The Atlas полностью

Peter loved none of these weeds. But he loved to look down the mountain Golgotha at a certain ridge-fold where a single green tree rose; that was where he and the guards went to drink at a certain hour because there was a tiny oasis there; in the oasis it was cool and a wide shallow stream trickled through a muddy tunnel between the great cottonwood palms, whose bleached fronds stirred about their trunk-waists like the grass skirts of dancers, and the sky fluttered blue as turquoise between their green fan-fingers, and they spread ever so many happy green hands all around themselves in thankfulness, and cattails made a wall against the heat, and the water glittered in the darkness and the palm-trees rustled and between them it was so dim and cool; it was almost like being in a forest, but not quite, because there were not enough trees and their scales were sharp plates like reptile-scales; but at least the fronds were soft; they did not cut your hands. — Peter felt contented when he thought upon that grove. And he said to himself: My CHRIST is in the grove, not the grave. — And the guards made a covenant with Peter that neither party would molest the other, for each was but rendering service and allegiance as he was called upon to do.

The hills were like green breasts. In the vast mounds of forest blue and green rose skinny white birches so needy for someone to embrace them. Sky-blue massifs rose ahead and behind. The Baie Saint-Paul was wide and blue, pale blue like a sea. The far shore was but an uncertain congealment of haze.

The priests were Peter's sons. When they saw the immensi.y before them they whispered: We shall make no covenant with you.

Père Jean de Brebeuf made no covenants. But he followed the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius, and being thus directed (according to the limits of his strength) up the great river of prayer called Time, he came at last to the Seventy-Second Rapid— viz.; the Thirteenth Apparition of CHRIST, Who manifested Himself to Saint Paul, and also to the Holy Fathers in Limbo, from which state He freed them. Around this Rapid rose the blockily fractured cliff-faces covered by trees standing one below the other, thii crowns of those spruces and aspens shadowing the bases of those above them; they went down and down, until began the rock that dropped sheer to the brown river below. At first he saw the river flowing far down below him, between trees on which autumn and evening already shone with a pale yellow light; he seemed to stand with JESUS CHRIST, Savior of the World, atop the faded cliffs gray and: ool that rose to crickets, resin, ferns, red maples, forest shade, crowned by sky still luminous as in afternoon; but this position Brebeuf considered highly presumptuous considering his unworthiness, and so his soul leaped into the river, allowing itself to be borne back down the Three Falls of Humility, where he was much bruised and scratched by the river-rocks, a mortification which afforded him some consolation for his many faults. Now he permitted himself to clamber back up the Sauk of Election, to ascend to the Current of Patience which again washed him back to the commencement of the Third Week, to rise from the Sixteenth Rapid to the Third Isle of Prayer, to swim from the Twenty-Third Rapid back up to the Seventy-Second, which he pulled himself up by great might and main, wedging his feet between boulders to brace his climb as the cataract spewed down upon his body and the walls shimmered high and narrow above him like rocky-hued rainbows.

In fact the weather was rather grise—viz.; dull and gray. It chilled him but he would make no covenant with his loathsome body, no matter how much it shivered.

A sick woman saw in dreams a man dressed in black like Père Brébeuf, whom they called Echon. In the dream it was Echon who touched her with fire, at which her fever became much worse. When Tehorenhaennion was called, everyone in that long-house greeted him most respectfully.

The dogs must not howl, he said. I make my cures only in silence.

A girl took the dogs out, and also a bear-cub in its cage, which had begun grunting.

It is my rule to require the sick one to be carried into the woods, to see the Sky, said Tehorenhaennion after a pause. But today there are clouds. This cure will be difficult.

He bent over her and began to blow upon her and suck at her body where she was most swollen. Very soon he had found five hairball charms which Echon or some other witch had sent into her.