The Magic Mountain

Preamble                                                                                                

In and around 1492, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella sat confidently on their respective thrones in a castle in Castille,  Spain. Having successfully routed the African Moors in their final stronghold in Granada, the royal couple found themselves suddenly pushed into the political and social spotlight of Europe.  A military victory, that attracted not only the love and admiration of Christian Europe but also an alleged Jew, Christopher Columbus.  Columbus was by now having a most unsuccessful year or two selling his planned expedition to India and the Far East and was feeling slightly downtrodden as he entered the Great Hall.

The  King and Queen were made aware of the navigator’s plan by the neighboring kingdom of Portugal and was inclined to dismiss Columbus except for his uncanny ability to maintain a flicker of optimism in the face of gloomy disappointments. on his third meeting with the Spanish monarchy, Colombus, now forty,  bowed to the crown and was invited to plead his case for the final time.

Like all of Europe at that time, both Christian and Pagan, the fact that the world was round was hardly accepted even among royalty, which must have made Columbus’s task that much more difficult. The seaman Columbus, who was undoubtedly a salesman in the making, pressed his case using a series of complex maps. on a grand oak table, Columbus carefully unwrapped a crude portrait of the globe with lines and numbers drawn unto its surface that he poured over alongside his mesmerized hosts.

 And so, the winds of hope began to blow in Columbus’s favor, even against the stiff admonition of the court’s learned advisors.  They knew better and had called into question Columbus’s gross misjudgment of the distance that a ship would have to circumnavigate via a Westerly route with the intention of landing in the Far East.  Fortunately, Columbus won the day, and with no time to waste, he would set sail with a crew of ninety men and three ships—the  Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria—which, after sixty days, sighted land off the coast of Bahamas in the Caribbean Sea.  Lost and confused as to his actual location,  Colombus remained convinced  until the end of his days that he had landed in  India, and so named the string of islands  in the Caribbean Sea West India or better known as  the  West Indies.

Part1

In primary schools on our little island, Colombus was portrayed as a great man and hero, that landed him many, many miles away from his planned destination. Our textbooks in particular, which were published and imported from England—became the first official source of misinformation, concealing not only Columbus’s incompetence but also the true devastation caused by his arrival in the New World. The images from the text, nevertheless, portrayed an  accommodating and  fatherly Columbus that towered over the indigenous people, who had greeted him on the beach. Meanwhile, the mostly naked Indigenous people wearing shields made of goat skins and spears that concealed their modesty—appeared uncivilized next to the white man in tights and a hanging red cloak. That Colombus and his crew were the ones in need of civilization was something impossible for a boy like myself to see in my own colonized mindset. So much so that I learned to hate the native Caribs, whom  I had never met but was told were savages, mostly for their violent opposition against the white invaders.  The same people that would bring about the  African Trans-Atlantic slave trade in the 16^th century.

In the days and weeks following my history lesson, I day dreamed about  the  indigenous people who  might  have  once  foraged and hunted  in these very mountains that our  tiny village now rested. A world and civilization before the coming of the white man,  that  at its zenith had  built temples to their gods and ancient palaces to their  kings and princes. And perhaps still, the very spot where my father had built our house was once a graveyard for fallen warriors in internecine wars or the location of buried and forgotten treasure.

Part2                                                                                                                                                  

The desire to climb the Magic Mountain occupied my mind like a one-hundred-year-old homework assignment I had left undone.  I couldn’t shake it.  During the dry season when we went bird hunting through the mountain’s lower terrain, we often pressed our luck by gingerly stepping further uphill to its rich green topography. A world within a world inhabited by multifarious diversity of life including dazing hummingbirds, braggadocious robins,  throaty mountain frogs, the mutable iguana, vine snakes, the scavenging agouti, the manicous and the mongoose,   battalions of red and black army ants, squadrons of bees and wasps, the nocturnal ocelots and caciques, fruit-eating bats, solitary owls and far above in the tree tops the majestic white hawk with its black bill and yellow legs.

