And once again from far, far away in the eastern village the image came to her of herself, the older sister, pushing the baby carriage with her summer-naked brother in it, still a nursling (nursing at whose breasts now, after the accidental death of their mother?), and losing her grip on the carriage, which plunged off the path and tipped over the bank, into the jungle-like thicket of tall stinging nettles there, and again she plunged after the vanished brother-bundle into the dark-green, hairy nettle flames.
And once more she plucked at the unknown love of her life, lying facedown in the damp steppe grass, then stepped over his body, again and again, back and forth, back and forth, and asked him why he was so afraid that she would suck out his blood.
And on her estate, the former stagecoach relay station, on the edge of the riverport city, long since left behind by her, sparks from horseshoes pierced the darkness, the piles of pots in the kitchen shifted, the quinces, the kwite, the dunje, the safardzali, rolled among the piles of laundry, no letter lay on the bare table, no one played with the toys set up in her vanished child’s nursery.
And out here, among the dozens of brooks, rose thousands of mossy mounds, apparent islands, the turbari, softer than soft, which, when someone stepped on them, slowly twisted and sank, now, now, into the depths, into the bogginess, into the bog.
And the author in his village in La Mancha, in the chamber with the narrow cot, against the windowless wall, he, too, on his stomach, his hand over his eyes in his sleep, as if the night were not yet dark enough for him, him of all people.
“I have nothing to do with banking anymore, at least not as it is today,” she told him later. “And yet I am preoccupied with the idea of founding a new kind of bank — an image bank, a worldwide one, for the exchange, use, and investment of all my, your, and our images—” But when the author urged her to expand upon her project a little, as so often, she broke off her flight of fancy when it had hardly got off the ground.
23
But then the new day after all. The feeder brooks once more audible. The tent crowd holding a brief farewell meeting, out of doors in the morning mountain air in front of the Milano Real of Pedrada.
Each person also drank his coffee or whatever outdoors, from porcelain cups, yogurt containers, toothbrush glasses. She, the heroine, adventurer, or vagabond, had her Blue Mountain Coffee from Jamaica with her as always, which she shared with one person or another: a rich black oily gleam, that mirrored the summit plain of the Sierra. It was wrong to be stingy with these most precious of beans: if you used too few of them, the coffee would turn out more bitter and weak than any other coffee.
No one ate. Although it was allegedly winter and, according to the thermometer, a chilly morning, no clouds of breath showed in front of people’s mouths, just as in certain films where snow and a wintry landscape are a mere backdrop; only the beverages were steaming.
Now everyone here would set out by himself, or remain on the spot, or take the early bus, already waiting in the orchard, back to the plains and the cities.
Despite the bright daylight, not a single inhabitant of Pedrada was to be seen; the tents closed up tightly, as were the gray wooden shutters on the ancient granite-block houses: yet a living, breathing stillness (in his report, the observer, sent by the World Council, or whomever, who now burst out of his observer’s tent for his morning run, five to ten times around the colony, would characterize it as “hopeless,” “unmotivated,” “apathetic,” “eccentric”).
No one spoke at first. That night of dying and being dead had apparently had a good effect on the emperador, emperor, king, or the historical reenactor playing that role — perhaps a local historian from the provinces here, in his civilian profession a savings-bank employee who thought he would gain insight into the past through this role-playing: he decided not to continue the journey in the litter; would cover on foot the rest of the way to the retreat of Charles V and I, without the real or artificial ermine cloak, together with his four colleagues from the Caja de Ahorros (= savings bank) in Piedrahita or elsewhere, who would no longer have to carry him.
The medieval stonemason and the young woman no longer on the lookout for anyone’s story but her own — never again would she blush — stood with their arms around each other, as if since they first touched one another that night they had not been a finger’s breadth or a hairsbreadth apart, when sitting, then falling down, then lying, later getting up, and now stepping outside: not a chink between these two Siamese bodies. How would it end? Well, there was enough for the stone man to do here in Pedrada (= place of stones), and her simultaneous and parallel activity could at least cause no harm.
And the terribly young couple? Overnight they had become adults, he broad-shouldered, with a suitable hat, she visibly also larger, with a proud womanly face and wider pelvis, from which her stomach already protruded a little with their second child, while in the morning light the firstborn now appeared to have grown out of his diapers, having become a year or more older during the night, now able to stand on both legs, walk, hop over one of the feeder brooks of the río Tormes; and if his mouth did not yet produce any recognizable words, his eyes were already speaking, taking in everything that happened, could have said things about the others that they themselves did not even guess or know. Soon he would board the bus with his parents and sit between them during the entire trip and remain to the end, come what might, surrounded by these parents of his.
In the moment of parting they finally spoke. A strangely animated farewell for a group that had come together by chance, and so fleetingly. How full of enthusiasm each person there seemed, for himself, for the path ahead, as well as for the others and their very different paths. And hadn’t they all been enthusiastic at one time, when? through and through, about nothing in particular, without a particular destination or adventure, simply enthusiastic, about nothing, nothing at all? When? As infants? Yes, as infants, long ago, in their time. Yes, in their time — but when was that? — hadn’t all of us new arrivals in the world presented ourselves as enthusiastic? Wasn’t there a time or a story in which everyone was born enthusiastic, with an enthusiasm meant for the long haul? But why did it seem now as though these people, coming into the world enthusiastic, the enthusiastic newborns, were the rarest of the rare? And what has become of all those who were enthusiastic in their day, those destined to remain youthful even as they aged, and all the more so, people to whom the adjective “young” applied as to no others?
But even if a hint or spirit of continuity was nowhere to be found anymore, at least there was the sporadic or episodic enthusiasm of parting. Every person thanked every other one, just like that, for nothing in particular. And each asked every other one to say hello for him to the place for which he was setting out, even if the place was unfamiliar to the person sending greetings.
She, however, knew the Yuste Monastery, several days’ journey away, on the southern side, at the foot of the Sierra, below the lowest and easiest of the passes through the mountains, the Puerto de Tornavacas, and she gave the emperador this charge: “Say hello for me to the holm oaks, to the pool in the garden, to the giant palms, and especially to the sparrows, who are so absent from the northern Sierra, on the northern side of the djebel.”—He: “Also to the mausoleum and the sarcophagus?”—She: “No.” And laying her hand on his shoulder, she stole, without his noticing, the soft tiger-striped falcon’s feather from his ermine. And each person wished the other — a seemingly efficacious wishing — what he had secretly already wished for himself. Even if the stories they had launched together would not continue — so what? at least they had been launched.