The journey of the soul, from cycle to cycle, towards the same knot of destiny where man must choose between catastrophe once more and the emergence to another consciousness.
Björn was in peril; Erik's death had opened a door in his strong-hold and the enemy had entered. But I often wondered who that enemy was and I seemed to see the Friend smiling under his black cape; perhaps it is his way of entering our faultless prisons and of drawing us out of them in spite of ourselves, covered with mud and free of an old hardened goodness.
The just are impregnable, they are solidified in their light.
—We are going to clear out, I've had enough.
I looked at Björn incredulously.
—Yes, enough, we are going, there's a Norwegian or a Swedish cargo boat at anchorage, I don't know exactly, Meenakshi's cook told me.
—But...
—There is no but. If you let me down, I'll go alone.
He was standing on the threshold of my monk's cell, his fists no his hips. His eyes were dark grey.
—Are you afraid?
A terrible anguish took hold of me, my temples were throbbing. He continued to hammer out his words with a sort of hate:
—You are having an easy time here, eh, while I pay But I've had enough. Let's get going. if you stay here, you will have to beg from door to door.
I was petrified. Batcha's image pierced my heart.
—And Balu? I stammered.
He blinked.
—You don't expect me to stay here for a child, do you?
—...
—He will grow up, he will forget. You can do what you like, but I am going.
And Björn turned his back on me. I followed him to his cell; he began to rummage through his trunk, throwing his books and clothes in the air.
—Brothers of the good days, eh, it's convenient... All the brothers are going away. Besides, I can kick the bucket for all you care; you are “in the light”.
—I am fed up with this kind of walking dream, what the hell are we doing here, tell me?
He seized his mala12 and flung it against the wall.
—You don't care, eh, you find it amusing.
—That's enough, Björn, I'm going with you.
I was sick at heart.
To go away... I was always ready to go away, no matter where, in five minutes I had packed my bag, and the more unexpected it was, the happier I was, but this time I was not the same. Naturally, one cannot stay here “for a child”, of course, one is reasonable, one “does” something in life. What? I don't know. Perhaps one begets children to atone for the one one has betrayed.
—Six million mantras, do you realise! Six million... Three years' work!
Björn was kneeling in front of a pile of shirts and ties. There was also a map of the Sahara and the Sannyasi's knife which he had taken from me.
—Of what use is all this? One doesn't need anything.
His voice softened, he stopped a moment, he looked at me like a lost child. And suddenly I had the impression that he wanted to cry.
—Of what use is it Nil, I've lost everything ... I've even lost my dream.
—Do you think we shall find it again over there?
—We shall do something else, we shall start another life.
—Something else? Do you think one does something else?
One always does the same thing under different names.
He gave an ugly little laugh:
—I know mantras to cure scorpion bites, mantras to neutralise poisons, to cure nervous tics, precocious hysteria and to make pregnant women give birth in thirty minutes! It is all copied here.
He waved an exercise book.
—We could even open a maternity clinic or a hathayoga school, ah! indeed.
I wanted to take him by the arm and caress him, but an absurd bashfulness kept me rooted in my corner.
—And I don't even know how to live.
He stuffed his clothes back into the trunk.
—We don't need anything—yes, a pair of trousers, we can hardly go aboard disguised as Brahmins.
He threw me a pair of blue jeans and a shirt, then he stopped at the sight of my knife.
—Yes, that can also be useful...
He closed the trunk with a bang.
—I haven't even seen the gods, I've seen nothing at all!... I wanted to see the gods—you understand, to see, to love—to love, you understand? One shuts one's eyes and then one sees, and then it is there and one loves for ever. One day I saw Kali—oh! a picture,—she was so beautiful, all black, with her long hair, and I said to myself: if only I could see her always, at any time, anywhere...
He remained for a moment looking into space.
—We are really a miserable species: each one for himself, all die and the gods keep silent. The one who loves us the most is our own dream.
—I've lived twenty-five years in a dream.
—All right, you must pass into a greater dream, that's all. If you don't pass, you die.
—I have searched, I have seen nothing.
