Suddenly in the Depths of the Forest

21

The garden was shaded and lovely, and illuminated not only by the rays of the setting sun but also by intense shafts of colorful bright light shining from among the trees and bushes, the blossoming flower beds, the pools of water, and the small crystal brooks that burbled here and there in the clefts of the rock and between the terraces.

Those lights, Maya whispered, don't come from hidden lamps, like you might think, and like I thought too when I first came in here. Great colonies of fireflies are projecting the wonderful glow that they create inside themselves.

The garden was filled with fruit trees and ornamental trees and plants and meadows. At the base of the trees, beds of ferns and flowers bloomed in a delicate array of orange and gold and purple and red and lime and yellow and turquoise and pink and crimson and violet.

Matti looked up at the dense treetops and, for the first time in his life, saw and heard a multitude of birds singing and chattering loudly and interrupting each other, suddenly spreading their wings to fly off from one branch to another. Water birds stood peacefully on the banks of the brooks, even in the middle of puddles, one foot in the water, the other folded under them, sometimes even submerging their pink beaks. Matti was flooded with a soft, deep sense of serenity he had never felt before, except perhaps in the vague, veiled memory that lies beneath all memory, the serenity of a clean and fed baby as its eyes close and it is enveloped in sweetness, falling asleep in its mother's arms as she hums a lullaby in her warm voice.

Have I really been here before? Right after I was born? Or maybe even before?

The garden was deep and broad and spread out as far as the eye could see, all the way to the flowering lower edges of the slopes that bordered on dark groves, orchards, and vegetable beds. Here and there, small brooks flowed like silver-thread embroidery. And over it all, hosts of small insects and bugs hissed and whizzed and whined, their flight creating wave after wave of riotous buzzing and whirring and whooshing and zooming, as if they were working away at their job of stretching a finely woven web of thinnest metal over the entire garden, and all those delicately stretched, invisible threads were gently flitting and flapping and humming and thrumming with every gust of wind.

Strange snakes, slithering swift snakes with many legs, rustled at the bottom of the bushes. And large, lazy lizards dozed with open eyes. On the meadows and lawns of the garden, white sheep wandered and grazed, and giraffes and antelope and deer and hares roved about. And between them, like groups of travelers leisurely touring a peaceful resort, packs of idle wolves, a bear or two, and a pair of thick-tailed foxes wandered here and there, and one unkempt jackal came up to Maya and Matti and showed them a very long, very red tongue that seemed to pour out of the side of its mouth from between two rows of sharp, glittering teeth. The jackal suddenly began to rub its pointy head on Matti's knees, once, then again, and between each rub, looked up at them with its sad yellow eyes, a heartbreaking, pleading look, until Maya finally understood and bent down to pet its head and even tickle it a little under the chin and behind the ears, and her hand slid down its back several times, from its head to the base of its tail.

Then Maya and Matti passed four or five tired tigers lying stretched out on the meadow slope and staring, motionless, into the depths of the peaceful evening, heads resting on front paws. For a moment, those sleepy tigers reminded Matti of old Almon the Fisherman when his weary head drops to rest on his arm flung across the pages of his notebook, nodding off in the early evening as he sits alone at his wooden table at the bottom of his garden. Matti was momentarily filled with a sense of bitter longing, a sudden desire to sit on Almon's bench and tell him about all this, to describe every detail to him, or — even better — to bring Almon up here so he could see it all with his own eyes. So he could feel it with his old fingers. And to bring Solina and her baby-husband too. And Danir the Roofer along with his two helpers. And Nimi. To show this to all of them, to the whole village, to his parents, his big sisters, Emanuella the Teacher, and to look closely at their faces when they saw the garden for the first time.

Just then a cow came toward them, a slow cow, an extremely proud and well-connected cow, a very distinguished cow adorned with black and white spots. She trudged and swayed her way slowly, filled with self-importance, past the sleepy tigers, nodding her head two or three times as if she was totally and completely and entirely not surprised, absolutely not surprised, on the contrary, all her calculations had been correct and all her early assumptions had proved to be accurate, and now she nodded also because she was pleased she was right and also because she definitely agreed with herself fully and utterly and always, and without the slightest shadow of a doubt.