Beyond these physical aspects, mountains also held a spiritual significance which I learned in Sunday school.  In Mount Sinai, Moses received the ten commandants from the LORD, Himself. Likewise, Christ, himself,  after being baptized,  proceeded straight up into the mountain, where he prayed and fasted for forty days and forty nights. Then tempted by the devil.

The decision to climb the Magic Mountain was preceded by an unfortunate event– the untimely death of our friend Lazarus a few weeks earlier. Suddenly the quiet bliss that surrounded and protected our little village was pulled like a blanket from a sleeping child. And so, us fellas, who had spent our entire life preoccupied with cricket bats and footballs, were forced to see the harshness of this life.

  When the day came, Tar Boy, the Goose, and I were the only ones left to climb the mountain, proving the saying that many were called but few would go.  We agreed to meet by the cashew tree early that   Saturday morning– before the sun  had risen to its full strength and the clanging symphony of heavy pot spoons  against cast iron pots would ring out throughout the village like an untuned steel band orchestra.

Tar boy, the eldest of us three,  was first to arrive and had taken up a superior position with his back against the tree trunk.  Around his neck, he carried a homemade slingshot made of schools of rubber bands that when bundled together and properly calibrated could put out the lights of an adult pig or goat.

As I approached  Tar Boy, he barely looked my way but continued instead turning a small piece of bamboo he held in his mouth.

“Where is The Goose?” he asked.

 ” His mother clip he wings,”  I replied.

“Eh heh, don’t make a joke,” said Tar boy. “That boy go be late for he  owns wedding .”

I couldn’t imagine the  Goose at his wedding but this I kept to myself, as I told instead the scene I  had witnessed when  I called to the Goose from the road that morning.  As it turned out, the Gosse had a foot out the door when Mrs. Barabra,  the Goose’s mother, had caught him by the strap of the bag he had prepared for the trip, ordering him to clean the fowl coop and sweep the yard before he left.

Tar boy chucked at my bit of news, which made me glad.  For as long as I had known him, Tar boy never talked much, but spent his time studying the thing he was aiming to do shortly. Presently, he held in hand the slingshot which inspected before aiming at a passing bird.

“It goes be hell to pay,” Tar boy muttered under his breath.

I had hardly gotten to question Tar Boy as to what he was talking about by his previous statement when one of his observant eyes he previously held on his prey turned onto a flamboyant figure resembling a human peacock–it was the  Goose sprinting up the dirt road. As he got closer and closer,  it became clearer and clearer that the Goose’s outfit was chosen with a day at the beach in mind and not climbing a mountain.

  I watched Tar boy’s face for his reaction, but typical of him, he simply shook his head.

The Goose, for his part, seemed happy and even paraded a bit for us with his ultra white shorts and tank top.

“Morning,” he said at last,  “let we make haste to go  and come before that hot sun burns up meh skin.”

At this, Tar Boy, our captain,  retired his position against the tree trunk and stood to look at the Goose and me, which caused to shake his head once more. We were both outfitted in cheap Chinese rubber slippers which would surely be a problem he said.

 And even as the dust was still settling on our previous foolhardiness,  Tar boy noticed a long black object the Goose was carrying that which he, Tar boy,  first taught to be unlikely was true. At this, he exploded.

 “Is what the ass is this I seeing here.”  “Goose,  is what are you doing with that umbrella?

“Don’t make joke,” cried the Goose, “you ever watch how red skin does burn up in  the hot sun.”

“ Goose, listen nah, that umbrella in your hand going up that hill is as good as a monkey climbing a tree with both hands full,”   said Tar Boy.

“ I go handle   it meh self,” said the Goose

“Aright bossman,” said Tar Boy.

And with that said, we at last took off with  Tar Boy in front, The Goose in the middle, and me last. Not unlike Colombus and his three lost ships, I imagine.

