The Past Ahead. Gilbert Gatore

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ the words spilled all over each other inside her arm, immediately demanding the repose they sought in the small notebook directly in front of her. She can still feel the trace of their violent and acrid rush through her veins. For hours before she began writing she had clutched her pencil between her fingers, like a fistful of massive tidying needs, where so many things had piled up for so long and in such disorder that she couldn’t open it without everything tumbling out to crush her. Weary, she had loosened her grip at last. The sheets of paper scattered around the room are the result of this outpouring.

      She isn’t writing today. She has unleashed the flow of words and the thoughts they express, like bloodletting.

      Useless to herself hereafter, she remembers. Like a new commander reviewing his regiment to establish his authority, she visits her memories one by one. She’s afraid of indifference. She’s afraid she’s been defeated. But this feeling is merely a pointless reflex, for in the final analysis, it is no longer up to her to advance or retreat. She’s been launched, and she’ll be crushed. She is no longer anything but the example of a law of which you are the indispensable observer.

      Sitting straight on her stool, an unmoving image, she thinks that if she reflects long enough and is sufficiently stubborn she might end up understanding something. Actually, she’s moving among images she forces herself to register in a clear order, images upon which she hopes she will impose herself once and for all. As she thinks this she can’t help but wonder whether it isn’t she who is being visited, scrutinized, and subdued by her memories rather than the other way around.

      ONE

      2. Today, like yesterday and the day before, when night falls, Utiwonze, Uwera, and Shema come out of their holes to keep watch together. Niko, who himself is being watched by the monkeys, observes them from the opening to the cave. According to a rule that no one tries to justify, the piles of stones beneath which these three live should be seen as houses. What one really shouldn’t think about are the mounds indicating the fresh graves. The whole thing should be considered a village whose name, Iwacu, exists nowhere other than inside Niko’s mind.

      3. Niko saw the other three people who live here in addition to the monkeys arrive one after another. Uwitonze came first, followed by Uwera. Shema was the last one to appear.

      4. The cave is located at the top of the hill, which is itself an island. It lies in the center of a lake whose entire perimeter can be seen from the promontory.

      5. If a stranger were to appear in the middle of Iwacu, he would surely ask himself a few pointless questions. He would wonder whether a pile of stones becomes a house by the simple fact of sheltering a human being. He wouldn’t understand why these three individuals remain consistently mute and burrowed inside their shelters as long as the sun hasn’t yet vanished below the horizon. He’d be astonished to find no trace of a path or a harbor on the island, as if coming and going were out of the question here. The intruder would be surprised to notice that in order to penetrate the three little mounds of earth you have to crawl feet first, like a snake moving in reverse. The troublemaker would end up thinking that Uwitonze, Uwera, and Shema are here as runaways. He’d assume that the houses of Iwacu look like graves so as not to attract any attention. That’s why there’s never any fire. And that’s also why the three inhabitants are attached to the silence, the disconnection, and the thinness that turn them into living abstractions. Proud of his analysis, the stranger disappears the way he’d come, without any warning.

      6. “Dear bystander, if you are in as much of a hurry as this stranger you should follow him and vanish as well. This is the best time, for after these lines it won’t be as easy for you as it is now to leave.”

      7. The cave contains the source of a much sought-after hot water spring. No one has seen it because entering is taboo. Indeed, it is said that offenders will even be punished by being permanently swallowed up by the cave’s wafting breath. Water collects in a basin that has formed a little lower on the side of the hill. It cleanses everything, even gullibility. At least that’s what the most trustworthy springs have always confirmed.

      8. Among other pieces of evidence, the perils of the cave and the efficacy of its water are recognized both by the most respected therapists and the most ancient tales.

      9. Besides the water, at the entrance of the cave where the daylight begins to make way for darkness, there is a print the length of a hefty adult male’s foot. Here, too, tales provide the best information since no one is supposed to have come close enough to the cave to have seen this outline. The footprint, the story says, is that of a king who lived at a time when God still dwelled inside the entrails of monkeys. His size and strength gave him everything that his birth had forgotten to offer him. According to the legend, it was while he was visiting his land that the king passed through the island. And he put his signature on the property by striking the soil with his powerful foot inside the shelter so that the rain wouldn’t erase the imprint. Ever since then, on the night that they are to become men, boys come here to ask the footprint for the strength and courage with which to mark their own life as the giant king had marked the ground. It’s the only night that anyone is allowed to disembark on the island, climb to the summit, approach the cave, and draw a little of its miraculous water.

      10. That is why the island is the only place where the soil has retained its true color while blood drenched the rest of the country. Niko must have thought it a safe place to be when he came there to live.

      11. Niko doesn’t believe the story of the giant king. His experience and his imagination have constructed an entirely different version. The day he became a man and came to say the ritual prayer before the footprint, he didn’t heed the advice he was given. He entered the cave, although he’d been told that he shouldn’t, under any circumstances, either look at or approach it too closely. They had guaranteed him that he’d run the risk of being sucked up and he would disappear for good. Besides, Gaspard had added, it wasn’t just a risk, but a certainty, for all the known tales were adamant on that point: none of those who’d been too curious or foolhardy had ever come back.

      12. In spite of all these warnings Niko couldn’t resist the urge to take a few steps inside the cave, or else curiosity and regret would have killed him. On that particular night, by the light of the torch they’d made for him to avert animals and demons, he’d moved forward into the darkness, holding his breath in terror. He’d barely begun to advance when he saw a shadow flee ahead of him. As he ran, the vision made him give free rein to the fear he’d been able to control until then. The size of the cave echoed the sound of his steps that, multiplied tenfold, made him run even faster, and he sweated as he’d never done before. Once outside, he realized he’d dropped the torch but didn’t dare go back into the cave to find it. When he returned to the village he told them that he’d been forced to throw it at an animal that was threatening him.

      13. Could there be a link between the fate that constitutes a life, a secret breath that might guide its trials and errors? Is it possible that in reality life has a direction that everyone simply follows? Why was it that Niko, who would find refuge in the cave later on, defied the taboo of entering it?

      14. Niko didn’t tell anyone about his adventure. He’d committed a desecration, and if on top of that he’d broadcast his audacity he would have been severely punished. But his experience in the cave continued in his innermost thoughts. What was that creature that had run away from him? It wasn’t any ghost or monster, for it wasn’t anywhere near as big as he. Of that he was certain. Perhaps it was only a cat or a rat that had terrified him so. That hypothesis made him think again of his mad dash to the cave’s entrance that now seemed painfully ridiculous. Was it to exorcise this shame that he returned to the cave?

      15. Niko also remembers the reverberation his footsteps had made, which gave him the feeling of being in an infinite hollow. An echo whose muffled and interminable vibrations continued СКАЧАТЬ