The Song of the Eternal Waters
The narrow road, hewn out of the naked rock, goes winding along above the abyss. On one side rise high tors and crags, on the other side is heard the ceaseless murmur of waters in the dark depths of the ravine, deeper than eye can reach. At intervals the track widens so as to form a kind of refuge, just large enough to hold about a dozen people, a resting-place, screened by leafy branches, for those who travel along the road above the ravine. In the distance, crowning the summit of a jutting crag, a castle stands out against the sky. The clouds passing over it are torn by the pinnacles of its tall towers.
With the pilgrims goes Maquetas. He walks hurriedly, sweating, seeing nothing but the road in front of his eyes, except when from time to time he raises them towards the castle. As he walks he sings an old wailing song that his grandmother taught him when he was a child, and he sings it so that he shall not hear the ominous murmur of the torrent flowing unseen in the depths of the abyss.
As he approaches one of the resting-places, a maiden who is sitting inside on a bank of turf calls to him:
“Maquetas, come here and stop awhile. Come and rest by my side, with your back to the abyss, and let us talk a little. Nothing heartens us for this journey like a few words spoken in love and companionship. Stay awhile here with me. Afterwards you will go on your way again refreshed and renewed.”
“I cannot, my girl,” Maquetas replied, slowing his pace but without halting, “I cannot. The castle is still a great way off and I must reach it before the sun sets behind its towers.”
“You will lose nothing by staying here awhile, young man, for afterwards you will take the road again with more mettle and with new strength. Are you not tired?”
“That I am, lass.”
“Then stay awhile and rest. Here you have this turf for your couch and my lap for your pillow. Come, stay!”
And she opened her arms, offering him her bosom.
Maquetas paused for a moment, and as he did so there came to his ears the voice of the invisible torrent flowing in the depths of the abyss. He quitted the road, stretched himself on the turf and laid his head on the girl’s lap. With her fresh rosy hands she wiped the sweat from his brow, while his eyes gazed up at the morning sky overhead, a sky that was as young as the eyes of the girl.
“What is it you are singing, lass?”
“’Tis not I singing—it is the water that flows down there, behind us.”
“And what is it that it sings?”
“It sings the song of eternal rest. But now rest yourself.”
“Eternal, did you say?”
“Yes, that is what the torrent sings. But now rest.”
“And afterwards....”
“Rest, Maquetas, and don’t say ‘afterwards.’”
The girl put her lips to his lips and kissed him. Maquetas felt the kiss melt and flow through all his body, and so sweet it was that it seemed as if all the sky poured itself down over him. His senses swooned. He dreamed that he was falling endlessly down into the bottomless abyss....
When he awoke and opened his eyes he saw above him the sky of evening.
“O lass, how late it is! Now I shall not have time to reach the castle. Let me go, let me go.”
“Go then, and God guide and companion you. And don’t forget me, Maquetas.”
“Give me one kiss more.”
“Take it, and may it strengthen you.”
With the kiss Maquetas felt that his strength was increased a hundredfold and he began to run along the road, the lilt of his song keeping time with his strides. And he ran and ran, leaving the other pilgrims behind him. One of them shouted to him as he passed:
“You’ll stop, Maquetas.”
Then he saw that the sun was beginning to set behind the towers of the castle and Maquetas felt a chill strike his heart. The fires of the sunset lasted but for a moment. He heard the grating of the chains of the drawbridge. And Maquetas said to himself:
“They are shutting the castle-gate.”
Night began to fall, an impenetrable night. Very soon Maquetas had to halt, for he could see nothing, absolutely nothing. Blackness enveloped everything. Maquetas stood still, silent, and in the impenetrability of the darkness he heard only the murmur of the waters of the torrent in the abyss. The cold grew denser.
Maquetas stooped down, felt the road with his numb hands, and began to creep along on all fours, warily, like a fox. He kept edging away from the abyss.
He went forward like this for a long, long time. And he said to himself:
“Ah, that lass deceived me! Why did I heed her?”
The cold became horrible. It penetrated everywhere, like a thousand-edged sword. Maquetas no longer felt the touch of the ground, he no longer felt his own hands; he was benumbed. He stopped still. Or rather he scarcely knew whether he was stopping or crawling.