—But it is there! It is already there. You are trying to see something else Björn, but it is not something else that we have to see, it is the same thing with other eyes!... ce n'est pas autre chose qu'il faut voir, c'est la même chose d'un autre ӕil!... That's it Björn, we have rotted because of the supernatural. So long as we cannot get it out of our heads that the thing to be found is not elsewhere but here, we shall perhaps end up in the glories of heaven, but continue to rot here. I know, I too have suffered a long time because I fancied that the true world was elsewhere, a sort of private super-cinema, to which one treats oneself with crossed-legs. But it is not that! It is all here... here. Oh! I don't know Björn, everyone has his own way of having difficulties but it is always the same really... the difficulty. You cling to the gods, others to money, others to women, others to morality or immorality—it is their way of having difficulties,—they cling in any case, even to the spirit, even to beauty, to good, or to evil, but it clings, that is the difficulty of the world, the only difficulty: it is the “I” which clings and everything becomes rotten. There is not a single good which is not rotted by that I—you let go of it and everything is good. And when one lets go of it, the gods are no longer the reverse of the devils, nor the devils the reverse of the gods, one passes above, one is in that.
For a fraction of a second, I wondered to what I was clinging.
—I'm fed up, that's all.
He got up, picked up his shirt and his trousers; then he remained with a pair of shoes in his hand.
—In any case we are not going to dress here; the whole village will stare at us... We'll change on the beach.
He gave a sneering laugh:
—We'll disguise ourselves as Europeans.
I went to my cell. There was only a mat on the ground. I picked up my little flute-player, he looked so smiling. I looked around me... There was really nothing to take, I was as poor as Job. And so rich! I closed my eyes for a second: everything dissolved—the chaos, the departure, Björn's anguish; there was only that little flame within, so warm, so quiet. One draws the curtain and it is there, it is always there: the infallible wonder. And then that noise outside, the false departure which leads nowhere; one bustles about, one moves, makes gestures, millions of gestures for nothing, a terrible nothing which walks in nothing... un affreux rien qui marche dans rien, and the only place to go to is there, quiet, noiseless, smiling: it waits. And the whole of life suddenly seemed to me so futile, a kind of virgin forest into which one hacks one's way, one walks, one makes such fantastic, dramatic efforts and then one stops for an instant, out of breath: there was that flower under the bush. Then everything is swept away in a single stroke, the forest, the sweat, the labour. Nothing remains but that flower. It was there, always there, it had never ceased to be there! It was for that that one had walked, laboured... Oh! that look which veers suddenly, and everything is pierced through, dissolved, fulfilled; one rounds the cape of mists; one is like a surprised child who sees the world change colour.
But one does not want smiles, one wants drama.
—So, are you coming?
He slammed the door.
We followed the western track, crossed the island up to the coral fishery. There was a cargo boat at anchorage, and the port was on the coast in front of us. Björn did not unclench his teeth, he was like a bottled-up storm. We changed our clothes on the beach; my trousers were dragging on the ground, I turned up the ends.
—And try not to make that face.
We took a felucca with a triangular sail. I felt like an automaton.
Little gusts of wind were blowing over the sea.
—Look, a Norwegian!
It could have been a Zulu or a Peruvian, for all I cared. And we could have sailed for Tierra del Fuego or the devil, it would have been the same to me.
Björn was excited, he moved from one side to the other.
—A Norwegian, can you believe it! Look at the blue cross! We are going to see snow again, Nil! And then the lavender of the fiords, ice—finished the furnace. You, who were dreaming of the poles...
I no longer knew of what I was dreaming; the cold or the heat, Norway or the equator, I no longer needed anything but a little inner degree; all the rest... It was like these trousers: a disguise, or like that boat: noise.
—Aalesund!
I dangled my hand in the water, the sea was lapping gently against the sides of the boat. Aalesund, but what could that matter to me! I was on another voyage and the world seemed veiled in tenderness. It is strange, but ever since I left that island, I felt myself borne by a force greater than my own, so sweet, as if I were going outside of myself or to the side of myself, and were leaning over that little body, over Björn, over that boat; I was looking at all with that tenderness, as from someone who is already dead and far, far away, borne by something else, or someone else, and the world recedes, fades, is seized in a haze of sweetness.
