...act I
...The sudden, strange noise echoed through the bamboo forest and
through the Bamboo Man, shaking and shattering him like the broken jug at his
feet. He began to tremble like the trees trembled in the Mountain wind. The
sound was so alien to him, so out of place and out of distant memory that at
first he could not recognize it. It had been a long time since last he heard
another human voice, not to mention a baby’s cry.
But once he
understood the sound, he knew that only one thing had to be done. Yet once he
realized where the sound came from,
he turned reluctantly toward the dark cave. Without doubt, the cries of the
child came from that yawning mouth of the earth.
He suddenly
suffered a mix of unaccustomed and very un-Bamboo-Man-like emotions: first, he became
angry that someone had abandoned a baby in the cave, but then he grew afraid of
the darkness there. A moment later he became frustrated with himself that he
felt afraid at all and before he knew it, he felt a white-hot courage well up
inside him. His wiry old legs marched his bent old body across the slippery,
pebbled threshold at the entrance to the cave.
He stuck his head
inside. The cries of the child grew louder, echoing in the blackness. If the
Bamboo Man had been in there before, he did not remember how dark it was. This
place had never known summer or lanterns, stars or sunlight. The cave only knew
haunting darkness and despair and cold.
He had only gone a few paces behind the
waterfall till the darkness immersed him and he went blind as death. He tripped
and fell flat on the rough cave floor. He looked up and saw nothing. He looked
ahead and saw nothing. He looked back and saw the bright circle of daylight and
the waterfall.
He listened and
could tell from the noise—since the crying had dwindled into a faint sniffling—that
the lost baby still lay abandoned at least a hundred paces ahead.
“Hold on, child!”
his sandpapery voice faded into the darkness as he got up and ran backward out
of the cave. He squinted in the sunlight like a newborn but he didn’t stop
running. He scampered down the pebbly threshold and he dashed past the waterfall.
He might have run past the pool if he hadn’t fallen in to it. But he got up
again in a flash and ran dripping wet through the forest, down the Mountain
toward his little hut, holding his bamboo hat to his bald head and his bamboo
cane under his arm.
The animals
looked at him with disbelief. The rabbits looked on with pride and the turtles
with envy. The bamboo whistled as he rushed past as if cheering on a sprinter.
The Bamboo Man
puffed out the words: “Morning viper, fox n’ stag, flying forest squirrel Mountain!”
Finally, he burst
breathless through the door of his little hut and scrambled across the floor to
rummage through his belongings. Peco squeaked with alarm.
“No time! It’s a
boy! A baby, Peco! Cave-baby! …Aha!” he laughed as he held aloft his bamboo
lantern. He took it along with his best blanket—not the bamboo one—and the last
of his matches, then ran back out the door. Peco thought briefly about
following the adventure, then shook her head and fell asleep again.
The Bamboo Man
flew through the forest.
“Forest,
Mountain, good viper, flying-stag, foxy squirrel morning...!” he panted as he
shambled on as fast as he could. Minutes later, the cave gaped before him. He
struck up a match, lit his bamboo lantern and, with a deep breath, plunged into
the darkness.
The tiny light of
his tiny lantern shone like an insignificant star in all the black emptiness of
the night. He could barely see the reflection of the light on the rock wall of
the cave. Nothing gleamed in the darkness. Nothing shone back to him.
He began to
descend down the hole in the earth. The Bamboo Man went some steps in and
strained his aged ears to listen. Beyond the noise of the waterfall, he heard
nothing. The sound of the baby crying had ceased. He might have gone back and
given up. After all, maybe someone else had heard the child and rescued it.
Maybe the poor creature had no need any more of a rescue or maybe it didn’t
want to be saved. But the Bamboo Man didn’t stop. He went on, though the rough
cave floor cut his bare feet.
He kept his
lantern before him, his eyes on the floor and one hand against a side of the
cave. Soon even the roar of the waterfall faded to total silence, his old
familiar dinner guest. His hair stood on end. The cave was quiet as a tomb. A
heavy feeling of dread descended upon him. Sweat like ice slithered down his
back. It became hard to breathe.
His heart began
to pound within him at the thought of how far into the cave he had come by now,
stooping at times and even crawling on his belly like a worm through the dirt.
Still he strained his ears. Still he heard nothing.
