When my friend Adi first came home in the late spring of that year, he was the show stopper who we called the ‘ruthless’. An altar boy with no frills, with the coat too short that fails to hide the ankles, an altar boy we trust blindly. The day he returned, was something else. As if he had sent a puppet with his name engraved in the DNA, or a kind of faded flap of the sleeve, Adi not even remotely resembled the giant evil that made me a sign with bright eyes to tell me that he would take the attacker and it was me at the centre.
There was a natural silence. We walked without even hearing our footsteps, close to the grass, as if on the tips of vegetation. We looked around. On the other side of the forest, where there was the serpents on earth and mud on the moraines of locust trees, other lights pierced the darkness. A beam through the plots of the trees, shot up toward the sky, the moon and God, if there is.
There came the whisper. We were silent instead. And in the dark, we were on the hunt. Crouched among the ferns, their rose the scent of black earth, and all that was there to macerate for centuries under our bellies. Besides his face to the earth, that his talk with his fingers was the only semblance of a soldier who had been, and that inexplicably was not more.
As if the luminous trail on which he had ridden in those years, up on to the success that were all predicting, as if the trail had been all a mistake, a dramatic bluff to which he himself had believed, since he came to me, cold and bright. He had never been a tender heart to redeem. But that gesture, the two fingers together to show me the movements to do because the Royal Bengal tiger could not see us, overhanging the lake in Sunderbans. We felt, it knew nothing of us; it was the only trace of what had been the rest was only a puppet springs prey of ghosts and fantasies.
And me, why did I follow? Because, I drag literally in the absurd and dangerous nocturnal picnic in the woods and for the left grinning glint in Adi’s eyes, that was and for the tingling that had begun to shake as before to take the field for the final was going on, that's all and when that happens the rest are details. Lighting or Liberation or whatever one wants to say, I felt distinctly out of our breaths. I could feel the smell of the world. I had begun to see the subtle movement of the moon in the sky and the constellations, where the branches thinned and small parenthesis sky opened up above us.
The animals of the dark were patrolling the woods. Adi gave me the signal and I proceeded on his forearms, breathing in the scent of millions of human exhaling beneath us. He seemed a very long snake out of a diabolical history, but it did not matter. Care to be there. Adi, myself, and the Tiger. We are on his trail and her on our own. I saw the Tiger when it also saw us.
Come. Bring the torch shouted Adi. I watched the red LED alarm that pierced the darkness into those monstrous eyes of the mighty tiger, close to the forest, buffeted by the winds of the north. It seemed really one slipped out of the dream of a midsummer’s night.
From the woods came the strong smell of pollen and mosses. Then it was really quite incredible as a nymph that flies in the woods, as the quintessence of energy, and I stand at the centre of the universe.
"Are you bowed? The air spreads your smell," was his query. And who should hear, smell me? I wanted to tell him.
I would have given all the gold in the world to ward that monster off, less than a few meters away from us. As in all the couples that work, I was doing the partner. I was the shoulder, the good, the weather. I tried to shut out the noise of the world and then, eyes on Adi. He stood, hands on hips, breathing regularly, his legs planted on the ground, spread like lead soldiers in his collection, the square and wide face, short hair and bright water, and in a meter and that seemed to never end, extended dramatically in the shadows under the headlights of the field.
Like a fortress. Here's what it seemed to me, that's why at that point and put it aside consciousness, hesitations, fears, and I just thought that the battle was about to begin.
‘And what do you want?’I asked. I began to see things more clearly, and it seemed to me more and more crazy.
So it was so. Perhaps the day went to sleep at night and wandered through the woods. It was a lost soul kissed by the moon filtering through the branches. What had I become? A shaman, a faun, a satyr melancholy and aged or maybe the tragicomic dowser himself, a poor boy rambling in search of his spirit.
We try to run. Her face was smeared with earth, as the Marines I saw in movies.
"Light the torch? From here, I'll go ahead" Adi added.
Join me. Come at the intersection of the path. Let's start from there, howled Adi as if he knew the place well. He looked away, somewhere, in the glow of the lake; where there is nothing to look at, if not fanciful shapes that swarm the eye, in that white mist. When attacked so I did not know what to say. There was something out of place in his speeches. Not that it weighed me, my friend Adi has something lyrical, over the top, something that he had not even suspected of having. Only that his every word seemed to pop out something crazy, of abnormal.