—You will see how beautiful my country is, it is wild and rugged and full of white birds...
I heard Björn's voice from afar, but it was a complete Björn that I perceived, with all his hidden depths, his story surrounding him, a sort of coloured network with fluctuations, little flames, dark streaks,—yes, a dark streak. Then another voice rose: “How beautiful my island is! Every morning I come here and prostrate myself before the beauty of the world,” and that Björn was dressed in white. Already his island had lost its beauty; tomorrow his beautiful Nordic country would turn grey, there would have to be other countries—I know the song and I have worn out all the maps; the white birds are stuffed with straw.
—Eh, Nil, to which country do you belong? You have never said from where you come.
—I...
—You look like a dazzled owl with a French accent.
—I am from a country which does not move... un pays qui ne bouge pas.
His eyes widened, he looked at me for a moment with the air of a stubborn child. Then I noticed that he had forgotten his red triangle:
—Your tilak.
He blushed to the roots of his hair. He rubbed out his triangle with the back of his hand in a kind of rage. He had become a very ordinary Björn.
—If Balu saw you, he would not recognise you.
I said that mechanically as one states a fact or points out an error in the colour of a picture. But it was the whole picture which looked false; that furious, ashamed Björn, that enormous bulge of cinnabar, those feluccas moored alongside, awaiting their turn under the grinding cranes, the sacks of phosphate which made the air stink, and the cry of the macua;13 all that floated before me like a fiat, artificial picture, a sort of imitation of a two-dimensional world. And that immense tenderness behind, so quiet, which looked at the story as through an orange mist. And Björn who wanted to bite.
—As for you, you don't need the North Pole, you are already like an iceberg.
He went back to the starboard.
His distress also came to me; everything came to me with precision, even the smallest vibration, but as if caught by that look behind, transmuted, seen with that sweetness of eternity which leans over the world and which hears the cries of children: everything is already golden on the hill and the ray will soon touch this valley... Perhaps it was an altering of time, a sort of acceleration of consciousness which caused that orange mutation?
—What, you're sleeping?
I jumped like a puppet. A fellow was posted at the bottom of the ladder—three brief words, a sharp glance which undresses you. Björn climbed up first. A second fellow wearing a peaked-cap, a glance at the lower abdomen: click, clack, it's done, three words like biting and up you go. Phosphate powder and the masts which veer about, hurry up, you're in the way. A third fellow on the bridge, another glance... But who is looking I don't know, it is a zinc eye which opens on to a mechanism, and they cut your neck, clack, cleanly: seen, sized-up, pigeon-holed... and no time wasted. Next one.
—Don't say anything, I'll manage.
Oh! no, I was not saying anything. It was the door. And hop! I was inside, at the blow of the whistle.
A man was seated there, sweating, bare-chested. Bleub, bleub, blob! another glance, this time undressed quickly and always straight to the lower abdomen: that must be the meeting place. I don't understand anything but it does not matter, they talk. And that also is like a mechanism, it is mechanical speech, in iron wire, which make compartments, angles, and piles up: all that floated before me like a fiat, artificial picture, a sort of imitation of a two-dimensional world. And that immense tenderness behind, so quiet, which looked at the story as through an orange mist. And Björn who wanted to bite.
A man was seated there, sweating, bare-chested. Bleub, bleub, blob! another glance, this time undressed quickly and always straight to the lower abdomen: that must be the meeting place. I don't understand anything but it does not matter, they talk. And that also is like a mechanism, it is mechanical speech, in iron wire, which make compartments, angles, and piles up: one cube, two cubes, three cubes, a small netting, the right-hand drawer, it is there. He pulled out his pipe. Björn sat down, I sat down. He brushed back his lock of hair, I brushed back mine, but I had no lock, it did not matter—let nothing stick out, above all, nothing must stick out. I did not move again.
There I was, in the dwarf-box.
Blob-blob-blob, neutralised, stupefied, ratified.
A pause.