Maquetas felt himself suspended in the midst of the darkness, black night all around him. He heard nothing but the ceaseless murmur of the waters of the abyss.
“I will call out,” Maquetas said to himself, and he made an effort to shout. But no sound was heard; his voice did not come forth out of his chest. It was as if it were frozen within him.
Then Maquetas thought:
“Can I be dead?”
And as this thought took hold of him, it seemed as if the darkness and the cold fused together and eternalized themselves round about him.
“Can this be death?” Maquetas went on thinking. “Shall I have to live henceforward like this, in pure thought, in memory? And the castle? And the abyss? What do the waters say? What a dream, what an appalling dream! And not to be able to sleep!... To die like this, dreaming, dying little by little, and not to be able to sleep!... And now what am I going to do? What shall I do to-morrow?
“To-morrow? What is to-morrow? What does to-morrow mean? What is this idea of to-morrow that seems to come to me out of the depth of the darkness, where the waters are singing? To-morrow? For me there is now no to-morrow. Everything is now, everything is blackness and cold. Even this song of the eternal waters seems like a song of ice—just one prolonged note.
“But can I really have died? How long the dawn is in coming! But I don’t even know how long it is since the sun set behind the towers of the castle....
“Once upon a time,” he went on thinking, “there was a man who was called Maquetas, a great wayfarer, and he walked for days and days journeying to a castle, where a good dinner awaited him and a warm fire and a good bed to rest in, and in the bed a good bedmate. And there in the castle he was going to live days without end, listening to stories that went on for ever, joying in his sweet companion, a life of perpetual youth. And those days would be all alike and all peaceful. And as they passed, oblivion would fall on them. And all those days would be thus one eternal day, one same day eternally renewed, a perpetual to-day overflowing with a whole infinity of yesterdays and with a whole infinity of to-morrows.
“And Maquetas believed that that was life, and set out on his journey. And he journeyed on, stopping at inns where he slept, and when the sun rose he went on his way again. And once, as he was leaving an inn, he met an aged beggar who was sitting on the trunk of a tree by the door, and the beggar said to him: ‘Maquetas, what meaning have things?’ And that Maquetas answered him, shrugging his shoulders: ‘What does that matter to me?’ And the aged beggar asked him again: ‘Maquetas, what does this road mean?’ And that Maquetas, now somewhat irritated, answered him: ‘Why do you ask me what the road means? How should I know? Does anybody know? Does the road mean anything? Leave me in peace, and God be with you.’ And the aged beggar knitted his brows and smiled sadly, gazing on the ground.
“And then Maquetas came to a very rugged country and had to cross a wild mountain ridge by a precipitous footpath hewn out of the rock, high up over an abyss, in the depths of which sang the waters of an invisible torrent. And thence he discerned afar the castle that he had to reach before the sun set, and when he discerned it his heart leaped for joy in his breast, and he quickened his steps. But a lass, sweet as a vision, compelled him to stop and rest awhile on a bank of turf, and that Maquetas rested his head on her lap and stopped. And when he left her the lass gave him a kiss, the kiss of death, and as soon as the sun set behind the towers of the castle the cold and the darkness closed in all round him and the darkness and the cold grew denser and merged into one. And there fell a silence from which only that song of the eternal waters emerged. Yonder, in life, sounds, songs, murmurs, used to issue out of a vague murmurous background, out of a kind of mist of sound; but here this song emerged out of the profound silence, the silence of darkness and cold, the silence of death.
“Of death? Yes, of death, for that Maquetas, that valiant wayfarer, died....
“How sweet the story is, and how sad! It is sweeter, far sweeter, sadder, far sadder, than that old song my grandmother taught me. Let me see, how does it go? I will repeat it over again.
“Once upon a time there was a man who was called Maquetas, a great wayfarer, and he walked for days and days journeying to a castle....”
And Maquetas repeated to himself again and again and again and again the story of that other Maquetas, and he continues repeating it and so he will go on repeating it as long as the waters of the invisible torrent go on singing, and the waters will sing for ever, ever, ever, without a yesterday and without a to-morrow, for ever, ever, ever....