The light that came from the outside was a blinding earthy light banging on the walls of the mangrove. Then I heard her voice. Light, silent, empty. Another world. I had to pass that way. And now I know things. It made me try the patience. All to see her so, to hear babble incoherently. Adi stood ground, the stopper without mercy, the soldier hard and unyielding. Her eyes were hungry.
Whatever it was, I should embrace them, only if I had the strength. Or shoot her a shot or take her down to the old zoo. Again she stopped as I tried to imagine the scene. The giant Adi fixed his eyes down the body of the mountain in the middle of the desert, with the wind that bites off the skin from the face.
Adi, waiting to take the ruthless tiger, but I said nothing, and I was most afraid of to see him pounce without mercy on the onlooker. I thought maybe he was trying to put some order in that his head full of lights and flares and magic. His head full of liberation, as he had said at that time, treading the pronunciation and making a gesture in the air with his hand. But then he recovers his strength, like the characters in those novels on sanatoriums. And back on the front, where he was born to be. Without saying goodbye and this is really Adi First. It could not be so.
Adi was motionless, his eyes still, pointed straight ahead, and his grin. Who would not had known him in his days of greatness, would have thought it was cynical and sceptical. I looked at him really, and I knew what I was watching, a lump of nerves ready to explode. I nodded fast, with the two fingers together. I was too afraid to decode just what he wanted to tell me. I would not survive more than an hour, without Adi. I still did the signal. He had the face of someone who has already done his homework, of one who already knows how it will end, because you will end exactly as he wants it to end.
The Tiger was lying on her side. It was like glazed earthenware, one of those things kitsch that there are over the fireplace. Her coat is flaccid crumpled on twigs and leaves scattered around. Beautiful. She looked at us. She also knew what would happen, and seemed to wait. Only I did not clear anything, or I had it all wrong, as usual. I was just afraid, afraid of a damn.
Adi looked at me, then. He grinned, his body propped up on his elbows, and his head bent, long legs, like a tail. Other than milky fantasies, and long pauses in speech, and all that soft jelly that I had thrown him, as was delirious. Ladies and gentlemen, here is Adi First, the ruthless wonder how I should have seemed. I wonder what he thought of his old defence, my polite smile, now that I realized that we really kicked into trouble. It lasted for a moment: we crossed our eyes, and together all earthly brackets which until then had mysteriously shared. Then I did what I had to do.
I got up, not looking at anything, the forest, the trail, the Tiger, Adi. Nothing. I got up and started running, I duplicated a shadow of my own shadow at night, under the light of the moon with the Tiger, spreading her mouth emitting a hoarse and primitive sound. I ran, stumbling everywhere. The Tiger sprang towards us, towards me. I turned around, slipping and fumbling.
Standing, still, there was Adi. He rolled up his sleeves. I do not know why he did it. It was a stupid gesture. A grand gesture. Adi stood up and looked from behind the giant of a fairy tale, or a knight errant on the paths of his insight crowds, or the old stopper cursing the cold edge of the area, taking on all towards the offside line. The torchlight touched the moraines of blades of grass and shrubs, touched by the breeze dispersed pollen. I could feel the tips of the ferns that touched his legs, as the tickle of a thousand invisible fingers.
The tiger emerged from the long series of ferns. I saw her prance before, and then take a long run. Adi stood. He bent down on his knees. Took place. I never saw him in the face. He did not turn. The tiger let out his war cry. I saw her again leap forward, such as fishing forces from the accumulation of his gilded cage. He jumped again, and again. Then, he looked straight in her eyes holding a burning matchstick. A spell, to see. The Tiger. It was immense. She was beautiful.
Opposite her, vertical and cold, Adi stood as the statue in front of the stoned tiger.
He had jumped out of the ferns, off the ground, out of everything that had imprisoned him. He jumped out in the open, under the moon and the stars, under God.
I saw him run, bright, towards where he knew he had to go. He ran towards the Tiger. Then nothing, as a liberation.
He ran away the tiger
"Where were you? Where are you? I asked.
