Lost Worlds Read online

  Paco looked pleased at the remark, which seemed to have no epigrammatic whiplash. I held his hand. “I like you too, Juan.”

  More laughs and choking. Then his face turned serious and he said quietly, “I will tell you a story.”

  Paco leaned forward. Epifania was nearby but, as seemed to be her custom, said nothing.

  Juan coughed and spat, then began.

  “There was a man, a good man of the mountains—a hermit—who had an angel for a friend. Every day, at the hour of prayer, the angel would come to greet him and they would walk together. If the man needed advice the angel would give it to him, and before he left he would always remind the man to go out to do an act of charity every day. The man obeyed and was known and loved by everyone he met for his kindness.

  “One day, when the man was walking on a path in the mountains, he saw two soldiers with a third man tied up like a prisoner. ‘Why is this man tied up?’ asked the kind man.

  “‘He has done wrong. The law has sentenced him to be hanged.’

  “The man of the mountains asked if the prisoner could be released, but the soldiers refused. The man then said, ‘He who does it pays for it.’

  “The soldiers placed a strong stick between the branches of two trees and hanged the prisoner.

  “That night at the hour of prayer the angel did not appear to the man of the mountains and he was very sad. The same the next day, and the next.

  “Then on the next day after that the angel came to him and the man asked him why he had not appeared on the three days before. ‘What you did was a bad thing. You said to the soldiers who were going to hang the prisoner, “He who does it pays for it.” You did not give advice to the men. Instead you said “He who does it pays for it” and for that God will chastise you.’

  “The poor man of the mountains was very sad. ‘Does that mean that I will not be saved?’

  “The angel replied: ‘You must go now and remove the man who has been hanged. Bury him. Take the stick they hanged him on, place it on your shoulder, and everywhere you go you must take it with you. Whenever you sleep place the stick by your head and when the stick becomes alive with flowers, you will be saved.’

  “The little man—the hermit—was very sad but obeyed the angel. He took down the body. He buried the man and carried the stick with him every day—everywhere he walked—on his shoulder. At night, every night, he put the stick at his head, hoping that it would come alive in the morning with flowers.”

  Juan paused in the middle of the narrative. Epifania filled his cup with more tea and he drank slowly. There was something in the way he told the tale that made it seem personal. I was tempted to ask but was learning to cut the questions and just listen.

  Soon he began again.

  “After becoming very old the hermit still carried the stick with him and slept with it next to his head every night. Then one stormy night, when he was very far from his home in a wild part of the mountains, he saw a small house. He was in need of shelter and in the house was an old woman. The man said, ‘Señora—please do me a favor and let me stay here for the night in your house.’

  “Many times the woman refused, but the man begged, ‘I am old and very tired. I will sleep anywhere.’

  “Still the woman refused and said, ‘I have two sons who are thieves. If they see you here they will kill you.’

  “But the man was too weary to go farther and told the woman the story of his punishment and the stick he must carry. ‘Let me stay,’ he said again. ‘Whatever happens will happen.’ Finally the woman did not say no anymore and he found a place in the stable and put his stick in the corner against the wall.

  “When the sons came back to the house they sensed the man was there and were going to kill him. But the woman said they must not, and she told them the tale. She said that there was something strange about the man and his punishment.

  “‘God is watching him,’ she warned them, and the sons were alarmed.

  “‘Only for that small wrong God is punishing him for so long? What punishment will we have to endure, then? We have killed many people!’

  “That night the sons repented of their terrible crimes and the following morning went to see the hermit. But the hermit was dead and his stick, leaning against the wall of the stable, was alive and full of flowers. The sons were saved that day because they repented. And that is my story.”

  There was a long silence.

