"As long as they don’t murder you," he said under his breath. His gaze turning away from me while his gestures grew faster, more rhythmic and cadenced.
His gestures took the lead: they took hold of him, sucked him in. Then his eyes went from the bundle of twigs he just tied (fascinating how he managed such an expert knot while still talking, paying attention to me I believed) to the cabin door.
I shivered faintly for no reason. He must be about to head inside, store that wood somewhere. Maybe on a pile close to the fireplace.
Was there a fireplace? Was it just a hole in the middle of the floor? What was the floor made of?
Dirt? I thought so. The fireplace must have been a dirt hole inside a dirt hole, so to speak, since what else was the cabin? A grotto, a cavern would have been better definitions, though it wasn’t literally dug into the mountain. But the mound against which the door was barely silhouetted, in the penumbra, was so indefinitely shaped. Was it mud? Were rocks mixed with mud, gravel, branches? I couldn’t say.
My attention had been magnetized by his body, his face and his voice. And less consciously by the things he said ... things I had listened to but they’d surface later. For they didn’t strike me at the moment like their owner did. Their owner? Their porter I guess.
If I had listened with some partiality, more absorbed by his presence than by his words, the surroundings had registered even less.
Yes, I knew the cabin was there, as the place where he would disappear at some point. Now, though, it jumped to the foreground as if my mind were a camera switching focus. It became imposing and dooming … his quick stare caused it to swell, to come forwards in an Alice in Wonderland reenactment, with reality whimsically changing sizes. I was Alice. Who was he? It didn’t matter, the metaphor didn’t matter: it was just a distraction.
He would pass through that door now and vanish. Chances to see him again were practically inexistent.
Why did I worry? After all I had known him for less than an hour. I had no time to fall in love and how could I have? I mean, he had to be as old as my grandpa. Older probably.
Yes, I knew he was astonishingly kept. I couldn’t tell his body that much: it was bunched up in rags, too large and too many. But I could feel the ease, the aplomb. After all he had chopped wood during the entire conversation without losing breath. He could manage chopping and talking. Smiling too … He sure had good lungs, especially since the air was thin up there.
He moved with coordination and grace, his center of gravity exactly where it should be … still supported by tight tonic muscles, still not twisted by arthritic, brittle, displaced bones. The parts of him that were visible--hands, neck, feet clad in sandals--looked healthy. His knotted, crumpled flesh was firm, so tanned it looked like polished leather.
Strangely his hair was short. He had a whitish crew cut: wasn’t it weird?
How did he manage it? Did he have a mirror? A ponytail dangling all the way to his calves would have made more sense. But the short cut looked clean.
Very clean. Can you picture a fellow in rags looking neat as an athlete before the race?
And his eyes were of the handsomest blue. That didn’t surprise me. Stuck into the folds of his skin like pieces of glass from a broken bottle. Fake, unnaturally blue, mismatched with the earthy tones of his rags. With the dirt, woods, rocks and mountains …
I forgot the sky. But you see, the sky was far and unreachable, that justified its independence in taste.
Also its expanse diluted its shade, made it pale.
Nothing justified those eyes. Nothing diluted them.
I had found him, now that I think about it, by a series of mistakes.
First of all the assumption--due to youthful inexperience--I could hike in the mountains of a foreign land (more precisely a region I knew nothing about) with no maps.
If I look at my attitude from a distance (namely from the age I’ve reached now) I’m appalled at the degree of carelessness I displayed. I recall (accurately I’m sure) starting on the trails more than once with no plan at all, just leaving my tent or the room where I spent the night, as soon as I woke up. Out we go.
I travelled often. I hit the road whenever I had saved enough money through whatever odd job I had found. Then I travelled my way to the next, so to speak. That went on for years in a row.
To the point. I had a sort of breakfast, I’m sure, my young appetite would require it. The nature of it would be bread: you always can find some and it fills you up.
Yes, that plain but substantial meal kept me going for the day. You got it: I didn’t bring lunch or snacks, I simply did not think about it. At some point I would be hungry. That point was called 'return’. At my return I’d be hungry, very hungry or incredibly hungry, depending how long my wandering had been. None of those nuances worried me.
No, I didn’t bring water! Of course not, why should I bother? What’s so strange at being thirsty or very thirsty? When you get back you drink.
