Selected Cronicas

RITUAL (EXTRACT)

Beyond lies the sea, the most mysterious of non-human existences. While the woman stands here on the shore, the most mysterious of living creatures. The day mankind questioned its own nature, it became the most enigmatic of living creatures. The woman and the sea.

Their mysteries could only come together if the one were to surrender to the other: the surrender of two incomprehensible worlds enacted with the confidence of two understandings surrendering to each other.

She is capable of looking at the sea. Her vision is only restricted by the line on the horizon, that is to say, by her human incapacity to see beyond the Earth’s curve.

It is six o’clock in the morning. There is nothing to be seen on the shore except a stray dog, a black dog which stops in its tracks. Why is a dog so free? Because the dog is that living mystery which does not question itself. The woman hesitates before entering the sea.

Her body consoles itself with its own smallness in relation to the sea’s vastness, because the body’s smallness helps to keep it warm. This same smallness also turns the human body into something poor but free with its share of that freedom enjoyed by the dog on the sands. This body will enter the infinite chill that roars without ire in the evening silence. Unwittingly, the woman is testing her courage. The shore is deserted at this early hour so there are no other bathers to show her how entering the sea can be transformed into a frivolous game of life. She is alone. The salt-water is not alone because it is salt and fathomless, and that is an achievement. At this moment she is less familiar with herself than with the sea. Her courage is that of someone who, without knowing herself, nevertheless proceeds. It is fatal not to know oneself, and not to know oneself requires courage.

She starts to enter the sea. The salt-water is so cold it chills her legs as if part of the ritual. But a fatal happiness — happiness is fatal — has already possessed her although it never occurs to her to smile. On the contrary, she looks quite solemn. The powerful smell from those tossing waves rouses her from the slumbering depths of millennial dreams. She now becomes watchful, just as the hunter is unconsciously watchful. The woman has become impenetrable, light, and sharp, as she forces her way into the cold sea, liquid yet resistant, before allowing her to enter, just as in loving where resistance is often an act of pleading.

This slow passage increases her inner courage. And suddenly she allows herself to be immersed by the first wave. The salt and iodine, completely liquid, momentarily blind her, the water drenching her — as she stands there in terror and already fertile.

The cold becomes intense. Advancing, she penetrates the sea. She has found her courage. The familiar ritual is under way. She lowers her head into the gleaming waters and re-emerges, her hair dripping salt-water which causes her eyes to smart. Slowly she splashes the water with one hand. Her hair soon dries in the sun, the salt making it brittle. Cupping her hands to form a shell, she drinks the water in great, refreshing gulps, a time-honoured ritual which she performs with the arrogance of those who never offer explanations, not even to themselves.

This was what she needed: to feel the sea inside her like a man’s dense sperm. Now she is truly equal to herself. Her nourished throat becomes parched with salt, her eyes redden as the salt dries in the sun, the gentle waves come beating against her and then retreat, her body acting as a solid shield.

She plunges in once more, swallows more water, now less avid and intense, for her thirst has been slaked. She is the lover who knows she will possess everything anew. The sun comes out further and causes her to shiver even as it dries her. She takes another plunge, ever less avid and intense. Now she knows what she wants. She wants to remain standing still in the water. And that is precisely what she does. As if beating against the side of a ship, the waves come beating against her, retract and return. There is no transmission. The woman needs no communication.

She then walks through the sea, heading for the shore. She is not walking over the waters — that she would never do, thousands of years after those waters have already been walked over — but no one can rob her of this: to be able to walk through the sea. Sometimes the waves put up resistance, pushing her back with force, whereupon the woman, like a ship’s figurehead, presses on, a little more determined and severe.

Now she is treading the sands. Aware that she is gleaming with water, salt and sun. Even if she were to forget within minutes, all this will be hers forever. And she knows in some obscure way that her dripping hair belongs to someone who has been shipwrecked. Because she knows — she knows she has survived danger. A danger as ancient as man himself.