At last, he
stopped. He didn’t feel the white-hot courage in him anymore. Should he give
up? He did not know the cave like he knew the Mountain. Here he feared he could
lose himself in the close darkness and the numbing silence.
He promised
himself he would go on, through the dark and the dirt and the silence. Finally, he came to a deep chasm in the cave
floor. He crept cautiously to the edge and lifted his lantern out over it. He
couldn’t hope to see the bottom with that tiny light, nor could he see the
other side of the gap. His adventure had reached its end, the terribly ordinary
kind of end where nothing happens at all.
Feeling that it
had all been worthless, the Bamboo Man set his lantern on the cave floor and
threw himself down beside it. He was out of breath. Then he made himself think,
the way he would sit and think in his little hut down the Mountain. Time
passed.
He suddenly
raised his head and reached for the pouch of bamboo sticks he carried on his
shoulder. He pulled out the strongest shoots and bound them together with
threads he pulled from his shirt. He worked with difficulty in the darkness but
nobody was more skilled at his craft than the Bamboo Man.
Soon, he had bound three strong stems
together. These were bound to three others end to end, and those three end to
end with another three and so he had a long pole almost three times his height.
The Bamboo Man lifted the pole and got to his feet, then carefully lowered his
invention across the chasm. The end of it disappeared into the darkness but as
he let it fall, it stopped, level with his feet! He raised it and let it fall
again. It stopped again. He shuffled it about until he felt sure; he’d found
the other ledge across the chasm.
Success! But now came the really horrible
part of his plan. He took his pouch and dumped the rest of the bamboo out. He
frowned to see the finest bits touch the dirty floor as he left them behind.
Next, he twisted the empty pouch around his wrist and then tied his wrist to
the bamboo pole, the pole that lay across the chasm. Finally, he took up his
feeble lantern but realized he had to leave that behind too. This was the
hardest choice. Leaving behind that tiny light was like leaving behind the
greatest treasure of heaven. But the Bamboo Man was resolved to go on, light or
no light.
Once more, he took a deep breath. Now came
the time to leave behind the light and the old man, and to do what a man half
his age might only dare to do. He lay himself down at the edge of the chasm. He
gripped the pole as tightly as he could with his old hands and slowly, very
slowly crept across the bamboo tight rope. The pole passed across his chest and
belly and between his legs and knees. Once he had crept fully over the chasm,
he did not look down into the dead drop. He knew that if he did, he would see nothing,
but he would then certainly give up and turn back.
“And, old man,”
he told himself, “You cannot turn back.”
His brow dripped
with sweat and his aged body trembled. He was half way across. He looked and
saw his tiny lantern sitting on the safety of the floor behind him, shining. He
looked ahead and thought he could dimly see the other side. He crept further
still. Now he was sure he could see the edge.
He had crept
almost to an arm’s reach from the other side when something hot and hairy
blasted past his face. He shrieked and started, causing the bamboo pole to
creak and bounce. When he finally dared to open his eyes, he saw perched before
him the fattest, ugliest bat he had ever seen. It had a gnarled face and a nose
like the roots of trees, and ears like the horns of the devil. Was that a trail
of dark blood dripping from its fangs?
“Move out of the
way, bat!” the Bamboo Man shouted, “Away! Get out!”
But the bat only
spread its monstrous wings. A stench as of corpses hit the Bamboo Man in the face.
He felt dizzy.
“I’m not going to
fall, bat. And I’m not going back,” the Bamboo Man said as firmly as he could
for a man stretched out on his belly in mid-air, suspended by nothing more than
a bundle of sticks. “Listen here, bat. You are going to move out of my way!”
But the bat only
nestled its hideous head as if it was going to fall asleep. The Bamboo Man
furiously reached for the creature with his fist and the bat swept into the
air. It swooped toward him. He felt icy claws in the flesh of his face. The
wooden pole rocked and bounced and creaked and snapped. The Bamboo Man held on
tight. His heart felt like it would burst.
When he had
caught his breath and opened his eyes, and when the bamboo pole had stopped
swaying, the Bamboo Man found that the bat had disappeared into the darkness. He
mustered his last strength and climbed across the last length of the pole. He
grabbed hold of the edge of the chasm and slowly and clumsily hauled his body
onto solid earth.