"Here in the woods. Adi called me. He told me that the tiger is gone. I'll call you from here. The tiger, the tiger, and I felt that he wanted to cry, but held back as living alive is awesome in tiger territory.
There was a natural silence. We walked without even hearing our footsteps, close to the grass, as if on the tips of vegetation. We looked around. On the other side of the forest, where there was the serpents on earth and mud on the moraines of locust trees, other lights pierced the darkness. A beam through the plots of the trees, shot up toward the sky, the moon and God, if there is.
There came the whisper. We were silent instead. And in the dark, we were on the hunt. Crouched among the ferns, their rose the scent of black earth, and all that was there to macerate for centuries under our bellies. Besides his face to the earth, that his talk with his fingers was the only semblance of a soldier who had been, and that inexplicably was not more.
As if the luminous trail on which he had ridden in those years, up on to the success that were all predicting, as if the trail had been all a mistake, a dramatic bluff to which he himself had believed, since he came to me, cold and bright. He had never been a tender heart to redeem. But that gesture, the two fingers together to show me the movements to do because the Royal Bengal tiger could not see us, overhanging the lake in Sunderbans. We felt, it knew nothing of us; it was the only trace of what had been the rest was only a puppet springs prey of ghosts and fantasies.
And me, why did I follow? Because, I drag literally in the absurd and dangerous nocturnal picnic in the woods and for the left grinning glint in Adi’s eyes, that was and for the tingling that had begun to shake as before to take the field for the final was going on, that's all and when that happens the rest are details. Lighting or Liberation or whatever one wants to say, I felt distinctly out of our breaths. I could feel the smell of the world. I had begun to see the subtle movement of the moon in the sky and the constellations, where the branches thinned and small parenthesis sky opened up above us.
The animals of the dark were patrolling the woods. Adi gave me the signal and I proceeded on his forearms, breathing in the scent of millions of human exhaling beneath us. He seemed a very long snake out of a diabolical history, but it did not matter. Care to be there. Adi, myself, and the Tiger. We are on his trail and her on our own. I saw the Tiger when it also saw us.
Come. Bring the torch shouted Adi. I watched the red LED alarm that pierced the darkness into those monstrous eyes of the mighty tiger, close to the forest, buffeted by the winds of the north. It seemed really one slipped out of the dream of a midsummer’s night.
From the woods came the strong smell of pollen and mosses. Then it was really quite incredible as a nymph that flies in the woods, as the quintessence of energy, and I stand at the centre of the universe.
"Are you bowed? The air spreads your smell," was his query. And who should hear, smell me? I wanted to tell him.
I would have given all the gold in the world to ward that monster off, less than a few meters away from us. As in all the couples that work, I was doing the partner. I was the shoulder, the good, the weather. I tried to shut out the noise of the world and then, eyes on Adi. He stood, hands on hips, breathing regularly, his legs planted on the ground, spread like lead soldiers in his collection, the square and wide face, short hair and bright water, and in a meter and that seemed to never end, extended dramatically in the shadows under the headlights of the field.
Like a fortress. Here's what it seemed to me, that's why at that point and put it aside consciousness, hesitations, fears, and I just thought that the battle was about to begin.
‘And what do you want?’I asked. I began to see things more clearly, and it seemed to me more and more crazy.
So it was so. Perhaps the day went to sleep at night and wandered through the woods. It was a lost soul kissed by the moon filtering through the branches. What had I become? A shaman, a faun, a satyr melancholy and aged or maybe the tragicomic dowser himself, a poor boy rambling in search of his spirit.
We try to run. Her face was smeared with earth, as the Marines I saw in movies.
"Light the torch? From here, I'll go ahead" Adi added.
Join me. Come at the intersection of the path. Let's start from there, howled Adi as if he knew the place well. He looked away, somewhere, in the glow of the lake; where there is nothing to look at, if not fanciful shapes that swarm the eye, in that white mist. When attacked so I did not know what to say. There was something out of place in his speeches. Not that it weighed me, my friend Adi has something lyrical, over the top, something that he had not even suspected of having. Only that his every word seemed to pop out something crazy, of abnormal.
