The Dry Leaves

The sun had set: the clouds, crossing in tattered shreds above my head, piled one upon another on the distant horizon. The cold wind of the autumn evenings whirled the dry leaves at my feet.

I was seated at the edge of a road, along which ever return fewer than those who go.

I know not what I was thinking of, or if indeed I was thinking of anything at all. My soul trembled on the point of launching into space, as the bird trembles and slightly flutters its wings before taking flight.

There are moments when, thanks to a series of abstractions, the spirit withdraws from all that surrounds it, and folding back upon itself analyzes and comprehends all the mysterious phenomena of man’s internal life.

There are others in which it detaches itself from the flesh, loses its personality and mingles with the elements of nature, relates to its mode of being, and translates its incomprehensible language.

I found myself in one of these latter moments, when alone and in the midst of the bare plain I heard talking near me.

It was two dry leaves that were talking, and this, more or less, was their strange dialogue:

“Where do you come from, sister?”

“I come from rolling with the whirlwind, wrapped in the cloud of dust and of our companion dry leaves, along the endless plain. And you?”

“I have followed the current of the river for some time, until the gale snatched me from among the silt and the reeds of the bank.”

“And where are you going?”

“I know not: does the wind that pushes me know perchance?”

“Alas! Who would have said that we should end up yellow and dry, dragging ourselves across the earth, we who live dressed in color and light, swaying in the air?”

“Do you remember the beautiful days when we sprouted; that gentle morning when, the swollen bud that served as our cradle broken, we unfolded to the warm kiss of the sun like an emerald fan?”

“Oh! How sweet it was to feel oneself balanced by the breeze at that height, drinking in through every pore the air and the light!”

“Oh! How lovely it was to see running the water of the river that licked the twisted roots of the aged trunk that sustained us, that clean and transparent water that copied like a mirror the blue of the sky, so that we believed we lived suspended between two blue abysses!”

“With what pleasure we leaned out over the green fronds to see ourselves portrayed in the trembling current!”

“How we sang together, imitating the murmur of the breeze and following the rhythm of the waves!”

“The brilliant insects fluttered about, displaying their gauze wings around us.”

“And the white butterflies and the blue dragonflies, which spin through the air in strange circles, would stop a moment on our jagged edges to tell each other the secrets of that mysterious love that lasts an instant and consumes their life.”

“Each one of us was a note in the concert of the woods.”

“Each one of us was a tone in the harmony of its color.”

“On moonlight nights, when its silvery light slid over the crest of the mountains, do you remember how we chatted in a low voice among the diaphanous shadows?”

“And we related with a soft whisper the stories of the sylphs who swing on the golden threads that spiders hang among the trees.”

“Until we suspended our monotonous chatter to listen, enraptured, to the complaints of the nightingale, which had chosen our trunk for a footstool.”

“And so sad and so soft were its laments that, though full of joy upon hearing it, we dawned weeping.”

“Oh! How sweet were those tears lent us by the night’s dew, which shone with all the colors of the iris at the first light of dawn!”

“Then came the merry band of goldfinches to fill the woods with life and noise in the joyful and confused clamor of their songs.”

“And a loving pair hung beside us their round nest of couch grass and feathers.”

“We served as shelter for the little ones against the annoying drops of rain in the summer tempests.”

“We served them as a canopy and defended them from the importunate rays of the sun.”

“Our life passed like a golden dream, from which we suspected not that one might awake.”

“A fine evening when everything seemed to smile around us, when the setting sun kindled the sunset and blushed the clouds, and from the slightly damp earth rose effluvia of life and perfumes of flowers, two lovers stopped at the water’s edge and at the foot of the trunk that sustained us.”

“Never shall that memory be erased from my memory! She was young, almost a child, beautiful and pale. He said to her with tenderness:—Why do you weep?—Forgive this involuntary feeling of egoism—she responded, wiping away a tear;—I weep for myself. I weep for the life that is fleeing from me: when the sky is crowned with rays of light, and the earth is dressed in greenery and flowers, and the wind brings perfumes and bird songs and distant harmonies, and one loves and feels oneself beloved, life is good!—And why should you not live?—he insisted, pressing her hands, moved.—Because it is impossible. When those leaves that murmur harmoniously above our heads fall dry, I shall die too, and the wind will carry their dust and mine someday, who knows where?”

“I heard it and you heard it, and we shuddered and fell silent. We were bound to dry up! We were bound to die and spin, dragged by the whirlwinds of the wind! Mute and full of terror we remained still when night arrived. Oh! What a horrible night!”

“For the first time the enamored nightingale that enchanted her with his plaints missed his tryst.”

“Soon the birds flew off, and with them their little ones already fledged; and the nest remained alone, swinging slowly, and sad as the empty cradle of a dead child.”

“And the white butterflies and blue dragonflies fled, leaving their place to the dark insects that came to gnaw our fibers and deposit in our bosom their disgusting larvae.”

“Oh! And how we shuddered, cowering at the icy touch of the night frosts!”

“We lost our color and freshness.”

“We lost our softness and form, and what before upon touching us was like the murmur of kisses, like the whispering of lovers’ words, later turned into a harsh noise, dry, disagreeable and sad.”

“And at last we flew off, detached!”

“Trodden under the foot of the indifferent passerby, ceaselessly dragged from one point to another among dust and mire, I have deemed myself fortunate when I could rest for an instant in the deep furrow of a road.”

“I have spun without end, dragged by the turbid current, and in my long pilgrimage I saw, alone, in mourning and gloomy, contemplating with an absent gaze the passing waters and the dry leaves that marked their movement, one of the two lovers whose words made us foreshadow death.”

“She too detached herself from life and perchance will sleep in a recent grave, over which I stopped for a moment!”

“Alas! She sleeps and rests at last; but we, when shall we finish this long journey?...”

“Never!... Now the wind that let us rest a moment begins to blow again, and I already feel myself shudder to rise from the earth and continue with it. Farewell, sister!”

“Farewell!”

The air that had remained silent for a moment whistled, and the leaves rose in a confused whirlwind, losing themselves in the distance among the shades of the night.

And I thought then something that I cannot remember, and which, even if I remembered it, I should find no words to tell.