He lay there for
some minutes on his back, breathing in and out long breaths of the stale cave
air. Then he sat up and looked back across the chasm. He could see his lantern
on the other side.
Then he heard a
small noise like a very small voice. Not the voice of the wind or of silence,
but of a living soul. But where did it come from? Could a voice come from the
dust?
He turned and felt around in the darkness.
All of a sudden, his gnarled fingers touched the tender fingers of what could only
be a little baby. The old man laughed in triumph, a sound that had never been
heard in that dark cave. The darkness shivered, but the Bamboo Man gently
picked up the infant and cradled it for a moment in his arms.
“What a silly old
Bamboo Man,” he quietly chuckled at himself, “You gave yourself breakfast, but
brought none for the child.”
Just then, he
heard another small noise like a very small voice off to his left. He reached
out a knobby hand and touched the soft foot of a second baby! Then he heard a
whimper to his right and a sniffle to his left, two more babies! The Bamboo Man
spent the greater part of an hour searching that far side of the chasm until he
knew every space of it and had run up against every wall. He found a total of
ten little children in all.
“Ten children!”
the Bamboo Man gasped, “And how did they get here, naked and cold and hungry?
He never found
another tunnel leading elsewhere on that side of the chasm. It was just the
cliff: a dead-end. But he put down his curiosity at once. He knew the thing to
do was get the babies out of the cave, all of them, safely and quickly. But he
knew there could only be one way to carry them out of the darkness. He would
have to carry them one by one back across the bamboo pole he had made, back across
the deep chasm.
The Bamboo Man
acted with the utmost care. First, he re-counted all the children in the dark
and laid them in a row as far away from the edge as possible. Then he removed
the pouch he had tied around his wrist and wrapped the first little baby inside
of it. Then he strapped the pouch around his neck, making certain this knot was
the greatest knot ever tied in history. And finally, without a moment’s
hesitation, he began to crawl back along the pole, swifter than ever, the first
baby dangling from the pouch around his neck
He arrived at his
lantern in a little more than a minute and there carefully unwrapped the little
child. It was asleep. He set it as far away from the edge as possible. Then he
took up his pouch and went back for the second. Soon he crawled back for the
third and then the fourth, then the fifth and the sixth. Drenched in sweat, he
crept back for the seventh. Tired and shaking, he crossed over for the eighth.
His hands were pierced and bleeding from the wood by the time he headed back to
the ninth. Finally, he bent down to wrap up the tenth child for his tenth
journey across the gap.
But as he carried it across the pit, an all
too familiar creature flapped across his face. He smelled the stink of filth
and felt the hot breath of the creature. The bat settled down in front of him
again and hissed a challenge, unfolding its black wings. The pole was swaying
beneath the Bamboo Man. He heard the wood creaking and snapping. He did not
shut his eyes. He did not despair.
He looked the
hideous creature right in the eyes and screamed: “Out of my way! You can’t keep
what isn’t yours!” And then he punched it right in its ugly face. The thing
plummeted into the pit.
At long last, the
Bamboo Man carried the tenth child across the chasm to the safety of the other
side. He knew what to do at once. He pulled the bamboo pole over the chasm to
himself and then carefully wove both his pouch and his shirt around the pole in
such a way that he made ten little pouches in a row. He carefully placed one
child in each spot, checking and re-checking his knots and binding and threads,
until all the children sat in place. Then he grunted and wheezed, and his legs
groaned and his elbows ached as he hefted the pole up over his shoulder. Then
he straightened himself, one hand balancing the pole and the other carrying the
lantern.
In this manner,
he began to walk up out of the cave. As he ascended, he felt his grin creeping
back to his face. Soon he could hear the dull roar of the waterfall. A hundred
paces later he burst from the darkness of the cave into the red afternoon upon
the Mountain. There at the pool, he let down the pole and checked on the
children.
Still they slept,
ignorant of his sufferings, unaware of the bleeding hands and feet, the face
torn by the bat’s claws, the aching bones and pains of their savior. In the
fading light of the afternoon, he saw that each of them were boys, probably no
older than their first year. He patted their heads with his wrinkled old hands
and then lifted the pole once more upon his body.
“Just one more
path, silly old Bamboo Man,” he said aloud, “And then you shall be home to
rest.”
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~norton
