CHAPTER XXII
Before that well-nigh hopeless journey to the coast was half over Ibecame ill--so ill that anyone who had looked on me might well haveimagined that I had come to the end of my pilgrimage. That was what Ifeared. For days I remained sunk in the deepest despondence; then, in ahappy moment, I remembered how, after being bitten by the serpent, whendeath had seemed near and inevitable, I had madly rushed away throughthe forest in search of help, and wandered lost for hours in the stormand darkness, and in the end escaped death, probably by means of thesefrantic exertions. The recollection served to inspire me with a newdesperate courage. Bidding good-bye to the Indian village where thefever had smitten me, I set out once more on that apparently hopelessadventure. Hopeless, indeed, it seemed to one in my weak condition. Mylegs trembled under me when I walked, while hot sun and pelting rainwere like flame and stinging ice to my morbidly sensitive skin.
For many days my sufferings were excessive, so that I often wishedmyself back in that milder purgatory of the forest, from which I hadbeen so anxious to escape. When I try to retrace my route on the map,there occurs a break here--a space on the chart where names of riversand mountains call up no image to my mind, although, in a fewcases, they were names I seem to have heard in a troubled dream. Theimpressions of nature received during that sick period are blurred, orelse so coloured and exaggerated by perpetual torturing anxiety, mixedwith half-delirious night-fancies, that I can only think of that countryas an earthly inferno, where I fought against every imaginable obstacle,alternately sweating and freezing, toiling as no man ever toiled before.Hot and cold, cold and hot, and no medium. Crystal waters; green shadowsunder coverture of broad, moist leaves; and night with dewy fanningwinds--these chilled but did not refresh me; a region in which there wasno sweet and pleasant thing; where even the ita palm and mountain gloryand airy epiphyte starring the woodland twilight with pendent blossomshad lost all grace and beauty; where all brilliant colours in earth andheaven were like the unmitigated sun that blinded my sight and burnt mybrain. Doubtless I met with help from the natives, otherwise I do notsee how I could have continued my journey; yet in my dim mental pictureof that period I see myself incessantly dogged by hostile savages. Theyflit like ghosts through the dark forest; they surround me and cut offall retreat, until I burst through them, escaping out of their veryhands, to fly over some wide, naked savannah, hearing their shrill,pursuing yells behind me, and feeling the sting of their poisoned arrowsin my flesh.
This I set down to the workings of remorse in a disordered mind and toclouds of venomous insects perpetually shrilling in my ears and stabbingme with their small, fiery needles.
Not only was I pursued by phantom savages and pierced by phantom arrows,but the creations of the Indian imagination had now become as real tome as anything in nature. I was persecuted by that superhuman man-eatingmonster supposed to be the guardian of the forest. In dark, silentplaces he is lying in wait for me: hearing my slow, uncertain footstepshe starts up suddenly in my path, outyelling the bearded aguaratos inthe trees; and I stand paralysed, my blood curdled in my veins. Hishuge, hairy arms are round me; his foul, hot breath is on my skin; hewill tear my liver out with his great green teeth to satisfy his raginghunger. Ah, no, he cannot harm me! For every ravening beast, everycold-blooded, venomous thing, and even the frightful Curupita, halfbrute and half devil, that shared the forest with her, loved andworshipped Rima, and that mournful burden I carried, her ashes, was atalisman to save me. He has left me, the semi-human monster, utteringsuch wild, lamentable cries as he hurries away into the deeper, darkerwoods that horror changes to grief, and I, too, lament Rima forthe first time: a memory of all the mystic, unimaginable grace andloveliness and joy that had vanished smites on my heart with suchsudden, intense pain that I cast myself prone on the earth and weeptears that are like drops of blood.
Where in the rude savage heart of Guiana was this region where thenatural obstacles and pain and hunger and thirst and everlastingweariness were terrible enough without the imaginary monsters andlegions of phantoms that peopled it, I cannot say. Nor can I conjecturehow far I strayed north or south from my course. I only know thatmarshes that were like Sloughs of Despond, and barren and wet savannahs,were crossed; and forests that seemed infinite in extent and never tobe got through; and scores of rivers that boiled round the sharp rocks,threatening to submerge or dash in pieces the frail bark canoe--blackand frightful to look on as rivers in hell; and nameless mountain aftermountain to be toiled round or toiled over. I may have seen Roraimaduring that mentally clouded period. I vaguely remember a far-extendinggigantic wall of stone that seemed to bar all further progress--a rockyprecipice rising to a stupendous height, seen by moonlight, with a hugesinuous rope of white mist suspended from its summit; as if the guardiancamoodi of the mountain had been a league-long spectral serpent whichwas now dropping its coils from the mighty stone table to frighten awaythe rash intruder.
