(...)
A light breeze under the trees. The faint noise of the grove humming lightly in the breeze. Pine scent. Yet unlike that of a few trees scattered around a garden. It is the sharp, overpowering redolence of pines stretching farther than his gaze can contain, covering all the space that is not the sea. Unable to withstand it, he lowers his body, leans his back against a tree. The breeze is not cool but hot, fragrant. Yet he does feel a certain coolness on his skin. Never forget the sea, he says to himself. He hears his voice—faint, reluctant. He needs to get used to hearing it. Even alone, he needs to get used to being heard. He needs to remember, revive, everything that the monastery called him to forget. Even if he has to live like those monks who endured the pious ordeal of solitude on this island, three hundred, four hundred years ago. Yet, their faith never wavered, whether they lived on the hilltop, in the wilderness or the desert. At least that's what people believed.
Was it so in truth? Or did the belief alone satisfy the ones who chose to stay behind in the villages or in the city, those whose lives depended on the company of others because they couldn't be weaned from the sedative of multitudes? No one knew. In the monastery, some of the hermits were transformed into legends. The power of their faith was believed to have conquered mountains, fierce beasts, the devil... Yet, there ought to have been among them more than a few who, bewildered by loneliness, mistook dreams for reality and eagerly accepted their own voice, their own shadow as signs of other, immaterial beings. How else could one explain the countless fairy-tales and legends about the monks who kept encountering the devil, battling him on mountain peaks, in the middle of deserts?
Why were people worried about the devil who was never seen in crowded cities where no one could walk without stepping on another's foot?
Andronikos thinks it is not time to pursue such questions. First he needs to survey the area, inspect, get to know his environs...
All of a sudden, it occurs to him that what the mathematicians call zero is utterly—and unexpectedly—different from all the terms he has invoked until now when thinking of nothingness. God alone was able to transform chaos into order. But humans have had to go surmount zero, by one, by two, and so on... The forest now surrounding him is zero. His task is to arrive at one, two, three, departing from this zero... To arrange one thing after another, to construe something as far as his strength, his mind, his humanity allowed...
A little while ago, he was able to resist thinking in terms of imperatives; he is determined to resist it now as well. He raises himself from the ground, looks up, and notices the trees becoming sparser on the hill. Closer to him, they seem densely clustered, where they protect one another. Perhaps he is wrong. Yet, more light seems to flow through the trees in the distance... He'll figure out when he reaches the top.
He begins to climb. The sun has risen; its rays reach him through openings among the trees. Walking eastward, he estimates that noon is three hours or so away. It is neither early nor late. But if he wants to eat and perhaps rest a while, he has to climb, descend to the shore, and climb again. There is no other way.
He tears a piece of the bread he has carried in his pocket and puts it in his mouth, but to chew it only. He would be out of breath if he ate while climbing. He must pace himself, climb neither too slowly nor too fast. He must find the rhythm, the rhythm of the climb, and match it with that of his heart, his temples, his pulse. The sin-gular, uninterrupted rhythm that God placed inside humans. Changing but uninterrupted rhythm. Interrup-tion would mean only one thing, not two.
Yet death is useless, empty. Andronikos forgets the morsel in his mouth. Death must be avoided at all cost, unless the inner rhythm falters, unless God decides to cease what He has put in motion, in which case nothing can be done. But if a mortal hand lunges at your body to choke that rhythm, then there is only one thing to do. Grab that hand, bend that wrist with all the strength you can muster, and if need be, cut it off. No hand should have a right to another’s life. Or, Andronikos thinks, you can do one other thing: what he is doing—escaping... Because he has not enough strength to bend that wrist, because he has not enough faith to help him find the strength... Escaping...
Once again conscious of the morsel in his mouth, Andronikos bites into the spongy lump swollen with saliva, feeling its unsavory warmth against his palate. The tree trunks are beautiful. Solid, dark, fragrant. They no longer remind him of candles melting in the heat. Or, for that matter, about his need to find firewood. He delights in the scabrous layers and layers of membrane-thin bark—like islets scattered among lagoons—that appear even and soft to the eye... Along the deep cracks, gleaming—though slightly cloudy—trickles of redolent resin...
He ought to think of the pine trees along with the fallen pinecones—cracked, cracking, yet to crack—along with the needles that carpet the ground. The pine is not just a tree; it’s nature all by itself, an entire life cycle between earth and sky. Scattered among the blackened, dried-out pinecones are green ones inexplicably fallen—incipient lives, interrupted dreams... As long as it is the harsh wind or sun and nothing else that causes their fall. As long as no hand reaches out to pluck them from the branches...
He considers tearing another piece of the bread, but decides to wait. It is laughable to be concerned about pinecones when wheat gets plowed, lambs are slaughtered. The pinecone, too, could be useful at times, and if you cannot find one on the ground, you pluck it. Aren’t humans supreme? Hasn’t God created everything to sustain human life? The senile notwithstanding, no one would dispute this most basic fact, Andronikos thinks. He wants to consider disputing it. He fails. Nonetheless, he has allowed the consideration to enter his mind. He closes his eyes, and wants to think of something else instead. Because if one can dispute this most basic fact, then what is left behind? Surely, there would still be no justification for humans attempting to use other humans. It’s utterly indefensible.
God did not create humans so they become each other’s playthings. True, but what if it pleases us to think otherwise, with the pride the devil has instilled in us... His temples throbbing, Andronikos realizes that he hasn’t drank water for hours. But his clay pitcher is left on the shore, inside the boat... The water in the pitcher would last him for two days or three at the most. Afterwards, it would become stale, infested. Andronikos had filled his pitcher at the well in the center of the village where he had obtained the boat. It would be difficult to ration water in this heat. He should have thought sooner about finding water. The task is clearly more important than climbing the hill. And not just water, but the wellspring Andronikos remembers reading about in a book by an ascetic monk. The gurgling wellspring described by the monk ought to be somewhere around here. Andronikos must find it in order to remain on the island...
To remain here. If he has to leave because he couldn’t find water, he will have to waste his days wandering. He will have to postpone settling some place and doing something. Not much will change, except for the place, although at this moment, he cannot think of where. Even the opposite shore seems to be fading from his view... Returning to the city would be—should be—unthinkable.
(...)
Translated by Aron Aji
Longer sample manuscript available in English 
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