Suddenly, I realised that I was playing the ape. I was seated next to Björn, discreetly, respectfully, on a sofa covered with a green floral print, watching with a sort of rapture, almost compunction, a Chinese junk all yellow, or rather canary, bobbing on a sea of olive oil which reflected a pinkish sky, the whole thing painted on silk, just behind the fellow's head.
That Chinese junk was one of my life's discoveries. If he had asked me at that moment who I was, I would have pulled out my diplomas, my military cross, my uncle who was minister of the Navy and my baptismal certificate—I was in it up to the neck. A real electric shock. I saw Björn, I saw that individual, I saw that junk suddenly magnified like the close-up on a cinema screen, and then there was a reversal: I went through—I was no longer in it: gone in a flash, cut loose! It was like an intense flame which lit up instead, with a cry. Then I saw, I saw all kinds of things in a flash, and first of all, the difference, the tremendous difference: one minute before, I believed in it, I was in it, fully in the dwarf and it was so natural, a sort of hypnosis, thousands of habits which came back with a whole curriculum vitae, even my grandfather's cancer was there and I was fit for the cancer—a tremendous habit of being. It was like that and it will be like that and it has always been like that. A habit of feeling, thinking, of reacting, believing; a sort of stupefied dwarfing, as thought making oneself all grey, all small, as one does in enemy territory in a dream. One is in the box, it is the regulation asphyxia... c'est l'asphyxie réglementaire. The world is a formidable habit: it looks at its Chinese junk and gets shipwrecked on a make-believe olive-oil sea. And then just that cry of awakening, and it melts, everything melts, even the cancer along with the military cross: one quits the death-sentence. And then... Then yes, my obedient monkey was there, outside, trying to look presentable for the measurements, and I... Oh! I was that flame, so warm within, that clear expanse, that child's delight who discovers its unimaginable kingdom, that secret lightness in the midst of barbarians... cettte légèreté secrète chez les barbares. And that sudden-gratitude like an abyss, because there was that. The release. And there, in front of that Chinese junk of painted silk, with its little man at the end of a boat hook, I was so moved—I wanted to kneel down and prostrate myself and weep like a child, because there was that, that wonder which sweeps away everything in its flow of tenderness, those crumbling walls, those open doors, that great white wave which releases. Oh! I do not know if God exists, but that exists, that is true, that is wide, it is the great unmooring, the “open sesame”, the fabulous wealth in a million banalities as if everything glowed, changed under one's eyes, lit up under one's fingers; it is the great awakening, freedom for ever, inalienable royalty. Oh! they could throw me into the hold or into hell, I was free in hell and free in their prison, and death could die a thousand times, I was alive for ever! Where was the fear, the anguish, the end? Everywhere I bad my inviolable dwelling, in the twinkling of an eye I had gone thousands of light years away, to fiery distances, I was in the great sweetness which spins the worlds and which would so like to smile through our millions of eyes. And everything is possible... Everything becomes possible in-stan-ta-ne-ous-ly. One minute before, it was the implacable sequence, the ineluctable law; the cancer passed from father to son, the military cross for life, the unremitting cage—a formidable cage of which all the lines were traced, known, drawn once and for all and none can escape, it is the inflexible gravitation downwards, the iron hierarchy, communion through the lower abdomen—and then, poof, and it has gone?... Really gone; it is as one wills. An illusion, a fantastic illusion! As if one had drawn little geometrical lines on a virgin world and put oneself inside and then “it is the law”: a fantastic curriculum mortis, a gigantic intellectual cancer.
My look came back to that man, then to Björn, who kept his hands folded between his knees. A loud-speaker was blaring out orders on the deck. Then a sort of deep compassion came over me; I felt like going down there, me too. I was almost happy to go away, Oh! I was happy anyway, outside, I was in a great white steppe and, inside, like a little flame which loves, simply, for nothing, because it loves no matter what. But they do not know that they love! They do not know that they are vast, light-years away, with lost hearts, ils ne savent pas—they do not know. So they are afraid. They think they are small and full of misery, they build steel walls to protect themselves from their own immensity, they lay traps in order to retain one drop of their treasure. They are weak because they do not know, they are hard and evil because, they have forgotten; if they knew, they would open their doors wide and draw handfuls from the great treasure, they would drink their fill from the ocean of joy.