My shoes for the hike were those I was wearing. I had one pair of shoes until they fell apart and I could fix them no more. Then I’d buy another pair.
I didn’t worry about appropriate clothing: I wore what felt good at the moment. Later, when the sun would be burning, I would knot my sweater or jacket around my waist.
I was cold many times, not having thought of sun setting, winds, possible rain, altitude. I remember being unbearably cold--but I bore it in the dumbest of way, just enduring.
Then, whenever I’d get to a shower or simply to bed, I’d savor a delightful relief.
I never fell sick--don’t ask why. As a result I didn’t learn from experience. I imperviously avoided it, to be true. For decades I learned nothing. Neither carefulness nor the need for planning.
Neither caution nor fear.
As for orientation: how naively did I tackle those strolls, often lasting until late night! Time to find my way back, wasn’t it? I always assumed I’d figured it or it would figure itself. Someone would help me, there would always be someone: I didn’t prospect the existence of true wilderness. Things would make sense, I would remember clues, by instinct I’d retrace my steps, at least find a place for the night.
What a blank slate I was! No vision of evil apparently stained my imagination. Is that true? Maybe I had wiped it off.
If the insouciance I displayed--venturing in the mountains, that morning, entranced by the colors of autumn leaves--was one of the aforementioned mistakes, the other was related to language. Fresh as I was in my practice of the local tongue (I had resided in the country for a year by then, time for an employment or two) I still didn’t master the ambiguity of nouns and verbs sounding the same.
I am talking about the term 'falls’ that for me was just the third person of a present tense. I had no idea it could also be a noun’s plural. I’d refer to waterfalls, for example, still as cascades. I would call a snowfall an avalanche. That works, does it?
Down, where the trail …
Truly I had called it 'road’ in my ignorance, giving it the same sturdiness, same stability of a paved roman avenue. Roads don’t get blurred, fishtail or simply vanish: they are mighty reliable.
Where the road started I’d seen an old wooden sign, quite unreadable and still ... it said: 'Hermit Falls’. I laughed. To me it sounded like a pun. Like a jocular version of 'Deer Crossing’, although it used the present instead of the gerundive (I wasn’t yet capable of appreciating the difference).
Who on earth would have written it, since that wasn't a theme park (they didn’t exist)? I didn’t ponder.
First of all, that’s the very essence of traveling: you accept to not understand the mentality. Second, we already discussed my general casualness.
I didn’t expect hermits. (what exactly is a hermit by the way? I had never seen one, only heard about them in stories. Did hermits still exist? Had they ever existed or were they purely fictional? Purely symbolic?) I didn’t think hermits would tumble down the slopes for my amusement. Maybe, though, I expected something as a cave painting … yes, some hermit themed historical landmark. That would have stirred my curiosity.
Or not. After all I was enraptured by the autumn leaves covering the trees surrounding me. Trees of breathtaking beauty. Of amazing majesty. Trees that almost possessed something human. Superhuman I mean.
While I walked the woods became thicker. And the valley grew distant, then remote. The silence embraced me--but silence, as you know, is never such in a wood.
I walked for hours and hours. Unexpectedly the trail started descending.
I heard the thumps behind me but they didn’t startle me. I turned back with the elation of risen curiosity: I was ready for a bear cub, maybe a mother bear. Something heavy and solid by the nature of the noise.
I immediately saw him. Although his colors melted with those of nature around, his fast progress quickly defined him. He marched downwards as you do it in the mountains: rapidly, to keep balance and use momentum. He seemed concentrated in his walk, a bundle of twigs under his arm, an axe hanging from a rope tied around his waist.
You think you should be scared to see a man with an axe when nobody else is around. A tall man, well built. Not when he’s been patently cutting wood, of course.
I moved over to let him pass. I looked into his eyes and he smiled. His teeth weren’t in the best of conditions. I followed at my pace.
When I got to the clearing (a minuscule one) I saw the hut first, then him chopping close by. He had put down his bundle, he was busying himself around a pile of logs.
Cutting them into smaller pieces. I don’t know what it took me, but I sat on a stump a few feet away and I watched him.
He must have been aware of it but he didn’t say a word. That didn’t trouble me. I was resting.
*
Then he suddenly put the axe down and he wiped his forehead with its sleeve. Very slowly.
