Abandon

Henri Pourrat: The stupid beggar (The Treasury of the Tales. "Fairies")

“

Once upon a time there was a traveller passing through the mountain. As he wanted to take a shortcut, he left a footpath to take another one and so on. Finally, he did not really know which path to take.

He was walking on the pasture, in the middle of a heathland, when he saw an old man, a beggar, who was sitting on a stone and eating a piece of bread.

“- Tell me, my good man, if I'm still going by there, will I arrive at Le Monastier?
- Don't know, sir.
- Is that a path I see over there, towards these three trees?
- Don't know, sir.
- That seems well to be one. Then, where does it lead to?
- Don't know, sir.
- Don't know, don't know... But, well, you must know where you are, here? Yes, tell me, where are we?
- Don't know, sir.
- Well, my poor fellow, I believe one thing: that you are nothing but an animal, a stupid animal.
- That may be so, sir, but so stupid an animal I may be, I come from where it happened to be, I go where the wind leads me, and my way, I still haven't lost it.”

A traveller is running from a place to another one, following tracks. He knows where he comes from, where he goes, where he is, until the moment when, perhaps in a hurry, he takes a shortcut, gets lost in a labyrinth of paths without exit, and ends up wandering, at the mercy of his anxious look.

A beggar is eating and resting, quietly. His way is a point of space and time which does not leave any trace: here and now. Without other place than himself, without other time than the very moment, he never gets lost.

Lost in the interval of a starting place and a place of arrival, a past and a future, mislaid out of the “beaten tracks”, the traveller touches another world, another time but, too busy running after a knowledge which has escaped him, he sees there nothing but a dead end and makes there only one short stopover.

The one who knows follows tracks; if he deviates from his way, his knowledge, he falls into ignorance and fright; then his search starts.

The one who does not know roams; without anything to seek, without asking, without feeling the least tension which would order a search, driven by a desire without object, not even a desire to be, he walks on like an adventurer without adventures, abandoned to here and now.