Then the series of flashing images of her brother, who in the meantime was where on his journey, parallel to hers or perhaps not, to his chosen people? Traveling only at night, he was sleeping now during the day, but not in the hay in a barn or a stable, but warm and well cared for in a bed. The correspondences he had conducted daily in prison had resulted in a long list of addresses, all of which represented possible places to spend the night. Not only in the country toward which he was heading but also throughout the world, the released prisoner would have been taken in immediately, here as well as there, with hardly a day’s journey between one place and the next. In every town, even small ones, at least one house stood ready to receive him, a sort of network almost like that of a certain sect or a people scattered all over the earth. And should he happen to find one door barred, his sister was certain that one right next to it would immediately be opened to him. Her brother, the enemy of mankind, was at the same time the quintessential social animal. He was aware of thresholds, true, but instead of impeding him, they gave him momentum; he drew the strength from them to open himself up, and others.
Precisely when encountering strangers he was immediately all there, as a matter of course, yet made no assumptions, with the result that he infected every new acquaintance with his attitude, always liberating or refreshing. Women in particular tended to respond to him, and after exchanging two sentences with him began to use the intimate form of address. Accordingly, her brother was at this very moment sleeping, if not at one of his thousands of correspondents’ addresses, then under the coverlet of a young or older “motherly” woman he had met only an hour ago at the bus station (or in the next room), who meanwhile was at work somewhere, having pressed the key to her apartment into his hand after the third sentence they exchanged.
But the present image had nothing to do with her sleeping brother. It, too, obedient to the rule or law governing such images, came flying or flashing out of the depths of time, and this one even from a long-ago past: in it her brother appeared to her as a very small child, almost a nursling still (but nursing from whom? his mother had died in an accident the day before). And this child — like the adult in the present — was sleeping, though not in a bed in a closed room somewhere but rather on a wool blanket outdoors, under an apple tree, back home in their village orchard. Yes, she had seen him this way once, and she had squatted next to him, in the role of the one who was supposed to take care of him, the guardian of his sleep. Her tiny brother lay there on his back, in the light summer shade of the tree, and slept deeply and peacefully, the sleep of the righteous, almost the self-righteous, as only a nursling can sleep, with cheeks puffed out and lips protruding.
This image, like all the rest in the image shower, told of (dealt with) a kind of peace. And this fragment from a very different era likewise contained an element of melancholy, or, worse still, a danger, a threat. And with unabated amazement she recalled that at that moment it had been crucial that her brother not wake up. He was very ill, and this was supposed to be his healing sleep. He had to sleep for a long, long time. If he woke up too soon, or suddenly, it would kill him. And soon the blazing sun would reach his face. Should she pick him up and move his bed? Sit down and shield him? And the tractor sounds growing louder. And the saw blades howling as they sliced into the tree trunk. And now, as she drives steadily southward over the mesa, along the almost always deserted carretera, with the image of her endangered brother before her, a small branch hits her windshield with a pop (in reality more a cracking sound), making her jump. Unlike with the previous images, she remains silent; avoids any sudden noise in the car. Not squirming in her seat, which could set a defective spring to humming. Not turning on the windshield wipers (to remove the sight-blocking branch) — risk of squealing. Maintaining a steady speed so as not to shift. Having to brake suddenly now would be the end, once and for all!
Then, even when opening her brother’s letter with one hand: no ripping, as little noise as possible. Reading, silently, the single sentence: “That the world is still there — wonderful!” (Not to be taken literally, see “secret code”!) The branch blown onto the windshield: from an acacia, leafless, arrow-shaped; studded with sharp, pointy thorns; arranged in pairs, in the form of bulls’ horns.
Then all the image meteors — didn’t “meteor” mean “between heaven and earth”?—outdone in brilliance and duration by one whose content she did not want to reveal to the author. The only thing she told him: “It was just a word.” And then she explained to him: “Even single words can arrive from a distant place and time as images. And perhaps there is no image more penetrating and intense than a pure word image like this.”
Even now, long after the fact, when she spoke of it, the word was present for her as hardly any present could be. Although she kept the word secret, she revealed herself terrifyingly to the author. If he was terrified, it was in this sense: suddenly he viewed her with different eyes; he no longer recognized in her what he thought he knew; he saw before him a total stranger, and at the same time someone familiar; he wanted both to back away and move closer; his terror: not so far from what was at one time called “holy,” at least with a hint of it. And yet she remained unapproachable? Or on the contrary? And he, or one, or whoever, simply did not find the right way to approach her?
After the arrival of that word image—“It flew to me, came sailing to me”—she had driven on at her steady speed. She drove on. She is driving. The highway over the upland plateau is bumpy, and the car bounces and sways like a carriage. While driving she pushes back the Santana’s canvas top. She sticks something between her lips, something that suits her even less than a cigarette: a toothpick, and not even one made of ivory, let’s say, but a wooden one. She takes off her hat and lets down her hair — which does not suit her either, or does it now?
Empty blue sky, devoid of airplanes, devoid of the kites and buzzards so common on the mesa, with that motionless dark cloud still hanging there, though by now low on the horizon, sinking out of sight, like a mountain. In her open rough-terrain vehicle the heroine shows herself to the author for a moment from high above (although he has never written a film script). Then she moves in close again, in a veritable close-up, or a torso shot. And for the first time now he sees her eyes, as if they had always been veiled to him previously, even though he has been preoccupied with her story for so long, including their color, which again does not seem to suit her at all; or perhaps it does, and how! though not her origin and her country, but then what did that have to do with her story?: an indescribable black.
“Indescribable”? How could he, such an experienced writer, let a word like that slip out? And now he tried at least to describe that black, at first mainly for himself, as usuaclass="underline" it was a black that could resist any light, even the most glaring, even the winter sun hanging low over the fallow disk of the earth. The adventurer’s eyes did not merely face down the sun; they literally absorbed it — perhaps, too, because although they were open wide, they did not dry out, at all, at all — and sent the rays back, transformed, and how! A black like the black of the eyes of the white-robed angel on the medallion, whose one finger pointed sideways toward the empty tomb? No! How extinguished those eyes appeared now, almost wondrously extinguished; for how they would flare up again when—. In ancient books, the word for the black of her eyes was gagat or azabache, meaning something like pitch black. But not that either: this was no film. After all, hadn’t the movies made it impossible to find a color and a face? These were supplied ready-made, in close-up? Besides, our heroine bore no resemblance to any angel, including the fallen ones, and least of all at such moments! This black sucked in the light, absorbed it; tasted it; savored the aftertaste. Her entire face, then her neck and shoulders as well, were engaged in silent tasting, motionless, without biting, chewing, or swallowing. Along with the light of day, the air was tasted, the airstream, the hues of sky and earth. And also striking to the author — which subsequently struck him again and again, if anything at all — was how, in addition to her eyes, all the parts of the woman’s body, even the smallest ones, unveiled and unclothed, revealed themselves in the light surrounding her; as aspects of the light, stretching, billowing, arching, even when the woman did not raise her face as she drove along, but rather kept it lowered. Visible even now the seemingly eternal abrasion on her brow, always in the same place. Visible, too, her hardworking villager’s hands: she was strong. But the physical strength was not her own. And nonetheless the many scars on her body.