IN THE COOL OF THE EVENING

“The sky is bright, the night is slow in coming, time lags, life is dull, movement is languid. Beneath shimmering shadows I read and reread my books; I stroll, reminisce, ponder, wonder, yawn, doze, let myself grow old. I'm unable to find any great pleasure in this golden mediocrity despite the invitation and consolation of the poet who has given it his ear.”
—page 1, A God Strolling in the Cool of the Evening by Mário de Carvalho

These are the opening sentences of Carvalho's novel. I love them. I even love the third sentence, which introduces tension with the first two; and, those two are perfect until the third is read. These sentences—each of them—are moments that I can, do, live within.

I think of Carvalho's book whenever a soft breeze lightly rustles the leaves of the cottonwood trees near the river. Such was the case early this evening. The leaves fluttered from green to gold to green sixty feet overhead, as the child and I walked around Bradley Lake. Plenty of other people were out walking, but it still felt quiet and isolated—or, rather, I did.

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“I came upon Maximus sleeping on some pillows on a stone bench under an arbor. A pruning knife lay on the ground. His arm, resting on the edge of the bench, was moving softly back and forth to the rhythm of his heavy breathing. His head hung down over his chest, and his handsome white hair, which he wore too long, fell over his forehead. He was at peace, far removed from the world, in the land of dreams. I committed the cruelty of awakening him.”
—page 101, A God Strolling in the Cool of the Evening by Mário de Carvalho

The silence is always broken by noise. The rustling of cottonwood leaves is supplanted by a car engine shifting into a higher gear as it crosses the nearby bridge. The song of birds becomes the screaming of children at play. The gurgle of the river is swallowed by the shouting of a father at his young son. Kronos devours even the seemingly solid.

Yet, we ourselves enjoy the “cruelty of awakening” others. We swallow, stones and all, for the satisfaction of control. We gloat in our dissonance, in our triumph over the stillness.

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“A strange calm had taken over the Moorish encampments outside Tarcisis. From the walls we watched the people going from tent to tent, carts and horses moving about, confused clusters here and there, the domestic activities of hauling water and cooking something or other—we even saw arguments and altercations. They didn't seem to evince any interest at all, now, in the city; they simply stayed put. The horde was still too large, however, for us even to consider trying to wipe them out with a sortie.”
—page 196, A God Strolling in the Cool of the Evening by Mário de Carvalho

What appears calm is not so calm after all. The chaos of daily life, of the little, of the mundane and everyday, gathers energy as it rolls along. The Moorish siege of Tarcisis, at one end of the Roman Empire, is strangely “normal” and “banal” once it becomes an established part of the landscape. It would seem that we are very adaptable creatures.

I like that Carvalho so easily portrays the calm broken by the “noise” of life. It reminds me of the soft spring or summer breeze as it gently nudges the limbs and leaves of the cottonwoods. I can hear the brush of wind over the thin fabric of foliage. I can see the flash of gold amidst green—a beacon of the routine of life broken by the unexpected and then replaced by routine again.