As the story went, there was once a time when the hunters of the Sierra, not those hunters whose story remains to be told here, even planted rowan trees hither and yon in the mountain wilderness, in order to lure the small birds that were prized as delicacies, and at any rate the rowan trees that often stand alone, as if artificially planted, in the Sierra de Gredos have a second name, along with “bird berry” also “hunter ash.” Bitter-as-can-be berries or clusters? Yes, bitter as can be. Not bitter as gall.
But as other fruits first tasted sweet and only later manifested their bitterness, deep within, a bitterness that caused the person eating them to spit them out suddenly, a bitterness that not only turned his stomach but “shook him up” (a village expression?), the rowanberries by contrast revealed to the palate, after the initial off-putting bitterness, a taste that was more than mere “sweetness”: an inwardness (did that exist, an “inward taste”?) all the more inward because the initial bitterness remained present in it. Ah, ow, oh — only no “ugh!”—the rowanberries in the rocky clefts of the Sierra de Gredos. (Was it appropriate for her, the heroine, to stand on tiptoe? Yes.)
26
During one period — which one, again, hardly matters for the current story — she had viewed possessions and property as a kind of “accomplishment” (though different from the accomplishment of “having a child,” in which she continued to believe, now even unwaveringly). And at the end of that period? She was no longer so sure.
And now, while crossing the Sierra? Was she happy to be as far as possible from her so-called possessions; to get through the day without ever thinking about or looking at things the way a property-owner would — in other words, to be rid of something that over time, rather than cushioning or liberating a person, tended to make one petty and rigid, which plagued and preoccupied one (and there was nothing positive in being thus “occupied”)?
What: Was she, a banker and economist, which she continued to be, in her apparently traditional fashion, an enemy of property?
Yes: at least as far as her personal existence was concerned. And besides, she saw here, too, a problem that was beautiful = worth describing, but not a contradiction. Even a few top people at the World and Universal Bank — before her journey, one could easily have pictured her as one of them — had recently come out in opposition to the position on property espoused by this super-powerful institution, which merely pretended to want to help the have-nots of the world and in reality was out to enhance its own power and prestige, and had left their posts with that institution to do something altogether different — something in opposition. And perhaps these people, one at a time, were also making their way through a similar moonlike region, devoid of human beings, relieved to be released for the time being from their eternal preoccupation with power and possessions, perhaps even contemplating an entirely new paradigm?
No, owning property could be an accomplishment for a while, but it was not one’s mission in life — which it seemed to have become in the current era. Money and possessions had become the be-all and end-all. The money-changers in the temple? No, the temple of money-changers — and it was the one temple that still counted. In the face of the silence, brightness, and sanctified aura of the money temple, everything else could not help degenerating into dark, agitatedly flailing, recidivist raging. But to her, and precisely to her, the formerly fruitful and liberating notion of property seemed exhausted once and for all, yes, a complete failure. Property no longer represented an ideal.
And because, as she made her way through the Sierra, no “property” crossed her path and disrupted her rhythm, she became, and was, so free that she could do the smallest thing, or, with reference to others, the majority, could “undertake” them. At least this conception accompanied her, and for a stretch her “I” or “one” became a “we” and a “you.” We laced our boots. We would bring this rock crystal back for you, and this sheet of mica for you, and this snakeskin for you.
Yes, just as she was making the journey for herself, she was undertaking it for others, and in the rhythm of her stride she felt constantly accompanied by others. It was crucial to stay away from property, as far as possible. We have been property owners long enough. And there was very little that got in the way of observing and perceiving — of seeing the big picture — as much as property ownership. And if we lost the ability to observe, we ceased to be worthy of observation, of being kept in the picture.
And at the same time she remained aware that one false step, one stumble, not even a broken foot, merely a sprain, would be enough to put an end to this cocky “we.” One momentary slip, and the veil of universality, the epic sweep, would be ripped off our big picture of the world, and all such words as “we” and “you” and “one” would be blown away, and only the teeny-tiny “I,” more solipsistic still than the property owners’ “I,” would be left, more wretched, ridiculous, and, in her eyes, now “not worth describing.”
And even more powerful than her constant awareness of the external danger of falling, which was mechanical and merely threatened her body and could also be anticipated and to some extent forestalled, another awareness was at work inside her, one that had pursued her since her first time in the Sierra de Gredos, when she was halfway to the top and suddenly found herself without her companion, the father of her child, which she could feel, ready to be born, in her protruding belly; under her heart.
Just as then, when she had stood alone with the fetus in the blazing granite-cliff sun, there would again erupt from deep within her something that would turn everything upside down, uncontrollably: labor pains, which would have nothing to do with giving birth, bringing something into the world, and which, also, instead of just hurting, produced sheer, revolting horror — turning not only herself but the entire exterior world upside down, so that again she would be unable to distinguish her head from her feet, but also north from south, earth from sky, horizontal from vertical, mountain from plain, up from down, large from small, body from surfaces, eagles from lizards, ants from ibexes, cliffs from houses, rockslides from metropolises — all hopelessly mixed up before her eyes. Hopelessly? Hopelessly.
Yes, infinitely more to be feared than a false step was the repetition of that tumbling and stumbling of her insides, casting her, and with her the world and everything in it, into a chaotic state in which the cosmos (which meant “ornament” and “order,” did it not?) seemed utterly insane and the entire creation fell out of joint — and far outstripped the so-called primal chaos in its frantic confusion.
“To get a grip on things,” she went on, “I sank my teeth into my arm, and as I did so felt my arm growing teeth and biting me back in the face … The tops of the cliffs, although they were standing still, began to tip in all directions. The kite circling in the distance grazed me with its beak. The shoe I had kicked off became a person in his death throes, his mouth gaping wide. A circle of dead tree trunks bent over to become a herd of elephants, about to stampede over me and the child in my belly. I jumped backward at the sight of a cloud. I leaned over to pick some blackberries that were hanging high above my head. When a butterfly approached, I jerked my head to the side as if it were a mountain vulture. Like someone cutting her own hair in front of a mirror — no, not like that — I reached to the left for something on the right, in front of me for something at my back, and vice versa, and vice versa again. And finally, in a panic, I even looked for the doorbell in a rock wall …” For once she did not interrupt her story in midstream, but was all afire (the author: “an expression still in use?”) to go on and on, describing the episode.