About six hundred steps we walked before reaching our first-way point–Mrs. Beauty ominous wood house. From our vantage point, it appeared less frightful and imposing than one’s dreams but still uninviting.  Our captain hoped that we could slip by unnoticed when without notice, a keen trio of  mingy mutts—they must have smelled us– emerged with blind ferocity from their dusty lair beneath the house, charging straight towards us.  The instinct to run seemed futile and so we stood frozen as  the ravenous hounds closed in.   At this range, their yellow jaws dripped a vile spittle that became airborne with each bark.  Then as swift as the hounds came rushing forward, they were forced to heel by a great chain tied to a high house post.  Strangled by their iron leaches, the mutts bellowed a high pitch alarm that roused their Queen. With great annoyance, Mrs. Beauty opened the small window that looked over the empty yard. By this time we had ducked under the bushes, and at this safe distance, we watched her activity that resembled that of an off-duty prison guard that was rudely awakened from her sleep.  Satisfied. She spit in the wind. And upon closing the window with a hard slam  she screamed: “Hush all you kiss me ass.”

 Hearing this, the dogs retreated to their dusty hole for good.  

Part3

Like frightened goats running from the slaughter so we came to enter the pristine mountain forest. Stopping in a wide clearing, we looked up in awe at the canopy of tall trees that blocked the harsh sun and heat of the day.  The air so pure, so pristine, we began breathing as if for the first time. Then,  as if tuned into an elementary earth radio, we listened for more than a moment to the lively symphony of inconspicuous forest creatures great and small. Hypnotized thus, we had missed the battalion of army ants that had called on an attack on our stagnancy.   We fled,  and at one point I attempted to turn back to see where we had entered, which to my surprise the bush had quickly erased.

“Where to now,” I asked Tar boy.

“Up and up,” said he.

 We hadn’t gotten far when our rubber slippers came apart like bicycle tires, forcing us to walk barefeet, which wasn’t a problem for me as much as the Goose, who complained about his tender feet.

After about one hour of traveling on the path, pangs of predictable hunger arose and the decision was made that we should stop and eat. Just ahead, I noticed a large pristine white boulder that resembled an island of safety in a wild sea of vines and bush.  We scampered onto it and sat down to eat. Looking envious towards the Tar boy and the Goose’s handsome breakfasts as they ate, I felt a surge of gratitude for my mother, who had supplied me with the two small bakes that I now ate.

As it turned out: I was up early the day of the trip, which upon entering into the kitchen, found my mother kneading flour over at the kitchen table. She looked at me with curiosity.   

“I am going to tend the goats,” I said.  

“Boy, put something hot in your belly, ” she cried.” “Out there cold.”

Before I could refuse, she had placed the kettle to boil, flattened two clumps of dough into bakes then dropped them into the hot cooking oil.

The hot tea felt good running down my cold pipes,  releasing an operatic series of belches and a squeaky fart.

“I  gone,”  I said, placing the empty enamel tea cup on the counter.

 Then dashing through the kitchen door with great haste, I was half way up the road, when I heard my mother’s voice calling me home. I had forgotten the bakes.

“Take your time and walk fast,” she said, handing me the grease paper bag.

Part 4

After we had eaten, we laid on our backs like fat crabs in the scattering, cracking jokes and trading riddles.

It was  Tar Boy’s turn  when he shared this:

-The man, the lion, the goat, and the bail of grass. Here it is:

A man had a lion, a goat, and a bail of grass and must cross a river by boat. The boat can carry only the man and one item at a time across the river. .  In completing the task the man must make sure that the goat  be not left alone  with the lion, less  the lion eat the goat. Nor can he leave the goat alone with the grass, less the goat eat the grass.  How then can they cross the river without anything being eaten?

The Goose and I ran the riddle through our minds to exhaustion, hitting a mental brick wall every time.

This is real shit,” said the Goose. “If I take the bail of grass  across the river first and leave the lion with goat, the lion eat he. And when I take the lion across and  leave the goat with the grass, the greedy goat eat the grass. So, if it was up to me I done leave all they ass gone my way, said the Goose.

“ So how it go,”  pleaded the Goose.  

“My brothers  all I go say is there is more than one way to skin a cat.”

“What the ass that supposes to mean.”

“The answer to every riddle is in the riddle itself,” said Tar Boy.

