The Rainbow Bridge and the Shadow of the Serpent: The Rainbow Bridge and the Shadow of the Serpent

by Sergio Pereira

  - It can be, but not anymore. All that struggling doesn’t make sense. That competition. All that narcissism to have to be perfect is tiring. Exhausting.

  - Nothing’s easy.

  - Especially for me. I no longer see the sense in what I’m doing and since I don’t know how to do anything else, I just keep on.

  - But you love dance, don’t you?

  - Look, enough, OK? My life’s one big mess. I feel I’m drowning in my world and now I’m in another. Where, I have no idea, talking to a girl who communicates through enigmas.

  Stefanie was making an effort to hide the tear that was forming in the corner of her left eye. Her anguish was evident and she didn’t understand why she should begin to open up to someone she didn’t even know who, to add insult to injury, was no more than an adolescent.

  - Now I think. I mean I don’t think. I know where we are. If you’ll let me, I’ll tell you my story. And I also know that this is a great place for dreaming. A dream that goes to the sea, has to return one day.

  - Lovely sentiment, but what good does it do?

  - It’s from a song not yet recorded.

  - Can you, without any puzzles, explain to me what’s going on? Could you possibly tell me where we are and how we can get back?

  - I’ve already said I have the answer to “Where are we?” As for the other two questions, no. You know, there must be good reasons for them to exist and for us to be here.

  - Where does all your conformism come from? Do you really have so much faith? Are you deluded or do you know something I don’t…

  - Can I try to explain?

  - Hey, why so hoity-toity? Who’s the adult here?

  Violet didn’t know the meaning of the word hoity-toity. Even so, she didn’t like it at all. She even thought about standing up and going to another part of the beach. When she was about to do this, she observed in her companion a slight tremor in the right hand, accompanied by a biting at the corner of her lip.

  She looked her in the face. Stefanie’s beautiful blue eyes were begging for help, but the tone of the words coming from her mouth said the opposite. She felt sorry for her and immediately relaxed her leg muscles, because they were already preparing to take the rest of her body with them to another place. Trying to transmit tenderness through her voice, she began to tell what she knew little by little, about what she judged could be assimilated at that moment about the Kingdom of the Seven Moons.

  CHAPTER IV

  SYMPHONIC SEA

  More or less two hours before the Sun and sea met on the horizon of the Beach of the After the Now, two eyes focussed on the Girl with the German Piano and the young Canadian. However, their attention was soon on Stefanie alone. In a corner of that beach, the stretch of vegetation at the frontier between sands and land was short. Not more than a few metres. Soon afterwards, some clumps of coconut palms appeared. The pair of eyes peeking at her was hiding right behind one of them growing at the border of the sand and land. The tree had sprouted beside a rock whose visible part resembled the form and size of a small hump-backed whale, beached in the river that emptied into the sea on the beach.

  As each being sees the world around them according to how the mirror of their soul reflects their own anxieties and desires, feelings and concepts rooted in the mind, no one perceives the universe in exactly the same way. Where some see opportunity, others see tragedy, When for many beauty exists, for others the bizarre appears. Both the beautiful and the ugly, the attractive and the repugnant, the sensuous, the lascivious, the sublime, the sacred, the heinous, the frightening, the erotic, the ridiculous, the amusing, the deformed and the pathetic are perceived according to the perspective of the soul of each individual. Only those who have already evolved considerably can capture the almost totality of the enormous complexity and simplicity which is the reality of the universe around us. Thus, almost always, we only see what we want to see. And, because of this, we are practically blind to reality. As the wise Renaissance painter, artist, philosopher and scientist, Leonardo da Vinci, once said, “the eyes are the window of the soul and the mirror of the world”.

  With the pair of eyes that was observing them from a distance, it was no different. They didn’t leave their target for a moment, according the perspective of their anxieties. The focus was Stefanie, and there was no movement she made that went unnoticed.

  - Are you hungry? – asked Violet.