Something in that motion struck me. I held my breath for a second. I was expecting something. As if a change of status had occurred (how I didn’t know), as if he had wiped away something else than sweat.
He turned toward me and said hi. “Hi," I said and I smiled. He introduced himself. Now to save my life I couldn’t remember his name. Do not think I haven’t tried. I’ve tried a million of times for all these years. There’s no way.
I must have given him mine but I don’t recall either. That of course doesn't matter at all.
He asked me about myself. What I was doing there, where I came from and such. Small talk it could be defined, then I didn’t know of such expression. That I would have taken for a pun anyway.
I’m sure that I candidly answered whatever he asked, though I recall nothing. Soon he was quiet again, as if that basic collection of data satisfied him.
Thus I asked about him. First his name, of course.
Oh God, why can’t I possibly recall it? Could someone help? What wouldn't I give to recall his name!
What was he doing there?
He laughed. What a question. He lived there of course. He was getting ready for winter because it was fall. Duh.
Lived there all year around? Of course.
Did he always live there? No. He had become a hermit at some point, he wasn’t born one.
Although the explanation seemed obvious I knew little, as I said, about hermits. Yes, I guessed that wasn’t a thing you inherit like money or a genetic trait. But how did you become one?
Well, you choose at some point, he reiterated.
Out of the blue? (Why did I use an idiom I still didn’t master? Must have been his eye color.)
He laughed more, as if I was asking the obvious. No, he first was a monk in a monastery with plenty others. Oh! Didn’t he like it there? Yes, but he knew he would like it better up here.
Didn’t he miss people?
His smile widened. Not like that of the Cheshire cat, not that kind of smile.
His smile widened and it was like a secret garden. Like something I desperately wanted to get in, a kid grasping at a gate.
He smiled large and he didn’t answer. He looked down and he chopped harder. He did that a few times, whenever he liked. Just looked away, chopped harder.
“Don’t you like people?" I insisted.
Again he didn’t answer. I was at loss for a second, not knowing what I should do with the conversation, if to drop it would have been best. But I had no wish to go.
Then the delayed answer came: “course I do." As banal as that.
Did he lie? Something strongly suggested he never did. Maybe he was forbidden. That is why he took time answering: because he didn’t lie.
“Do you see many people?" I asked. Once again he smiled. “No one wanders around here.
How come?"
I just got there following a wooden sign … “It’s not much of a traveled trail."--
He focused back on his task. I said nothing.
Later: “There’s a monk who visits periodically. He comes checking on me, my health mostly ... And he brings a few things I need."
“Food?" escaped from my mouth.
“I don’t need food! I can find and I can grow food. I have a little patch I cultivate. Not much grows here but some things do. He brings things I can’t fabricate out of thin air: candles, soap ..."
Candles, soap then what else? He didn’t say. Maybe candles and soap.
As for clothing, what he wore seemed extremely seasoned. Did he have that stuff on him when he first moved? I didn't ask. I mentally enlarged the checklist without need to confirm it: needles, thread.
Maybe just one needle. I was sure he’d take care of it. I was sure he wouldn’t lose it. By the way you can fix clothes and shoes without needles. You can manage.
How often did his fellow monk come and visit? What did periodical mean? Now my question was worried. I had grown alarmed for reasons I couldn't detect.
Probably I didn’t even know I was alarmed.
“Oh" he said, “when the season changes … every three months or so. Sometimes the weather doesn’t permit. He didn’t come last time. August storms have been bad."
What did he do if the monk didn’t show up? My worry was kind of swelling. Why?
He only smiled. I sensed he didn’t want to reply. I felt my questions were not just stupid but too stupid. “You know …" he said. No, he couldn’t have said 'you know’, he couldn't have possibly. “That’s mostly for them," he said. “To make sure I’m fine. Not for me but for them."
“They must know when they have to replace me," he added after a pause. Replace him? “Don't you miss talking with people?" I asked.
I was feeling a creeping sadness. The subtlest thing. Creeping, subtle: like one of those little snakes my grandfather showed me when I was very young. Those small snakes he pointed at to teach me what a snake was, to make me acquainted with them and not afraid. Those small snakes qualified to be called so, but barely longer and wider than a worm. Snakes you didn’t want to touch or take in your hand (they won't let you anyway) but you couldn’t truly be scared of.
Sadness (a blade of it, no more) crept on me like a little snake. So irrelevant it could be called domestic… a pet almost.
