Then I heard voices approaching from the direction of the cabins. I didn’t want to be around people. More accurately, I didn’t feel the need to be around people. The trees, the branches, the sunbeams, the birds—supplied all my needs.
Then I straightened up, crossed the bridge to the other bank, and began to walk down the path beside the river.
—
Ari told me later that it took a long time to find me. The girls woke him up after they themselves had drunk from a small pouch. Straight Hair told him they saw me walking away on the path, and in her opinion, the stuff they had been sold was spoiled.
Curly Hair didn’t say anything. Only occasionally, as they walked, she pointed to a flower and said: How beautiful.
—
While they were searching for me, I lay shirtless on an exposed hill above the river and looked at the clouds.
Actually, first there was the donkey. I want to be accurate. I won’t always have such a detailed, vibrant memory of what happened, and at some point, I’ll need these words to keep from forgetting:
The donkey was far from me and close to me. The two possibilities didn’t cancel each other out. At some point, I remember, the thought passed through my mind that it was part of a painting. That it wasn’t real, that it was part of a two-dimensional painting I was looking at. Every time I closed my eyes and opened them, it was a different distance from me, but even when it was really close, I wasn’t scared. All in all, at that stage, I still wasn’t scared. Was the man who came and took the donkey away real, or a product of my imagination? It’s difficult for me to say for sure. I only remember thinking that just because the man was made of cardboard, like a figure in a shooting range, it didn’t rule out the possibility that he was human.
After the donkey was taken away, I watched the clouds.
Pages of my travel journal are filled with descriptions of the shapes I saw in them: crabs, monkeys, cats, and then crabs again.
And from behind the clouds—the city of the gods sparkled at me.
I remember thinking: Behind the clouds is an ancient city where the gods live, and now I’ve been given the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see it and maybe even talk to the gods. I believed that if I focused hard enough, I would be able to communicate with the gods through the power of thought alone. Without words.
I even wrote in my journal: I tasted the fruit of the tree of knowledge.
Then Ari and the girls appeared.
We had a dialogue, some words were exchanged, I don’t remember them.
I do remember that the two girls lay down on either side of me and Ari stood above us.
Curly Hair was right beside me. Straight Hair was farther away.
Curly Hair asked, What are you looking at?
The clouds.
She looked up and said, They’re so beautiful.
Do you see the crabs?
Sure, she said, and then again, they’re so beautiful.
I felt that Curly Hair and I had a deep understanding of each other.
Straight Hair, on the other hand, really pissed me off. She kept complaining that nothing was happening to her. That they’d been sold spoiled stuff. And she warned us over and over again that it was about to rain. As if it mattered.
I thought, I could kill her. If she doesn’t shut up, I’m capable of getting up, grabbing a rock, and smashing her head in. And then I panicked that maybe they’d heard my thought.
I want to be accurate: I wasn’t afraid that I’d spoken the thought out loud, I was afraid that, in the world I inhabited then, thoughts could be heard.
Ari stood above us the entire time. I asked him to come closer to me and I whispered in his ear: Can you hear my thoughts?
No, bro, he said.
I think you should take her back to the restaurant, I said. I was sure he would know which one of the girls I meant.
I think everyone should go back to the restaurant, Ari said.
It’s going to start raining any minute, Straight Hair said.
In response, my hand clenched into a fist.
Rain is so beautiful, Curly Hair said.
I always wanted a big brother, I said.
Me too, Curly Hair said.
I want to go back, Straight Hair said.
I’m not moving from here, Curly Hair said.
I’ll take her to the restaurant and come back as fast as I can, Ari said.
—
The rain started a minute later—or an hour later, my sense of time had leaked away.
Long rows of small drops fell on us from the clouds. I’d never seen rain fall from that angle, lying down, and it was so—
Beautiful, said Curly Hair.
So much it makes me want to cry.
The ground beneath our bodies became damper and damper, and looser. Our bodies sank into it.
The ground will swallow us up, Curly Hair said.
I don’t care.
Neither do I.
We lay next to each other, our faces to the clouds.
We didn’t turn to each other or touch. There was no need. We had the sense that, effortlessly, we had become connected to each other and to the nature around us. That there was a certain harmony between all the elements of the moment we were living in.
I even wrote the word “harmony” in my journal. But that was later, in the cabin.
I didn’t write anything while it was raining, and I wasn’t bothered that my journal was getting wet.
Nothing bothered me. Nothing. There was nothing that I longed for. Nothing I missed.
Ari returned and suggested we go back with him because it would be dark soon.
I didn’t say anything. As far as I was concerned, darkness wasn’t a reasonable possibility. It was just morning.
Curly Hair didn’t say anything either.
He sat down beside us. Silently. Wrapped in a poncho.
I thought to myself, What an amazing person that Ari is.
And he said, Thanks.
I
