"What happened?" I asked.
He let a few minutes pa.s.s before answering. He then turned a strange gaze on me, and said in a strangled voice, "Son. I"m starting to doubt what I just saw. At the very instant I called you, the gravel under my feet gave way and I felt like I was sucked in. At first, I thought I"d set my foot in quicksand and I stuck my head underwater to see how I could free myself. That"s when I realised my legs were imprisoned not by quicksand but a moving hole shaped like a mouth. And son, what I had to pry open. Lips. It was like lips made of sand. That I had to pry open to free my legs." He gave a sad laugh. "Of course you think I"m mad."
"No. Not at all," said I, in what I hoped were rea.s.suring tones.
After what we had experienced, it did not occur to me to doubt anything my companion said. Horror gripped me, but I looked him in the eyes. "Whatever happened in the river doesn"t matter. Didn"t you say we needed to keep our heads if we wanted to get out of this place? So let"s keep our minds on one thing: finding the way out."
My friend relaxed as I spoke. An amused gleam lit up his dark eyes. When I had finished, he whistled through his teeth. "Well, look at that...You"ve become a man, haven"t you? A real man. In this case, there"s no reason on earth we can"t extract ourselves from this mess. On Toine"s word!"
Coming from him, these words filled me with joy. Now I thought I could handle anything, even the worst possible situations. My anguish had not disappeared but I was growing accustomed to it. Courage is no more than learning to live with your fear.
XI.
We followed the river up to the waterfall in a stifling heat. The fresh morning air had vanished. Finally, we arrived at the banks where the gigantic flowers awaited their prey. Seeing them again sent a shiver down my spine. They seemed to have grown in numbers since my visit. How was it possible in so short a time?
Toine, who was gazing at the flowers with interest, said as if he were speaking to himself, "Something isn"t right about the presence of carnivores."
I did not see what he meant by that. I must confess I was not trying to solve puzzles. The mere sight of those plant-like monsters was enough to scare me to death. To avoid seeing them, I let my gaze wander about the liquid dust that, escaping the waterfall, sparkled in the red light.
Toine"s voice made me jump.
"Son, instead of daydreaming, help me understand how these carnivorous plants can survive in a place with no animals at all."
Toine"s information surprised me first, but I soon had to admit he was right. How did this upside-down world survive when no life other than vegetal was visible? Not on the ground, in the river or in the air. Save for the stone statues resembling human beings and animals, nothing indicated that a physical life made of flesh had ever existed here. Still, our presence proved that life was possible.
"See, it"s like a world of silence," Toine said.
"Not entirely," I countered. "The waterfall makes as much noise as any other waterfall. Last night, the trees groaned rather loud. And there"s this beating that comes from the depths. It never stops, does it?"
"True, but for me these sounds don"t belong to the world we come from. Even the fruit don"t look like anything I know. You"re going to say it"s normal because they change with the region. But I know all the regions in the world, and I"ve never seen these species. It"s the same with the trees. One or two new species, I can understand, but an entire forest of unknown trees? It"s impossible. It"s too much for my old head, which can"t trade reality for dreams any more. And besides, I wouldn"t dream of scaring you, but wasn"t I almost swallowed alive by a riverbed, this morning?"
This thought made me shiver. We filled our flask with fresh water and resumed our crossing of the forest, headed toward the mountain. At first, our trek was easy. The trees grew spa.r.s.e; the undergrowth was not thick enough to be an obstacle, and we advanced making no sound on the mossy ground, wary of the vines that hung from the trees, unmoving but watchful.
Just as we were congratulating ourselves for our uneventful progress, we realised the trees had become more numerous. From the vines that touched the ground, more young trees sprouted, like a miniature forest. To cap it all, the day was waning.
Long before the sky, which we glimpsed through the canopy, had grown dark, we found ourselves in pitch-black shadows beneath our roof of leaves. Not wishing to spend the night in the forest, we continued going forward, in the hope of finding a clearing. The vines attacked us and we had to cut them away. Like snakes, they coiled their fibrous bodies around us. The heavy flask impeded our progress, but we could not resolve to leave it behind.
