B007P4V3G4 EBOK (15 page)

'Mother,' the man said, his voice smothered because of her
bosom.

'Yes, my boy,' said the woman, 'mother's here, for a mother
must always be prepared. I've got nothing to reproach myself
with, I have.'

At that moment the sparse light in the room was diminished by
the appearance of two girls in the doorway; by their smell one
could clearly tell how hot it was outside.

The woman revived and said: 'Here're Anna and Maria from
next door; they're just dropping by, you know what neighbours
are like.'

The young man shook hands with them and said how surprisingly easily he had been able to find the house again in the village,
as if he hadn't been away. The girl called Anna took another step into the room so that her face was no longer so indistinct. She had
a large, very sensuous mouth and her nose was no tiddler either,
but her piggy little eyes looked kindly into the world.

'I, on the contrary,' she said, 'am always afraid of losing my
way, particularly in the evening, and I also have a fear of suddenly
going blind and then falling into the river.'

The young man laughed. 'Those who follow me shall not
stumble in the dark. I do like the water, don't like swimming but
like standing in it and going a bit wrinkly.'

The girl Anna blushed, cast down her eyes and whispered:
Now there's a thing.' Then she turned to the woman and asked:
'Shall I give the room he sleeps in a bit of a going-over, and air
and make his bed?'

'Fine,' the woman said, measuredly, 'I know my place.'

That evening, when the young man had already gone upstairs,
Anna dropped by a moment, out of interest, but many questions
hovered unuttered in the room.

Would you mind taking him some fresh water?' the woman
asked. 'You have young legs and if there's anything else you need,
tell me.'

The girl Anna went upstairs, knocked, stepped inside and set
down the water on the table. Then she settled on a chair beside
the bed. The young man sat on the only other chair, at the table,
and he stared at the water in the bowl.

The garret room was in part situated above the stables, the
smells from which penetrated with great force through the gaps in
the floor. These were the smells of a summer's evening so balmy
and full of promise as only exists apocryphally. Purple, the evening
dashed against the window, jasmine scent and hay-heat hung
heavily upon the air and the grievous snorting and stamping of the
bull downstairs was clearly discernible. Brightly gleamed the eye
of the mother behind the keyhole and, behind a few gaps further
along, those of the neighbour and the lass, Maria. What they saw
they slurped in greedily, but there was painfully little. Perhaps
both knew they were being watched by glittering eyes behind the
wall, but they showed no signs of shame or irritation. The room
was neat, its furnishing extremely spartan; the bed, however, had
been highly aired and made with care, even more reason to crawl
away together for a right old cuddle and let farmers make the hay.
But no; the young man spoke: not quite audibly, he told of very
sad things, for the girl Anna drooped more and more, with hunched back and shoulders and despondent hands in her lap. The
mother, not wishing to let any opportunity pass in order not to
have anything to reproach herself with later on, fetched her lute
from downstairs and strummed a soft and sloping song. 'I hang my
helmet on the brazen knob.'

Both youngsters were well equipped for an hour of cheeky bliss:
he possessed the attractiveness of someone who comes from far
away, that of the stranger, and she smelled so strongly of fresh
honeysuckle, it hurt; moreover, the bull boomed downstairs on the
cobbles and steamed like Pan himself. The young man, however,
just held forth, a strange light resting on his pointed little skull. He
pointed upwards with his knobbly finger as if he was probing the
chart of heaven, modelled all kinds of strange things in the air, and
meanwhile the little virgin Anna blinked away tear upon tear from
her little eyes. The mother even appeared in the room for a
moment, jazzing up the lighting with a little red table lamp, setting
down a pitcher of red wine on the table and a dish of peppered
beef.

In the end, virgin Anna left the loft, sobbing, stumbling down
the stairs, squeaking with misery, and she cried: 'To what do I owe
this?'

Who cares!' the mother cried after her, triumphant, 'you can't
get used to it soon enough, my girl: children ... nothing but
misery.'

