RITUAL Essays - Whisper, Go, Green Bananas, Ominous Silence

In the mountains, they call it Going Beyond.The way they pronounce the Words endows the sound with a hushed finality as though the meaning had nothing to do with the syllables, the lips just a bit parted, afraid to release The Words altogether.The head is bowed during the utterance, signifying both the solemnity and the apocalyptic nature of the occasion.If you had been there then you would have see how the men, baskets of cabbages and green bananas on their backs, would meet on the muddy trail and whisper to each other.You would have understood from the contour of their lips that The Words were said; and these having been said, they would pursue their individual ways--one, perhaps, to wend his way to the Market, the other to wait by the Highway for Tourists to purchase his vegetables at a pauper's price.Women sitting on the cold bamboo benches before the village store would suddenly interrupt their conversation by an ominous silence:you knew they were thinking of The Words; they did not have to say them.In fact saying them would be only anti-climactic, because deep in their minds lurked images that could not be collapsed into a mere couple of sounds.A father queried about the whereabouts of his son would whisper The Words, raising him arms in the direction of the Mountains, and you would be a Fool if you thought he meant his son had gone away to live in another place.The raising of arms is supplementary to the meaning of the Words, at times it means more than The Words."He's gone beyond," the father would say."No, he's not dead, but he's gone beyond."Beyond is more than the physical boundaries of the Village, more than the physical boundaries of the Mountains, more than the Sea and the Sky and the Land put together.Yes.It is not Death.It is not Life.It is not Life and Death put together.You may give it any name you want, you may declare the people mad, but in the Mountains, they call it Going Beyond. "The trouble with you," Roy said, "is that you are a coward." I looked at him framed by the last glow of sunset that managed to pour through the misted windowglass.He had just arrived from the City which, from the vantage point of this far-flung [sic] Village, was on the other side of eternity.His single bag ("I like to travel light") lay beneath the army cot that stood parallel to the wall; this and the other on e I called mine touched ends to form an ell, with the two windows dotting their extremities.It was a small room, though it was room enough for me.Even in the rare event when I had an overnight visitor there was still sufficient space to spare. "The trouble with you is that you are a coward," he said again turning to me after quaffing the last drops of his drink."Imagine coming here, living here with God knows what kind of people.This is not the place for you." He walked to the table in the middle of the room to refill his glass; the moment he was embraced by the light, the single light that dangled from a single cord from the ceiling, I saw that the years had not altered him.I do not mean that he had not grown old; I mean that his soul had not changed:he was still Roy, my big brother, my friend trying to save me from distress most of which he had only imagined.Or I may be wrong.Perhaps he had changed, only I was too ensconced in my new world to notice the realities outside it. "How's Luisa?" I said.I had not moved from sitting on my cot. "She's going to have a baby.You cannot expect a woman like her to remain alone forever," Roy said. "And the man?" "She can't ask for anyone better." "I'm glad she's happy." "It's not a question of happiness," he said moving back to the window."A lot of people die not knowing they are happy.It's a question of knowing someone is there for you to turn to when you get sick of being with yourself or punching the same infernal machine day in and day out." "I did my best," I said, but my mind was groping