Toine stopped.
"Son, we can"t go on like this anymore. We don"t even know if we"re heading in the right direction. Let"s spend the night here. I know everything is hostile, but we have no light to direct our steps, right?"
We lay down side by side in a narrow patch free from vines. Finding our sleep proved impossible. Above the treetops, the wind created a noise similar to a tiger"s hissing, while from beneath came the m.u.f.fled thumping, and the vines made reptilian creeping noises on the ground.
Sharing our fears was pointless, and so we kept our tongues. I hoped the night would pa.s.s without accident. I was about to fall asleep when I sprang up, my fingernails digging into Toine"s arm.
"Did you hear that?" I screamed.
The infernal noise we knew all too well had resumed. The entire forest pulsated with long shudders, accompanied by the heartrending cracking the trees made as they bent toward the ground. This time it was ten times more terrifying because we were at the centre of a phenomenon that could destroy us. Toine was screaming, too, and our shouts mingled with the moans coming from the trees. We got to our feet and braced ourselves for the ma.s.sive weight that was about to crush us.
"Let"s curl up at the feet of the nearest tree before the trunk crushes us," Toine said.
I followed his advice, surprised that a man like him could hope such a tactic would protect us from that enormous ma.s.s. I slipped under a tree, but without Toine. In my panic, I had unwittingly moved away from him. I called him to no avail. Among the concerto of moaning and cracking, not even a bugle would have been heard. I soon gave up and clung to my tree. I felt the life of the tree. Its sap dripped over me and I imagined tears of blood. It"s all over, I thought, when I heard the leaves rustle against the ground. In a childish gesture of self-protection, I closed my eyes.
The enormous din, compounded of cracking and leaves brushing against the ground, ended. From the bowels of the earth, the hammering recommenced and the noise became deafening.
When it was over, I heard Toine"s voice call me. My eyes still closed, as though awaiting death, I could not bring myself to answer. It"s useless, I thought. Only a miracle can save us now. When his voice grew more insistent, I cracked my eyes open. The forest had reverted to its normal state, and everything bathed in a strange light. In this otherworldly phosph.o.r.escence, I could discern the trunks, now erect. But something equally luminous struck me Toine, not far from me. I got up. "Here. Over here!"
He turned in my direction and approached, astonishment painted on his face.
"D"you know you"re shining, just like the forest?" he said when he reached me.
"You"re shining, too!"
His expression darkened. "Then, like the forest, we"re cursed."
My joy at being alive was so great I laughed, which infuriated Toine. He mastered his temper on the spot and set a hand on my shoulder. "Sorry, son. I"m losing my mind with all the things that keep happening."
I simply smiled. Seeing that strange glow around him, I wondered whether he was right after all. Perhaps we were cursed in earnest. Then the disturbing glow faded and a quiet, serene night enveloped us.
We fell into a slumber similar to unconsciousness, something different from simple sleep rather an invincible catalepsy. When we resurfaced, red beams pierced the green ceiling of the forest. My companion, I had already noticed, emerged older from these bouts of faint, more bitter, too. I began to wonder whether he was concealing something about his nightmares. Nevertheless, I lulled myself into believing that we would find salvation beyond the mountains.
"Aren"t you hungry, son?" Toine asked, rising with a visible effort.
"Course I am," I answered with impatience. "It doesn"t change anything, though, because we"ve got nothing to chew on."
"We"ll see "bout that."
Toine disappeared behind a bush. He soon came back, arms laden with fruits. I was amazed. What courage the man must have possessed in order to touch the reclining treetops.
"So you"re afraid of nothing."
"I am afraid of hunger." He let the fruits fall to my feet. He was already biting into an enormous stone fruit. I imitated him and we ate in silence.
Toine was satisfied sooner than I because his appet.i.te was less demanding than mine due to our age difference, I think. Comforted by the frugal meal, our thirst quenched by the fresh water from our flask, we resumed our journey among the green and purple.