One day, their walls will crumble and they will stand amazed.
—Eh! Nil.
He nudged me in the ribs. I saw the man in front of me become as red as a beetroot, he coughed, put down his pipe, I thought he was going to explode or throw me out. I understood. I lowered my eyes. I made myself small, colourless, odourless, I crawled back into the hole. Yes, I know they cannot bear that, it is like an insult for them, or a threat; one must veil oneself. They cannot bear to be loved, they cannot bear joy... And what about us? Had we not already left our island for this box of cinnabar? Oh! we have all the quantity of joy we can bear!
The man scribbled something on a slip of paper.
And suddenly, as he bent over his table, I felt with an overwhelming certainty that the divine totality of the world was there, the totality of joy, the totality of love, the totality of everything, simply waiting for us to be able to contain more. We run after a miracle which is already there, like an empty jug floating on the ocean of nectar.
Björn got up, he made his little bow; I got up, I made my little bow; he pocketed the slip of paper, I pocketed my look and we went out.
—Now we must go and see the second officer.
Björn was as white as chalk.. As for me, I was completely elsewhere.
We went down to the deck below, a man called out to us. It was the radio-telegraphist. A little Mediterranean type with a turned-up nose, seeming to sniff the direction of the wind, who gave vent to a torrent of words in English with an imitation American accent. Björn was explaining I didn't know what, the other was gesticulating.
...Chittagong, Rangoon, and then return to Trondhjem. You're lucky, two deserters at Colombo. Ah! Colombo, what about! What about! There was a little Singhalese girl...
The holds yawned in a cloud of white dust, men ran hither and thither in a clatter of windlasses, diesels, orders shouted in Norwegian, in English, in German; the derricks moved over, leaving a trail of chemical powder in the sticky humidity. I leaned over the side—Chittagong, Rangoon... In a quarter of an hour, I shall be done for. It was like a dream. But everything was a kind of dream: the little chap who was running with his winch, the radio-telegraphist, the boat, and then the world over there—Rangoon, Trondhjem, Oslo——which ran... ran and there was not a single real minute. It was “life”, but who lived in it? I do not know. They were lived, toiled, worked upon by life, a formidable current which passed inside, and when the current had stopped passing through the machine, it was the end, they were lived out. A fantastic unreality. There was nothing, not a single thing existing by itself, it was like a film unfolding on a screen—little flat chaps, a flat boat, a flat world; it simply unfolded, it was unfolded, a fantastic projection in the void. And the more that unreality took me by the throat, the more I felt that flame rising within, burning, living, intense, as if its power increased tenfold under the pressure of the void, as if it were fanned by that suffocation—and then I saw that if I went down a few more steps, there was an intolerable Fire right at the bottom.
I was like a living fire.
And it was that which was living... the only thing alive in all that, it was the only substance, the life of life. If that were not there, there would be nothing but hot air.
—I tell you I don't know.
I turned round. Björn looked like a shadow.
—You're joking?
—But I don't know, I tell you.
This time, Björn's voice had changed. The little Italian was gesticulating:
—That's too much... You are not going to make me believe that after three years here, you don't even know where one sleeps!
Björn looked haggard, he seemed drained of his substance.
I took him by the arm.
—Come Björn, we must go and see the second officer.
The radio officer showed me the way to the mess.
—Ѐ matto!14
Björn's arm was ice-cold.
We went down the iron ladder, whistle-blasts rent the air, a smell of saltpetre and warm oil rose from the deck. Then that smell plunged me into a stupid panic, I felt I was being filled with lead. But what the devil was I doing there? What?... A man started to shout in French: “Ah! the swine.” I raised my head... And the whole island was there, white, fringed with foam. Björn followed my gaze. An incredible island, with a blue peacock and a child clad in a long pomegranate-red skirt.. And suddenly, I felt an intense pain there, in the hollow of my chest, like a wrench. And that whole sea like a sheet of dazzling light... Björn clenched his teeth:
—Let's go.