  Paco had been quietly translating the long slow tale in case I missed some of its subtleties. (I’ve tried to write it down as it was told, but even now I’m not sure I understand all its meanings.) I watched Juan’s face, hoping he’d explain more about the story and why he’d chosen to tell it to us. Was it somehow about him—about his life? Maybe about his one-time position as a judge? Was he the hermit? Had he lost his angel somewhere along his life? Or had he found something else? Had his stick flowered?…

  The questions kept bouncing around my head, but I now realized that Juan was unlikely to answer them. In the true spirit of zen, you find your own answers.

  As it grew darker we thanked Juan and Epifania for their hospitality and left to prepare our meal in the courtyard. They both smiled and Juan murmured something quietly to Paco.

  “He says we can sleep in the room off the courtyard. There are bamboo beds. And we can stay as long as we wish. He wants you to go and see his church tomorrow.

  After dinner (a remarkably unmemorable mush of a meal) I went to check out the beds in the dark room off the courtyard. Like much of the house the walls were monolithic creations of unmortared stone through which the cold night air whistled. The bed was constructed of sections of tree trunk and the raised sleeping platform consisted of thin strips of bamboo placed close together and covered with a few goat and cow hides. Paco seemed quite happy with the accommodation, but I found the utter blackness of the room oppressive and decided to spend another night out in the open.

  I found a small hollow covered in soft pasture turf close to the waterfall behind the house. It was cold, but the sky once again was a vast panoply of brilliant stars. Slipping on an extra pair of trousers and second shirt under my parka, I snuggled down in the waterproof sleeping bag and lay back, listening to the night breezes in the bushes.

  My mind dabbled with the intricacies of infinity. Stars do that to me. Those constant patternings of sparkle-matter—the same patterns that have intrigued astronomers down the ages—suggest permanence, stability, and balance. As two-dimensional designs they fascinate—but as three-and four-dimensional actualities they tear at the edges of a finite mind, invoking a kind of momentary madness. No wonder the ancients preferred the concept of a flat earth and used ridiculous logical contortions to prove that the earth, sun, and moon were the focus of the universe. How they must have resented the conflicting mathematical evidence of other realities—larger, mind-bending actualities.

  And now, today, when we know that we’re nothing but specks of matter in an inconceivably vast infinity of random chaos, how do we place ourselves? How do we find meaning within our little finite minds, so easily boondoggled by an act as simple as looking at stars? How do we relate big bangs, expanding and contracting universes, antimatter, parallel realities, and all the implications of E = MC2, to our day-to-day lives full of petty concerns, hopes, frustrations, all ending inevitably in death? How do we keep a faith in any ultimate meaning and purpose when all around us, every day, are these overwhelming reminders of our apparent insignificance? Does Juan have answers for these kinds of questions?

  Casting off all the tempting diversions of life as he had done—prosperity, power, status, community, sensual pleasures—is certainly one way to clear the mind and the spirit for deeper perceptions and insights. But does it lead merely to a more sophisticated definition of unanswerables? Or is there really a mind behind matter, order within chaos, a nonmaterial spiritual reality of which we are all part?

  A short film I saw years ago dabbled with the actuality of infinity—both inne
r and outer. Beginning with the hand of a bather on a beach somewhere, the film simulated first an outer journey of 10 to the power of 10, leading the viewer from a place ten inches above the bather’s hand (10 to the power of 1), to 100 inches (10 to the power of 2), and so on until at 10 to the power of 10 we vanished into a virtual infinity of endless space. Then the same journey was undertaken inward, into the hand itself, down through the pores, into the spaces between cells, then into whirling molecules, then between the particles of molecules, and on and on until at 10 to the power of 10 we disappeared into the infinities of inner space—equally deep, equally as intangible as the outer universe itself.

  The film lasted ten minutes or so—it was a short documentary for schoolchildren, I believe—but the images and its impact have remained with me for years. The idea of everything we perceive possessing the same fathomless infinities—everything interconnected in endlessness—was both alarming and comforting at the same time. The film didn’t try to suggest any spiritual significance to its revelations. We each have to figure that out for ourselves, I suppose. But for me, it gave stargazing a whole new dimension and here I was once again under those same stars, cocooned in my cozy sleeping bag, letting the possibilities pulsate through my sleepy brain.