We advanced slowly. The forest had become inextricable and thorns scratched us painfully. The moving vines gave us no quarter and we had to alter our path to avoid them. If life multiplied its forms in the plant world, the forest remained void of animal life. Not the smallest mosquitoes dancing in the patches of light. We humans were somehow suspended between the mineral and the vegetable. The gift of life was available only for the creatures that wore no flesh, as if no incarnated G.o.d had ever visited this place.
When we arrived at the edge of a clearing, we hesitated. Was it safe to go any farther?
The gra.s.s was darker than usual. And those marvellous flowers of soft or violent colours rose incredibly tall. They bore no resemblance to the waterfall flowers, but they might as well have been as carnivorous.
"Son, we have to go through," Toine said in peremptory tones. "We"ve got no choice."
And he was the first to pa.s.s the threshold.
The flowers fled like gazelles as we drew near. Astonished by this delirious sight, we stopped in our tracks.
The flowers stopped as well.
Toine sighed. "And I thought I"d seen it all. Maybe it"s a nightmare," he added after a few seconds" silence, "but I must admit it"s very beautiful."
No one could have remained insensitive to the spectacle of a wide stretch of a green ocean where the flowers moved, enormous but as elegant and charming as normal flowers. A heavenly scent followed their movements. At a distance, far away, the mountains were visible, some of the crests lost in the red sky.
We followed the flowers until they led us to a swamp. To avoid being bogged down, we had to go back to the edge of the forest. Without cutting through the woods, our way became much longer, but at least we were free from creeping vines and th.o.r.n.y bushes.
But already the black of night was sneaking up on us. Sleeping near the flowers held no appeal for me. I mentioned my fear to Toine.
"Don"t worry, son. Nothing is worse than the reclining forest. What can these flowers do to us?"
"You"re forgetting the flowers at the waterfall. Didn"t those attack us?"
"All right, only these ones run away when we come near. So perhaps we don"t need to fear them."
We waited for night to fall before stopping. Then we stretched out on the fresh gra.s.s. A heavy silence hovered above us, only disturbed by the light noises of rustling petals as the flowers moved about.
When the sky blossomed with stars, Toine cried, "As a sailor, I remember the position of the stars. You know what? Tonight those stars aren"t in the same places. So who"s moving? Them or us?" Seeing I understood nothing of what he had said, he explained. "It"s not complicated. If you head north, you"ll end up seeing the sky filled with stars from north to south. And vice versa. But the stars remain the same. They"ll only be more or less higher above the horizon. Now, the sky tonight has nothing to do with the sky we"ve been seeing since we got here. Either the stars are moving or we are. This is another universe, son. I"ve never seen any of those constellations. We are under unknown skies."
Toine"s reasoning made perfect sense. Nevertheless, I could not accept the idea that we might be elsewhere than on our dear old earth. If Toine was right, what hope was left for us?
Someone was shaking me. Sound asleep, I did not wish to open my eyes. All I wished was to remain wrapped inside the night I had earned for my pain. Toine"s vigorous hand continued shaking me.
"Come on, wake up, son."
I opened my eyes. The sky was a black void.
"Why did you have to wake me up? I was sleeping so well."
"d.a.m.n it, can"t you see?"
The clearing was illuminated by the shimmer of the forest living its silvery hour.
A most extraordinary spectacle was the infernal dance in which the flowers had engaged, their petals like the leaves of water lilies when you immerse them and myriads of trapped particles of air cover them, glistening underwater.
The mountainous skyline glowed red, like the embers of a gigantic fire. And the earth rumbled with the beating of a frenzied heart. My gaze remained riveted to the bewitching scene. I could not find the strength to turn away from it. Finally, darkness retook the forest.