It came to pass that a great drought arrived in the land, and to
such an extent that even a camel standing stock-still threw up a
cloud of dust. The earth around the village had been scorched
brown-grey, and when the sun had reached its highest point,
tongues of flame flickered in the sky. The struggle for water had of
old been part of daily toil. The inhabitants of the village owed
their chabot head to it: that little pointed skull, the little eyes close
together, their nose the size of a sugar beet, and those coarsegrubbing gobs. The songs in the village were full of shade, milk,
the rustle of leaves and glugging water. There was even a man
who had made himself perfectly at one with the dryness of the
soil; it had become the objective of all his considerations, not God,
but the withered, asphyxiating plain of scorched shale and sand.
'This earth does not cease to give,' he hummed on the little
market, 'tender meat, fine milk, living water, and moreover she also
bears the poet on her back.'

Where there is scarcity, there is also the spiv, the crafty one, the
canny devil; no milk he has butter; no his
lamp bums as brightly as the first day; has all water he
still perspires, untroubled, speaks with moist mouth and things
gurgle in his stomach, juicily.

In the village there is a narrow, steep, quiet little backwater
where the sun always shines, but half way up there is a small sidealley where there is a great to-do. Here the water trade is
conducted; the atmosphere is tense but lively, and it is a fascinating
sight to hear the turnip-heads from the village and its surroundings
shout and bid there with cracked lips and parched voices.

The water trade is a murky business, for how the cool water
gets there into the cistern deep underground is incomprehensible
to the thirsty nit: this is the spiv's, the canny devil's secret. It was
whispered that the water owner had connections with little clouds
which only watered his garden, whispers too about a basin, that
happened to be underneath his house, to which the water flowed
and dripped, unstoppably, from far and wide, and where it stayed
just as cool as in winter. Whatever the case, the trader had his
house extended and purchased white camels with small, precious
carpets in the stirrups and golden knobs on the saddles.

Until the real drought came, the drought within a drought
which made the earth crack and snap to its very core. Sudden splits
and rifts boomed through the rocky ground and the price of the
obligatory wooden bowls which had not cracked rose to unknown
heights. But the price of water, of course, rose most of all, indeed,
it even rose while being passed from one to the next so that the
thirsty had to pass it on, from one to the next, incessantly, and
they finally succumbed, as dry as St Nicholas's bottom. The chabot
skulls mummified, nose and cheeks withered, all hope drained dry
from the eyes.

When their plight was at its worst, the rumours started: there'd
been thunder, it was said, in the mountains on the horizon, there
was even said to be a waterfall there, free and open in the sky, just
like that. This last one was not to the rich water merchant's liking
and he would no longer give water to ones who believed such
tales. Until he happened to have a visit from a feverish young man
with a hollow look in his eyes, who told him about a source out
there in the desert from which water bubbled up inexhaustibly, a
spot blessed with henna flowers, vine bushes, apple trees and the
occasional gazelle. As if by a miracle, the merchant was convinced. 'Show me the way there,' he shouted, chalk-white with greed. He
quickly gathered some onions, goat's cheese and a few flasks of
aqua, and off they went, looking back furtively time and again. For
days they made their way through sand and cinder, the landscape,
naked and drab, unchanging so that it was as if they were rooted
to the same spot, for ever, and yearning. The sun beat down,
godless and scorching, on the pointed head of the merchant; camel
and companion, crumpling, were left behind. The merchant could
no longer speak, for his tongue tapped to and fro in his mouth like
a twig; the last drop of urine, squeezed out with much effort,
carved through his member like a red-hot knife.

The grotto he reached with his last, faltering steps, and the
strange figure he found there did not seem to be bothered by
anything at all: he munched some locusts, cheerfully spitting out
legs round about and appeared to be in fine fettle. His was the
primal posture of the spirit: down, splat, on his bum, the thighs
carelessly spread wide, the hands scalloped before the cosmic.
With intense compassion he addressed the sly dog, having first
refreshed him extensively with cool water from a flask he calmly
and generously brought forth from the dark of the grotto.