  - Of course. Water isn’t a problem, because of that river over there. But I haven’t seen any food, and there can’t be any snack bar in this kingdom which, if you’re right, I’m in.

  It was Violet’s turn to look at the river spilling its fresh, crystalline waters in the right-hand corner of the Beach after the Now. Her body had been asking for some time to be hydrated and she hadn’t noticed. Just one hundred steps took her there. She was followed by Stefanie, who didn’t want to be alone any longer or far from her peer in gender, species and planet or kingdom of birth.

  They drank thirstily, cupping their hands like shells. The freshness of the waters that sprang from the distant mountains and ran into the sea slid into their mouths, down their throats and esophagi to enter their stomachs. The sensation for both was marvellous; though it didn’t last long. No sooner had the need for water been resolved than hunger appeared.

  While Violet and Stefanie, in silence, sought to find anything at all to eat, the owner of the pair of eyes had furtively moved the rest of his body. He had gone into the forest and thus, still hidden, maintained almost the same distance. The few tracks he had left in the sand were from hooves. And while the girls were looking for something, he was concentrating his attention on the drops of water running down Stefanie’s neck towards the centre of her breast, and from there inside the discreet neckline of her t-shirt.

  - Can you help me? I think I can manage if you do.

  Violet pointed to another pair of coconut palms about twenty metres from where they had set off for the river. They were soon in front of the trees. Meanwhile, the hidden observer had gone back to his original spying place.

  Violet leaned against the first coconut palm. It was a singular species, neither tall nor erect as these palms usually are. It had grown in the shape of an arc and, to their delight, it was full of coconuts, whose pulp was succulent and nutritious. They were the most inviting coconuts in the universe, and they just needed picking.

  The girl climbed onto Stefanie’s back and with quite an effort went up two more metres, clinging to the tree like a veritable primate. She reached her target. One, two, five, seven coconuts were brought down until she lost hold and dropped, falling on her back into the soft sand. She missed Stefanie by two centimetres in that disastrous fall.

  - Aaaaaaaaaaaaagh!

  - No! My goodness, girl, be careful!

  - Aaaaagh!

  - Are you alright? Did you hurt yourself? Let me look at you.

  - Aaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!

  Violet’s fall also disturbed the emotions of the hidden observer; however, he stayed where and as he was.

  - Violet, please be alright. You’re ok aren’t you? Please.

  -Aaaaaaaaaaaaaagh! What an idiot I was.

  Violet, still sprawled out on the sand, wriggled her fingers one by one. Then her feet and, finally, her arms and legs. Her bones seemed to be intact, but not her pride. She hated falling and that tumble had been ridiculous.

  - Thank God you seem to be fine!

  - Aaaaaaaagh!

  She got up. She shook the sand from her body, her bermuda shorts and the cycling shirt she was wearing over her normal top. Stefanie noticed a mobile phone on the sand. Her new companion’s fall had thrown it out of her back pocket.

  - Look what I’ve found. It’s yours isn’t it? Cool!

  Violet’s face registered temporary ill humour, due to the painful assault on her pride and body.

  - And will you be calling a taxi, by any chance?

  - Hey, you don’t need to be rude. Sorry. It’s just that I was worried about you. An
d I don’t know! I left mine in my room there on the other side of the mirror. Do you see that I’m already beginning to talk like you? We can’t live without a mobile, can we? It’s all wrong somehow. What good is this so-called connectivity if we can’t say what we really feel.

  Violet sensed anguish and revolt again in the other girl’s tone. Pain in the soul can be can be much greater than that in the body. She forgot about her own pains and felt sorry for Stefanie, who seemed scared and her blue eyes reflected despair at her own life. She decided to reassure her.

  - Don’t fret. I’m fine. The pain will soon go away. Give me the mobile. I’ll turn it off, that way we’ll save the battery. Maybe by some magic we’ll find a signal. Let’s attack the coconuts!

  That was when the Sun finally sank behind the horizon as if about to make the sea boil.