Neither Toine nor I could sleep. We kept vigil in our distressing universe, but nothing moved. The large clearing reappeared with the first light of dawn. The flowers were gone. Only a few petals remained like pale specks in an ocean of green. We ate some gra.s.s to cheat hunger. At that moment, I noticed for the first time my skin was becoming rough. As though mud had dried over it. I mentioned it to Toine who answered in a weary voice, "We"ll take a bath in the next river. It"s just filth."
And we did not speak about it again.
After skirting the wide patch of moving ground for hours, we had the impression we were going round in circles. Around the middle of the afternoon, we did arrive at the end of that interminable swamp. Below us opened a gorge, a veritable chasm we would have to cross if we wanted to continue toward the mountains that rose majestically on the horizon.
"We can"t cross that," I said.
"I don"t see what else we can do. Look in both directions. This gorge is like a frontier."
A revolt verging on hatred surged in me. "Then why must we go there? What"s with those inhospitable mountains? We can"t be sure we"ll find salvation if we get there. On the contrary, we"ll risk starving and dying of thirst."
"I know," Toine said in a calm voice. "But do you really think you"re going to survive in these accursed woods? With the meat-eating plants, and all the rest? No, this place here is unfit for human beings. But on the other side of the mountain, maybe we"ll find a normal life, the kind of life we"re cut out for. So, if we must die anyway, it"s better to go down fighting. Oh, I"m as tired of all this as you are, but if you don"t want to go, I"ll try alone. If I make it, I"ll come back for you. A self-respecting man could not live with himself after failing a friend."
Toine"s words, bitter but resolute, dissolved my anger.
"If one goes, the other must follow," I said. "But seriously, how are we getting to the bottom of the chasm?"
"Down there," he said, extending an arm.
This outstretched arm caught my eye. The strange crust Toine had dismissed as filth had thickened. And the legs and the back of my companion were equally covered with the same substance. I examined my body. The thickness appeared everywhere. Shaking, filled with misgivings, I scratched at it, but it stuck to my skin like mortar to stone.
I asked Toine, "Are you sure this is filth? You"re hiding something from me. I"m sure of it. I beg of you. Tell me what is happening to us."
He answered in a voice dripping weariness, "You"re not suffering, son, are you? Then forget the rest. It"s probably the sun that is cooking us up."
He was trying to rea.s.sure me. He didn"t believe a word of it! I did not insist, though. I concentrated all my efforts on overcoming this new anguish that was creeping inside me.
Toine guided me to the spot he deemed propitious to our descent. We started down. It was my turn to carry the huge flask, which hindered me considerably. As I was about to lose footing, I had to let go of the thing to hold on. It rolled down and disappeared from view.
"Don"t worry," Toine said, sensing my despair. "We"ll surely find some water below. And I still prefer losing the flask to losing you."
His tones left me with a peculiar impression, as if nothing mattered to him any longer. Perhaps his hope in finding a different life on the other side of the mountain, or...No. I refused to consider any other possibility.
After a long, painful descent, we felt a rock under our feet. It was enormous and jutted far out into the void. We went down on our bellies and crawled forward until we could peer down into the abyss. We were able to take in its extraordinary depth thanks to several fires that illuminated the bottom.
"Do you have an idea what this means?" I asked.
Toine kept his gaze riveted to the bluish flames that created living shadows on the dead rock walls.
"No," he answered. "No. I really don"t know."
We resumed our descent. It was more and more difficult. We advanced squeezed between two slabs of rock; a thick malodorous smoke floated up to us and it was getting hot. The red light of day decreased rapidly and soon we had only the glimmer of blue flames to guide us.
Through the crusts that covered our bodies, sweat oozed, as thick and yellow as pus. At the same time, the fatigue that had plagued us vanished. Was it due to the emanations of those mysterious furnaces?
