Aeternus

MORUS MORES

Abdellah Bouazza

The mossy ditch, which was as slow and sluggish as the day itself, separated the boy from the mulberry tree. To his surprise, under its lush foliage and dusty shade appeared a small dog, which watched his movements with doll-like curiosity. The scene (less shady perhaps) recalled the fable of the wolf and the lamb. Instead of a warning, the boy considered the little dog’s droll presence an invitation. He backed a couple of steps and made a running jump over the black-green reflecting ditch. The moment his hands touched the summer earth and he looked up the dog had already disappeared and there lay a broad-leaved fig branch. That disappointed him a little, but the rich mulberry tree provided an overwhelming green bliss. Hurriedly he plucked, tasted and put mulberries in his pockets; the taste of the berries and the forbidden delight blinded him, weakened his senses to such an extent that the orchard (apricot, lemon and also raspberry), which was hardly to be descried from without, was registered by his narrowed field of vision merely as a variegated vegetal backdrop.

All of a sudden a figure loomed up. The boy regained just enough presence of mind to detect in this Pan-like apparition a human entity and to recall its name and residence. The fellow (his clothes were not dusty as the boy wrongly remembered) was armed with a fig branch; and before the boy could ascertain that the branch bore no figs he had fallen to the ground and was screaming in response to the blind and hard thrashing his body received. The tree and its berries were sky-high and the place was transformed into a camp of blows, dust, fury, contortions, cries, kicks and, yes, the smell of figs.

Strangely enough, the cries he uttered were not from pain, but from terror and incomprehension; and although the satanic brute had, with renewed force, to make do with a broken branch he did not feel any pain and the expression “to come to blows,” which a relative of his had used and for which he himself had never had the opportunity to use, crossed the boy’s mind. Just then he got the heavenly idea of escape. He fled like a three-legged creature and all the while every thorny weed and shrub tried to tackle him. He dared look behind him and saw no one: the mulberry tree as motionless and indifferent as ever, the stripped fig branch and… the small dog, which looked into the ditch wagging its tail –why was it wagging its tail? Because it saw its reflection? It was astounding that he felt no pain, that the accessory tree did not even rustle as a sign of life, of emotion. When he had reached a distance from which the farm seemed more a caprice of the scenery than a coppice, whimsy vegetation, he pulled his pants down to inspect his wounds. A livid bruise ran across his right thigh: the stripe of an albino tiger cub. A cold contempt for the devilish guy revived him; the same contempt one feels for someone who has broken the unwritten rules of youth’s outdoor life. The boy mocked his agrarian aggression. “That’ll teach yah!” He had repeated the words dutifully as if he had not been sure about their meaning, and his mug, in spite of the exertion, had remained as pale as parchment. The boy wondered whether the savage, the rabid cur, had not recognized him, because how often hadn’t they greeted each other and exchanged words?

His hatred reached the intensity of the guy’s –he didn’t want to say his name- spent fury, only his hatred was not blind; on the contrary, the clarity with which he viewed his situation was remarkable. Stupid puppy, worthless mulberries –those he had put in his pockets were of course at the initial stage of jam; he walked with his pockets turned inside out. In the warm siesta-quiet afternoon he loafed past the cacti in hedgehog position, sometimes under the carob trees whose trunks were whitewashed, while the crickets were busy at their sawmills.

The incident seemed nothing but a pseudocarpous, innocuous idea that was furiously erased by an evil afterthought. He imagined the outcome if he had heard or seen the feral bully coming or if evil had not taken shape. It was strange that his screams had not attracted attention. He bent towards a stick and reached the asphalt road while brandishing that stick.

From the eastern direction a beige Mercedes neared and the unlucky boy decided to let the car drive by first. With the stick he hit the car, which was driving at a friendly speed, and crossed the road. The car stopped, the driver got out and bellowed. The boy had seen the angry red lights of the Mercedes and was now heading for the strategic trackway lined with olive trees. He looked behind him and was startled to see the driver vehemently following in his wake; the bespectacled young man (the driver’s son), who was also chasing him, was outside his field of vision, so that the boy was blinded by terror when he was grabbed by the neck by the latter and not by the driver. The boy fell with his back against the olive tree and could not hear what the glasses, the bad teeth and the grimaces were saying; yet he felt the slap that made the sun tremble like a gong and made him queasy with the aftertaste of mulberries and mossy ditch water. After a while he tried to see through his tears the merciless eyes of those two: invidious stars in the sky of his fear…but there were only the smarting sunbeams, and the silence again denied everything.

He remained in the scanty shade (the slap had flattened his hair to his left temple) and with his index finger drew abstract figures in the soil, something in which every untalented boy excels. The figures took rudimentary shapes of a delta, a bird, a beak, a wing, wings, a tail, and a bird. A falcon or hawk hovered in the awesome sky like a bad conscience.

Without much thought he stood up and walked towards the asphalt road, crossed it, walked under inclining trees, entered the weed field and, after a short while, arrived at the ditch; he jumped over it, saw the broken fig branch and threw it away to the other side, among the shrubs. No dog: good. Slowly he plucked and ate the refreshing berries and having collected a handful he sat on the ground and leaned against the trunk and, while he ate and relished, looked at the trees in the distance, at the pale-blue mountains, at the sky: a falcon or hawk hovered. He left the orchard and searched for a stick in the field; first he found a snake. He stripped the leaves and twigs from the strong branch and armed himself with it. When he had reached the asphalt road he waited.

All this he saw from that circling height from which houses seem toys and the trees lollipops. Imagination’s hawk, mighty hawk, flew from the orchard to the trackway. Contrary to the patience of the hawk, which was still circling, his was variable and short-lived. The boy wiped the figures with his shoe and stood up; in the sunlight he stretched himself. There, in the stubble, a big grasshopper landed. Smiling, he went after it. The hawk, too, had spotted a prey and pounced upon it.

Written: 17-4-1988
Published: 01-10-1993
Englished: 6-3-2007