Now he wiped his face, again, with the back of his hand. He had put his axe down, not as if he was tired. He certainly wasn’t. I think he had decided I deserved a bit of attention.
Did he? Maybe to get rid of me at last.
He looked at me. That weird sensation reoccurred, as if I was a four-year-old. What am I saying? Younger. No more than three. No, just two and I can’t go further back since that’s when memory starts, they say.
Two or maximum three-year-old grabbing at that gate, those black iron bars, clutching them with my fists. With such strength I could shake them. Maybe pull them apart, I’m quite sure.
I have such strength in my arms, yes, my palms, my ten fingers: I can feel it ... I have all that is needed but it just doesn’t work. Then what? In fact I don't have to pull on those bars. I’m so small I could slip through. But it doesn’t come to mind.
Yes, I was my young self, stuck outside the gate, drooling for the place I wanted to be let in. Maybe I was in and the place was outside. Would it matter?
“I can talk one hour per day," he said calmly. “I have a whole hour." Every twenty-four? Sure that is what he meant.
That was an awful lot I thought (such awareness must have come from him telepathically). That seemed lavish and uselessly so. Kind of a waste. Especially if nobody wandered in the area.
What did he do when nobody came around? He didn’t care answering.
Obviously the talking hour wasn’t a hygienic routine of sort, something he had to perform in order to maintain sanity. One would think so, but no. He didn’t have to talk to the elements, to the birds or squirrels or mice just to keep his mouth busy.
No. The rule simply meant that in case of visitors all he was allowed was an hour. The rule set a limit, a boundary.
As if, I guess, with more exposure he could get contagion. He could get infected: his immune defenses must have dramatically dropped.
What was I thinking? Defenses from what?
But I had started understanding. Maybe just empathizing, with no reasoning involved. I was feeling how he must feel.
Sure, one hour could be dangerously overwhelming once you lost the habit. All that communicating could be inebriating and not in a good way. Listening to the nonsense could be sickening, nauseating.
Since now it was quite obvious I--for instance--had just talked nonsense … All my questions--what was he doing here, did he live here, why, did he miss people---weren't--they all perfectly obvious? Self-explanatory and evident?
Why did I ask things I myself could answer? Small talk: I didn't yet know the definition. That does not justify me.
It was sadness now that made me talk, pushing up the next dumb question.
Because sadness had widened a bit. No, not to the size of a dangerous snake. Not yet.
(By the way there weren’t many dangerous snakes, grandpa said. Almost none of them. Size didn’t matter. Even those so long they spread all the way across, like a wavering bridge I had to overcome, were pacific. Even those thick as a shovel handle should not preoccupy me. They lived their life. They were loners. They didn’t want to meet me, they hated interacting. They were scared of me believe it or not. I should stay put, let them pass, be quiet, make no noise. They wouldn’t harm me if they didn’t feel threatened. No! I could befriend snakes if I kept proper distances. The only ones I should fear where vipers, those short fellows with bifurcated tongues. Very easy to spot. Even they were okay though, if I left them alone.)
But enough of snakes!
Sadness had grown thicker, it spoke through my tongue. Didn’t he like people at all? Did he hate people? As if his previous statement a propos had not made it through … As if I were in dire need of reassurance.
Desperate need.
He might have guessed, for he answered with the largest of smiles. The most handsome I’d be graced with that afternoon, but I didn't know yet.
“I love people," he said. “I pray for them daily."
Did he pray an hour a day? I asked almost thoughtlessly. He laughed.
“I pray as many hours as I have left when I’m finished working. I don’t count them," he said.
Then I asked about his work--another set of banalities that he answered more and more courteously.
More convivially I could say if such word made sense in that context.
Now I was conscious--if vaguely (my awareness, I mean, was a matter of feelings more than a clear analysis) ... Now I sensed my interjections were tautological. I asked things that could be derived from one another or by mere observation. I kept asking, too, someone who didn’t like talking.
And it dawned on me that the clock was ticking. Since he had started replying (did his first nod count?) time had been running.
Did the hour begin whenever he wished? Or had I by mere chance arrived in the canonic one, the same always, just before sunset? Both a classic (because kind of obvious) and a romantic choice (the forest in twilight.)
Time in any case was going by. Though I couldn’t tell how long the conversation had lasted, like an animal I sensed it would end soon.