We reached the bottom of the abyss in an almost euphoric state. Toine had found his smile again, frozen in the folds of that disturbing crust. The fires blazed much farther apart than we had thought when we saw them from above. They burst out of the ground through small craters, with thin whistling sounds. We skirted a few of them with no difficulty. We now had to climb to the other side. By some miracle, our strength had increased tenfold, and we attacked the wall right away. We found more finger- and toe-holds, and we climbed easily. It was fortunate for hardly had we reached midpoint than the dreaded thumping suddenly resounded, causing the walls of the chasm to shake in a frightening way. Gigantic flames rose, almost reaching us, giving off an unbearable heat. I was about to let go of my hold when it all went back to normal. The silent night enveloped us with no other light than the unfamiliar stars. Unable to move in the darkness, we remained glued to the wall and waited for daylight. Fatigue retook us, and if the wall had not been gently sloped, we would have fallen and crashed to the bottom of the chasm. As the wait seemed to stretch into forever, the first fire began to burn again, followed by a second, and a third, until the entire gorge was ablaze. A marvellous sensation of well-being erased our fatigue. But when I could make out Toine"s features, I noticed in horror that the hideous crust had evolved. I read in my friend"s eyes that my face had undergone the same transformation. We resumed our ascent without a word.
As we climbed, fatigue gripped us once again, vice-like. I shot furtive glances at Toine. His face resembled a mask and my skin, too, stiffened with the exertion of the ascent. We were hoisting ourselves out of the chasm when the sun began to take on its red hue, tingeing the vault of heaven with a deep mauve while the night died away. The crests of the imposing chain of mountains kept to the shadows, which were quickly fading into the light. The mountains rose at a short distance now, behind a stretch of flat desert land apparently easy to cross. It proved an illusion, though, because as soon as we set our feet on it, we sank into the soil up to our knees. We progressed with terrible efforts. And when the bleeding disk dispelled the night, we discovered we were treading a red powder that resembled dried blood ground to dust. We should have felt horror. Instead, an immense detachment freed us from the horrible and the monstrous. Our exhaustion, too, vanished. Once at the feet of the mountain, we were thus able to commence our ascent with no delay. But despite the curious calm that now pervaded me, I could not help glancing at Toine"s face in disgust. It was turning to mud.
XII.
The mountain was made of a porous rock like the silt found at the bottom of the oceans. It resembled sponge because of the holes peppering it, but instead of being smooth, it was rough and full of imperfections like an abrasive pumice stone.
Hardly one hundred metres up, we discovered a great number of those strange statues in human or animal shapes. All of them stuck to the mountainside. To my surprise, I had brotherly thoughts for the stone silhouettes a much stronger emotion than the fleeting compa.s.sion I had experienced for the skeleton in the hut. The higher we climbed that hideous vitrified sponge, the greater the number of mineral spectres became. All those beaks, muzzles and mouths expressed a single emotion fear.
We continued our ascent all day, speaking as little as possible because every attempt at moving our mouths caused physical pain. But our horrified eyes were free to exchange frequent glances. Under the progress of the hideous crust, little by little we were becoming mineral. The great bleeding disk finally sunk behind the horizon, beyond which, for all we knew, only emptiness existed.
At this time of the evening, a crowd of mineral creatures encircled us, glowing with a soft purple light. The haunting beat resumed. When the night conquered the sky, the plain and the mountains bathed in the gloomy shadows we already knew. A murmur like a whispered prayer reached us. Our gazes riveted to the forest, we kept still, leaning our backs against the slope. We feared fear. He who has never experienced this feeling knows nothing of terror. Since that whisper similar to a death rattle had begun, I had the impression I was turning into one of those earthen creatures. From my poor deformed mouth I managed to express my feeling aloud, hoping Toine would hear me. He did. I believed he felt the same terror, but in a hideous grimace, he laughed at it. To the very last, that incredibly brave man tried to rea.s.sure his companion.
We had resumed our silent contemplation. The forest was visible now. A silvery glimmer emanated from the tree trunks and the leaves. From the centre of the mountains, the thumps became more insistent and the shadows surrounding us more luminous. It was such a supernatural sight I hoped in my madness that I would soon escape that vivid dream and awake to a normal world. Toine"s hand on my arm destroyed my illusion.
"Look," he said.