The Lives of Things (11 page)

Almost there. The ditch he is following just happens to be there and could lead anywhere, the work of men and a path by which to reach other men. But it heads in a southerly direction and that is what matters. He will advance as far as possible, even in daylight, even with the sun above the entire plain and exposing everything, whether man or beast. Once more he had defeated Heracles in his dream in the presence of all the immortal gods, but once the combat was over, Zeus retreated southwards and only then did the mountains open up, and from their highest peak surmounted by white pillars, he looked down on the islands surrounded by spray. The frontier is nearby and Zeus headed south.

Walking along the deep and narrow ditch, the man can see the countryside from one end to the other. The lands now look abandoned. He no longer knows where the village he had seen at daybreak has disappeared to. The great rocky mountains have become taller or perhaps drawn closer. The horse’s hooves sink into the soft earth he is gradually climbing. The man’s whole trunk is clearly out of the ditch, the trees space out, and suddenly, once in open countryside, the ditch comes to an end. With a simple movement, the horse makes the final descent, and the centaur appears in full daylight. The sun is to the right and shines directly on to the scar which begins to ache and burn. The man looks back, out of habit. The atmosphere is stuffy and humid. Not that the sea is all that close. This humidity promises rain as does this sharp gust of wind. To the north, clouds are gathering.

The man wavers. For many years he has not dared to travel out in the open unless protected by the darkness of night. But today he feels as excited as the horse. He proceeds through scrubland where the wild flowers give off a strong scent. The plain has come to an end and the ground now rises in humps restricting the horizon or extending it ever more because these elevations are already hills and a screen of mountains looms up ahead. Bushes begin to appear and the centaur begins to feel less vulnerable. He feels thirsty, very thirsty, but there is no sign of water nearby. The man looks behind and sees that one half of the sky is already covered in clouds. The sun lights up the sharp edge of an enormous grey cloud that is steadily approaching.

At this moment, a dog can be heard barking. The horse trembles nervously. The centaur breaks into a gallop between the two hills, but the man does not lose his sense of direction; they must head south. The barking comes nearer, bells can be heard ringing and then a voice speaking to cattle. The centaur stopped to get his bearings, but the echoes misled him and then, suddenly, there is an unexpectedly humid and low-lying stretch of land, a herd of goats appears and in front a large dog. The centaur stopped in his tracks. Several of the ugly scars on his body had been inflicted by dogs. The shepherd cried out in terror and took to his heels as if demented. He began shouting for help: there must be a village nearby. The man ordered the horse to advance. He broke a sturdy branch from a bush in order to chase away a dog which was barking its head off in rage and terror. But fury prevailed: the dog rapidly skirted some boulders and tried to grab the centaur sideways by the belly. The man tried to look back to see where the danger was coming from, but the horse reacted first and, turning quickly on its front hooves, aimed a vicious kick which caught the dog in mid-air. The animal was dashed against some rocks and killed. The centaur had often been forced to defend himself in this way but this time the man felt humiliated. He could feel the strain of all those vibrating muscles in his own body, his ebbing strength, hear the dull thud of his hooves, but he had his back to the battle, played no part in it, a mere spectator.

The sun had disappeared. The heat suddenly abated and there was humidity in the air. The centaur cantered between the hills, still heading south. As he crossed a tiny stream he saw cultivated fields, and when he tried to get his bearings he came up against a wall. There were several houses on one side. Then a shot rang out. He could feel the horse’s body twitch as if stung by a swarm of bees. People were shouting and another shot was fired. To the left, splintered branches snapped, but this time no pellets hit him. He stepped back to regain his balance, and with one mighty effort he leapt over the wall. Man and horse, centaur, went flying over, four legs outstretched or drawn in, two arms raised to the sky which was still blue in the distance. More shots rang out, and then a crowd of men began chasing him through the countryside with loud cries and the barking of dogs.

