(147) The abracadabrante story of Child Moon

"I shall tell what I did, what I thought, what I was. I have concealed nothing evil, added nothing good; and if I have occasionally employed some harmless embellishment, it has never been for any purpose other than to fill a void occasioned by the failure of my memory."

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Confessions

Where, little by little, the two parrots cease to regard memory as a chest whose contents must be preserved intact... They begin instead to see it as a theatre in which absence itself takes part in the performance.

— Do you recall... long ago... that time when we made a profession of stillness, perched upon that rope stretched between the two columns, while the heavy velvet curtains hanging behind us seemed to keep the theatre itself suspended within a breath it endlessly postponed?

(See: March 23, 2026.)

— There are images that pursue one through every age... as though, instead of truly disappearing, they returned to us in episodes entirely distinct from one another... You speak of hours to which I still refuse the right to give the full name of the past.
— That, indeed, is an answer after my own heart.
— You reassure me... I feared it might rather trouble you.
— It is the words that fail to trouble me which concern me most.
— Then you would prefer paths that hesitate?
— They possess the exquisite courtesy of allowing the traveller time enough to become the one who walks.
— It was only recently...
— ...or a very long time ago.
— Thank you for that correction. This tale treats time with a carelessness I sometimes envy.
— Indeed, it owns no clock.
— It shows... without a watch.
— In those days... you were still questioning me.
— I confess I possessed that audacity.
— You asked me... whether my memory was sound: When shall we know whether what we see and hear is true?
— Permit me...
— I am listening most attentively.
— That was not, strictly speaking, the question.
— You still insist on correcting me?
— With a fidelity I never imagined myself capable of.
— And yet we have spent many seasons circling around this very question.
— Precisely. You see, after circling it so long, I no longer believe it occupies the true centre.
— Ah?
— It seems to me that it is we who have changed circles.
— You will grant that the distinction is not without importance.
— Nuances are matters of the utmost seriousness.
— Even colours spend their entire existence trying to reach them...
— ...or trying not to lose themselves within them.
— Then our subject remains bottomless.
— I should say even more than that...
— Pray do.
— It possesses the singular courtesy of abysses.
— Meaning?
— The nearer one believes oneself to be, the more gracefully they withdraw.
— That would explain your slowness.
— Notwithstanding the sarcasm... I hope.
— Why do you hope so?
— Because truths willing to arrive too readily have always struck me as suspiciously familiar.
— You have become remarkably demanding.
— The neighbourhood of questions occasionally produces that inconvenience...
— ...or that privilege.
— The two words, inconvenience and privilege... whether singular or plural... are they not cousins?
— Courtesy alone would suggest introducing them to one another.
— Perhaps they are acquainted already.
At that moment, for some unknown reason—which is exceedingly rare—the two parrots fall silent together.



— Look...
— What, precisely, am I expected to see?
— Nothing that has not been seen before.
— The columns remain.
— With a dignity I sometimes envy.
— The curtains remain as well.
— They continue, with admirable devotion, to conceal what they themselves do not know.
— As for that rope...
— Ah... my dear sir... why must we always return to it?
— Perhaps because it has never truly left us.
— You are remarkably willing to grant memory to things.
— And you, my dear sir, far too reluctant.
— Do you really think so?
— Look at it.
— That is exactly what I am attempting to do.
— No... try looking at it as we once did.
— I fear I have forgotten how.
— We forgot together.
— That consoles me... at least in part.
— Some consolations are finer for being incomplete; they leave a place into which hope may still enter.
— You mean him.
— Did I pronounce his name?
— No.
— Yet you heard it.
— I did indeed.
— Curious, is it not?
— I am no longer entirely certain that it is.
— Explain yourself... or rather... grant me the favour of accompanying me a few steps farther. I glimpse your thought as one catches sight, between two trees, of a light that promises a clearing without yet revealing it.
— I have no intention of leading you there.
— Indeed?
— I should much rather that we lose ourselves there together.
— A proposal whose elegance rivals its imprudence.
— True journeys scarcely acknowledge such distinctions.
— Then...
— Then, when I contemplate that rope, it is not first of all the one who rested upon it that comes to mind.
— Truly?
— No.
— Whom, then?
— The ones we ourselves were as we watched him sleeping.
— Tell me...
— Yes?
— For several moments now I have been trying to find a name for the uneasiness that held me back.
— Have you found one?
— I believe so.
— I await this baptism with curiosity.
— It is not his absence that remains suspended between these two columns...
— Go on...
— It is our former gaze.
— Our former gaze... there is an enigma indeed...
— Yes. It seems to me that it is still waiting for us, with a patience of which I should be incapable.
— That is why this place strikes me as so strangely faithful.
— Nothing here asks for our memory.
— And yet everything here teaches it to us.
— Do you think he knew?
— Who?
— The one whose name we avoid with such careful application.
— You mean...
— Yes?
— I do not know what he knew.
— Then what do you know?
— That he possessed the rare gift of leaving a place without ever abandoning it.
— That sounds as much like an enigma as a paradox.
— No.
— No? What else could it resemble?
— A meeting.
— And... a meeting... between whom?
— Between the one who awakens... and the one who discovers—much later, it is true—that he was still asleep.
(They remain silent. For a long while.)
— Tell me...
— I am listening.
— And what if, long ago, we had been mistaken?
— About what?
— We believed we were seeking the truth.
— We did... and we still are.
— Perhaps it expected nothing of the sort.
— Then what did truth desire?
— Simply... that we should finally become capable of asking the question it had been waiting for us to ask since the very beginning.
— Do you believe that forgetting betrays memory?
— Not in the least.
— Then what does it do?
— It prepares within memory a space where, when it returns, it may become no longer merely a recollection, but an encounter.