Well, I was back in the dry river again. For some time I had been residing in a country that wasn't my own where, rather than gradually becoming more familiar, things increasingly appeared to be veiled by unsuspected differences: in their shapes, in their colours and in their reciprocal harmonies. The hills surrounding me now were unlike those I had learnt to know, with delicately rounded declivities, and the fields too and the vineyards followed those soft declivities and the steep terraces likewise, trailing off into gentle slopes. The colours were all new, like the hues of an unknown rainbow. The trees, few and far between, were as if suspended, like small clouds, and almost transparent.
Then I became aware of the air, of how it became concrete as I looked, how it filled my hands as I thrust them into it. And I saw a self that couldn't be reconciled with the world around, rugged and stony as I was inside and with gashes of colour of a vividness that was almost dark, like shouts or laughter. And however hard I tried to put words between myself and the world, I couldn't find any that were suitable to clothe things anew; because all my words were hard and freshly hewn: and saying them was like laying down so many stones.
Again, if some drowsy memory were to form in my mind, it would be of things learnt, not experienced: fantasy landscapes perhaps, seen in the backdrop of old paintings, or perhaps the words of old poets improperly understood.
In this fluid atmosphere I lived, as it were, swimming and felt my rough edges gradually smoothed and myself dissolved, absorbed into it.
But to find myself again, all I had to do was go down to the old dry river.
What prompted me -- it was summer -- was a desire for water, a religious desire, for ritual perhaps. Climbing down through the vineyards that evening, I prepared myself for a sacred bath and the word water, already synonymous with happiness for me, expanded in my mind like the name now of a goddess, now of a lover.
The temple I found on the valley bottom behind a pale bank of shrubs. It was a great river of white stones, full of silence.
The only remaining trace of water was a stream trickling almost stealthily, to one side. Sometimes the scantness of the flow between big rocks blocking the way and banks of reeds, took me back among well-known streams and conjured memories of narrower harsher valleys.
It was this: and perhaps too the feel of the stones beneath my feet -- the time-worn stones of the valley bottom, their backs encrusted with a veil of congealed waterweed -- or the being forced to move in jumps, from one rock to another, or perhaps it was just a noise the pebbles made, slithering down the slope.
The fact is that the gap between myself and this land narrowed and composed itself: a sort of brotherhood, a metaphysical kinship bound me to those broken stones, fecund only of shy but tremendously stubborn lichens. And in the old dry river I recognized one of my fathers, ancient, naked.
So, we went along the dry river. He who walked beside me was a companion in fortune, a native of these places, the darkness of whose skin and shaggy hair falling thickly down his back together with the plumpness of the lips and the flat nose, conferred upon him a grotesque appearance as of a tribal leader, Congolese perhaps, or perhaps from the South Seas. This fellow had a proud strapping look about him which showed both in his face, albeit bespectacled, and likewise in his gait, impeded though it was by the clumsy slovenly state of the impromptu bathers we were. Despite being chaste as a quaker in his life, his conversation upon meeting him was like a satyr's. His accent was as breathy and steamy as any I had ever been given to understand: he spoke with his mouth eternally open or full of air, emitting, in a constant and sulphurous outburst, hurricanes of extraordinary insults.
Thus we two climbed up the dry river looking for somewhere where the trickle broadened and we might wash our bodies, filthy and tired as they were.
Now, as we walked along the great womb, it turned in a loop and the background took on a new richness of detail. On high white rocks, an adventure for the eye, sat two, three, perhaps four young ladies in their bathing costumes. Red and yellow costumes -- blue too most likely, but this I don't remember: my eyes were in need only of red and yellow -- and bathing caps, as though on a fashionable beach.
It was like a cock's crow.
A green thread of water ran nearby and came up to their heels; they crouched down in it to bathe.
We stopped, torn between the pleasure of the sight, the pangs of regret it aroused, and the shame at our now ugly and oafish selves. Then we went on towards them while they considered us without interest and we hazarded a remark or two, trying them out the way you do, the wittiest and the most banal we could manage. My sulphurous companion joined in the game without enthusiasm but with a sort of timid reserve.
In any event, a short while later, tired of the meal we were making of it and the lack of response, we set off walking again, giving free rein to more pleasant exchanges. And the memory, still present to the mind's eye, not so much of their bodies as of their red and yellow costumes was sufficient consolation.
Sometimes a branch of the stream, never deep, would widen to cover the whole river bed; and we, the banks being high and impossible to climb, would cross with our feet in the water. We were wearing light shoes, of canvas and rubber, and the water streamed through them: and when we were back on the dry ground our feet squelched inside at every step, wheezing and splashing.
It grew dark. The white shingle came alive with black spots that leapt: tadpoles.
They must have only just sprouted legs, tiny and tailed as they were, and it was as if they hadn't yet come to terms with this new facility which kept sending them flying up in the air. There was one on every stone, but not for long, since the one would jump and another would take his place. And because their jumps were simultaneous and because while pressing on along the great river one saw nothing but the swarming of that amphibious multitude, advancing like a boundless army, I was struck by a sense of awe, almost as if this black and white symphony, this cartoon sad as a Chinese drawing, were fearfully conjuring the idea of the infinite.
We stopped by a pool of water that seemed to offer sufficient space for us to immerse our entire bodies; even to swim a stroke or two. I went in barefoot, bareskinned: the water was weedy and putrid from the slow decay of river plants. The bottom was slimy and swampy: when you touched it, it sent turbid clouds up to the surface.
But it was water; and it was good.
My companion went down into the water with his shoes and stockings, leaving his spectacles on the bank. Then, not fully aware of the religious aspect of the ceremony, he started soaping himself.
Thus we embarked on that joyful treat washing is when it is rare and hard to come by. The pool, which we could scarcely both fit in, bubbled over with foam and roaring, as though we were elephants bathing.
On the riverbanks there were willows and shrubs and houses with waterwheels; and so unreal were they, in contrast to the concreteness of this water and these stones, that with the grey of evening filtering through they took on the air of a faded arras.
My companion was washing his feet, now, in strange manner: without taking off his shoes but soaping the stockings and shoes on his feet.
Then we dried ourselves and dressed. When I picked up a sock a tadpole jumped out.
Laid on the bank, my companion's glasses must have been thoroughly splashed. And -- as he put them on -- so gay must the muddle of that world have seemed to him, coloured as it was by the last gleams of the sunset, seen through a pair of wet lenses, that he started to laugh, and to laugh, without letting up and when I asked him why he said: 'It's such a hell of a mess!'
And, neat and tidy now, a warm weariness in our bones to replace the dull tiredness of earlier on, we said farewell to our new river friend and set off along a little track that followed the bank, reasoning upon our own affairs and upon when we would return, and keeping our ears open, alert to the distant sounding of a bugle.