And you continue: “To be once more, as before story became history, children of time, of the god Kronos, and also to behave like children of time, unlike the original time-god-murdering children: that is the prophecy, a sort of unplanned universal religion, according to which each individual in Hondareda wants to live, with such obscure watchwords as ‘to restore time’s veil,’ ‘back to veiled time,’ and the like.” Yes, I have studied your reports closely, by means of my own peri-periscope.
And in them, in the course of your assignment here, you have hinted more and more that you are drawn to the region and the immigrants here, even filled with enthusiasm, although of a sort that differs from mine. You, too, dear Jakob Lebel — the name of this old variety of apple, named for a farmer, suits you to a T — you, too, are, or at least once were, an enthusiast: except that your original enthusiasm emerges in reshaped and often peculiar forms as a result of your profession as observer.
Thus, in your reports, the way in which each of the Hondarederos, for himself in his cave and hideout, speaks of and rethinks time, day and night, in toneless monologues, you compare with people talking in their sleep, and furthermore not adults but children.
That impression on someone passing by outside stems primarily, you say, from the voices (which you could not hear as I could when I was inside as a guest) of those people talking to themselves in the dwellings: these sounds and syllables, seemingly uttered with great effort, which to your ears seldom resolved themselves into comprehensible words and even more seldom into an audible sentence, in fact have the ability, you write, “to transport an unprepared listener out of ordinary time and to suggest to him a subliminal time, a downright violently contrary time — an underground time” (later in the report you once use the verb “to murmur” pejoratively, as proof that you are immune to what is imputed to you, but on the other hand you note, in referring to yourself personally, that “in the meantime, however, I am more likely to prick up my ears whenever something is murmured to me, than in response to all the usual speaking in no uncertain terms, explaining, clarifying, intoning, and articulating”).
And, according to you, something uncanny emanates from the people talking to themselves in Hondareda, as elsewhere from people talking in their sleep. But in your report, where those who gave you your assignment would perhaps, for obvious reasons, like to see the word “threat,” you unexpectedly used the word “threatened.” Which brings us back to your comparison with children talking in their sleep: like them, you wrote, especially when they were lying alone somewhere, far away or separated forever from any kin, “utterly forsaken,” and stammered and stuttered into the nocturnal stillness, and finally could not produce one coherent sentence, the people up here “exuded with their entire existence, not only at night, but also on the brightest, sunniest day, an unparalleled sense of being threatened and exposed.”
And so, you conclude, they do not represent any danger to the world — simply because they would never, ever want to proclaim themselves an enclave in the valley they cultivate, and would never lay claim to property, either personal property or real estate — but on the contrary are themselves the ones who are threatened, yes, “lost and abandoned.”
33
And at this moment, so the story goes, she, the mistress of her story, standing opposite the observer up there on the granite slab in the midst of the wilderness near the Candeleda Pass, suddenly switched from thinking to speaking out loud, and directly, and continued, clearly audible to the other person: “And your enthusiasm, my dear, and mine for the people up here come together in our recognition of their loss, of everything that gives an impression of abandonment and lostness.”
And the red-haired, freckled observer promptly replied: “Yes, that is how it is. I have already been dispatched to hundreds of places and battlefields. But to Hondareda, and back and forth through the Sierra de Gredos — this has been my first real journey, and if I am ever sent anywhere else, it will be only to places like this, just as painful and just as alive.”
And she repeated out loud, though in somewhat different words, what she had previously said in her thoughts: “This is a one-day people here, most definitely. Their time reckoning does not include a year, let alone a century, and even months and weeks: canceled. Not to mention halves and quarters: how they laughed at me when, after my arrival, I slipped up once: ‘I have been here for half a month now.’ Nothing more ludicrous in Hondareda than ‘a quarter of a year’ or, heaven forbid, ‘a trimester,’ ‘a semester.’ If there is any unit of time, it is nothing but a day, a whole day. This is a one-day people, and a twilight people, and the glacial floor down there is the arena or the dance floor for their twilight dance, which will not save this people and its day and its time, and will at most postpone the extinguishing of the lights for another rowanberry or rice-grain moment.”
And he: “And the old man who has been searching day and night since he came here for his son, who went missing somewhere else entirely, and if only he could find his bones, if only he could bury one small bone of his son at least!”
And she: “And the way the person who just died kept trying for a while afterward to form one word with his lips.”
And he: “And the unusual or perhaps not so unusual crying of the children here, sounding so unusual in this rocky basin because it carries everywhere, a crying without an a or an i or a u, without vowels, only in consonants, b, d, g; k, l, m; r, s, t. Or the crying in general here.”
And she: “And the way all their books are dog-eared, and the way they manhandle the books further before they read them, tossing them in the air, bending them almost to the point of breaking the spine, leaving them out in the open, exposed to rain, wind, dew, and snow, letting them be pounded by hail.”
And he: “And the way they have made a daily ritual of sniffing deadly poisons, together with their children and grandchildren, whether in mushrooms or flowers, many of which contain the same poisons as they do elsewhere, but in a more concentrated form up here.”
And she: “And the way they use one of their favorite words, a word that is rightfully or wrongfully shunned elsewhere, the word ‘actually,’ in a sense that expresses happy amazement at a characteristic, a condition, or a phenomenon thought to have disappeared long ago, to have been abolished, to have become no longer possible — their constant ‘That’s actually beautiful!’ instead of a mere ‘That’s beautiful,’ finding beautiful something of which one would no longer have thought that, of which one would not even have dreamt that — hence the astonishment.”
And he: “And the way, when, in exceptional cases, they involuntarily, spontaneously, turn to us, even to us observers flown in from elsewhere, because the matter itself calls for it, as it were, and exclaim simply, ‘Isn’t it beautiful up here in our Hondareda?!’ without any ‘actually’!”