by Nahum Megged
When Time is Cracked and Trees Cry
Nahum Megged
Copyright © 2017 Nahum Megged
All rights reserved; No parts of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information retrieval system, without the permission, in writing, of the author.
Translation from the Hebrew: Yaron Regev
Contact: [email protected]
Contents
Part 1 In The Forest
The Clasped Hands
The Cave
The Deluge
The Forest Without a Forest
Marina
The Whirlpool
A Return to Life
Flight
The Bitter Date
Part 2 In the Town
Francisco
A Snake in a Box
The Great Rebellion
A Three-Way Encounter
The Book of Destiny
The Stranger and the Secret
Assassination
The World Before the World
Newspapers
The Pebble
The Hollow Eyes
The Dam Is Breached
The Teacher
The Maze
Part 3 Back in the Forest
Together
The Reflection
The Encounter
Amir
The Laboratory of the Gods
The Homeless Man
The Rain Is Falling
The Arrow of the Goddess
The Journey Begins
In the Earth’s Womb
In the Stone Library
In the Great Cold
The Pyres of the Dead
The Secret of the Cave
The Voice of the Plants
Dancing in the Dark
Opposites and Duplications
The Mud Sculpture
The Place Where the Trees Cry
PART 1
IN THE FOREST
1
The Clasped Hands
This was the fourth night he had appeared, and I could not decide if his face reminded me of any of the tribesmen’s. He looked like a Yarkiti, but his overflowing crown of feathers concealed part of his visage, already hidden by red war paint. His black eyes, peering through the feathers, appeared almost kind, without the fierce determination marking the eyes of warriors. His body was thin and muscular, with yellow stripes painted on his chest. In one hand he held a longbow, and arrows hung from his belt. He looked at me but said nothing, so I had no idea what his native language was. As soon as I opened my eyes to draw him out of the darkness, he disappeared, vanished into thin air. My desperate attempts to find any trace of him in the hut proved futile. The voices of the forest warned me not to leave the safety of the settlement to look for him.
He reappeared as soon as I closed my eyes again, not even waiting for me to fall asleep. He forced my dreams aside and took their place. He was standing very close to the doorway, gripping his bow, his black eyes turned toward the hammock where I lay. There was no point in trying to recapture his image with my eyes open, it always vanished. I walked about in a daze, eyes closed, hands outstretched, fumbling in darkness. Like a game of hide-and-seek, he disappeared and showed himself again only when I returned to my hammock, helpless and frustrated.
I still hadn’t told any of the tribespeople about my nocturnal visions. They’d had more than enough terrors of their own invading their sleep. Day and night they asked the spirits of light and darkness if they would survive the dry season. Why had the rains stopped falling there, where water was always plentiful, a place sometimes cursed with too much of it? Was the drought because of the stranger in their midst, even though his presence among them had received the chiefs’ blessing? Had Nafa, the sky god, and Mahoari, the god of swamps, forged an alliance because the children of the forest had betrayed them and sold the Great Mother’s skin to the white people, who paid them with guns and axes?
The earth was crying with pain, and the flowing water, its veins and arteries, wept with it. In spite of the marikitare’s, the shaman’s, warnings, the chiefs of the tribe were tempted to allow strangers into the heart of the forest and do as they pleased with it. The Nave, the white folk, paid no respect to the spirits among the trees. In return, the spirits of the trees and animals and the angry skies had closed the water route. A vast dam now sealed the upper seas, a barricade built entirely of dream stones. Fire raged as well and threatened with each of its monstrous tongues to turn every inch of forest into a clearing bereft of animals. Now and then, the voices of the flames, nurtured and fed by wood and wind, could be heard. From afar, they sounded just like the longed-for, blessed water.
The other dangers had not passed yet either. Game had become scarce, and hunger had brought war. The curare-tipped arrows no longer waited for monkeys or deer, and war dances greeted the dawn. Once, in the beginning of time, the skin that prevented the upper seas from falling into the jungle had been ripped open, and all the world was covered with water. Perhaps Omauha, the Great God, was closing all the water channels, only to tear them open later, just as he did during the ancient times, when the ancestors of the tribe had abandoned his ways. And just like in ancient times, the seas would return to cover the forests.
In their dreams the Yarkiti see many signs given them by the gods — trees shedding tears or turning into axes, birds digging themselves into the ground like mice, snakes flying in the sky — and even when the shaman drinks of the yage potion, he cannot always interpret the sequence of symbols. His body gradually transforms into a part of the Sekura, the world of spirits, and his mouth is no longer his own, but an opening from which the voices of the universe sound. He must tell everything he sees and hears in his visions, but he is not the storyteller; his flesh, emptied of shadow, houses someone else, someone who speaks with a different tongue, a sometimes unintelligible language.
