19
Matti stood in front of the gate for a few minutes and thought about what to do. He had the strange, mysterious feeling that he'd already been here, and maybe more than once. That sometime in the past, he had stood here in front of the gate exactly as he was standing here now. That more than once he hadn't been able to decide if he should run away or go inside. That he had already decided and gone inside and had seen. And now, if he tried as hard as he could, if he pushed his mind as far as it could go, he might suddenly remember everything he had forgotten. He might even remember what he didn't know and what he'd never seen before.
Matti looked and saw that the gate wasn't completely closed—it was almost closed—and remembered without remembering that it had been like that the last time and that's how this gate has been always and forever. A narrow crack was left between the two sides of the double gate. If he pushed hard, he still might be able to go inside and try to save Maya.
But wouldn't it be much safer to turn right around and run away? Run down the mountain as fast as he could and not stop running and not look back, run home while he still could? Run home and tell everything to his parents, to Emanuella the Teacher, to Danir the Roofer, to the village police, who would get organized and hurry up the mountain to save Maya? Because this was the castle of Nehi the terrifying mountain demon, and Maya was already lost, imprisoned within its walls, and you're all alone, you can't save her by yourself, and if you don't run away right now, you'll be lost too. Look, the sun is going down over these walls and the forested ridges, and if you don't start running home as fast as you can now, you'll be left standing here in the dark all by yourself, empty-handed, in front of the gates of Nehi the Mountain Demon's fortress, and you'll never ever go home again.
Matti turned around, ready to run down the mountain path, but Maya's voice stopped him. She came out and stood between the gates, her arms around a strange, round, gray lump that she was pressing to her chest, and said quietly, Come in, don't be afraid, Matti, come to me, come and see a miracle, follow me, Matti, don't be afraid, come and see how wonderful it is here.
20
And when Matti walked closer to her, he saw that what she had in her arms was a kitten: not the picture of a kitten, not a toy, not a doll in the shape of a kitten, but a furry creature, alive soft sweet and shy, that was looking at Matti with two round eyes, its ears bent forward in curiosity and its nose and whiskers trembling slightly as if it weren't a kitten at all, but a serious furry philosopher utterly focused on trying to understand who this was that had suddenly appeared. And why? And what had he brought with him? And especially—what, in fact, was going on out there, in the unknown worlds beyond the gate?
Matti was alarmed and drew back a bit because he knew cats only from pictures and because the kitten's body seemed to expand and shrink, expand and empty out in a way Matti thought was strange and almost frightening: never in his life had he seen or imagined that all animals breathe constantly, take air into their lungs and exhale it, then inhale it again, just like we do.
But Maya wouldn't let him off the hook. She took Matti's hand and ran his frightened fingers through the kitten's soft fur again and again until they got over their fear. Then his hand calmed down as it stroked and was stroked by the soft fur, and his arm calmed down, and his shoulder, then his whole body. And suddenly, the touch of the kitten's fur felt so good, and so did Maya's fingers as they drew his hand along the kitten's velvety back. As if her fingers were creating soft tremors and passing them on to him, warm, pleasant tremors that flowed from her hand to his, and through his hand, to the kitten's fur. Then the small creature's round, innocent eyes looked at him in wonder and closed. Matti closed his eyes for a moment too and let his fingers absorb the waves of shivery vibrations that gently shook the kitten's body because it was purring quietly in pleasure now and rubbing its cheeks and forehead gently but firmly against the hand that was petting it. The kitten's eyes opened, then almost closed again; only two greenish slits peered at Matti and said, Yes, that's right, keep stroking me, please, yes, we're both enjoying it, keep doing it, yes, like that, please, don't stop.
Suddenly, the kitten winked at Matti, a quick but unmistakable wink, the wink of a secret shared only by the two of them: as if it were trying to tell Matti that it knew very well how much his fingers wanted to stroke it, and how much pleasure Matti was getting from the way it was rubbing against his palm, as it lay sandwiched between the kitten's fur and Maya's hand. He had never felt that kind of pleasure before, and it almost made him dizzy, because the tips of Maya's fingers fluttering over the back of his hand and the soft fur he was stroking back and forth sent wave after wave of warm shivers through him.
Matti's body relaxed and filled with tenderness, and as his body relaxed, so did his fear: he looked down and saw that his feet were already standing inside the walls. And he saw the inner garden and knew that now he was really inside, actually inside the fortress of Nehi the Mountain Demon. But instead of being terrified, Matti felt curious and excited. He looked up and saw the wondrous sights of the garden.
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 e
yes, 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.
22
Matti and Maya stared wide-eyed at all those wonders, mesmerized by the alligators with their checkered armor lying on the edge of the pool, and the monkeys, the squirrels, the parrots, that circled above them in the branches of the trees that were pleasing to look at and the trees that were good for food. The flapping of the sparrows' wings and the cooing of the pigeons spread a translucent veil of loveliness over the entire garden, the brooks, the meadows, the treetops, enveloping it all in a blanket of deep, warm tranquility, the tranquility of other worlds.
Why am I suddenly so sure that I was here once? And how can this really be?
The evening falling on that garden of wonders was so perfect, so limpid and peaceful, that Maya and Matti never even noticed the not very young, not very tall man with the slightly bent back and bare head, his suntanned face grooved with a strange and intricate crisscross of wrinkles, his long, almost completely gray hair falling to his shoulders. He was standing there quietly, leaning against a rough tree trunk, alone on the garden slope in the evening breeze, looking at them with a slight smile, a bitter, distracted smile, as if some of his thoughts were here and some were in other places.
The man's shoulders were a bit hunched, one slightly lower than the other, and his bulky hands hung limply at his sides as if they had just completed a long, very grueling job. His face wasn't handsome, but reticent and cautious, and he looked embarrassed, as if he was glad that Matti and Maya didn't see him.
