And she: “And the public library there, with the books even more beat-up than those in the houses: transparent glass structures right on the edge of a cliff, with a view from the reading room and from the reading ladders into the still-open crevice at the end of the melted glacier.”
And he: “And in their disdain for gatherers they are not serious in the slightest; they themselves gather whatever they can, crouching down, crawling on their stomachs, on all fours. But they do not look like gatherers, or even grabbers, snatchers, on the one hand because while gathering, instead of becoming utterly immersed and absorbed in it, they broaden their outlook — precisely through their searching and gathering and ‘collecting,’ which somewhat resembles harvesting — and acquire a three-hundred-sixty-degree sense, a sense that has no specific focus but lets them become open to all sides, especially when, in contrast to contemporary gatherers, instead of doing their gathering in secret, shamefacedly, with a guilty conscience, they do it openly and proudly and thus relieve us of our gatherers’guilt — and among them the young people also gather cheerfully and with an infectious matter-of-factness, dressed in the latest styles from the cities and at ease with the latest technology!”
And she: “And have you heard how the children up here can launch into storytelling from one word to the next, and then do not want to stop, while elsewhere — or at least this is what is claimed — storytelling is dying out more and more, and hardly any children surprise the people around them with stories — yet how wonderful and redeeming it used to be to hear, and also see, one’s own child, or any child, unexpectedly turning up as a storyteller!”
And he, with an expression he had never used in his reports: “It is true: with my own eyes I have seen the way two butterflies up here, when they flutter around each other, amount, as the Hondarederos say, to more than a pair, and as they gyrate in the air defy being counted, in harmony with the principle here, that time ‘defies measurement.’” The expression he had never used before? “With my own eyes.”
And she: “And look: the water in the lake down below is flowing in a circle.”
And he, turning his head to look down into the basin: “And look, the untouched piles of freshly split firewood everywhere in the settlement, as if in Hondareda it were simultaneously winter and early spring and already summer again, or fall. And look, the branches bending under the weight of fruit there in the garden of the man who is dying. And I have experienced personally”—another new expression for the observer—“that walking the town squares and the streets of Hondareda, naturally paved with smooth-polished granite, is infinitely easier on the feet and more unimpeded than anywhere in the great cities, where even the most central squares and avenues have become so uneven, dangerously uneven, despite their general appearance, from the constant digging-up and repaving of small patches, that with one step I stub my toe on a bump, with the next stumble or go flying into the air, with the third slip and fall, and so on. And look over there, the frog in the crown of the tree. And there, a lost pizza-delivery man!”
And she, shouting at him: “Isn’t it beautiful in Hondareda? Couldn’t it have been beautiful?”
34
While the mistress of the story, la Señora de la historia, and the reporter conversed thus and gazed down from their rocky platform above the brush at the settlement in the hollow, twilight fell and the moment of departure drew near: for her last crossing of the Sierra de Gredos she had chosen this night, a clear one, to be sure, but one without moonlight, a new-moon night.
The granite outcroppings stretching as far as the eye could see — the normal unit of space in the Sierra — shimmered yellow-red-blue, almost sparkling, as if it were early morning, shortly before sunrise.
In Hondareda not a light was burning. From the giant hollow in which the town lay, its houses indistinguishable at the moment from the glacial chaos of boulders, a shot or explosion rang out — in fact, it was merely a heavy piece of firewood crashing from its pile onto the rocky ground, the bang amplified as it echoed through the mountain basin.
From innumerable chimneys the smoke from stoves and workshops had been rising, steadily and everywhere straight up in a column, and now, in the interval it took to close one’s eyes and open them again, the smoke seemed here and there to have suddenly ceased.
How shrunken the capital of the Sierra appeared. And what an indecipherable and bizarre pattern it continued to present. High up in the sky the sun was still shining, its rays visible in the jet contrails of a plane that was already out of sight, the trail ending abruptly, as if the plane had crashed or been shot down. In the shadow of the summit plain, the wheeling of a kite, above that the wheeling of a mountain eagle, still in the sun. The settlers appeared, seemingly in their best clothes, to bid her farewell, dressed as if for their last days on earth.
Now above the entire region, from this clear sky, came a rain of pamphlets, with the sound of falling leaves, and one of them also landed at their feet. They did not have to bend down to read it. Written in all the languages of the world was one sentence in bold type: “People of Hondareda! We have not forgotten you!” And that was not meant to be reassuring; that was a threat.
From the corner of her eye she saw what she had not noticed before — that the observer, Jakob Lebel, had swollen and reddened eyelids, and that he was wringing his hands, like a woman or a very old man.
The rattle of tank treads that reached them from the depression came from suitcase wheels: a few people were leaving the settlement with bag and baggage, dragging themselves along the newly rebuilt road up to the Puerto de Candeleda. And the rattling also came from the Venetian blinds being lowered in some windows, something that had previously not been customary anywhere in Hondareda in the evening (they were used otherwise only to keep out the sun).
On the other hand, she saw the shutters open, providing a framed image, as if brought close by a telescope, on the only residential building that during her entire time here had been locked up, as if permanently abandoned, and the iron pegs, which otherwise hung down on chains, were stuck into the sockets along the entire façade to fasten the wide-open shutters; and this one stone building, now that it was apparently inhabited at last, allowed them — simply because it was lived in? — to hear the beat of music (a kind that had never, and would never have, been heard in Hondareda otherwise, a music seemingly vanished and unknown).
And in this “blockhouse” the first light appeared, and there was singing, no, not there, somewhere. And no, it was not singing, merely humming. “If you’re going to sing, then sing so we can hear you!” Who said that? She and the man next to her shouted it in unison. And at this command someone, who? promptly sang, at top volume, the single line of a song that was immediately swallowed up by the increasing late-afternoon racket and the rumbling of the garbage trucks (a song which later, as the apocryphal storyteller, who chimed in again, reducing the story to a legend, would have it, was “supposed to become the anthem of the vanished region”). And this single line, audible through the din, went, “I know who you are!” and, unlike the sentence in the leaflet, this was an expression of trust and respect.
And the rumbling also came from the other members of the observation team, which included as many women as men, who were just running their final laps of the day around the settlement, eight to thirteen of them, shouting and at the same time exchanging incomprehensible small talk, while the rotors of the helicopter that was to bring them back to their lodgings on the other side of the Sierra ridge were already whirring (and another line of the song, not added until later, referred, according to the apocryphal narrator, to these runners in circles: “I do not know who you are!”).