  Which suddenly wasn’t so sleepy anymore.

  Something was out there moving about in the grass. A dark thing, keeping low to the ground among the faint moon shadows. And it was coming my way, toward my comfortable hollow by the waterfall. I never thought to ask Juan or Paco about night creatures in this lonely silent valley. Wolves? Coyotes? Do they exist in Venezuela? I knew there were jaguars way down in the plains of Los Llanos, but what about up here in the wilds of the Andes?

  The thing kept coming. Larger and darker than before. I reached out to find a stone or something to scare it away, but all I had were my boots. Well—better than nothing. I eased up slowly to a sitting position and prepared to aim…and then was greeted by a gentle woof, a wagging tail, and a wet nose nuzzling my beard. It was one of Juan’s dogs, curious about this stranger who preferred to sleep out in the cold rather than on a perfectly comfortable bamboo bed.

  I stroked its head and it gave a little whining noise. Maybe it was hungry. I groped around in my bag and found a bar of chocolate. It vanished in two bites. I lay back again and the dog decided to join me, stretching full length against my side. It was a lovely sensation. I forgot about the infinities and all those unanswerable imponderables. A friendly dog was just what I needed. So what if it was, just like me, a walking universe of endless space. It was a tactile, warm, and furry universe—and a fine sleeping companion.

  Juan, wearing a traditional wool ruana cloak, joined Paco and me for coffee in the courtyard as the sun rose over the mountains, burning off stray strands of morning mist. We had just finished washing ourselves in the stream and were still tingling and flush-faced from the icy water.

  “Paco tells me that you are an artist,” Juan said.

  “Well—I do a lot of sketching.”

  “Can you do faces? People faces?” he asked.

  “Yes. I enjoy sketching faces.”

  There was silence. We sipped the strong coffee and I knew he’d left a dangling question.

  “Juan—I would like to sketch you and give it to you as a gift.”

  I’d obviously said the right thing. His leathery face buckled into a hundred creases and furrows and he chuckled.

  “That would be very good. I will fetch my hat.”

  He returned wearing a stained, weather-bashed straw hat decorated with a broad band of woven cloth in once-bright reds and indigos.

  “Did you weave that band yourself?” I asked.

  He smiled and nodded. “And the hat. I made the hat. Many years ago.”

  He chose to remain silent and serious as I sketched. Doves cooed, chickens scratched in the dust of the corral. Our donkey bellowed out a greeting to the morning from the hillside above us and Paco watched entranced as the lines coalesced into a face on the sketch pad.

  I decided to draw him just the way he was, with his ragged mustache, unshaven chin, and big watery eyes. I wanted to capture his kindness, his wisdom, his sureness of purpose, and his amazing endurance for almost five decades in this remote hideaway. I think I managed some of the above and gave the drawing to him.

  He looked at it thoughtfully for a long time. Maybe I’d been a little too honest with the sketch. Maybe he was hoping for something different, less face lines maybe, less of the scrubby beard.

  He lifted himself up from the bench without a word and went inside the house. Paco looked perplexed. Had I offended the man in some way? That can be a problem when you sketch people’s portraits. You never really know how they see themselves and I’d never learned the street artists’ clever techniques for graphic flattery.

  He returned shortly, without the sketch and without his hat, and sat down on the bench. He asked to use my sketch pad and my pen. I gave them to him.

  Slowly—very slowly—in a shaking hand—he began to write something on paper. I think he had arthritis in his fingers. Each letter seemed to be a struggle. But then he came to the final signing of his name and let go with a grand flourish of filigree lines that resembled some of the more elaborate signatures on the Declaration of Independence. He handed the pad and pen back to me and I could barely make out the words in Spanish. Paco seemed to have less problems and translated a very flattering—and very moving—statement. I think I blushed. Juan obviously liked his sketch and according to his message our friendship would be “eternal as heaven.”

