The invention of Morel - Adolfo Bioy Casares [11]
I am miserable. I have no tools down here. This region is unhealthy, sinister. But a few months ago the mere thought of a life like this would have seemed too good to be true.
The daily tides are neither dangerous nor punctual. Sometimes they lift the leafy branches I sleep upon, and I wake up in a mixture of sea water and the muddy water of the marshes.
I hunt during the afternoons; in the morning the water is up to my waist, and the submerged part of my body feels so large and heavy that I can scarcely move. In compensation for these discomforts, there are fewer snakes and lizards. But the mosquitoes are present the whole day, the whole year long.
The tools are in the museum. I hope to be brave enough to try to go and get them later. But that may not be necessary after all—perhaps these people will disappear; perhaps they are merely hallucinations.
The boat, on the beach at the eastern part of the island, is inaccessible now. But my loss of it is not important; all I have really lost is the satisfaction of knowing that I am not a captive, that I can leave the island if I wish to. But was I ever really able to leave? That boat has been a kind of inferno to me. When I came here all the way from Rabaul, I had no drinking water, no covering for my head. The sea is endless when you are in a rowboat. I was overwhelmed by the sun, by fatigue. I was plagued by a burning sensation and by dreams that never ceased.
Now I spend my days trying to distinguish the edible roots. I have come to manage my life so well that I do all my work and still have time to rest. This makes me feel free, happy.
Yesterday I lagged behind; today I worked continuously; still there is more work left for tomorrow. When there is so much to do, I do not have time to think about the woman who watches the sunsets.
Yesterday morning the sea invaded the sandbanks. I never saw a tide of such proportions. It was still rising when the rain started (the rains here are infrequent, very heavy, and accompanied by strong winds). I had to find shelter.
I climbed the hill in spite of the odds against me: the slippery terrain, the intense downpour, the strong wind, and the dense foliage. I thought that perhaps I could hide in the chapel (it is the most unfrequented place on the island).
I was in one of the anterooms where the priests eat breakfast and change their clothes (I have not seen a member of the clergy among the occupants of the museum), and all at once two people were standing there, as if they had not arrived, as if they had appeared only in my sight or my imagination. I hid—nervously, stupidly—under the altar, among the red silks and laces. They did not see me. I am still amazed at that.
Even after they had gone I kept on crouching there uncomfortably, frozen, peering cautiously between the silk curtains beneath the main altar, concentrating on the sounds of the storm, watching the dark mountains of the anthills, the un- dulant paths of large, pale ants, the agitation on the tile floor. I listened to the rain pelting against the walls and the roof, the water stirring in the eaves, the rain pouring on the path outside, the thunder. I could hear the confused sounds of the
storm, the rustling trees, the pounding surf resounding on the shore, and I strained my ears to isolate the steps or the voices of someone who might be approaching my hiding place, for I did not want to be taken by surprise again—
I began to hear the fragments of a concise, very faint melody. Then it faded away