'I am the source,' the man said, 'mark you, I'm not saying he is
the source, or we are the source, or them's the source, no ... I'm
saying that I am the source. Nor am I saying that I was the source,
am it perhaps or once ever will be, none of all those: I say that I
am the source. And I'm not on about the door or the gate or the
fence, no, I'm on about the source and then not just any old source,
but the source. What sayest thou to this?'
-- - - - - - - - - - - -- - -

The merchant, bewildered, pointed to his mouth which still had
sand and dust panting in and out of it, and again he was given
water, copiously, without any contribution as regards cost, and
then the word goes down a treat, it does.

Thus, to everyone's disappointment, the man returned to the
chabot village with a spring in his step and, as all and sundry
thought, firmly intent on squeezing out every last drop again. But
no, this turned out quite differently: the merchant had become a
man of the word. Where previously they had bitten each other's
ears off to get to the front during trading, chabotteurs now
congregated in all tolerance to listen to the merchant, during
which they would be handed a little bowl of water: they just
couldn't suspend their disbelief for a moment. 'Blessed be they
who quench for free,' said the waterman and he let the words roll in his mouth, round and round, with relish, 'for they shall inherit a
kingdom.'

'Aha,' the chabot-tops thought cunningly, 'there you have it,'
and their eyes moved a little closer together still. But no matter
how distrustful they were and continually bore in mind being
hauled back to bone-dry reality, the man appeared to be firmly
decided to share out his supply of water, to give away his riches,
and in so doing to tell about his encounter in the desert. He went
round the village like an uncomfortable presence, greeting everybody, smiling in an unnatural manner, and now and then he laid
his hand in blessing upon the head of an old dolt or a playing
child, who then would making a quick get-away for that matter.

What precisely did actually happen?' the elders asked, repeatedly, and one evening he addressed them. 'I will tell you of this in
parables,' he said, 'for otherwise it looks just ordinary and this it is
not, not at all. Listen: I found the master sitting at the entrance to
his grotto, deep in thought, pondering, and I saw that his little,
pear-shaped head was stuffed full of choicest thoughts and noble
passions. He was sitting on a stool covered in gleaming pink silk,
like at court, his nose was nicely ripe in shape and his large, broad
lips made a pale oval shape in his black stubbly beard. An art
connoisseur, by the looks of him, a man from the East cloaked in
cool white silk and with a rosette in his buttonhole. A man who
would go far; I saw this in no time at all. In front of him, in a
marble courtyard with columns, fat white women rolled about the
floor, and from time to time, when he had a refined thought, he
would, with an elegant gesture, measure a breast or nipple between
his thumb and index finger. Occasionally he would caress their
skin which was smooth as silk and gleamed like a mirror because of
scented oils, and then he would stare out across the wilderness
with eyes like gelatine, moist and dark, and very narcotic in the
depths. 'Women,' he then said, 'they are eternity and
spirit. Amen, 'n over-and-out, folks.'

'Did I already mention the plaster eagle, his opera hat in his
right hand, his youngsters: a tailor, a cook, a gravedigger, a nurse
and a few more. I knelt before him in the dust but I had so many
things to ask him all at once that I ended up being a little lost.
When he went into the grotto to have forty winks during the hot
noontime hour, I did see that his legs were a little on the short
side.'

'Tell us more,' cried the elders excitedly, 'tell us all.'

'One evening,' the merchant said, cosily contented, and after a
thoughtful swig, 'we were sitting together, the lights had been
extinguished and everybody felt themselves to be in the safe
hands of the others, some way or other. It was a dreadfully stormy
night, lightning flashing incessantly and unceasing thunder all
round. The trees groaned in the garden and in the distance we
heard the sea booming against the rocks and waves rolling in, tall
as houses.'

'The seat cried the elders, 'where did that suddenly come from,
where actually was that grotto?'

Refined, the merchant raised an already somewhat pale, thin
hand and said: 'These are but parables; books and verses, as it
were.'

'Continue,' the elders said.

'All had assembled in the hall!