Our present peace was to be interrupted once more by a second wave of attacking ants, this time over the crumbs from our breakfast.

Presently, Tar Boy mumbled something about avoiding flagging stones as the reason why we had suddenly changed course. And so, we, quite unexpectedly, entered the heart of the forest: a quagmire of thick mud, moss, dragging flies, and butterflies that lazily flopped their wings in the swampish ambiance.  From the trees high above, a lone red robin whistled the song of apprehension and alarm at our presence. Seeing it, Tar Boy calmly prepared his slingshot with a stone from his pouch, which on closer inspection was a collection of iridescent marbles.

The lofty shot disturbed a nearby cluster of leaves but missed the bird.  Somehow sensing a second shot was on its way, the bird teased poor  Tar Boy, who had prepared the thought of aiming when the bird flew off.

Not far ahead,  we discovered a mountain spring so serene that it bettered one’s dream of it.  So much so that even the thought of disturbing such peace by splashing in it seemed a minor sin to my senses. The  Goose,  on the other hand, showing no concern for such things, tossed an empty wrapper from a stick of gum into the pristine pool.  The sight of the shiny aluminum floating on the surface of the water caused a revulsion in my young soul.

“Pick it up,” I demanded.

“For what,” said the Goose, “ nobody is looking.”

I looked to Tar Boy for help, but feigning from his lost opportunity, he became pensive for some time.  And sit was up to me to explain to the Goose why we should do the right thing even when no one was looking. Realizing my point, the Goose took the end of his umbrella which he used to fish the offending litter.  After, we drank from the spring with our hands while dunking our heads under like black cowboys.

  As we pushed on, the thick blanket of treetops slowly thinned like the head of a balding man.  Without the tree tops the ground became unbearable on our naked feet, which we attempted to remedy by walking partially on our thick heels.  The top was in sight now, but not really.  Some previous climbers had taught it helpful to mark the last one hundred feet with small red flags serving as signposts, which turned out to be more anti-climactic than helpful.

“I AM THE KING OF THE WORLD,” someone shouted.

Like the first men on the moon, we walked gingerly around our new landscape. And in no time at all, it came to me that the summit was far wider and flatter than I imagined, with enough room even for a cricket pitch. Because of the momentous occasion, something overcame that it might be a good idea to give a speech to my fellow climbers.

 In a nutshell, what I attempted to relate to both Tar Boy and the Goose, who were not interested in the least with my sermon, was that climbing a mountain was an act of perseverance and overcoming obstacles both internally and externally. This of course as I said before went over the heads of my fellow climbers and friends as they now took turns identifying key landmarks including the capital ports,  meandering main roads, and the very outline and curvature of our island that we learned to draw in school. We soon discovered that our mountain was hardly unique but simply a link in a chain of mountain ranges that stretched from East to West.

Like elephants joined by tail to trunk, trunk to

tail. Closer to home,   one thousand and one galvanized roofs dazzled and simmered like warning diamonds under the blazing sun.

“I could see meh house,”  cried the Goose, giddy with excitement.

“Where,” I asked, standing shoulder to-shoulder with the Goose.

   I did my best to follow his extended arm as it pointed to objects in the distance. How did the LORD or the host of Angels ever distinguish sinners from the saved from this height?

As for me, I did manage to find my father’s house from a blotch of yellow that appeared in the distance that I took for the lemon tree behind the latrine.

 The backside of the mountain might as well have been another country. Who lived there no one knew. We were careful not to go too far but even from this distance   I heard the roar of the sea, which I was later told was all in my imagination, as the mountain range we lived on was many miles from the coast. Similarly,  my discovery of a human skull that I took to belong to the ancient tribes of our island was impossible considering such tribes inhabited the lower valley and interiors where the ability to farm and fish was accessible.

Thus satisfied with our exploration we planted a flag and carved our names on several boulders before our descent.

“Yes,” said Tar boy, “we  go reach  before twelve .”

The great force of downward pull  towards the village was bittersweet for  I knew that “wickedness… was great in the earth, and that every imagination of thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”