Ambiguous Adventure Read Online Free PDF

mood.
    “The gourd is of a droll nature,” the teacher went on after a long pause. “When young, it has no other vocation than to achieve weight, no other desire than to attach itself lovingly to the earth. It finds the perfect realization of itself in weight. Then one day everything changes. The gourd wants to take flight. It reabsorbs itself, hollows itself out, as much as it can. Its happiness is a function of its vacuity, of the sonority of its response when a breath stirs it. The gourd is right in both instances.”
    “Master, where are the gourds of the Diallobé?”
    “That is for the gardener to answer, not for me.”
    The chief remained silent for a moment.
    “If I told them to go to the new school,” he said at last, “they would go
en masse
. They would learn all the ways of joining wood to wood which we do not know. But, learning, they would also forget. Would what they would learn be worth as much as what they would forget? I should like to ask you: can one learn
this
without forgetting
that
, and is what one learns worth what one forgets?”
    “At the Glowing Hearth, what we teach the children is God. What they forget is themselves, their bodies, and the futile dream which hardens with age and stifles the spirit. So what they learn is worth infinitely more than what they forget.”
    “If I do not tell the Diallobé to go to the new school, they will not go. Their houses will fall into ruins, their children will die or be reduced to slavery. Extreme poverty will be entrenched among them, and their hearts will be filled with resentment.”
    “Extreme poverty is, down here, the principal enemy of God.”
    “Nevertheless, master, if I understand you aright, poverty is also the absence of weight, of substance. How are the Diallobé to be given knowledge of the arts and the use of arms, the possession of riches and the health of the body, without at the same time weighing them down, dulling their minds?”
    “Give them the weight, my brother. Otherwise, I declare that soon there will remain neither person nor thing in the country. There are more deaths than births among the Diallobé. You yourself, master, your hearths are becoming extinct.”
    It was the Most Royal Lady speaking. She had come into the room without making a sound, as was her custom. She had left her Turkish slippers behind the door. This was the hour of her daily visit to her brother. Now she took her place on the mat, facing the two men.
    “I am delighted to find you here, master,” she said. “Perhaps we are going to bring matters into focus this evening.”
    “I do not see how, Madame. We move along parallel lines, and both are inflexible.”
    “Yes, indeed, master. My brother is the living heart of this country, but you are its conscience. Envelop yourself in shadow, retire into your own heart, and nothing, I declare to you, will bring good fortune to the Diallobé. Your house is the most scantily furnished in the countryside, your body the most emaciated, your appearance the most fragile. But no one has a sovereign authority over this country which equals yours.”
    The teacher felt terror overcoming him, gently, in time with this woman’s speech. He had never dared to admit very plainly what she was saying, but he knew it to be the truth.
    Man always wishes for prophets to absolve him from his insufficiencies, but why should they have chosen him, a creature who did not even know what to abide by on his own account? At this moment his thought went back to his inner laughter at the solemn instant of his prayer. “I do not even know why I laughed,” he reflected. “Was it because in conquering the weakness of my body I was conscious of giving pleasure to my Lord, or was it from vanity, and nothing else? I do not know how to settle this question. I do not know myself … I do not know myself, and it is I to whom they choose to look. For they do look to me. All these unhappy people spy on me, and, like chameleons, take on for