Tipang, July 12, 2019

One glimpses, behind the roofs and the modest spires, on the grassy slopes that slide toward the lake, a white gush, a powerful water. It’s a waterfall.

One wants to get there, but how? One tries a narrow path, made for walkers and scooters, through the young fields. One asks the way of men drinking coffees in a farmer’s shelter. One threads among the low houses, the hens and the chicks, the laundry drying, the small and courageous life. As we pass children hook onto us in a jingling string of tin cans. The scooter will go no further: now we must walk.

At this hour we are father and mother of nine children, joyfulnesses cackling along the trail, delighted by this unforeseen visit, excited at the mere sight of a bule. We track through the tall grasses like trembling jerboas. And suddenly the fall: it drops then terraces, digs pools from landing to landing. The children have already undressed: they jump, dive, do somersaults, then come to shiver on the rock. They watch me with their big wet eyes.

I take off my t-shirt, my pants, everything but the boxers, and I jump into the cool water, flung down the volcanic walls. The woman with me would have liked to bathe too, but a mature man turns up, holding a machete. One would want a place where there would be only lovers, children and dogs: a place where one could bathe naked without shame, kiss amid laughter and barking. One would want this place or nearly, the real or nearly, this waterfall but for one detail.

On the way back, fingers rise toward the foliage. A small barefoot boy climbs into a mango tree, agile as a monkey, and makes the small yellow-green fruits rain down. In the rice paddy a family threshes the rice plants. Hard labour that brings you back down to earth. On the road the engines rumble. In the cafés the men knock themselves out with tuak. There are the ferryboats on the lake, and the town over there. We take again the road of the terrestrial.