  Stefanie couldn’t believe what she saw next. That little girl with the masses of hair used two hands to lift a coconut above her head. It was an energetic movement. She smashed the coconut against one of the many rocks that had lain on that beach for millennia. It just took four or five more bangs for the fruit to open in two parts. The water inside was almost entirely wasted as it ran onto the sands, which absorbed it in less than a second. But what she was really interested in was the pulp. She gave one of the halves to Stefanie. The inside was so soft that her fingers had no difficulty taking it out.

  - Mmmm. Delicious! Where did you learn to do that?

  - The lady at the coconut stand in Ibirapuera does this when we’ve drunk all the water.

  - I don’t understand it when you talk about Ibirapuera. What’s Ibirapuera?

  - Forget it. Let’s split more coconuts?

  - What are you waiting for?

  Their spirits lifted with reinvigorated strength and the lights of the day left for the other side of the Kingdom. Sleep soon came. Although it was night, it was hot and the fluffy white sands weren’t cold.

  - I think it’d be better for one of us to keep watch while the other sleeps. That way we’ll be on guard. I’ll start, OK? Two hours each – Stefanie proposed.

  Violet fell asleep, pretending to agree. She was soon imitated by her new friend, who couldn’t fight the extreme torpor and exhaustion that enveloped her body and mind. While the body of the girl and the young woman were practically inert and their spirits were penetrating the world of dreams, the apparent quiet of the beach was unmasked by dances as yet not described or observed in the Kingdom of the Blue Earth.

  There were just few of them at first. But they soon grew in number and intensity. Yellow, almost white, legs mingled with red, almost ruby, legs. Crabs met. Some from the depths of the symphonic sea, others from the silent marsh. When they crawled across the sand, their claws disturbed micro-organisms of phytoplankton scattered by the licking waves. Streaks of luminescence, like micro-fireflies, appeared between the claws of the crustaceans, which were acting at that moment like ten-legged ballerinas that move sideways. The crabs’ spindly, bulging eyes looked at each other, while pairs formed for the high-tide ballet.

  Why were they doing that?

  It’s one of the things we’ll never know. We can only suppose they were happy inside their own shells.

  Moths and night fireflies appeared and the sea became even more alive. Mysteriously, symphonies or works by the French genius Claude-Achille Debussy sounded in the air, without there being any orchestra. Debussy, who in the Kingdom of the Blue Earth, had been born and baptized with this name in 1862, and who in 1918 had left for other kingdoms, left a work so memorable that any adjective to describe it will always be incomplete.

  He himself didn’t like his music to be labelled as a sound version of the cultural movement born in the mid 19th century, Impressionism. In this phase, such painters as Claude Monet, Van Gogh, Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, Edgar Degas, Paul Cézanne and Berthe Morisot, among others, endorsed the contemptuous commentary of a critic at the time, who referred to Monet’s “Sunset”, affirming that his work was nothing more than “mere impressionism”. Intelligently, instead of being irritated with the lamentable criticism, the genius painters allowed the expression to christen the new style.

  So, in the Kingdom of the Blue Earth, a movement was born, which depicted the changing matrixes of colours and forms in the passing of the hours seen by distinct observers. And, if in impressionist painting the perception of reality becomes more important than reality itself, in the music of Claude Debussy sound reality has no limits of form and sounds that ears can ear. It is music that can be heard by the soul.

  Just as impressionist painters portray the physical and biological universe, with feeling, and not rationality, as a point of departure, Debussy’s music can tattoo impressions so deep and subtle on the soul that there is no theory in the world that can explain it.

  In this sense, many affirm that it is, indeed, impressionist; however, there is no reason to disrespect Debussy’s wishes. If he didn’t like the label, but often loved, in a bi-polar way, the works of his contemporary painters and musicians, why not just savour the music? After all, as he himself complained categorically, to the maestro Camile Chevilard, who was rehearsing one of his master works, “La Mer”, in 1905:

  “A little quicker here.”

  And the maestro responded:

  “My dear friend, we have just played at the exact speed you recommended to us yesterday.”