The centaur’s body was covered in foam and sweat. He paused for a moment to find the way. The surrounding countryside also became expectant, as if it were listening out. Then the first heavy drops of rain began to fall. But the chase went on. The dogs were following an unfamiliar scent, but that of a deadly enemy: a mixture of man and horse, assassin hooves. The centaur ran faster, and went on running until he perceived that the cries had become different and the dogs were barking out of sheer frustration. He looked back. From a fair distance he saw the men standing there and heard their threats. And the dogs which had darted ahead now returned to their masters. But no one advanced. The centaur had lived long enough to know that this was a frontier, a border. Securing their dogs, the men dared not shoot at him; a single shot was fired, but from so far away that the explosion could not even be heard. He was safe beneath the rain which was pouring down and opening up rapid currents between the stones, safe on this land where he had been born. He continued travelling southwards. The water drenched his white skin, washed away the foam, the blood and sweat, and all the accumulated grime. He was returning much aged, covered in scars, yet immaculate.

Suddenly the rain stopped. The next minute all the clouds had been brushed away and the sun shone directly on to the damp soil, its heat sending up clouds of vapour. The centaur walked slowly as if he were treading powdery snow. He did not know the whereabouts of the sea, but there stood the mountain. He felt strong. He had quenched his thirst with rain, raising his mouth to the sky and taking enormous gulps, with a torrential downpour running down his neck and all the way down his torso, making it glisten. And now he was slowly descending the southern slope of the mountain, skirting the great boulders leaning against each other. The man rested his hands on the highest rocks, where he could feel the soft mosses and rough lichens beneath his fingers, or the sheer roughness of the stone. Below, a valley stretched all the way across which, from a distance, seemed deceptively narrow. Along the valley he could see three villages a fair distance away from each other, the biggest of them in the middle where the road beyond headed south. Cutting across the valley to the right, he would have to pass close to the village. Could he pass there safely? He recalled how he had been pursued, the cries, the shots, the men on the other side of the border. That incomprehensible hatred. This land was his, but who were these men living here? The centaur continued to descend. The day was still far from over. Suffering from exhaustion, the horse trod cautiously, and the man decided it would be just as well to rest before crossing the valley. And after much thought, he decided to wait until dusk: meanwhile he must find some safe spot where he might sleep and recover his strength for the long journey ahead before reaching the sea.

He continued his descent, getting slower and slower. And just as he was finally about to settle down between two boulders, he saw the black entrance to a cave, high enough to allow the man and horse to enter. Using his arms and stepping gingerly with tender hooves on those hard stones, he entered the cave. It was not very deep, but there was enough room inside to move at one’s ease. Supporting his forearms against the rocky surface of the wall, the man was able to rest his head. He was breathing deeply, trying to resist rather than accompany the horse’s laboured panting. The sweat was pouring down his face. Then the horse pulled in his front hooves and allowed himself to slump to the ground which was covered with sand. Lying down or slightly raised as was his wont, the man could see nothing of the valley. The mouth of the cave only opened to the blue sky. Somewhere deep inside, water was dripping at long, regular intervals, producing an echo as if from a well. A profound peace filled the cave. Stretching one arm behind him, the man passed his hand over the horse’s coat, his own skin transformed, or skin which had transformed into him. The horse quivered with pleasure, all his muscles distended, and sleep took possession of his great body. The man released his hands allowing it to slip on to the dry sand.

The setting sun began to light up the cave. The centaur dreamt neither of Heracles nor of the gods seated in a circle. Nor were there any more visions of mountains facing the sea, of islands sending up spray, or of that infinite and sonorous expanse of water. Nothing but a dull, dark wall or simply colourless and insurmountable. Meanwhile, the sun penetrated to the bottom of the cave causing all the rock crystals to sparkle, and transforming each drop of water into a crimson pearl that had become detached from the roof after swelling to an incredible size, and then traced a blazing trail three metres long before sinking into a tiny pool already plunged into darkness. The centaur was asleep. The blue sky faded, the space was flooded by the myriad of colours of the forge and evening descended slowly, dragging in the night like some weary body about to fall asleep in its turn. Cast into darkness, the cave had become enormous and the drops of water fell like round stones on to the rim of a bell. It was already darkest night when the moon appeared.