As if he felt ashamed in front of them.
And so the stranger stood there without moving, breathing slowly and deeply, and watched the fascinated eyes of the two children, followed every movement of their curious gaze as it roamed around the sights of the garden, astonished at everything in it.
The man's secretive, almost sly smile actually began around his eyes and not on his lips, and spread from there along the grooves of his wrinkles, gradually lighting up all the furrows and folds of his face from within.
And still he didn't move or make a sound. Only one bluish vein, thin and remarkably delicate, pulsed on one side of his forehead like a tiny fish twitching underwater.
Until Maya suddenly saw him and was terribly startled. But she stayed calm and simply bent over slightly and whispered to Matti, Careful, Matti, don't look over there now because someone is standing there and watching us, but he doesn't seem dangerous, just a little strange.
23
A little strange, the man with the suspicious smile repeated the words Maya had whispered to Matti. That's exactly what people said about me many years ago, when I was still just a child: He's a little strange, they used to say, and twist their lips into a sneer. And sometimes they would say, look, here comes the retard. All that was many years before you were born, when your parents were about your age.
And I wanted so much to be one of them: I really, really tried all the time to be like everyone else. Even more like them than they were. But the harder I tried, the more they made fun of me.
The stranger began to walk toward them, but after a few steps, he stopped, changed his mind, and went back to the fig tree: Perhaps he was afraid he might scare them off. Or perhaps he found it difficult to move closer to them. But when he saw that the children didn't run away from him but kept standing where they were and looking at him, merely moving closer together to close the space between them, he looked down at the grass and said in a smiling voice, I'm glad you came.
Then added, Look, I have some pomegranate juice here. And snow water. Want some?
Matti whispered, Careful, Maya. Don't even touch that wooden cup. You never know. Maybe it's dangerous to drink it.
But Maya mixed some pomegranate juice with snow water in the hollow wooden cup, drank, laughed, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and said to the man, I'm Maya. And this is Matti. Matti's afraid you're a sorcerer. Are you a sorcerer?
And then she said, Drink some too, Matti. Come on, taste it. It's cold and delicious. You won't get whoopitis from it, don't be scared. Look, none of the animals here is afraid of this man.
Matti didn't say a word, just grabbed Maya's arm and tried to pull her back. But Maya absolutely refused to be pulled back, and jerked her arm out of Matti's grasp. And she didn't say a word either.
Suddenly, some peculiar, low sounds came out of the stranger's mouth, twisting sounds that weren't like words, and when he uttered them, an entire flock of excited, twittering honeysuckers, gold and turquoise and blue-spotted, landed on his shoulders and his head, and also on the children's heads and shoulders.
When the man and his guests were surrounded by the birds, he told them how, many years ago, when he was still a child, the other children had always snubbed him. After all, every class or group has one like that, the man said—unwanted, different, and wherever groups of children go, he always insists on trailing after them, and he always drags his feet a few steps behind everyone, self-conscious and shy, but ignoring the insults and ridicule, desperate to be accepted, to belong. That's why he's ready to do anything, ready to be their servant, at their beck and call, ready to play the fool to make them laugh, to volunteer to be the jester, and they can ridicule him as much as they want, even abuse him a little, he doesn't care, look, he's handing them his whole, rejected heart free of charge.
But the group just isn't interested in having him around. And not for any special reason: they absolutely don't want him and that's that. And he should get out of their sight as fast as he can. Because he's not like us and doesn't fit in. So he should go away because really, but really, no one needs him here.
Maya said, We have a boy like that too: Nimi. Nimi the Owl.
And Matti said, No. Nimi is something different. Nimi just has whoopitis. Everyone keeps away from him because it really is dangerous to get close to someone with whoopitis.
Then he leaned over to Maya and added in a whisper, It'll be dark soon, Maya, we have to try to escape right away.
Maya said, Escape? But the gate's open and no one is keeping us here. You can leave, if you're in such a hurry. But I'm staying. There's still so much to see.
And the man said, Sit down now, both of you, here, on this stone. Have a little pomegranate or fig juice with snow water. And don't worry, M
atti, about the coming darkness. It'll be a bit late tonight, so we can continue talking. Just don't be afraid of this mole. He gets insulted when people are afraid of him. He's very, very old, and almost deaf, but he took the trouble to come out of his burrow just to sniff you. Sit quietly for a minute and please let him sniff. Look at how amazingly delicate his ears and paws are, and how his pink nose is quivering so gently in your honor, like the rapid beating of an excited heart. Your smell must be stirring memories from the time before his parents were born.
Matti looked from the old mole to the man, then back at the mole, and, once again, a vague remembrance passed through his mind: I've been here before, all this happened to me once, I was here and forgot everything, and even now, I still can't remember what actually happened. But I definitely remember that I forgot. I think this man must be a little lonely. Or maybe he just seems that way to me? Is he setting a trap for us? Because from up close, Matti thought he'd seen a spark of slyness, the glimmer of a secret scheme flash across the man's wrinkled face. And when did he see it? At the moment when the man laughed and said that the darkness would be late in coming tonight, so we can all continue talking.
What if he was planning to imprison them here? Forever?
The man's veiny fingers suddenly looked to Matti like stubborn roots that clutch and entwine and never let go.
And what if this sorcerer is actually plotting to hold us here so he can take revenge against our parents and the whole village? Or not only hold us, but cast a spell on us and turn us into animals?
Matti said, It'll be dark soon. I want to go home now.
And Maya said, But I don't. I want to hear more. And I want to see more.
24
Then the man told them that when he was about ten and a half, he gave up on being friends with children his own age or adults and began spending his days with cats and dogs until he learned to understand and even to speak dog-words and cat-talk, not to mention horse-lingo.