[-PART EIGHT-]
{+Chapter Eight+}
It has been a day of wonder, this, our first day in the forest.
We awoke when a ray of sunlight fell across our face. We wanted
to leap to our feet, as we have had to leap {+to our feet+} every
morning of our life, but we remembered suddenly that no bell had
rung and that there was no bell to ring anywhere. We lay on our
back, we threw our arms out, and we looked up at the sky. The
leaves had edges of silver that trembled and rippled like a river
of green and fire flowing high above us.
We did not wish to move. We thought suddenly that we could lie
thus as long as we wished, and we laughed aloud at the thought.
We could also rise, or run, or leap, or fall down again. We were
thinking that these were [-thoughts-] {+things+} without sense, but before we knew [-it-]
{+it,+} our body had risen in one leap. Our arms stretched out of
their own will, and our body whirled and whirled, till it raised
a wind to rustle through the leaves of the bushes. Then our hands
seized a branch and swung us high into a tree, with no aim save
the wonder of learning the strength of our body. The branch
snapped under us and we fell upon the moss that was soft as a
cushion. Then our body, losing all sense, rolled over and over on
the moss, dry leaves in our tunic, in our hair, in our face. And
we heard suddenly that we were laughing, laughing aloud, laughing
as if there were no power left in us save laughter.
Then we took our glass box, and we went [-on-] into the forest. We went
on, cutting through the branches, and it was as if we were
swimming through a sea of leaves, with the bushes as waves rising
and falling and rising around us, and flinging their green sprays
high to the treetops. The trees parted before us, calling us
forward. The forest seemed to welcome us. We went on, without
thought, without care, with nothing to [-feel-] {+fell+} save the song of our
body.
We stopped when we felt hunger. We saw birds in the tree
branches, and flying from under our footsteps. We picked a stone
and we sent [-is-] {+it+} as an arrow at a bird. It fell before us. We made
a fire, we cooked the bird, and we ate it, and no meal had ever
tasted better to us. And we thought suddenly that there was a
great satisfaction to be found in the food which we need and
obtain by our own hand. And we wished to {+be+} hungry again and
soon, that we might know again this strange new pride in eating.
Then we walked on. And we came to a stream which lay as a streak
of glass among the trees. It lay so still that we saw no water
but only a cut in the earth, in which the trees grew down,
upturned, and the sky [-lay-] at the bottom. We knelt by the stream and
we bent down to drink. And then we stopped. For, upon the blue of
the sky below us, we saw our own face for the first time.
We sat still and we held our breath. For our face and our body
were beautiful. Our face was not like the faces of our brothers,
for we felt [-not-] {+no+} pity when [-looking-] {+we looked+} upon it. Our body was not like
the bodies of our brothers, for our limbs were straight and thin
and hard and strong. And we thought that we could trust this
being who looked upon us from the stream, and that we had nothing
to fear
[-with-] {+from+} this being.
We walked on till the sun had set. When the shadows gathered
among the trees, we stopped in a hollow between the roots, where
we shall sleep tonight. And suddenly, for the first time this
day, we remembered that we are the Damned. We remembered it, and
we laughed.
We are writing this on the paper we had hidden in our tunic
together with the written pages we had brought for the World
Council of Scholars, but never given to them. We have much to
speak of to ourselves, and we hope we shall find the words for it
in the days to come. Now, we cannot speak, for we cannot
understand.