The man woke up. He felt the anguish of not having dreamt. For the first time in thousands of years he had not had a dream. Had it abandoned him the moment he had returned to the land of his birth? Why? Some omen? What oracle could tell? The horse, more remote, was still asleep but stirring restlessly. From time to time he would move his hind legs as if he were galloping in dreams, not his, for he had no brain, or only on loan, but stirred by the willpower in his muscles. Resting his hand on a protruding stone, the man raised his trunk and, as if sleep-walking, the horse followed him effortlessly, with flowing movements which seemed weightless. And the centaur emerged into the night.

The moon cast its light over the entire valley. So much light that it could not possibly be coming from that simple little moon on earth, Selene, silent and spectral, but the light of all the moons elevated above an infinite succession of nights where other suns and lands without these or any other names rotate and shine. The centaur took a deep breath through the man’s nostrils: the air was soft, as if it were passing through the filter of human skin, and it had the smell of damp soil that was slowly drying out between the labyrinthine embrace of roots securing the world. He descended into the valley by an easy, almost tranquil route, his four equine limbs harmoniously swaying, swinging his two male arms, moving step by step, without disturbing a stone or risking any more cuts on some sharp ridge. And so he finally reached the valley as if this journey were part of the dream he had been deprived of while asleep. Ahead there was a wide river. On the other bank, slightly to the left, stood the largest of the villages on the southern route. The centaur advanced out into the open, followed by that singular shadow without equal in this world. He cantered through the cultivated fields, choosing beaten paths to avoid trampling the plants. Between the strip of cultivated land and the river there were scattered trees and signs of cattle. Picking up their scent, the horse became restless, but the centaur went on heading for the river. He cautiously entered the water, using his hooves to feel his way. The water became deeper until it came up to the man’s chest. In the middle of the river, beneath the moonlight, another flowing river, anyone watching there would have seen a man crossing the ford with upraised arms, his arms, shoulders and head those of a man, and with hair instead of a mane. Concealed in the water walked a horse. Roused by the moonlight, fishes swam around him and pecked his legs.

The man’s entire torso emerged from the water, then the horse appeared, and the centaur mounted the river-bank. He passed underneath some trees and on the threshold of the plain stopped to get his bearings. He remembered how they had pursued him on the other side of the mountain, he recalled the dogs and shots, the men and their cries, and he felt afraid. He now wished the night were darker and would have preferred to walk under a storm like that of the previous day which forced the dogs to seek shelter and sent people scurrying indoors. The man thought everyone in those parts must already know of the centaur’s existence for the news must surely have travelled across the border. He realised he could not cross the countryside in a straight line in broad daylight and slowly began following the river protected by the shade of the trees. Perhaps ahead he might find more favourable terrain where the valley narrowed and ended up compressed between two high hills. He continued to think about the sea, about the white pillars, and closing his eyes he could see once more the trail left by Zeus when he headed south.

Suddenly, he heard the lapping of water. He remained still and listened. The noise came back, died away, then returned. On the ground covered with couch grass, the horse’s steps became so muffled that they could not be heard amidst the manifold murmurings of tepid night and moonlight. The man pushed back the branches and looked towards the river. There was clothing lying on the river-bank. Someone was bathing. He pushed the branches further back and saw a woman. She emerged from the water completely naked and her white body shone beneath the moonlight. The centaur had seen women many times before, but never like this, in this river and with this moon. On other occasions he had seen swaying breasts and hips, that dark spot in the centre of their body. On other occasions he had seen tresses falling over shoulders and hands tossing them back, such a familiar gesture. But his only contact with the world of women was that which might please the horse, perhaps even the centaur, but not the man. And it was the man who looked and saw the woman retrieve her clothes; it was the man who pushed through those branches, trotted up to her and, as she screamed, lifted her into his arms.