Thirty Seven
The shadow of the portico is leaning out from the house a bit, so that it’s possible to come out into daylight gradually in steps of increasing brightness: from the cool interior, out into the breezy shade of the portico, then through a middle ground of half-shade under the swaying palm fronds. Beyond that, everything shimmers dreamily under the dazzle of a benevolent sun. A grassy area extends in a fan-shape from the back of the house; not a lawn in any sense, but an area where the vegetation that grows so riotously everywhere else has been flattened and tamed slightly by a repeated pattern of footsteps, and, where necessary, by the occasional action of a machete. Outward from that edge, the tall grass evolves quickly into a thicket where purple and cream-colored berries lure the hand, like jewels suspended in an inaccessible complexity of vines and twisted branches covered with sharp, green thorns. Still further out, the tops of trees mound out of the basic greenery at random intervals. And from within their leafy bosoms, resplendent in the sun, are visible the sculpted bodies of mangos, guavas and avocados. In this way, the land that surrounds the house extends for miles in all directions, in a green and bounteous homogeneity, except to the East, where only a quarter mile away the sea is grinding against black rocks in a fit of thunder and spume.
The area of flattened grass casts out a narrow path from its Eastern corner, that, in spite of having been made by the same mechanism of footsteps and machete arcs, seems to have considerably recovered its original wildness from lack of use. So walking along that path now, for even a short distance, quickly brings you to a point where the house is no longer visible, where the insects suddenly swarm everywhere in breathtaking abundance, and where the sound of the sea impels the legs forward irresistibly. And there are other such points along the path, where likewise the ground appears slightly more trampled, slightly more persisted upon by the weight of feet. You stop at them, and you realize these are the path’s natural pauses, through which no passer is able to continue without feeling the touch of the place upon him in some profoundly stirring way. On those spots, the body itself is paralyzed by an overmastering exultation of the spirit. It feels as if nature, and therefore implicitly the attention of the divine, has been focused to a spot of transcendental brilliance. In the shape of every leaf the face of the maker is plain; the shudder of the dappled, verdant forms in the gentle breeze evokes the trembling of a heart, touched within its fragile cage of bone. And at the very moment when you feel yourself most firmly in that grasp, just as the limits of a corporeal existence threaten to sever that brief intimacy, you are distracted. The crow makes his cry wheeling overhead; and the sound comes down from the azure heights with such remoteness and yet with such familiarity of note, that it seems a long lost echo of your own voice. It is as if the disappointment, the hollow loss of calling out expectantly into a cavern and hearing only silence could be healed, if only for this one moment. So healed, you keep walking. And at every turn, the sea is audibly nearer, though still invisible behind the wall of lush, shuddering leaves. The sound seems to forego the easiest route to your ears, not coming through the air above the trees and down on top of you. It keeps coming, as it were, from straight ahead, from the empty space right in front of you into which only the next step will deliver you. And suddenly the intense blue is there, peeping first between two giant leaves that the hands quickly part, and then the immense expanse. Only the sky is larger.
But no beach here. No possibility of a gentle transition from one element to the other, to its antithesis. The jungle breaks suddenly and the ground becomes nothing but sharp coral rock. Though it is possible to see wisps of green here and there in the cracks, these are only the most tenacious of plants, covered with hostile thorns and spikes, not at all like the jungle with its myriad moist, green faces. From this point, the last fifty feet to the sea are nothing but a jagged, flesh-tearing misery. So you go no further. And the sound is thunderous now, linking itself finally to a spectacle of perpetual animosity. It plays itself out, over and over, making a rhythm even more elemental than the beating of your own heart. Each shattering concussion is followed by a relative silence within which the million crystal droplets struggle briefly in the air then surrender to gravity.