And that terrified me. Why? Was I falling in love? Don’t ask it again, please.
Of course not. How could I have? But it never had happened before--fearing to be cut out, be refused an answer because my interlocutor was done, finished for the day.
I dreaded such moment, I suspected it would be awful, just because it was new to me ...
Or perhaps because I was naïve: I forgot it had happened before and a number of times. People rarely give you an hour of attention. Well, way less. People often shut up on you without notice, close the door and leave you outside without explanations.
Didn’t I know? Didn’t it register just because it wasn’t expressly quantified?
I only knew I didn’t want that hour to end. Or, since it would, I didn't want to waste any of it. I wanted to ask questions so that I would get answers. Mostly I would hear him talk: I just needed it.
I had him describe what his work was …
Simply keeping alive! Yes he hunted a bit. Small rodents and birds he could roast. He said not much meat was needed: less and less when you get old. He gathered berries, even larger fruit like wild apples, wild loquats. Nuts of various kinds. That took more time than I could imagine. He also grew, he told me, a few veggies and herbs.
Then he gathered firewood: winters were long. He kept things in running order: the house, his clothing and shoes …
Not that I could tell, but what did I know? All these tasks took time, he said. Just enough though, plenty was left for prayer.
Now, he said, the moment was coming.
What moment?
Oh, that was my dumbest one. In fact he didn’t answer.
That is when he mumbled something to himself:“if only they wouldn’t kill you, if you only, if you could,-- something like that. I can’t reproduce the exact wording.
Then he pushed the almost invisible door--that contour barely drawn on the wall. My chest fluttered while I expected him to be swallowed into his cave.
Then the impossible happened. He said I could come in. A few minutes were left, he could show me something.
Now you think the situation feels fishy. Finally creepy. But no.
I don’t remember much of the interior. It was very dark.
I was scanning the obscurity, prey of a morbid curiosity. Was it? Maybe something else I can’t define.
I looked for a fireplace. A stove. He didn’t have one. A table. I think so, in a corner. With nothing on it but a wooden cross.
I was looking for his bed but I couldn’t find it. A blanket, an army one probably, was laid along a wall. On the right, almost out of sight, another one hung across a rope like a curtain. He pulled it and he gestured me in: I should go first.
I was struck by the luminosity.
Where was I? This wasn’t a room. A closet maybe. An alcove? A niche squeezed against the mountainside, partially roofless, so the sky was visible.
A source trickled from the stone wall. From the mountain. It came down vertically, skinny as a snake and wavering likewise.
So the Hermit Falls existed after all. The water had its typical trickling sound, fragile but chime like. And a flickering: as a sparkle of sequins. Weird, incongruously festive. Maybe that was responsible for the luminosity, like a vapor, a halo.
Where the trickling hit the soil it formed a sort of puddle. Tiny and with a verdant reflex. Close by there was a cup with no handle. Or a mug, or a bowl. I can’t tell: it was shapeless and the color of soil. But the firmness of its silhouette struck me.
For a second the fountain (should I call it so?) took me away, took me in. Its sight and sound recollected me. Just as if that famous iron gate opened for me, without noise or resistance. Sliding smoothly it welcomed me in.
Then I turned toward him. God, he had already kneeled down, his head bent forward, his torso still erected. I panicked: he would talk no more.
But he did.
“Here I pray,"-- then a pause.
I was eager to hear him say I should go now, I should get on the trail before dark. Actually I just wanted him to say goodbye. I wanted it desperately. But I felt I had vanished from sight.
He remained still. His lips moved without sound as if he was murmuring again things incomprehensible, as he did when he put his axe down. Things I maybe wasn’t supposed to remember. Was I? Things I never asked for (did I ask for anything meaningful, did I?)
His eyes had rolled inward, though he kept them open and they still looked amazingly blue.
When I stepped out I realized darkness had reached everywhere, and so fast.
That’s a common surprise in the woods. How rapidly everything fades away when the sun sets.
As I said I wasn’t the fearful type. The strange apprehension I felt during the conversation (mostly while I waited for the conversation to end) left me as soon as I started walking. A great calm came in its place.
Obviously the road unwound under my feet as it always did, bringing me back to where I had started in the morning. I was hungry and thirsty but I wasn't cold. My mood was quite excellent.