The Past Ahead. Gilbert Gatore

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СКАЧАТЬ imagining in almost no way at all. When you enter it, the passageway widens as you move forward, opening into the first hollow space. His immediate plan is to make that his living area. Light and wind sometimes come this far, faintly, which eases the darkness and humidity. From the entrance to the cave it is impossible to see the high recess to which he will attach his bedding. Suspension is the only way to be protected from the animals and insects with which he must share his cave, he observes, congratulating himself on having brought twine with him. Yes, hanging the bedding is a good idea: the swinging movement of the setup will be enough to keep bats, rats, and cats at a distance. Cockroaches, spiders, and ants won’t be able to get at him except via the fastening point, and he promises himself to keep a particularly watchful eye on that. And if there are any mosquitoes and flies he’ll just have to get used to them. In the back of this first hollow space, a passageway he is forced to crawl through opens onto the ceiling of a very large room. Before he’s able to get down into it, Niko must first braid a long cord and attach it pretty firmly so that he can use it to climb up and down. So he goes out again to gather dried banana tree bark, which he dampens in order to work it without cracking the pieces, and from this he makes two long ropes. Still farther down the slope he finds a long stalk of bamboo, which he thrashes against the ground to soften it up. Three ropes are bound to provide him with what he needs to get down into the second hollow area. The twisted bamboo stalk assures solidity while the banana fiber cords will facilitate his grip.

      33. Niko isn’t comfortable in a place that he hasn’t thoroughly checked out.

      34. As he makes his descent, the torch, now humid and lacking air, threatens to go out with his every move. He realizes that he can’t continue his exploration and tries to go back up, but his weary arms won’t support him and he falls down.

      35. He thinks his absence lasted only a very short period of time. One second that stretched out indefinitely, as far as the infinity of memory, as far as the dream’s eternity.

      36. First he felt his arms defying, then his entire body deserting him. He remembers having let go and the awareness that his head was going to hit the ground first. And a moment later, he opens eyes that are stunned by what they’ve just seen and troubled by not recognizing anything in the darkness that greets them.

      37. He wonders if he’s really awake when a monkey approaches him. He watches the animal’s silhouette as it detaches itself from the darkness. A stern face and a massive hand are displayed to sprinkle him with water and shake him before disappearing into the blackness, only to reappear soon thereafter. He muses over the scene from afar, as if it doesn’t concern him, because he is trying at the same time to reconstruct the dream he just had. He sees the monkey bustle about the way you see a bird go by in the sky or an ant on the ground—without paying it very much attention. He sees him without watching him, immersed as he is in what he saw when he was knocked out by the shock of his fall.

      38. In the dream, Niko was walking around the island with his father. A brilliant sun was their companion, and the forest sounds echoed their good mood. They were walking amidst splendid eucalyptus trees, banana trees bowing under the weight of their heavy fruit clusters, acacias, and bushes of fern, hibiscus, and bamboo; and there were still other plants whose names he didn’t know. There seemed to be no animals at all other than a few birds swirling around, so high that their cries were inaudible. Neither was there any wind rustling through the foliage, so the silence was complete. However, nothing bothered them, and at first, they didn’t notice that the forest around them was being transformed as they wandered through it. Slowly the trees were growing longer and lining up to form columns, centering on the spot where they were standing. At the same time, the wild grass had been brought down by the soil, and the birds flying in the distance were coming closer. They were crows. In the dream, the trees—ever taller and leafier—ended up eclipsing the sun’s brightness, and soon only a dark and viscous red was breaking through the foliage. In the grip of this terror, frozen with fear, Niko and his father watched what was going on. The trees, now altered into human shapes, were forming an army of motionless, silent giants. No longer able to control his panic, Niko cried out. He wanted to tell his father that they had to run, but instead of a voice, flames came from his mouth. The flame first set fire to his father, who, before he succumbed as he choked on the smoke, asked, “Why, my son?” Very quickly the fire reached the giant figures that had once again turned into trees, and everything burned up except Niko. When the fire died out, Niko saw nothing but a charred expanse and a grimy sky as far as the eye could see. Even the lake had dried up. At that very moment a warm rain began to fall. Raising his eyes to the sky, Niko felt it shower on his face before he saw the monkey spit on him and shake him. He still didn’t know whether the darkness he saw was the continuation of the opaque fog the fire had left behind or whether he was now awake.

      39. It’s impossible to know how long Niko lay there in the dark, at first unconscious, then mesmerized by the view of a monkey appearing and disappearing into the shadows, and finally engrossed in the recollections of his dream. Generally speaking, with Niko it’s impossible to have a reliable temporal reference point because he himself doesn’t think it’s terribly important, among other reasons.

      40. The fall and the dream remind Niko of something. A confused memory. The monkey comes back. Again. He spits on his face, shakes him, and leaves. Suddenly Niko understands it’s water. The monkey keeps going to the spring to fetch it and then sprays him to wake him up. With that thought in mind Niko comes back to earth. He no longer sees the animal as an abstract presence but as a real being that from now on he will associate with specific memories. “Monkey,” he mumbles. “Water . . . cave . . . rope . . . torch,” he continues, and remembers very clearly where he was, why he’d come here, and how he’d fallen.

      41. He doesn’t have the strength to be scared of the animal. What energy he has left is consumed by the pain pummeling away at the top of his skull and the other one ripping at his stomach. This anguish awakens a memory in him that slips away as soon as it’s stirred up. He must avoid certain thoughts.

      42. He hears cries. The swarm comes closer and, suddenly, there are some twenty monkeys, big and small, surrounding Niko, turning him into a plaything. He doesn’t have time to be frightened when a multitude of curious, noisy fingers are exploring his nostrils, ruffling up his hair, pulling at the skin of his belly, tickling his feet, twisting his penis, and stuffing soil in his ears. Niko has to get up if he doesn’t want to risk winding up as a shapeless human paste. The idea has hardly taken shape inside his head when the unruly hands grab him and throw him in the air once and then even higher a second time. Forgetting the uproar, the pain, and the exhaustion for a moment, he understands he’s being flung the full length of the rope. At the third try he grabs hold of it and, after some long, painful, clumsy writhing, he manages to cling to a nearby edge of the passageway that leads to the first gallery. He almost falls several times but the whooping, which he interprets as encouragement, helps him hold on. Having finally made it to the passageway that should allow him to get back to the first hollow area and then to the outside, he turns around to thank the monkeys, but they’ve vanished. All he sees behind him is the rope swinging above a dark and silent hole.

      43. The pain, hunger, and guilt that dig their pincers into him don’t leave him any time to wonder what just happened. Did he really run into monkeys down there? Was he cheered on, booed, ridiculed, or driven out? Does the cave continue beyond the expanse into which he’d fallen?

      44. According to a fable whose details he can’t recall, there was a time when humans and monkeys of all kinds formed a single family. That was the day mankind began to think bad luck had come to earth. The tale draws the conclusion that whoever wishes for happiness must stop talking, dreaming, and thinking, in that order. Monkeys in general are said to be the guardians of this lost wisdom—gorillas in particular, since they have always kept to themselves, away from the snare of thinking and dreaming and of words above all, content instead to see, understand, and do.

      45. For a while some people nicknamed him Niko the Monkey because they thought that, being mute, Niko could СКАЧАТЬ