I would need to tell the shaman what my eyes had seen in the darkness. Maybe the warrior who appeared at the entrance of my hut carried a message from the world of the gods. I hoped when I understood what this message was, the warrior would stop haunting my nights and I could sleep peacefully again.
The spirit roamed the forest, and I did not know its nature. I awaited the first light of dawn, when I would go out into the clearing that housed the small village. The day before, when I had explored east of the village, I saw a strange stone beneath the aerial roots of a large tree. The carvings on the stone appeared man-made, but who had brought it there, to the heart of the forest, and when? I found it hard to believe there was a time when the jungle had not covered this area. And the possibility that the sons and daughters of an ancient civilization had managed to penetrate its depths seemed unlikely also. I wanted to ask Xnen about my discovery, but I did not know what his reaction would be. It might be that the stone was guarding a holy presence that mustn’t be disturbed.
Yakura was early in visiting me that morning. She showed up in my hut before I went out for my morning walk in the forest. The palm leaf tray she carried held my breakfast, banana pulp mixed with the ground-up yucca roo
t, which is the primary food of the Yarkiti. Such a beautiful young woman, I used to wonder how she had reached a ripe old age — she was probably twenty years old — and still not have a man and a family to care for. Yakura did not wear the large earrings and beauty sticks the village women pierced through their chins, under their noses and sometimes inside their cheeks. Her eyes were black and brilliant, her skin was smooth, and her long lashes gave her face and timid smile a special quality, a combination of the divine and the mysterious.
After placing the food in front of me, she snuggled at my feet, waiting for me to stroke her head in a fatherly way. When my hesitant hand yielded, her large eyes brightened with the light of appreciation. I had asked Xnen, the great shaman and a chief of the tribe, why Yakura had been separated from the rest of the young women and had not yet been matched with a man. With glazed eyes, after sniffing some vihu, the sun seed, Xnen told me in a voice that seemed to emerge from a dream that Yakura was a living Sekura, a spirit walking among the people. Therefore, her match was determined in the days long gone, before the mist had turned into the forest, and she had married one of the gods before being born. His answer terrified me. Marriage to a god meant the girl would one day be sacrificed, taken away to be given to the god and the spirit. Meanwhile, having no husband or children to care for, she tended to me as a daughter would care for her father or a wife for her husband. Maybe Xnen had instructed her to do so or perhaps it was her own initiative.
Something about that particular morning was special. The men hurried about the clearing, covered with war paint, and despite the early hour were already sniffing vihu, gripping their heads in pain as the sun seed opened the gate to the spirit world.
Naked as the day he was born, dancing and hallucinating, Xnen wandered about holding a magnificent staff the likes of which I had never seen. The staff’s head was made of gold or copper, embossed with the image of a white eagle. I was positive the tribesmen had found the staff and had not carved it on their own. The wood, showing signs of age, was embedded with precious stones and decorated with unfamiliar drawings. Possibly they had found it in the same place I had seen the large carved stone.
Because I had never seen the staff, not even during the tribal rites in which I had participated, I assumed something unusual was about to take place.
I approached the area designated for women. They walked toward the river in a long line, pumpkin containers on their heads, shaking gourd rattles full of pebbles and seeds. Did the tribespeople sense the drought was about to end and now turned to honor the lords of the rain with signs and symbols?
I followed the women. I was a stranger, unfamiliar with most of the tribe’s customs, even though I had been living among them for a long time. I did not know if a man was allowed to watch the activities of the women. But even if such a prohibition existed, it might not apply to me, as I was not considered to be a man like the rest. No woman lived in my hut, my skin color was different, the clothes I wore were different and so was my unusual age; I had long passed the age at which the tribespeople turn into Noneshi and seek the Tepoi, the Last Mountain.
I walked behind the women, and no one tried to stop me. The women were completely naked, just like the shaman. They did not even wear the narrow leaf skirts that usually covered their lower bodies. The babies were slung on their mothers’ backs. Suddenly, a wailing voice emerged from the line of women, and the rattles were silenced. It was a mournful song, trying to break the locks of the world.
I searched the group to find the woman who was responsible for that heart-rending sound and thought I saw her at the head of the line. I moved closer and recognized her at once. Like a wounded animal, Yakura was being dragged to the river, abandoning her naked body to the hands that led her on. I was struck with fear. Perhaps the time had come, and they were about to sacrifice the girl to the rain gods. Even under the circumstances, I found myself staring at Yakura’s nakedness.
The women reached the riverbank, and Yakura was dragged down to the edge. I watched in horror as she was held beneath the rushing water. The eldest of the tribeswomen took a pumpkin container and splashed water on Yakura, who had not yet opened her eyes. The others joined in, and they began to sing. They sounded like a choir of cicadas, the voices transcending and completing each other. They all went into the water, which reached to their waists. A moment later, as one, they submerged themselves, then broke the surface, and walked out of the stream.