The light that came from the outside was a blinding earthy light banging on the walls of the mangrove. Then I heard her voice. Light, silent, empty. Another world. I had to pass that way. And now I know things. It made me try the patience. All to see her so, to hear babble incoherently. Adi stood ground, the stopper without mercy, the soldier hard and unyielding. Her eyes were hungry.
Whatever it was, I should embrace them, only if I had the strength. Or shoot her a shot or take her down to the old zoo. Again she stopped as I tried to imagine the scene. The giant Adi fixed his eyes down the body of the mountain in the middle of the desert, with the wind that bites off the skin from the face.
Adi, waiting to take the ruthless tiger, but I said nothing, and I was most afraid of to see him pounce without mercy on the onlooker. I thought maybe he was trying to put some order in that his head full of lights and flares and magic. His head full of liberation, as he had said at that time, treading the pronunciation and making a gesture in the air with his hand. But then he recovers his strength, like the characters in those novels on sanatoriums. And back on the front, where he was born to be. Without saying goodbye and this is really Adi First. It could not be so.
Adi was motionless, his eyes still, pointed straight ahead, and his grin. Who would not had known him in his days of greatness, would have thought it was cynical and sceptical. I looked at him really, and I knew what I was watching, a lump of nerves ready to explode. I nodded fast, with the two fingers together. I was too afraid to decode just what he wanted to tell me. I would not survive more than an hour, without Adi. I still did the signal. He had the face of someone who has already done his homework, of one who already knows how it will end, because you will end exactly as he wants it to end.
The Tiger was lying on her side. It was like glazed earthenware, one of those things kitsch that there are over the fireplace. Her coat is flaccid crumpled on twigs and leaves scattered around. Beautiful. She looked at us. She also knew what would happen, and seemed to wait. Only I did not clear anything, or I had it all wrong, as usual. I was just afraid, afraid of a damn.
Adi looked at me, then. He grinned, his body propped up on his elbows, and his head bent, long legs, like a tail. Other than milky fantasies, and long pauses in speech, and all that soft jelly that I had thrown him, as was delirious. Ladies and gentlemen, here is Adi First, the ruthless wonder how I should have seemed. I wonder what he thought of his old defence, my polite smile, now that I realized that we really kicked into trouble. It lasted for a moment: we crossed our eyes, and together all earthly brackets which until then had mysteriously shared. Then I did what I had to do.
I got up, not looking at anything, the forest, the trail, the Tiger, Adi. Nothing. I got up and started running, I duplicated a shadow of my own shadow at night, under the light of the moon with the Tiger, spreading her mouth emitting a hoarse and primitive sound. I ran, stumbling everywhere. The Tiger sprang towards us, towards me. I turned around, slipping and fumbling.
Standing, still, there was Adi. He rolled up his sleeves. I do not know why he did it. It was a stupid gesture. A grand gesture. Adi stood up and looked from behind the giant of a fairy tale, or a knight errant on the paths of his insight crowds, or the old stopper cursing the cold edge of the area, taking on all towards the offside line. The torchlight touched the moraines of blades of grass and shrubs, touched by the breeze dispersed pollen. I could feel the tips of the ferns that touched his legs, as the tickle of a thousand invisible fingers.
The tiger emerged from the long series of ferns. I saw her prance before, and then take a long run. Adi stood. He bent down on his knees. Took place. I never saw him in the face. He did not turn. The tiger let out his war cry. I saw her again leap forward, such as fishing forces from the accumulation of his gilded cage. He jumped again, and again. Then, he looked straight in her eyes holding a burning matchstick. A spell, to see. The Tiger. It was immense. She was beautiful.
Opposite her, vertical and cold, Adi stood as the statue in front of the stoned tiger.
He had jumped out of the ferns, off the ground, out of everything that had imprisoned him. He jumped out in the open, under the moon and the stars, under God.
I saw him run, bright, towards where he knew he had to go. He ran towards the Tiger. Then nothing, as a liberation.
He ran away the tiger
"Where were you? Where are you? I asked.
"Here in the woods. Adi called me. He told me that the tiger is gone. I'll call you from here. The tiger, the tiger, and I felt that he wanted to cry, but held back as living alive is awesome in tiger territory.
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