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Chapter 8 It
has been a day of wonder, this, our first day in the forest.
We
awoke when a ray of sunlight fell across our face. We wanted to leap to
our feet, as we have had to leap to our feet every morning of our life,
but we remembered suddenly that no bell had rung and that there was no
bell to ring anywhere. We lay on our back, we threw our arms out, and we
looked up at the sky. The leaves had edges of silver that trembled and
rippled like a river of green and fire flowing high above us.
We
did not wish to move. We thought suddenly that we could lie thus as long
as we wished, and we laughed aloud at the thought. We could also rise, or
run, or leap, or fall down again. We were thinking that these were things
without sense, but before we knew it, our body had risen in one leap. Our
arms stretched out of their own will, and our body whirled and whirled,
till it raised a wind to rustle through the leaves of the bushes. Then our
hands seized a branch and swung us high into a tree, with no aim save the
wonder of learning the strength of our body. The branch snapped under us
and we fell upon the moss that was soft as a cushion. Then our body,
losing all sense, rolled over and over on the moss, dry leaves in our
tunic, in our hair, in our face. And we heard suddenly that we were
laughing, laughing aloud, laughing as if there were no power left in us
save laughter. Then
we took our glass box, and we went into the forest. We went on, cutting
through the branches, and it was as if we were swimming through a sea of
leaves, with the bushes as waves rising and falling and rising around us,
and flinging their green sprays high to the treetops. The trees parted
before us, calling us forward. The forest seemed to welcome us. We went
on, without thought, without care, with nothing to feel save the song of
our body. We
stopped when we felt hunger. We saw birds in the tree branches, and flying
from under our footsteps. We picked a stone and we sent it as an arrow at
a bird. It fell before us. We made a fire, we cooked the bird, and we ate
it, and no meal had ever tasted better to us. And we thought suddenly that
there was a great satisfaction to be found in the food which we need and
obtain by our own hand. And we wished to be hungry again and soon, that we
might know again this strange new pride in eating.
Then
we walked on. And we came to a stream which lay as a streak of glass among
the trees. It lay so still that we saw no water but only a cut in the
earth, in which the trees grew down, upturned, and the sky at the bottom.
We knelt by the stream and we bent down to drink. And then we stopped.
For, upon the blue of the sky below us, we saw our own face for the first
time. We
sat still and we held our breath. For our face and our body were
beautiful. Our face was not like the faces of our brothers, for we felt no
pity when we looked upon it. Our body was not like the bodies of our
brothers, for our limbs were straight and thin and hard and strong. And we
thought that we could trust this being who looked upon us from the stream,
and that we had nothing to fear from this being.
We
walked on till the sun had set. When the shadows gathered among the trees,
we stopped in a hollow between the roots, where we shall sleep tonight.
And suddenly, for the first time this day, we remembered that we are the
Damned. We remembered it, and we laughed.
We are writing this on the paper we had hidden in our tunic together with the written pages we had brought for the World Council of Scholars, but never given to them. We have much to speak of to ourselves, and we hope we shall find the words for it in the days to come. Now, we cannot speak, for we cannot understand. |
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