living alone beneath the jungle canopy. There will be moments when you will not be able to think clearly. You will put a hand to your forehead every time you try to weigh the difference between the threat of the serpent and the violence with which the capuchin will kill it but not kill your fear. You will make a great effort to think that first the serpent will threaten you, and that that will happen before, before, and the capuchin monkey will club it and kill it, but that will happen after, after.
Now the monkey will lope away with an air of indifference, dragging the heavy stick and making noises with its mouth, moving its tongue the color of salmon. The salmon will swim upriver, against the current: that memory will illuminate you, you will feel happy because for a few instants you will have remembered something—although the next instant you will believe that you have only dreamed, imagined, foreseen it. The salmon will swim against the current to give and to win life, to leave their eggs, to await their hatch … But the capuchin will kill the serpent, that will be certain, as it will also be certain that the monkey will make noises with its mouth as it completes its work, and the serpent will be able to do no more than hiss something with its forked tongue, and it will also be certain that now the animal with spiky bristles will approach the motionless serpent and begin to strip away its jungle-colored skin and devour its moon-colored flesh. It will be time to climb down from the tree. There will be no danger now. The forest will protect you forever. You will always be able to return here and hide in the thicket where there is no sun …
Sun …
Moon …
You will try to articulate words that serve what you see. The words are like a circle of regular movements that hold no surprise but have no center. One moment when “jungle” will be identical to itself and will be covered with darkness and only the changing sphere the color of the wild boar’s back will penetrate some branches. And that other moment when the jungle will fill with rays like the swift wings of birds.
You will close your eyes in order better to hear the one thing that will be with you if you continue to live in the forest, the murmurs of birds and hissing of serpents, the meticulous silence of insects and chattering voices of monkeys. The terrifying incursions of the boars and the porcupines in search of carcasses to strip.
This will be your refuge and you will abandon it reluctantly, crossing the frontier of the river that separates the forest from the flat, unknown world, which you will move toward pushed by something that is not anxiety, lethargy, or remedy, but the impulse to know what is around you while maintaining the absence of before and after, you who will live now, now, now …
You who will swim across the turbulent, muddy river, washing off the second skin of the dead leaves and ravenous fungi that will cover you as long as you live in the branches of the tree. You will come out of the water coated with the dark mud of the riverbank, to which you cling desperately, battling the trembling of the earth and the force of the river in your struggle until you find yourself, on all fours, totally spent, on the opposite shore, where you will fall asleep without ever having stood.
The earth’s trembling will wake you.
You will look for a place to hide.
There will be nothing beneath the dingy sky, a sky like a level, opaque ceiling of reverberating stone. There will be nothing but the plain before you and the river behind you and the jungle on the other side of the river and on the plain the herd of gigantic hairy quadrupeds making the earth ring with their hooves and scattering in every direction the troops of panicked reindeer that will abandon the field to the aurochs until the earth grows still and it is dark and the plain sleeps.
This time the incessant scrabbling of the ugly small creature with the pointed nose will wake you as it
Now the monkey will lope away with an air of indifference, dragging the heavy stick and making noises with its mouth, moving its tongue the color of salmon. The salmon will swim upriver, against the current: that memory will illuminate you, you will feel happy because for a few instants you will have remembered something—although the next instant you will believe that you have only dreamed, imagined, foreseen it. The salmon will swim against the current to give and to win life, to leave their eggs, to await their hatch … But the capuchin will kill the serpent, that will be certain, as it will also be certain that the monkey will make noises with its mouth as it completes its work, and the serpent will be able to do no more than hiss something with its forked tongue, and it will also be certain that now the animal with spiky bristles will approach the motionless serpent and begin to strip away its jungle-colored skin and devour its moon-colored flesh. It will be time to climb down from the tree. There will be no danger now. The forest will protect you forever. You will always be able to return here and hide in the thicket where there is no sun …
Sun …
Moon …
You will try to articulate words that serve what you see. The words are like a circle of regular movements that hold no surprise but have no center. One moment when “jungle” will be identical to itself and will be covered with darkness and only the changing sphere the color of the wild boar’s back will penetrate some branches. And that other moment when the jungle will fill with rays like the swift wings of birds.
You will close your eyes in order better to hear the one thing that will be with you if you continue to live in the forest, the murmurs of birds and hissing of serpents, the meticulous silence of insects and chattering voices of monkeys. The terrifying incursions of the boars and the porcupines in search of carcasses to strip.
This will be your refuge and you will abandon it reluctantly, crossing the frontier of the river that separates the forest from the flat, unknown world, which you will move toward pushed by something that is not anxiety, lethargy, or remedy, but the impulse to know what is around you while maintaining the absence of before and after, you who will live now, now, now …
You who will swim across the turbulent, muddy river, washing off the second skin of the dead leaves and ravenous fungi that will cover you as long as you live in the branches of the tree. You will come out of the water coated with the dark mud of the riverbank, to which you cling desperately, battling the trembling of the earth and the force of the river in your struggle until you find yourself, on all fours, totally spent, on the opposite shore, where you will fall asleep without ever having stood.
The earth’s trembling will wake you.
You will look for a place to hide.
There will be nothing beneath the dingy sky, a sky like a level, opaque ceiling of reverberating stone. There will be nothing but the plain before you and the river behind you and the jungle on the other side of the river and on the plain the herd of gigantic hairy quadrupeds making the earth ring with their hooves and scattering in every direction the troops of panicked reindeer that will abandon the field to the aurochs until the earth grows still and it is dark and the plain sleeps.
This time the incessant scrabbling of the ugly small creature with the pointed nose will wake you as it
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