When the others awoke, their eyes fell on a spot of sunlight on the gray wall of their cave. In it, the otherwise dull-white sinter shone bottle-green as though dripping wet, and although this small bright spot had no particular shape, the moment we all of us at once opened our eyes, it spoke to us with the authority of a sign: Arise! It is day, everything is here; out with you, into the open; bestir yourselves.
None of us felt the usual grogginess, we came to our senses immediately; we knew where we were and arose light-heartedly from our nightmares, looking forward with rare delight to the morning. The spot on the wall seemed to make us inventive. Without even looking, we found among the numerous puddles on the ground a deep one from which to gather water for washing and making coffee.
We ate breakfast in the grass outside the bunker. The plateau, rising steadily like a ramp as far as the horizon, lay there in the sun as though contemptuous of the four seasons. It seemed hardly imaginable that there could be any life apart from these trees and these few birds. Yet beyond “extensive scree,” “dry ditch,” “stony riverbed,” “bald hill,” our leader’s map noted a “lake” (with “landing”) and near the landing a “log cabin,” from which a hatched-in path led to an “old road” (a line), soon prolonged by a “new road” (two parallel lines) beginning at a nameless “village” and ending at an equally nameless “city.” In view of the actual country confronting us, the old man’s map, with its pedantically delineated cliffs and even individual trees, put us in mind of the early fantastic topographies that represented the most inhospitable terrain as accessible and made it seem likely that a whole continent could be crossed on foot in a single day.
We assumed that the old man had gone on ahead of us, that he had left the map to enable us to follow him, and would be waiting for us somewhere along the way, at the latest that evening in the city. A light, steady breeze blew in our faces from the start — hadn’t that breeze been raised by his steps? Surely it was so fragrant because of the herbs he carried — mixed, concentrated, and warmed — in his trouser pockets. If we had called him, it wouldn’t have been out of worry but out of playfulness — yes, but by what name?
All day we walked with the thirst for knowledge that had taken hold of us in our moment of waking. Though supposedly there was nothing more to investigate or discover on earth, we approached every new landscape with the eagerness of explorers, and circled each object in a collective joy of discovery. Our perception was never purely external; it was always an assimilation, which engraved colors, forms, and relationships indelibly on our minds and strengthened us; we never so much as thought of appropriating, but saw things as values in themselves; their mere presence made us feel that we had recovered from something. We wanted only to embrace them, feel them, measure them, and transmit them; didn’t even the most unassuming blade of grass deserve to be noticed and communicated — at least with faint cry? Our day of discovery brought us news that obviated the need for any conceivable newspaper.
That day nothing could happen to us. Of the snakes in the rubble we saw only the dark tips of their tails as they disappeared between stones, and the gambler, despite his lack of exercise, proved unexpectedly nimble in jumping from boulder to boulder. The woman, with the old man’s cape over her shoulders, danced as surefooted as in a dream through the rocks and stumps that encumbered the dazzlingly white riverbed. And when the soldier, racing up to the bare hilltop ahead of us with the knapsack bobbing up and down on his back like a child’s schoolbag, staggered and fell as though shot, he was merely acting out a scene from his past.
Instead of pausing at the summit, we descended directly to the lake; in addition to walking and jumping and climbing that day, we kept arriving. At first sight the lake was only a pale-yellow forest of reeds. At its edge we found a boat, chained to a tree. The view from above had shown us that the other side could be reached most easily on foot; but we followed our scout’s directions and took the boat, though we first had to bail it out and then use our hands as paddles. The unusual things about this small lake were the trees half submerged in it and the clear water that rose in visible whirls from the stony bottom. The woman soon left the paddling to the others, draped herself in the cape, and stood erect in the bow. Though the breeze was barely perceptible, the leaves of the tall alders all around the lake rustled incessantly, and the rustling grew louder and louder, more and more tempestuous, until it seemed to do away with every other sound; no waterfowl screamed and no fish leapt out of the water. When in the apparent jungle on the far shore we saw a signboard — the first indication of human presence in a long while — were we relieved? Weren’t we equally disappointed?
On landing, we found that the sign was rusted through and barely legible; we finally deciphered BEWARE — HORNETS; to judge by the style of lettering, the sign dated from before the war. The dock, too, was rotten; the remaining piles were crooked, some driven more deeply than others, and overgrown with moss; in addition, the dock was well out of the water, because the lake had shrunk considerably over the years. The dead willow trees had great holes in them; the moss line on their trunks indicated the former water level.
Our first sign of the present time was the “log cabin.” This was a café with its own adjacent generator, which — CLOSED FOR THE DAY — was not working just then. In the dim light behind the large glass window we saw a bar and behind it a fireplace piled with logs ready to be lit. Outside, among scattered garden benches, there was a table-soccer game; in passing, we turned the knobs, and when we left, all the little wooden men had their feet in the air.
Although the path shown on the map proved to be a wide grass walk and we had plenty of room to spread out, we stayed as close together as we had been in the boat. The slightly raised green path was springy; from time to time the woman would take the soldier by the wrist and the two of them would dance along in wide spirals, while the gambler, smiling, brought up the rear. For a while it was possible to imagine that this was a region offering an escape from history, yet at the same time a new country where something might be begun.
On the “old road,” which our descending path suddenly joined, the plateau reverted to stone-gray. Though the gravel surface seemed well kept and even new, we saw no trace of any vehicle, nor was there any dust on the bushes. As sudden as the transition from green walk to desert track was the change from sea air to heat unstirred by any breeze. For hours we were directly under the sun, as in an everlasting noon. Outlook there was none; the road, straight on the map, rose and fell at such short intervals that there was never a distant horizon. The few clouds, somber with bright edges, remained motionless, grouped together in a sea-blue sky like a cluster of islands seen from a space capsule high overhead: the Sporades. The abundant blackberries by the sides of the road brought no refreshment; a whole handful slaked our thirst for hardly the time it took to swallow them. The silence in which we had been at home up until then degenerated into soundlessness; even the soft familiar hum of the crickets was gone — at our approach, their black heads disappeared into holes in the ground; the only sound apart from our own was that of the grasshoppers darting from under our toes.
Suddenly, like everything that happened in this high country, a crackling and whirring as of rain came from above, though the sky was still bright. The road narrowed and became a mere passage through head-high underbrush, which on one side had the appearance of a hedge purposely planted there. Here the old road met the “new” one, but did not merge with it; the two ran parallel for a short way, then the old road, now no wider than a smuggler’s trail, lost itself in the prairie grass. A hare appeared, sniffed the air, and vanished. The sound of rain came from a power line; no sooner had we climbed the embankment than its wires, leaping from otherwise empty space beyond the new road, came so close to us that for a few steps their crackling was a downpour.