No, Jalno hadn’t been trying to scare him; it was true. Wasn’t he seeing all these things for himself?
And Borles felt sorry for himself. Borles, poor Borles, in the valley the sky falls and tries to crush you, tries to merge with the sand and form a huge whirlwind to carry you off. How can you protect yourself? It was all so enormous, and he was so small, so tiny.
He started to turn back. One of his feet got trapped in roots, tripping him. His arms flailed behind him and hit the water, then his body slid smoothly, agonizingly, down the slippery mud of the riverbank. The water quickly embraced Borles, shook him, pounded him with pebbles and sand and reeds, entered his lungs until it seemed he’d never scream again. His hands desperately clutched something. It was an arm, but he wasn’t thinking about that: it was just something to grab onto so he could pull himself out of the water and the pain.
“You’re such an idiot!” Beres shouted as he pulled him out.
Borles saw Beres’s blurry face, a beautiful and distant thing. He loosened his grip, let go entirely.
Bímer slapped Borles’s cheeks, then, turning him over, pushed and pressed him on the back. Borles gasped and water gushed from mouth and nose.
That’s what he was supposed to do, Bímer thought with some surprise. Beres felt Borles’s skin and looked up at his brother. He remembered Jalno’s words: “Watch out for running water!” He stared at Borles’s body, but Borles seemed unscathed. He hadn’t been hurt, wasn’t bleeding or broken. He was clean besides. So the water hadn’t done any harm, just swept away the dirt.
Bímer seemed to guess what he was thinking. He said, “Jalno told us lots of things. Here we are, Beres, and nothing bad has happened, or will happen. Is there anything bad about the valley? Myself, I think it’s pretty nice.”
“Bímer, I almost think I like it, almost more than anywhere else.” He turned in circles, looking all around. He felt light, clean, washed by the caressing breeze from the forest. He then blew on Borles’s face and whispered into his ear. He had good news for him: didn’t he want to find machines? Well, there were machines here. Here, in the valley. A whole city, too—far off, the other side of those trees. Why hadn’t Jalno ever told them about this? He must have known. Not only that the valley wasn’t bad, but that there were men living in the valley. But Jalno had told them the valley was bad, that nobody lived there.…
Yes, Jalno made stuff up. Probably some of it was true, or he had some reason for tricking them, or maybe he didn’t even have a reason; nobody could say if it was right or wrong, nobody had ever understood Jalno and nobody could have understood him. And when you came to think of it, was he worth trying to understand?
“Let’s forget Jalno,” said Beres. Borles was happy to hear these things, though on the other hand he felt he couldn’t, felt afraid of denying Jalno. Couldn’t the valley suddenly turn into something bad, making Jalno totally right?
No, Borles told himself, it wasn’t good to turn his back on Jalno completely. About some things, sure. But others.… Nobody could make up all the things Jalno said. It was impossible; there had to be some truth in it. Bímer said they’d seen the city—at least, based on their father’s vague descriptions, something that looked like it.
“The people had skin like yours,” Beres said, looking at the water. “Like yours looks now, Borles.”
Borles sat thinking, Jalno’s city exists; so do the machines. And he decided he was right: he would not give up on Jalno completely. Nor believe all his stories, either.
3. The Valley
Bímer and Beres had seen the city, but they had gotten a false impression of it (which must be what had always happened to Jalno). Anyway, the world of the valley wasn’t really how Jalno had imagined it. It was, in any case, as bad or as good as the desert, the same as the sea would undoubtedly be; the same as everything. The valley was simply different. The men of the valley also used to have a sort of Jalno who used to frighten them and keep them roped up in prohibitions and mysteries. But now they knew, through Borles, that there really weren’t any borders or savage lands.
Jalno! Why was he so hard to forget? “Noahsark, let’s go look for the machines; we’re lost without them. Before the disaster, Nur B, my father, said that the machines would always be there, waiting for us. Do you understand, Pigeon? The machines!”
Right now he wished he had Jalno here with him, so he could ask him what good the machines were. There the machines sat, strange, useless. They weren’t good for anything, or hardly anything. Besides, they were stupid and dangerous.
It wouldn’t be a bad idea to destroy them. Of course it wouldn’t be a bad idea! On top of everything, the machines had the terrible habit of driving people crazy. What had happened to Bímer? Bímer had moved far away, and one day Beres went to look for him and found him on the other side of the valley, surrounded by machines, a demented smile plastered on his face.
Borles had stretched out on the thick fresh grass in the valley and listened to Beres tell the story.
Beres told him he hadn’t liked the look on Bímer’s face, or the machines, which Bímer had endowed somehow—Beres didn’t know how—with the power of movement. Beres also told him that one afternoon his brother came looking for him, but he wasn’t walking like everybody had done up until then; he was sitting on a machine that carried him here and there, wherever he wanted. No, Beres hadn’t liked that.
But Bímer didn’t want to abandon his machines or come back; he felt fine. He petted his machines and said, “Look here, Beres, look how good they are. Our father was right. I’m sure he was right about a lot of other things, too.”
Seeing the crazed look on his brother’s face, Beres was inclined to think the opposite. No, Jalno hadn’t been right; he’d been crazy, like his brother.
Right, Borles thought, listening to him; but he was already disillusioned enough to believe either way. Beres might be making up the whole story, just like Jalno—after all, wasn’t he Jalno’s son? One minor point: there were lots of machines in the valley; why were the ones that Bímer took the only ones that worked? Well, who cares. For his own part, he didn’t want to know anything about the machines, whether they made him feel better or not. Someday he’d fall asleep forever, some afternoon just like any other, and everything would end.
In the valley you didn’t feel either bad or good, and that was sufficient. When a storm came, Borles had a roof, and at night he wasn’t doomed to watching the stars. He was free of the threatening sky. What more could he hope for? If Bímer was happy with his machines, that was fine with Borles, good for him. If someone wanted to go to the desert, he wouldn’t be like Jalno and try to frighten him. After all, everybody looks for a place of his own, or rather: he finds it. And Borles’s place was always the least bad option, or the one he thought would be. There, in his city, among the ruins, Borles had his spot. And if somebody suddenly showed up telling him he’d found something better, he wouldn’t follow. He wouldn’t run anymore, or scream at night when the fear came over him, the big fear; because there’d always be scares and minor anxieties, and things and sensations he’d never be able to explain. But fine. He couldn’t ask for more, didn’t want to ask more.
The valley world had brought him new things; some were bad, others good, of course. Among the good things, for example, was the fact that he always, or almost whenever he felt like it, had a woman at hand. Desert life hadn’t been pleasant at all in that regard: walking, and sleeping wherever night caught you; desiring, craving a woman, and watching her roam away somewhere; and waiting until one day, perhaps the worst possible day, she was standing in front of you with that beautiful thing in her eyes, looking at you. Yes, the valley had come with new anxieties, but it had also come with women, and Borles wasn’t going to move from there.
Bímer didn’t go away for good, either; he visited the city regularly and one day he announced he was coming back with his machines.
Borles