=1 "Cloud of Happiness"
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Cloud of Happiness
Mowgli, the guinea pig, was my daughter's small companion, and I took care of him as little as possible in order to allow her the joy of being responsible for the happiness and well-being of another living being.
They spent hours together inventing mysterious games comprehensible only to themselves. While she was not watching him he was busy using his incisors and visiting the underparts of all sort of furniture, which offered him impregnable perspectives on the different activities of the house.
There he waited for Béatrice to search for him, to find him, tease him and then hold him as high as possible above the tables, chairs and sofas of which he otherwise knew only the bottoms. He eventually landed on the most tranquil lap of the household, that of Grandmother, where my daughter dropped him in order to play other games. There he lolled and dreamed until there was a need to use his little teeth again or until Béatrice picked him up and carried him away to new adventures.
He was always glad to pass from sleep to wakefulness and from wakefulness to dream, from one scenario to another, from life to another. Baby in the cradle, lost dog, polar bear, travelling companion, bird of paradise, or Vishnu dreaming this marvellous universe – all of these roles, he could play to her great satisfaction.
The surprises caused by the extravagances of a little girl, the unexpected objects and situations with which she confronted him in no way altered his inner serenity. All that happened to him could only be a stroke of good fortune.
Even when he inadvertently entered the cage belonging to the big macaque with the leopard-teeth, the monkey did not succeed in frightening him with his menacing gestures and so resigned himself to bombarding the guinea-pig with vegetables, which Mowgli nibbled innocently.
As everything was a blessing for him, we did not at first notice his illness. Béatrice became aware of it one day as she bathed him and provoked him into play. His benevolent reactions had become the inertia of a doll. Medical care, along with much tenderness and many caresses, did not succeed in restoring his liveliness.
One morning when I returned at an unwonted hour, I found Mowgli waiting for me. He refused to remain lying down, or even standing on all four feet. His small body, on the contrary, insisted on standing upright, on his hind feet.
I held him in that position, which his ancestors had always taken to keep watch above the grass of the vast prairies.
His gaze turned towards the infinite, and Mowgli, the guinea-pig, gave himself to that which called him and which could not be other than a movement of happiness. With a shudder he abandoned his diseased body for his festive body. As a white cloud that rises above things, bordered with light, he came to cling to the great tree of paradise that I am for him.