And I heard Batcha's little voice, clear, clear, poignant: “It was like a shining sea and I was calling you again and again... je t'appelais, je t'appelais... It hurt so much here, that I woke up.” Björn pulled me towards the mid-decks. The steps, the bridge, were glittering in the sun, but what the devil was I doing here?... Chittagong, Rangoon and back. What did it mean? I was sinking in a clang of iron, engulfed like a drowning man; a fellow rushed up the gangway four steps at a time, cursing under his breath. And suddenly, like a drowning man, I saw the whole picture unfurl before me: Balu's little figure in a corner of the station: “Shall I take you to your brother?... Your brother is so handsome!” and it was the Sannyasi who had led me to Balu, and Mohini who had led me to the Sannyasi... What chain of events, what whim of a minute or a second had brought me upto here? And who had led me to Mohini? A whim or a staggering precision? And in which direction were the cycles turning—Batcha after Mohini, but was it really after? Or had it not always been she, the same, and everything revolved round the cry of a peacock, from life to life, from one island to another? One day I pinpointed my finger on a map and I left for Guiana but Guiana led to Norway, inexplicably, via Rangoon and Chittagong, and all the maps are false! The maritime routes pass twenty-thousand leagues under strange seas and emerge suddenly under the nose of a war-god mounted on a blue peacock.
Aalesund 54.000 t. Skipsverft Bergen
Or was it the Laurelbank taking its revenge?... There are acts begun one day and completed twenty years later when one no longer thinks of them. And perhaps, one day in other lives I had started a voyage which was ending only today on the Aalesund with Björn; and Batcha was another voyage, Mohini another, the Sannyasi still another—or always the same one turning on invisible latitudes, and which would end when, where? One touches one point, another and still another—Mohini and Batcha, the white island, the red island—one loses the trail: the point has gone to draw an invisible arc across aeons of fire, nameless seas, lost times, it has pitched over into the blue Tartarus and it re-emerges here, or there, with another colour, another face and other arms, and yet with some indicible resemblance—et pourtant je ne sais quelle ressemblance—or was it always the same story, and the same arms like a great shimmering radiolarian which rolls through eternal gulf streams?
—You are supposed to have smashed your sailing-boat in the Palk Strait.
I looked at Björn uncomprehendingly:
—Don't worry, I know the trick, we are going to oil the engines.
We stumbled onto the mid-deck... the yellow bulbs, the stench, the rat-trap, the stifling fumes of tepid oil in the whirring of the bellows. What other voyage again?... Björn's heavy shoulders plunged below me into that throbbing, clanking, hammering boiler-room. Who had really led me here, what was the true bearing, the co-ordinates of this story?... The question was so intense in my heart that it made me feel giddy. Björn 's two fists were plunging down and down, all yellowed, gripping the iron hand-rails, and I was going to be swallowed up by that hold... and then all those faces, those places came spinning in front of me, Batcha and Mohini, the red island, the white island, the Laurelbank, the Aalesund; I did not understand, I did not see, only these little coloured bubbles, yellow, red, white, orange, incoherent, which passed for a second, smiled, burst, passed, smiled, burst... What did it mean?... For a moment, I stopped to catch my breath, my real breath, one single inhalation of truth in that drowing! And suddenly I saw a luminous hand passing in front of my eyes as if to throw something—to sow something, I don't know, in a sweeping-sleeve movement: a diaphanous hand in billowing white muslin; and its gesture seemed to catch all those coloured bubbles, those smiles, those islands, those faces and it wove them together, filled in the gaps, carved out blue valleys and went off like an arrow, drawing a luminous hill sown with white birds—a picture. For the fraction of a second, I saw a picture clearly in front of me, as one sees a Cézanne hanging in a gallery, but a light-picture bursting with meaning, which gave the whole meaning, the complete meaning: the mountain, the blue valley with purple patches, and as though a beam of sunlight on the hillside with those white birds up above—and I was in the valley. I was in the picture, a tiny purple spot walking towards a hill sown with birds. It was a flash, everything was in it, everything fitted in. I was no longer going down into a hole, I was going towards that hill white with birds, carried away on a shaft of light. Then the picture became still bigger (or was it my eyes?) but they were no longer lines nor patches of colour, it was the Picture, the essence, the great wonder of the world. A kind of total understanding which blazed into a white trail with that archangel's hand. I saw myself, I saw all those little purple daubs, those drops of microscopic life rolling in the valley and which did not know, which saw nothing, just that patch, then another and yet another, a burst of orange, a bit of a red island, a white haven, a child passing, and shadows, endless shadows, but the archangel had already brought forth the great hill, leaped over the abysses, over lives, sown its white birds on the ineluctable summit, and we were walking through centuries, blind walkers in a little shadow, in an orange or blue bubble, in evil, in good, we were advancing across the great nameless canvas, forgetful of the great vision, the golden track, believing that our life stopped at the ford, knowing no longer that this purple shadow led to a sunny hill, and that abyss to a bird's velvet-throat, nor which stroke of hand had thrown the wonder of a million lives on the whiteness of a divine dream.
