Matti looked up at the dense treetops and, for the first time in his life, saw and heard a multitude of birds singing and chattering loudly and interrupting each other, suddenly spreading their wings to fly off from one branch to another. Water birds stood peacefully on the banks of the brooks, even in the middle of puddles, one foot in the water, the other folded under them, sometimes even submerging their pink beaks. Matti was flooded with a soft, deep sense of serenity he had never felt before, except perhaps in the vague, veiled memory that lies beneath all memory, the serenity of a clean and fed baby as its eyes close and it is enveloped in sweetness, falling asleep in its mother's arms as she hums a lullaby in her warm voice.
Have I really been here before? Right after I was born? Or maybe even before?
The garden was deep and broad and spread out as far as the eye could see, all the way to the flowering lower edges of the slopes that bordered on dark groves, orchards, and vegetable beds. Here and there, small brooks flowed like silver-thread embroidery. And over it all, hosts of small insects and bugs hissed and whizzed and whined, their flight creating wave after wave of riotous buzzing and whirring and whooshing and zooming, as if they were working away at their job of stretching a finely woven web of thinnest metal over the entire garden, and all those delicately stretched, invisible threads were gently flitting and flapping and humming and thrumming with every gust of wind.
Strange snakes, slithering swift snakes with many legs, rustled at the bottom of the bushes. And large, lazy lizards dozed with open eyes. On the meadows and lawns of the garden, white sheep wandered and grazed, and giraffes and antelope and deer and hares roved about. And between them, like groups of travelers leisurely touring a peaceful resort, packs of idle wolves, a bear or two, and a pair of thick-tailed foxes wandered here and there, and one unkempt jackal came up to Maya and Matti and showed them a very long, very red tongue that seemed to pour out of the side of its mouth from between two rows of sharp, glittering teeth. The jackal suddenly began to rub its pointy head on Matti's knees, once, then again, and between each rub, looked up at them with its sad yellow eyes, a heartbreaking, pleading look, until Maya finally understood and bent down to pet its head and even tickle it a little under the chin and behind the ears, and her hand slid down its back several times, from its head to the base of its tail.
Then Maya and Matti passed four or five tired tigers lying stretched out on the meadow slope and staring, motionless, into the depths of the peaceful evening, heads resting on front paws. For a moment, those sleepy tigers reminded Matti of old Almon the Fisherman when his weary head drops to rest on his arm flung across the pages of his notebook, nodding off in the early evening as he sits alone at his wooden table at the bottom of his garden. Matti was momentarily filled with a sense of bitter longing, a sudden desire to sit on Almon's bench and tell him about all this, to describe every detail to him, or — even better — to bring Almon up here so he could see it all with his own eyes. So he could feel it with his old fingers. And to bring Solina and her baby-husband too. And Danir the Roofer along with his two helpers. And Nimi. To show this to all of them, to the whole village, to his parents, his big sisters, Emanuella the Teacher, and to look closely at their faces when they saw the garden for the first time.
Just then a cow came toward them, a slow cow, an extremely proud and well-connected cow, a very distinguished cow adorned with black and white spots. She trudged and swayed her way slowly, filled with self-importance, past the sleepy tigers, nodding her head two or three times as if she was totally and completely and entirely not surprised, absolutely not surprised, on the contrary, all her calculations had been correct and all her early assumptions had proved to be accurate, and now she nodded also because she was pleased she was right and also because she definitely agreed with herself fully and utterly and always, and without the slightest shadow of a doubt.
22
Matti and Maya stared wide-eyed at all those wonders, mesmerized by the alligators with their checkered armor lying on the edge of the pool, and the monkeys, the squirrels, the parrots, that circled above them in the branches of the trees that were pleasing to look at and the trees that were good for food. The flapping of the sparrows' wings and the cooing of the pigeons spread a translucent veil of loveliness over the entire garden, the brooks, the meadows, the treetops, enveloping it all in a blanket of deep, warm tranquility, the tranquility of other worlds.
Why am I suddenly so sure that I was here once? And how can this really be?
The evening falling on that garden of wonders was so perfect, so limpid and peaceful, that Maya and Matti never even noticed the not very young, not very tall man with the slightly bent back and bare head, his suntanned face grooved with a strange and intricate crisscross of wrinkles, his long, almost completely gray hair falling to his shoulders. He was standing there quietly, leaning against a rough tree trunk, alone on the garden slope in the evening breeze, looking at them with a slight smile, a bitter, distracted smile, as if some of his thoughts were here and some were in other places.
The man's shoulders were a bit hunched, one slightly lower than the other, and his bulky hands hung limply at his sides as if they had just completed a long, very grueling job. His face wasn't handsome, but reticent and cautious, and he looked embarrassed, as if he was glad that Matti and Maya didn't see him.
As if he felt ashamed in front of them.
And so the stranger stood there without moving, breathing slowly and deeply, and watched the fascinated eyes of the two children, followed every movement of their curious gaze as it roamed around the sights of the garden, astonished at everything in it.
The man's secretive, almost sly smile actually began around his eyes and not on his lips, and spread from there along the grooves of his wrinkles, gradually lighting up all the furrows and folds of his face from within.
And still he didn't move or make a sound. Only one bluish vein, thin and remarkably delicate, pulsed on one side of his forehead like a tiny fish twitching underwater.
Until Maya suddenly saw him and was terribly startled. But she stayed calm and simply bent over slightly and whispered to Matti, Careful, Matti, don't look over there now because someone is standing there and watching us, but he doesn't seem dangerous, just a little strange.
23
A little strange, the man with the suspicious smile repeated the words Maya had whispered to Matti. That's exactly what people said about me many years ago, when I was still just a child: He's a little strange, they used to say, and twist their lips into a sneer. And sometimes they would say, look, here comes the retard. All that was many years before you were born, when your parents were about your age.
And I wanted so much to be one of them: I really, really tried all the time to be like everyone else. Even more like them than they were. But the harder I tried, the more they made fun of me.
The stranger began to walk toward them, but after a few steps, he stopped, changed his mind, and went back to the fig tree: Perhaps he was afraid he might scare them off. Or perhaps he found it difficult to move closer to them. But when he saw that the children didn't run away from him but kept standing where they were and looking at him, merely moving closer together to close the space between them, he looked down at the grass and said in a smiling voice, I'm glad you came.
Then added, Look, I have some pomegranate juice here. And snow water. Want some?
Matti whispered, Careful, Maya. Don't even touch that wooden cup. You never know. Maybe it's dangerous to drink it.