That spectral moonlight camoodi was one of many serpent fancies thattroubled me. There was another, surpassing them all, which attendedme many days. When the sun grew hot overhead and the way was over opensavannah country, I would see something moving on the ground at my sideand always keeping abreast of me. A small snake, one or two feet long.No, not a small snake, but a sinuous mark in the pattern on a hugeserpent's head, five or six yards long, always moving deliberately atmy side. If a cloud came over the sun, or a fresh breeze sprang up,gradually the outline of that awful head would fade and the well-definedpattern would resolve itself into the motlings on the earth. But if thesun grew more and more hot and dazzling as the day progressed, then thetremendous ophidian head would become increasingly real to my sight,with glistening scales and symmetrical markings; and I would walkcarefully not to stumble against or touch it; and when I cast my eyesbehind me I could see no end to its great coils extending across thesavannah. Even looking back from the summit of a high hill I couldsee it stretching leagues and leagues away through forests and rivers,across wide plains, valleys and mountains, to lose itself at last in theinfinite blue distance.
How or when this monster left me--washed away by cold rains perhaps--Ido not know. Probably it only transformed itself into some new shape,its long coils perhaps changing into those endless processions andmultitudes of pale-faced people I seem to remember having encountered.In my devious wanderings I must have reached the shores of theundiscovered great White Lake, and passed through the long shiningstreets of Manoa, the mysterious city in the wilderness. I see myselfthere, the wide thoroughfare filled from end to end with people gailydressed as if for some high festival, all drawing aside to let thewretched pilgrim pass, staring at his fever- and famine-wasted figure,in its strange rags, with its strange burden.
A new Ahasuerus, cursed by inexpiable crime, yet sustained by a greatpurpose.
But Ahasuerus prayed ever for death to come to him and ran to meetit, while I fought against it with all my little strength. Only atintervals, when the shadows seemed to lift and give me relief, wouldI pray to Death to spare me yet a little longer; but when the shadowsdarkened again and hope seemed almost quenched in utter gloom, then Iwould curse it and defy its power. Through it all I clung to the beliefthat my will would conquer, that it would enable me to keep off thegreat enemy from my worn and suffering body until the wished goal wasreached; then only would I cease to fight and let death have its way.There would have been comfort in this belief had it not been for thatfevered imagination which corrupted everything that touched me and gaveit some new hateful character. For soon enough this conviction that thewill would triumph grew to something monstrous, a parent of monstrousfancies. Worst of all, when I felt no actual pain, but only unutterableweariness of body and soul, when feet and legs were numb so that I knewnot whether I trod on dry hot rock or in slime, was the fancy that I wasalready dead, so far as the body was concerned--had perhaps been deadfor days--that only the unconquerable will survived to compel the deadflesh to do its work.
Whether it really was will--more
potent than the bark of barks and wiserthan the physicians--or merely the vis medicatrix with which naturehelps our weakness even when the will is suspended, that saved meI cannot say; but it is certain that I gradually recovered health,physical and mental, and finally reached the coast comparatively well,although my mind was still in a gloomy, desponding state when I firstwalked the streets of Georgetown, in rags, half-starved and penniless.
But even when well, long after the discovery that my flesh was not onlyalive, but that it was of an exceedingly tough quality, the idea bornduring the darkest period of my pilgrimage, that die I must, persistedin my mind. I had lived through that which would have killed mostmen--lived only to accomplish the one remaining purpose of my life. Nowit was accomplished; the sacred ashes brought so far, with such infinitelabour, through so many and such great perils, were safe and would mixwith mine at last. There was nothing more in life to make me love it orkeep me prisoner in its weary chains. This prospect of near deathfaded in time; love of life returned, and the earth had recovered itseverlasting freshness and beauty; only that feeling about Rima's ashesdid not fade or change, and is as strong now as it was then. Say that itis morbid--call it superstition if you like; but there it is, the mostpowerful motive I have known, always in all things to be taken intoaccount--a philosophy of life to be made to fit it. Or take it as asymbol, since that may come to be one with the thing symbolized. Inthose darkest days in the forest I had her as a visitor--a Rima of themind, whose words when she spoke reflected my despair. Yet even then Iwas not entirely without hope. Heaven itself, she said, could not undothat which I had done; and she also said that if I forgave myself,Heaven would say no word, nor would she. That is my philosophy still:prayers, austerities, good works--they avail nothing, and there is nointercession, and outside of the soul there is no forgiveness in heavenor earth for sin. Nevertheless there is a way, which every soul can findout for itself--even the most rebellious, the most darkened with crimeand tormented by remorse. In that way I have walked; and, self-forgivenand self-absolved, I know that if she were to return once more andappear to me--even here where her ashes are--I know that her divine eyeswould no longer refuse to look into mine, since the sorrow which seemedeternal and would have slain me to see would not now be in them.
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