Juan Ávila Laurel - By Night the Mountain Burns

I didn’t go with the rest of them down to the beach, for I was a child and they wouldn’t have let me, and anyway I was asleep, but I know they encountered many problems. Many, many problems. It would have been a problematic journey if they’d done it by day and without the fury of the patron saint hanging over them. To be honest, I’d rather not say any more about that patron saint, for I’ve told you my religion and said that I’m a believer. Suffice to say, anything involving the patron saints filled me with fear as a child. Looking back, I see that everything filled me with fear as a child, even things that seemingly had nothing evil about them.

They went on saying prayers and they went on encountering many problems in getting that boy down to the shore and into a canoe, and in finding a moment of calm to push the canoe out into the water so that it might clear the rocks and other dangers. I know that beach well and I know you usually make several false starts before managing to launch out into the water, and to think they did it in the dark! And when I say dark, I’m not talking about any ordinary darkness. There was no moon and that beach was like a cave. I really think that to be an adult on our island back then was to live a life of extreme and constant danger.

They managed to get the canoe out into the water and the canoeman managed to paddle the child to the big village, the child who was choking because he hadn’t been presented to the patron saint. When we arrived in the big village the next day, around noon and after many hours of walking, I found out that the boy they’d taken in the canoe was my friend, the one I’d left stuck up the tree, shaking uncontrollably because of the lack of firm ground beneath him. The boy I’d gone to get help for was now in the house of the bone healer and, when I saw my friend, he was covered in bandages from head to toe, as if he’d broken every bone in his body. He couldn’t speak, but he heard my voice and he nodded his head. Only the inhabitants of San Xuan’s village knew how he’d ended up spending the night there, or not, as it proved. Because we’d become friends, he told me what happened once he got better, what happened to him after I’d left him stuck up the tree, inches away from wringing the neck of that bird we’d gone in search of because of our lack of fish. But in fact he knew nothing, or very little, about what happened. This might be because most of what happened happened in the dark. Or it might be because he had his eyes closed. The dark. It was something that always had to be taken into account on our Atlantic Ocean island. It was like an extra person. One of my main memories of the dark is that sometimes we’d be eating at night and an adult would take away the lamp. I didn’t like it because we carried on eating and by the time they brought it back I’d have nothing left on my plate. Eating in the dark wasn’t as satisfying as eating in the light. So when the lamp came back, I was tempted to ask for more food, because the food I’d put in my mouth in the dark didn’t count: it had been eaten in secret, or in hiding, and so I couldn’t feel it in my belly. So I sometimes waited for the light to come back before I went on eating because when I ate without it I felt cheated. It had nothing to do with whether what I was eating had bones in, or whether I was able to pluck the bones out in the dark without choking on them. It was just that I wanted to be able to see what I was eating. As far as I was concerned, eating in the dark was like going down a path in the dark. If for some reason you had to move about in the dark, you did it on all fours, to avoid dangers. It’s difficult to walk about upright in the dark, for there’s no knowing what obstacles you’ll encounter. You have to feel your way, keep touching the ground, reach out into the void. And it’s very frightening, so if you have to walk anywhere in the dark, let’s say down a deserted street, you put your hands wherever they make you feel safest. For example, by crossing your arms over your tummy and putting the palms of your hands on your sides, or by crossing your arms over your chest and putting the palms of your hands on your shoulders. This last one was the way we children felt most protected, the way we felt safest in the dark. The dark? We always thought something dangerous was lurking in the dark. Some of the littler children cried as soon as darkness fell. They screamed as if they’d been bitten. Bitten by the darkness. They felt they were in danger and they asked, they screamed, for the light to come back. And although we were afraid of the dark, we didn’t like the excessive light of the full moon either. As I’ve already said, on moonlight nights you felt too exposed. Things could see you from far away. So with the dark, you couldn’t see the danger, but with the moonlight you exposed yourself to the danger. Everything on the island brought fear. To be in the dark is to turn your back on life, for I don’t think anyone can really understand life in all its detail if kept in the dark. It’s like eating in the dark: you never get full, for you lose track of what’s on your plate. I think that the darkness in a person’s life is the darkest thing about living in hardship.

What that friend told me was that when I left him stuck up the tree to go and get help, he looked down and could no longer see anything. It was as if he were in the clouds; that’s to say, up in the sky. I didn’t believe him, but I’ll carry on with his story. He said he was up there, looking out to see if help was coming, but no help came and he became increasingly nervous. He was nervous and he was holding on to the tree trunk, and he was looking out for help, for someone to come and tell him what to do. But like I said, according to him, he could no longer see the ground, only clouds … So what was stopping him from coming back down the tree? That’s why I never believed his story. But anyway, he said he stayed up there and he started to hear the voices of the ministrants, many of their voices, although what he heard wasn’t specifically their voices but rather their prayers, prayers only the ministrants knew how to say. So up in the tree, he heard their prayers, or songs, and they were getting closer and closer to where he was. He was afraid. I would have been too. You’re alone in the bush, in some remote part of it full of mist, stuck up a tree, and suddenly you hear the songs of the ministrants: anyone would have been afraid. If it was me, and the songs got closer and closer, I’d throw myself over the precipice, if that was my only means of escape. I’ve already said how much the ministrants frightened me. If I’d been him, if the same thing had happened to me, what I would have thought when I heard the ministrants approaching with their mysterious songs was that there was an evil lurking nearby, the Devil even, and that was why they’d come, to drive the evil away. But then I’d have thought, and I don’t know why, that the evil actually came from the ministrants and their songs, that they brought the evil with them. And I’d have jumped out over the precipice, if that was my only way out. Anyway, the boy was afraid and he said he tried to escape. For just because the ministrants were coming didn’t mean they’d stop and help him down. We’d never heard of the ministrants stopping their singing and talking to anyone in a similar situation. Because as far as we understood it, from what the adults told us, whenever they were moving about in the bush they were guided by the Maté Jachín , and because the Maté Jachín wasn’t a person, no ministrant was allowed to act like a person in its presence. So, you’re in the tree and you sense the ministrants approaching, dressed in their white tunics. According to the number of voices in the singing, there are many of them, and you know they have the power to drive evil away, even if it’s the Devil himself. But what if they found the Devil in the same tree as you and decided to put a curse on it? Obviously the curse would affect you too. So naturally my friend was afraid and he wanted to get down and escape, and that’s just what he did. But after running for a while, he fell to the ground and couldn’t go on. The ministrants reached him and sang their mysterious prayers over him. That’s what he told me.