  Debussy, preserving his posture, shot back:

  “But I don’t feel the music the same way every day.”

  One can imagine the expression of shock and indignation of the maestro and orchestra members at that moment. There is no way, especially for an orchestra, at any time and on a whim, to change the speed of music. But on the other hand, it is certain that the magic of the music touches us in a different way at each instant. And that everything is in permanent movement, as is our perception of the world.

  The Symphonic Sea of the Beach After the Now was inexhaustible in its music and interpretations. Violet and Stefanie could feel and hear different works by Claude Debussy while asleep.

  Their spirits partially left their physical bodies without either noticing.

  Violet would remember that moment as a dream in which she was walking along a moonlit beach, the waves made of long pentagrams, where the keys of G and F were defining the tonality of each wave, until it ended scattered on the sand playing the marvellous Clair de Lune.

  She would also remember that she actually saw two or three dolphins surfing with some mermaids in tubes formed by waters, whose molecules were music atoms.

  Dreams can be strange. And even stranger is that they are often the extended reality of life in which we seem to sleeping awake. In this world, Violet was very happy and relaxed.

  Not so for Stefanie. The beach and time where they rested were the same, but their dreams were not. She felt she was being watched by someone or something that bothered her, while the Symphonic Sea was playing La Mer. She was also wandering on a beach in her dream. But her path was continually full of deep holes in the sand, where worms had made their home and were exhaling a sulphurous odour. She was afraid she’d get distracted and be contaminated by something unknown. However, at the same time, a mysterious look was perturbing her, giving her the sensation that she was just in her underwear. She was walking slowly and the Symphonic Sea sounded like some pre-torment to her.

  In the world of the awake at that moment, marsh crabs, seawater crabs, fireflies and moths continued their ballet on the sand while, for the faun, owner of the pair of eyes described above, another wonder composed by Debussy called Prélude à l'après-midi d'un Faune, resounded through the nooks and crannies of the landscape in a much more magical way than any orchestra had ever played it on Earth.

  The faun gradually plucked up the courage to get closer. He had a canteen hanging round his human neck and his eyes never left the young sleeping girl.

  The faun sighed. He sat down a few metres away and remained there motionless,
like rock made of flesh – half covered by smooth golden skin and half by short, thick brown hair.

  On the plane of dreams, Stefanie’s anguish was just increasing and reflecting the sadness experienced in the Kingdom of the Blue Earth. The beach sky had darkened and blotted out the stars. The weight of the mysterious faun’s gaze increased. Until the black sky was cut by a falling star.

  Stefanie reacted with the rest of her strength against that feeling: the walls of the world, of the rooms, of her bedroom seemed to squash her.

  She prayed to the star. In fact, she was praying to God, who might well have been that star. She didn’t need to wait long for a reply. The trail left in the sky scared off the dark shadows that covered the stars. And from the trail itself, a luminous point quickly in a crescendo towards her.

  It was with alarm, but without fear, that Stefanie saw herself before a beautiful woman with the wings and antennae of a butterfly – or a large butterfly with the body of a beautiful woman.

  Her voice was as melodious as the voices of fairy queens. She had a turquoise luminescence that took on pink and green tones.

  - You must not fear the beauty of flesh or the lack of it.

  Stefanie sighed and, as was her habit, snapped back:

  - But it bothers me. I don’t know exactly what it is, but it bothers me. I think, I don’t know, that this relentless competition at my school. This idea that a ballerina has to be perfect. You don’t know how hard it is.

  - No one said it would be easy to shine. But in your case it’s not that. I see your soul and I know that it’s not the hours of rehearsal that are disturbing you.

  - So what is it? Am I ugly? Am I pretty? Am I an object? What am I?

  - You are what you are. Like everyone, you are the child of the great father and mother of everyone and that is why you have to accept yourself as such, knowing that you are beloved by Him.

  It wasn’t the words that touched the depths of Stefanie’s heart, but the energy of truth brought by that voice. Her lips trembled and she threatened to cry.