(75) The abracadabrante story of Mooon Child

— Please, be silent…
— Why so?
— Because he is moving forward… there before us.
— Who then?
— The little prince of wood shavings… a wooden traveler caught among ropes and sawdust… Look at him… he seems like a child lost backstage within a storm.
— Ah… yes… I see him now. The tiny knight entangled in the whiskers of the wind! That poor creature climbs as though he feared disturbing even the slightest sigh that pushes him onward.
— And yet the one whose nose points before him like a thought hesitating to become a sword… advances bravely.
— That is precisely what troubles me. Truly weak creatures usually fall at the very first jolt. He wavers… then begins again. As though something were always calling him higher through this labyrinth of beams and sails.
— One would say he is crossing a shipwrecked dream rather than an old exhausted vessel!
— He no doubt ignores that we are observing him.
— I am not so certain of that.
— You believe so?
— Creatures of his kind sometimes possess strange sensitivities. They see nothing… often fall at the very first rolling motion! But this one… ah! this one bends, wavers, trembles through all his wood… then sets out again… and yet something within him, as within them, turns toward the gaze resting upon them.
— Beings of his sort sometimes look with eyes that are not in their faces.
— In any case his nose seems to search for the path before he does.
— Yes… like a blind man’s cane stretched into the darkness ahead of his body.
— A singular figure indeed.
— Be careful with that word, if you please. Figures sometimes harbor slow inner revolts.
— You speak as though this puppet were more than a puppet.
— Perhaps that is precisely it… perhaps he is beginning to become so.
— That is a very obscure sentence.
— Everything becomes obscure when a manufactured creature begins listening and tiring the strings that hold it.
— Here you are… becoming metaphysical as well!
— No, alas… merely worried.
— Worried? About what then?
— About what he produces around him.
— Yet he fights no one.
— Precisely.
— I understand you only halfway.
— Those who fight falsehood head-on often grant it a gigantic importance. They sometimes resemble it more than they themselves suspect. He acts differently.
— Meaning?
— He moves forward with a kind of luminous modesty… and suddenly certain words become more difficult to pronounce near him.
— Ah…
— Yes. Look carefully.
— Now that you mention it… everything seems changed around that little being.
— There…
— And yet he barely speaks.
— Certain presences speak more than entire tribunals.
— Do you think it comes from his famous nose?
— Only partly.
— Explain yourself, if you please.
— That nose threatens no one. It points at no guilty soul like a raised weapon. No… it suffers rather. It lengthens whenever words cease to possess a true dwelling within those who utter them.
— Oh… how beautifully said that seems to me… yet what a strange curse…
— Or what a strange fidelity!
— So he does not pursue falsehood?
— No… he seeks something else.
— What then?
— A habitable speech. A speech that does not force the one who speaks it to betray himself.
— That becomes almost painful to hear.
— Perhaps because we too are concerned by it.
— We?
— Naturally.
— Come now! We are nothing but parrots.
— Precisely.
— I do not understand.
— We live through repetitions. We gather the voices fallen from men. We make them resonate through beams, curtains, the dark heights of the theater… but since he began moving beneath those sails, something troubles me.
— What then?
— Certain phrases now refuse to return to my lips with the same innocence.
— You too?...
— Yes.
— That is highly embarrassing.
— Highly embarrassing… and perhaps very beautiful.
— As though words suddenly demanded more than their mere repetition?
— Exactly.
— As though they wished to be inhabited before being spoken?
— You see perfectly well that you understand completely.
— Then that little puppet…
— Yes?
— He transforms us as well.
— I fear so.
— Or I hope so.
— Perhaps both at once.
— What a singular adventure for simple parrots…
— You cannot imagine how true that is… perhaps simple parrots exist no more than simple marionettes do…