  Then he dipped into a pocket of his torn jacket and brought out a shard of dark rock. He asked for my hand and placed it gently in my palm.

  “This is a piece from the first stone of my church. Keep this to remember me.”

  I nodded and thanked him.

  “And now,” he said, smiling again, “I would like you to go and see my church and come back and talk with me again.”

  Which was exactly what I had planned to do.

  Paco decided to stay behind and help Juan with some rock-lifting project (yet one more extension to the house?) so I walked over the pasture and across the stream alone. On the far side of the narrow valley a path climbed the hillside between more bright patches of frailejon flowers. The air off the mountains was crisp and fresh. I carried Juan’s little piece of stone in my pocket and felt as frisky as a fawn in that blue and gold morning.

  I was repressing all thoughts of the return journey over the dreadful La Ventana and enjoying the easy uphill walk. As I moved higher the vistas opened up like a huge diorama—range after range of mountains purpling with distance, more sinewy valleys disappearing into morning mists. What a wonderful land Juan had found for his life! A little lost world untouched by anything except the elements and his own enduring spirit. In the rush, rigor, and hype of modern-day life we need all the Juans we can find to remind us of other possibilities, other perspectives.

  The church came suddenly, around a bend in the track, perched on the edge of an alarming drop into the next valley. It sat, squat and compact, in bold stone simplicity on a sloping site, shaded by wind-shaped conifers. A twenty-foot-high stone tower with a belfry rose up beside the main door. In front was a tall cross decorated, Gaudi-like, in fragments of pebbles, pottery, and glass. Small shrines and memorials to individuals known and admired by Juan filled the space between the church and the high stone retaining wall by the path.

  I entered through a narrow gate and climbed the steps to the church. The blue-painted iron door squeaked open. At first it seemed very dark, but as my eyes adapted to the glimmer of filtered sunlight, I found myself in a long, narrow space about thirty feet long bound by more bare stone walls and with a sloping flagstone floor leading to an altar. A few chairs and benches made from more of those twisted branches and stumps so loved by Juan lined the walls. An enormous font, hollowed from a boulder, stood on a stone plinth decorated by chips of colored rock.

  T
he power of the little church lay in its simplicity. It seemed to have grown directly out of the earth itself. For year after year, from 1952 to 1970, Juan and Epifania had built this place and its tower rock by rock and dedicated it to the Virgin of Coromoto. It’s hard to imagine the energy, the sweat, the back-snapping toil that went into such an effort. And yet the church exuded a spirit of calm, peace, and effortlessness. In the same way that the great pyramids seem to deny the agony and the superhuman labor that went into their construction by their overwhelming purity of form, so here the clarity of Juan’s vision suppressed all thoughts of the personal struggle during its creation.

  Light filtered through a section of transparent roofing material and bathed the altar in gold. In contrast to the starkness of the nave, here was a compact riot of symbolic objects and colorful ornaments. An old car headlight set in the wall above peered down like an eye of God. A tracery of rosaries and religious pendants dangled over the three-stepped levels of the altar. Fresh flowers in clay pots (who had placed them there?) filled most of the first level, followed by tiny religious statues and postcards on the second, and candles, miniatures of Christ, the Madonna, and the saints, and more flowers on the third. Every level was filled with objects; there was no room for anything else.

  I sat on the cold flagstones at the base of the altar for a long time. I’m not a religious person in any formal sense, but Juan’s little church touched something inside me. Maybe it was the sureness—the certainty—of his own faith. Surrounded by all this evidence of his labor and his love, I felt a certain diffuseness, an uncenteredness, in my own ramblings and meanderings. While opposed to dogma and “only one answer” diatribes in all their multifaceted forms, I maybe am drawn a little too much into the gentle anarchy of my own life, avoiding spiritual commitment, sacrificing focus for the exploration of open-ended possibilities and alternatives. Most times I am content to play with the options, but once in a while, when faced with something as strong and moving as this place, well, I begin to wonder….