And she kept walking slowly through the garden house. She stood at the open back door and stepped outside. She sunk her head a little to one side, softly and attentively, deep in her thoughts. She lifted and set down the little basket, I noticed a note that I had found in her sewing basket one time when I was a boy. She had lightly written her plans for the day on it, what she wanted to remember: “Hermann’s pants frayed — put away laundry — borrow book by Dickens — Hermann did not say his prayers yesterday.” Streams of memory, cargoes of love!
Bound and chained, I stood at the gate, and beyond it the woman in the gray dress walked slowly away, into the garden, and was gone.
The Forest Dweller
(1917)
At the dawn of civilization, quite some time before human creatures began wandering over the face of the earth, there were forest dwellers. They lived close together fearfully in the dark tropical forests, constantly fighting with their relatives, the apes, and the only divine law that governed their actions was — the forest. The forest was their home, refuge, cradle, nest, and grave, and they could not imagine life outside it. They avoided coming too close to its edges, and whoever, through unusual circumstances while hunting or fleeing something, made his way to the edges would tremble with dread later when reporting about the white emptiness outside, where the terrifying nothingness glistened in the deadly fire of the sun.
There was an old forest dweller who decades before had been pursued by wild animals and had fled across the farthest edge of the forest. He had immediately become blind and was now considered a kind of priest and saint with the name Mata Dalam, or “he who has an interior eye.” He had composed the holy forest song chanted during the great storms, and the forest dwellers always listened to what he had to say. His fame and mystery rested on the fact that he had seen the sun with his eyes and lived to tell about it.
The forest dwellers were small, brown, and very hairy. They walked with a stoop, and they had furtive, wild eyes. They could move both like human beings and like apes and felt just as safe in the branches of the forest as they did on the ground. They had not yet learned about houses and huts. Nevertheless, they knew how to fabricate many kinds of weapons and tools, as well as jewelry. They made bows, arrows, lances, and clubs out of wood and necklaces out of the fiber of trees that were strung with dried beets or nuts. They wore precious objects around their necks or in their hair: a wild boar’s tooth, a tiger’s claw, a parrot’s feathers, shells from mussels. A large river flowed through the endless forest, but the forest dwellers did not dare tread on its banks except in the dark of night, and many had never seen it. Sometimes the more courageous ones crept out of the thickets at night, fearful and on the lookout. Then, in the faint glimmer of dusk, they would watch the elephants bathing and look through the treetops above them and observe the glittering stars with dread as they appeared to hang in the manifold interlaced branches of the mangrove trees. They never saw the sun, and it was considered extremely dangerous to see its reflection in the summer.
A young man by the name of Kubu belonged to the tribe of forest dwellers headed by the blind Mata Dalam, and he was the leader and spokesman for the dissatisfied young people. In fact, ever since Mata Dalam had grown older and become more tyrannical, the malcontents had made their voices heard in the tribe. Until then, it had been the blind man’s uncontested right to be provided with food by the other members of the tribe. In addition, they came to him for advice and sang his forest song. Gradually, however, he had introduced all sorts of new and burdensome customs that were revealed to him, so he said, in a dream by the divine spirit of the forest. But several skeptical young men asserted that the old man was a swindler and was concerned only with advancing his own interests.
The most recent custom Mata Dalam had introduced was a new moon celebration in which he sat in the middle of a circle and beat a drum made of leather. Meanwhile the other forest dwellers had to dance in the circle and sing the song “Gulo Elah” until they were exhausted and collapsed on their knees. Then all the men had to pierce their left ears with a thorn, and the young women were led to the priest, who pierced each of their ears with a thorn.
Kubu and some other young men had shunned this ritual, and they endeavored to convince the young women to resist as well. One time it appeared that they had a good chance to triumph over the priest and break his power. It was when the old man was conducting the new moon ceremony and piercing the left ear of a woman. A bold young man let out a terrible scream while this was happening, and the blind man chanced to stick the thorn into the woman’s eye, which fell out of its socket. Now the young woman screamed in such despair that everyone ran over to her, and when they saw what had happened, they were stunned and speechless. Immediately the young men intervened with triumphant smiles on their faces, and when Kubu dared to grab the priest by his shoulders, the old man stood up in front of his drum and uttered such a horrible curse, in such a squealing scornful voice, that everyone retreated in terror. Even the young man was petrified. Though nobody could understand the exact meaning of the old priest’s words, his curse had a wild and awful tone and reminded everyone of the dreadful holy words of the religious ceremonies. Mata Dalam cursed the young man’s eyes, which he granted to the vultures as food, and he cursed his intestines, which he prophesied would roast in the sun one day on the open fields. Then the priest, who at this moment had more power than ever before, ordered the young woman to be brought to him again, and he stuck out her other eye with the thorn. Everyone looked on with horror, and no one dared to breathe.
“You will die outside!” the old man cursed Kubu, and from the moment of this pronouncement, the other forest dwellers avoided the young man as hopeless. “Outside”—that meant outside the homeland, outside the dusky forest. “Outside”—that meant horror, sunburn, and glowing deadly emptiness.
Terrified, Kubu fled, and when he saw that everyone retreated from him, he hid himself far away in a hollow tree trunk and gave himself up for lost. Days and nights he lay there, wavering between mortal terror and spite, uncertain whether the people of his tribe would come to kill him or whether the sun itself would break through the forest, besiege him, flush him out, and slay him. But the arrows and lances did not come; nor did the sun or lightning. Nothing came except great languishment and the growling voice of hunger.
So Kubu stood up once again and crawled out of the tree, sober and with a feeling almost of disappointment. The priest’s curse was nothing, he thought in surprise, and then he looked for food. When he had eaten and felt life circulating through his limbs once more, pride and hate surged up in his soul. He did not want to return to his people anymore. All he wanted now was to be solitary and remain expelled. He wanted to be known as the one who had been hated and had resisted the feeble curses of the priest, that blind cow. He wanted to be alone and remain alone, but he also wanted to take revenge.
So he walked around the forest and pondered his situation. He reflected about everything that had ever aroused his doubts and seemed questionable, especially the priest’s drum and his rituals. And the more he thought and the longer he was alone, the clearer he could see. Yes, it was all deceit. Everything had been nothing but lies and deceit. And since he had already come so far in his thinking, he began drawing conclusions. Quick to distrust, he examined everything that was considered true and holy. For instance, he questioned whether there was a divine spirit in the forest or a holy forest song. Oh, all that too was nothing. It too was a swindle. And as he managed to overcome his awful horror, he sang the forest song in a scornful voice and distorted all the words. And he called out the name of the divine spirit of the forest, whom nobody had been allowed to name on the pain of death — and everything remained quiet. No storm exploded. No lightning struck him down!