Numbers in the Dark and Other Stories - Italo Calvino [4]
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