In the false dawn of each new day, its first rays unravel the web of the previous night and dispel the last of the morning dew’s sparkling coolness. The continent and the islands awake and know that, on this day like all the others, no one can escape the supremacy of the sun. Knowing itself inviolable, the orb rises ever faster into the sky, embracing all things with its rampant heat. Struggling or resigned, human beings, animals, plants and all inanimate things reluctantly absorb the erectile sultriness. The higher the fireball climbs, the deeper, the deeper the heat penetrates into the gaping pores. Everything and everybody is infected and the carcinoma of heartless deeds can once again start to spread.
I woke up a few times during the night, partly because of the strange surroundings and the hard bed, but also because of the unpleasant thought that I might be stung by a scorpion or some other insect. At one point I tried to look at my wristwatch, but couldn’t make out what time it was. I did not switch on the torch for fear of betraying my presence. Eventually I noticed that the night sky had taken on a lighter hue and from this I concluded that it would soon be daybreak. I folded the blanket neatly into a cushion I could sit on and took up my old position in a corner of the fort. I drank the rest of the pineapple juice and longed for a cigarette, but thought it better not to strike a match.
The dawn was longer coming than I had anticipated. Now and then I thought I could hear the creaking of a windmill, but it must have been something else, as I knew there were no windmills in this high country. It could have been the rattling of the ankle chains of a slave whose ghost, still bearing the scars of the floggings he had suffered, wandered endlessly through the night. This, at least, was how the country people explained such nocturnal noises. The Roman Catholic Church had been unable to expel completely the African god brought from Angola and Calabar, unable to banish the invisible child-snatcher that roams the primeval darkness of the island, unable to suppress the illicit worship of saints.
Finally the sun broke through and the first misty light began to grope its way over the landscape, slowly revealing itself to the greenery and bare boulders in the valley. In the distance the birds flew up from their roosting places in the treetops and raised their coarse screeching to the heavens. High in the air they fell silent, grouped themselves into ragged V-formation and dived down in a swift parabola amid renewed cries. The flock flew upwards again, brushing the top of the cliff face, but I saw that at least two of the birds had not made it. In the place where they had crashed I saw a small crowd of feathers glistening in the sun, like the luminous green of an exploding firework.
I took a swig of whisky and lit a cigarette, greedily inhaling its smoke. It would be best not to tell anyone about this morning ritual of the birds. If it ever becomes widely known, people will come from far and wide to watch. The travel agents in town will advertise in the press, offering excursions to “the only place in the world where splendidly plumaged birds commit mass suicide in the light of the morning sun.” The island authorities would apply for European development funding and use the money to convert the dilapidated private house on the other side of the mountain into a luxury restaurant with an exotic menu. The plateau next to me would be cleared of trees and undergrowth so that open pavilions thatched with palm leaves could be built for tourists to spend the night in. The natural bridge would be fitted with railings and the ramparts of the little fort protected with wire mesh to prevent the children who had been brought along to see the suicidal spectacle from falling off the mountain. The result of all this would, of course, be the rapid departure of the birds from the area.
The brief display was over and it was time to begin the descent and head home. I gathered up my things and stuffed them into the briefcase. I unwrapped the sandwiches and left them behind. Just as I was about to leave, a lizard appeared on the white wall. It was a tree lizard, more slightly built and darker than its relatives that scuttle along the ground. At first it watched me without moving, and then began to make agitated movements with its head. Finally it raised itself up and several times extended the brilliant blue and orange fold of skin under its throat like a fan. Some say that lizards do this when they feel threatened, others claim the male does it to attract the female. The boys of the island believe that if a lizard spreads its fan several times in succession it is insulting their mothers, and they promptly stone it to death.
THREE
The only tangible objects in the cocoon I have spun for myself are the glass on my left and the beer bottle on my right. The night is getting cooler. Half-transparent wisps of cloud float across the dark heavens and dim the brightness of the stars. I long for one of these mild shapes to descend upon the island, brushing my body with a consoling caress like a velvet-skinned woman, faintly perfumed and whispering soft words.
The night speaks to me. I listen to its sounds and try to decipher their message. I attempt to receive the faintest signals from those unfathomable depths of the universe where the darkness is eternal and the prehistory of all living matter lies hidden. I try to recall the history of everything that guides and influences me; whatever it is that persuades me to sit on my terrace at two in the morning and drink my life away. Sometimes I succeed in freeing myself for a moment from time and space, from attachment and shyness. Then the people and the dogs and the sins that have forced their way into my life disappear like impurities, and in that hallowed mood I am no longer at odds with my own being. The beer and the whisky, though both necessary to set the process in motion, become superfluous at the point when the gaseous mixture mantling the earth changes composition and from the canopy of heaven a cool breeze of freedom and timelessness wafts towards me, containing ecstatic extracts of cactus, mushroom and ergot. A shiver runs through my limbs and it is as if the weight of my melancholy and the threat of the future are shaken from me. My sense of balance deserts me and I am overcome by a dizziness which creates the illusion that depths, emptiness and old fears can be erased, that happiness can simply be conjured up.
I have felt this dizziness at longer or shorter intervals throughout my life, sometimes at very inconvenient moments when I did not know how to respond. I found the sensation particularly annoying when I was young, and felt awkward enough anyway. It is only recently that I have begun to summon up the feeling deliberately; I call it my “solitary game.”
As far as I can remember, I was about eleven or twelve when I first experienced this vertigo. It happened at school, but luckily I was alone at the time. As a boy I went to a Catholic school, simply because it was the nearest one to my home. The Protestant school was in a different part of town and to reach it you had to cross the big pontoon bridge, so my parents thought it safer to send me to the nearby Catholic school. Each day began with half an hour’s religious instruction, with the emphasis on the Seven Sacraments and the Ten Commandments, which were relentlessly and repeatedly analysed. As a non-Catholic I did not take part in these catechism classes, and so in each term’s report, alongside the words “Religious Instruction,” there was always an oblique stroke rather than a mark out of ten. For the first half-hour of each day I sat with a textbook open in front of me, but did not read it because I was secretly following the lesson. I did so because those classes taught me something about what was happening within me and outside me, neither of which I fully understood.
Two or three times a year, on Catholic feast days, an open-air mass was celebrated in the playground. Everything had to be prepared the day before. The sections of the prefabricated wooden altar were taken out and assembled; a rectangular red carpet was laid out in front of the altar and tubs of flowers were placed on either side. The large space beyond the altar was filled with an enormous number of benches, which the boys had lugged out of the dining hall and corridors and placed in two dead-straight lines. The previous afternoon the whole school had marched in procession to the church to confess, so that they could take communion during the open-air mass. While this was happening, I stayed behind at school and hung about. There was also a Jewish boy from a higher class, but I paid no attention to him.