19. Youth, the Reddened Warrior

So often compared to vineyards or deer, upon closer inspection youthful bodies better resemble something invisible and dangerous, streams of energy it is inadvisable to approach like edges, parapets, and fire, ready to burst or to cushion heavy falling objects, unfortunate people, withheld affection, or whatever is hidden in incompletely clear intentions or even dreams, nostalgic for the Golden Age; young Gangulf, for example, thin and fast yet with a confiscated rage that he tried to control and felt sorrowful if he failed, more than satisfied if he could save it for random moments in the darkness of a park, behind a carefully closed door, or in a church before the flaming eyes of the images of saints in torment. He was not studying, because the letters in his books lay there like ants, like distant tropical ants with potbellied lustrous queens leading armies, like the blackest fastest ants or white ones tunneling through wood with lighting-fast metallic mandibula gnashing in the light before his eyes, malignant things, nightmares on dry mornings, mirrors that deformed small-town afternoons with their half-open windows; they stretched madly and were useless, so useless he could slam the covers shut, throw them hastily on the table, yet bear in mind Of the Power of Souls because he had been defeated: more than senses exist to place man in contact with a world where he had been born defeated to a life that surrounded and crushed him, but, for all that they deny the existence of an invisible force and tell him if it exists, its presence is perhaps not necessary, he had always liked to believe in it; he had been born to lose and this exonerated him, and even if they denied this presence of a hidden force, it made him throw his books on the table one against the other, jump up, look for his hat gloves cape, gestures that were just that, gestures assaying excuses for certain acts perhaps rightly called mad if taken in their totality, empty orders that must be complied with the way empty soup tureens and secret compartments in rings for poison must be filled, inscribed in the hidden being that responds to omnipresent nature, the immanent vision arising preformed entirely from the Highest; with three books under his arm, his hat brim tipped over his eyes, gloved hands to hold the cape against his deerlike body, hiking against the boxed-in wind down the university street asking what might allow an imperfect creature to perceive another reality, that of the Spirit undoubtedly, taking too-slow obligatory steps in search of ants: the true moral color of actions, the unmentionable hue of decisions, the breadth of talents, the other perspective of sin, the savannas of Africa, the green plains of the Americas where brittle desert ants dine on the marrow of yellow-tufted animals spread and cooked on embers, and thus the blind have to see more than those whose eyes are sound there where they domesticate boas and race mounted on jaguars with necks longer than giraffes’, mutes who make their voice heard to the ends of the earth, the deaf who hear the fall of a strand of cotton amid thunderous machines, and yet one dies slowly in nitrate mines devoured by the sun and worms emerging from beneath the white crust which has become one’s skin and where monsters sit on tree trunks, angels in huts and fools in palaces, the highest and lowest of the arc created by the impulse of Power. So at night, returning on the route to the black open windows, remembering, careful and ready to escape if necessary: he knew what he would find in the eyes of Miss Esther if he could look her in the face, make her look at him in the face and thanks to that awaken, shed the obstinately worded text composed with utmost patience, hurry and meet her again in the doorway. She might flee, which comforted him. Perhaps Madame Helena did not totally trust him despite the circumspect letters from his father, but then, had not the silly Esther fallen in love with him, the sweet miss in sweet blue and gray behind her sweet sugar counter? He would not arrive in time and this would bother him the way everything incomplete did at night, it would be awful like the savannas of Africa next to the pulpit for the almighty five senses and as a result the body was now dangerously empty, the walls worn out, the tapestry of daydreams still unconfessed, and he launched himself ahead, toward the deer park like an incendiary arrow burning everything it passed, and the air came to a stop and made lustrous ants explode between the teeth of the distant and ever-patient horses.