Yakura opened her eyes as if she had just awoken from a deep sleep. She got to her feet and, on her own, followed the others to the bank. She took the lead, and the women walked after her to the first waterfall, which roared like an angry beast. There, the women hurled the dried, hollow pumpkins on the rocks, smashing them. After all the containers were in pieces and the ritual was over, the women returned to the camp, the only sounds, the voices of the jungle.
Meanwhile, the men continued with their agitated preparations. One held a snake that squirmed in his hands, an exceptionally venomous viper, which tried to raise its head and bite its holder. Many of the tribe’s other warriors crowded around him, screaming earsplitting cries. They painted each other’s bodies and traced circles on their hands. When the decorating of the bodies was complete, they passed around bamboo stalks containing vihu, with which they could enter the nameless worlds. The warriors inhaled the gateway of truths, danced, and croaked like toads after the rain. Preparations for war had commenced in earnest.
Xnen was silent, following his ecstatic dance. The effect of the sun seed had dissipated.
“Marikitare, what happened?” I asked.
“An ancient Noneshi roamed about the camp last night. It wants to return to the earth and is looking for a body to inhabit. It was accompanied by a jaguar and a snake. We saw the animals’ tracks outside the village. We were able to catch the snake, and hope it will lead us to the opening from which the spirit emerged.”
“What does he look like, the Noneshi?”
An intense chill washed through me as Xnen described the spirit that had come from the invisible past. His words painted a picture of the man who had visited me the past four nights.
“Who is this Noneshi?”
“I do not know yet,” answered the shaman, “but he might be leading the Sekura army that has invaded our territory and prevents the waters of the upper seas from flowing and raining down on the fruit-bearing trees.”
I decided to tell him about my nocturnal hallucinations involving the image of the Noneshi, the head of the Sekura army. Xnen didn’t seem surprised.
“I expected he would visit your hut, as a hut housing a Nave is not protected by the spirits of the ancestors. Yakura saw him this morning, when he was leaving.”
“Yakura saw him?” I asked with wonder.
“Yes. When she told me about it we immediately began to prepare for war against the Noneshi and his soldiers. We burned Yakura’s clothes and she cleansed herself in the water of the spring, the first water brought by the river with the light of dawn.”
I asked him why Yakura had not gone to the spring on her own two feet, why she had been dragged, crying out like a wounded animal. He replied with a look of silent reproach. His eyes told me it would have been better if the question had not been asked. He gave me a similar look when I asked for more information on the Noneshi, then he added, “You have a role to play. When the time comes, you will know what it is.”
The camp resumed its daily routine. The women went back to their chores, the warriors cleaned their bodies with water brought from the spring, the younger tribesmen went out to hunt. In the sudden tranquility that settled over the camp, I grew restless and decided to return to the carved stone in the forest. I could not remember where exactly I had seen it, and when I sought it between the trees, I saw someone sitting there. I had no doubt who it was.
Yakura’s long hair blended with the textures and colors of the jungle and her smile, like the fir
st light of dawn, welcomed me. She sat beside the stone, her right hand resting on it. I went to her and stroked her head. She responded, as always, with a grateful smile.
“Here, next to this stone,” she told me, “crawled the snake the warriors brought to the camp.” A primordial animal to guard the primordial stone, I thought.
I went to the stone and began to scrape away the bed of leaves on the forest floor, exposing its lower part. The more I uncovered, the more it looked like a stage or an altar. I saw that it was surrounded by similar, smaller stones. I guessed these were the remains of a temple. A lightning-shaped arrow with a dog chasing it was carved on the western side of the stone. I thought the arrow might be pointing at something.
I furiously began to clear the southern end of the stone, thinking it might contain something important. I scraped the detritus away with my bamboo stick and exposed two clasped hands, their fingers pointing up. Yakura observed what I had found and grabbed my arm, terrified.
“Are these the hands of the Noneshi?” she asked, her entire body trembling. “The Noneshi’s bodiless hands!” she repeated, her fingernails digging into my flesh.
When we returned to the village, Xnen looked different. A rope of vines was wrapped around his waist, and he was busy preparing large amounts of sun seed. He ground the bark of a tree and mixed the powder with bonfire ashes. The large quantity indicated that the tribespeople were preparing for a long series of ceremonial activities that would last many days.
Xnen flashed a toothless smile at us. Yakura turned to him, and they became lost in conversation. Their hands and eyes spoke more than their mouths, which produced only a few, low-pitched sounds. I tried to follow the conversation by watching their gestures. Yakura showed him the clasped hands by recreating them with her own. Xnen raised his eyes and looked at me and then both squatted on their heels like Bedouins, thoughtful and silent. I was surprised to see that posture, apparently shared by the natives of the forest and the desert.
