He didn’t answer my question; all he said was “I’m leaving today, too.” And then, sadly, “It’s much further… It’s much more difficult.”
I realized that something extraordinary was happening. I was holding him in my arms like a little child, yet it seemed to me that he was dropping headlong into an abyss, and I could do nothing to hold him back.
His expression was very serious now, lost and remote. “I have your sheep. And I have the crate for it. And the muzzle…” And he smiled sadly.
I waited a long time. I could feel that he was reviving a little. “Little fellow, you were frightened…” Of course he was frightened!
But he laughed a little. “I’ll be much more frightened tonight…”
Once again I felt chilled by the sense of something irreparable. And I realized I couldn’t bear the thought of never hearing that laugh again. For me it was like a spring of fresh water in the desert.
“Little fellow, I want to hear you laugh again…”
But he said to me, “Tonight, it’ll be a year. My star will be just above the place where I fell last year…”
“Little fellow, it’s a bad dream, isn’t it? All this conversation with the snake and the meeting place and the star…”
But he didn’t answer my question. All he said was “The important thing is what can’t be seen…”
“Of course…”
“It’s the same as for the flower. If you love a flower that lives on a star, then it’s good, at night, to look up at the sky. All the stars are blossoming.”
“Of course…”
“It’s the same for the water. The water you gave me to drink was like music, on account of the pulley and the rope…you remember…it was good.”
“Of course…”
“At night, you’ll look up at the stars. It’s too small, where I live, for me to show you where my star is. It’s better that way. My star will be… one of the stars, for you. So you’ll like looking at all of them. They’ll all be your friends. And besides, I have a present for you.” He laughed again.
“Ah, little fellow, little fellow, I love hearing that laugh!”
“That’ll be my present. Just that…It’ll be the same as for the water.”
“What do you mean?”
“People have stars but they aren’t the same. For travelers, the stars are guides. For other people, they’re nothing but tiny lights. And for still others, for scholars, they’re problems. For my businessman, they were gold. But all those stars are silent stars. You, though, you’ll have stars like nobody else.”
“What do you mean?”
“When you look up at the sky at night, since I’ll be living on one of them, since I’ll be laughing on one of them, for you it’ll be as if all the stars are laughing. You’ll have stars that can laugh!”
And he laughed again.
“And when you’re consoled (everyone eventually is consoled), you’ll be glad you’ve known me. You’ll always be my friend. You’ll feel like laughing with me. And you’ll open your window sometimes just for the fun of it… And your friends will be amazed to see you laughing while you’re looking up at the sky. Then you’ll tell them, ‘Yes, it’s the stars; they always make me laugh!’ And they’ll think you’re crazy. It’ll be a nasty trick I played on you…”
And he laughed again.
“And it’ll be as if I had given you, instead of stars, a lot of tiny bells that know how to laugh…”
If only I also have a rose.