Everything faded.
I went down the iron steps. I was going with Björn I knew not where, and it was like a dream. But where was the dream, on which side? I went down into that hold like a sleepwalker fraught with memory, like men and men by the millions in a body, ah! what remained? Little bubbles, red, yellow, orange, without any sequence, happy and painful islands, glances of a second opening on intimate millenniums, and that Thrust behind, that luminous stroke of hand which draws us, it is all that remains: little coloured seconds, gestures which burst suddenly like a clap of thunder, encounters like the green buoy's signal of a wreck on old submerged routes, flashes of memory like a sudden shipwreck in calm waters, and faces, faces which surge up again like dream-smiles, odours of panic like a familiar country—chances and chances by the thousands, and all are premeditated.
—It is on the starboard side.
And a tenacious memory as of a treasure to be re-discovered, of a true life, another vision—something else, something else; a great Memory behind, a great Thrust which pulls us towards a future already lived, towards a Goal from which we come, over there, over there, over the islands and the abysses, over the sufferings and the days, with that golden bird winging swiftly—towards the joy of the great picture, towards the glance which embraces everything. And one begins again another canvas.
I entered that electric tunnel as one enters into an old life. The companionway disappeared in a drift of phosphate, Björn was pitching and tossing in front of me, his shoulders bent. The ventilators mixed the fuel-oil with the odours of cooking. Abruptly he stopped in front of a door and wiped his brow with his hand. He kept still for a second. And I felt exactly what he was feeling: the distress, the shame, the rage, as if his heart were beating in mine. Then he pulled open the door violently and remained standing on the threshold, his hands in his pockets.
There was a huge table covered with a brown moleskin. Bursts of laughter, stale tobacco-smoke, whiffs of frying grease and beer under the hardboard ceiling. Some ten men in singlets were sitting round the table under a hanging lamp. I plunged there as into a life of hell already known a thousand times, something which opened in the lower abdomen and which decomposed everything; and then those little dwarfs laughing in there, laughing, laughing their full-throated laughs. I felt submerged, tossed about under the wave. There was an empty counter on the right with cases of Brooke Bond Tea; the least little object burst open as if I had lost myself everywhere—the greasy shelves, the stuffed gull, the catacomb twilight,—poured out suddenly in a multitude of glances which fixed everything, entered into everything. And then Björn, his hands in his pockets, like a statue on the threshold.
But it was no longer Björn, it was Prince Björn, so erect, his head held high, his eyes flashing, who was surveying his destiny... Then I don't know what happened, whether it were he or I, my cry or his:
—No!
He turned towards me without seeing me.
—No, he repeated.
I shall see that second for ever, and each time there will be the same question: he chose, Björn chose at that second, his soul chose, and yet he could have been saved if he had said yes and gone away on the Aalesund.
—No, not that.
He abruptly let go of the door. Then, his head thrust forward, he began to run through the tunnel towards the deck ladder, as if he were suffocating. He shoved aside two men who were passing, bumped into a grating, upset a pot of coaltar and rushed down the gangway like a madman. We jumped into the first felucca.
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