A sliver of moon peeks through a crack in the clouds and a person, desperate, becomes convinced for a moment that he came into the world for a purpose he has yet to discover, but the next moment again buries his head in his hands and whispers to himself, it’s hopeless.
At a height of thirty-five thousand feet, circling like a bald eagle, is death with steel wings, sensitive thermal sensors and the sentence GOD IS NOT DEAD…YET written in red spray paint on the fuselage. This is Avenger, a crewless combat plane that has been airborne for twenty-five years. Its wings bear a tonne and a half’s worth of K01-7025 Hellfire air-to-ground missiles. Without it, no story comes to an end.
You damned bull! Don’t give up now, just before the end! You will make it. I believe in you. Love is not greed. Love is not greed. I promise you. I promise
look…
…at this street and all the people in it. And this branch, floating freely in the air just an inch away from his window. In windy storms it taps lightly on the pane, as if it were seeking refuge from the weather. In rain it dresses in black and makes a silent bow to the procession of drops. The tree itself cannot be seen from here.
Look at the clash of shadows on the streetlight’s yellow canvas. Listen to the typewriter keys. The constant clacking of their teeth. That herd of wild horses galloping across an embankment of rocks. The people under the window make all sorts of sounds. They have called out all the names, summoned their children and screamed astonished greetings at people they haven’t seen in centuries, they have laughed loudly, with no choice, almost under duress, at the thousands of hostile jokes from the mouths of foreign travellers who have arrived here from the primal forests and deserts, underneath broad hats, with cracked lips, and cracked skin over their thumbs… They have dragged metal barbecue grills right out into the street. Bodies are rotating over the flames. Sweet smoke creeps through the tiny cracks between the window frame and the wall. The smell of meat halts the sound of the keys. The chair screeches when the body in it leans back. The things you do to escape trap you inside. He remembers a story about a guy in a prison cell who built a cage out of his bunk bed frame and enclosed himself within it. He was trapped under his own conditions and therefore, so he told anyone who would listen, he had made himself completely free.
It was not in vain.
The pile of typed papers in the corner of the room grows and grows. The people under the window are setting off fireworks. You can hear the whistling rockets and observe the blushing façades. It’s a holiday. The windows have been freshly washed. The cleaning lady was going on and on about an anniversary as she scrubbed with a brush, but he couldn’t make out what it was an anniversary of. Her accent was too thick and for half of the words she’d switched languages. She also scrubbed the floor and swept away the cobwebs. He didn’t have to move, he could keep right on typing as if she wasn’t there, only once having to lift his feet, which he did without much enthusiasm and without complaint. Now you can see the reflection of the fireworks in the hardwood floor.
It’s been twenty-five years since he left home to settle among the cannibals. They’re not choosy. They’ll eat anything, from memories to respect. As long he’s typing, they leave him alone. But as soon as his typewriter falls silent, they come to inquire. Girls with black hair and translucent lips swarm around his body. He’s already too old to succumb to their charms. Once they almost cost him his fingers. Back then it was a matter of courage. What has remained? The men are even more annoying. They want to know everything. Who he is, where he’s from, who his parents are, what he does. Just draw his lot from the drum and he’ll take it.
The smell of meat won’t leave him alone. His machine remains silent. He tilts his head towards the door and listens intensely, to hear whether the hardwood will groan under the steps of an intruder. The house remains silent. All of its ghosts have flocked together in the jambs of the front door, waiting to pounce on the first one to enter. The bell at the reception remains silent. Is there really no one there? With his index finger he pushes his glasses higher up on the bridge of his nose. Sweet smoke. He doesn’t want to lead anyone by the nose. In three quick steps he’s at the door, which opens to a hallway of tumescent wallpaper with a pattern of pale-pink flower buds (one floor higher, a year ago, fat Shat fell asleep in the tub with the tap running and drowned – the wallpaper separated from the walls in a display of mourning), and timidly peeks over the staircase railing to the floor below. There’s no one. He puts the inside of his wrist against his ears to convince himself time hasn’t stopped. Om. Sssk. Om. Sssk. (Try it)
He grabs the lapels of his jacket and mashes them into a ball against his chest. The fabric tightens over his shoulders and a seam creaks. He rushes to the ground floor, watched over by gazing trophies (cats, cuckoos, buffalos) hanging from the wall . All the chairs are upholstered in red velvet. All the tables are ebony and thickly layered with lacquer. Bitten by forks. The chairs have cigarette burns in them. The fan is on but is facing the wall. There’s nobody here. Stubborn, decades-old drops of blood, which have ruined the backs of generations of housewives yet remained present, lead from the common space into the kitchen, a reminder of the Battle of Gunslingers, thoroughly investigated by the police and fully covered by the contemporary press. Combat at the Union. The owner’s forefathers won. The owner’s forefathers always win. With the palm of his hand he smacks the stumpy brass bell and lets the sound eat into the air.
Melquiades was asleep under the counter. His face is just a thin sanctuary that his lips, eyes, nose and thin moustache have made for themselves in-between the spilling circles of fat. He’s surprised to see him outside his room.
‘Where is Guadalupe?’
Melquiades takes a deep breath as he comes to.
‘And how should I know where the nogoonblotter is, I was still draven dreamin’?’
‘Can you hear it?’ he asks, raising an index finger. Neither can resist looking up for a brief moment.
‘No.’
‘Silence.’
Melquiades’s shoulders droop.
‘There’s nothing I can do about it,’ he says. ‘If anyone, she should do something. I don’t mind the silence.’
‘Good. Good. Could I, please, have a glass of water?’
‘Water? That’s all you want?’
‘Water.’
Melquiades, with difficulty, raises his hand to the row of glasses hanging from their stems over the bar, and takes one out. When he turns on the tap, they hear the mellifluous strains of an orchestra. They look at each other, stunned. Melquiades turns off the tap and the orchestra falls silent.
‘Do it again.’
When he turns it on again, all they hear is the rushing of water. They are both disappointed. Melquiades places the glass under the stream. After a moment he frowns and raises it to his face.
‘What?’
‘There’s a hole.’
‘I’m waiting for…’ he says.
‘Pardon?’ says Melquiades.
‘Nothing.’
Melquiades sighs unhappily when he has to raise his hand a second time. He switches glasses and checks to see if this one is ok. He throws the one with the crack into the bin. When he runs the tap, someone whispers.
‘Rip me in half, otherwise I can’t breathe.’
Melquiades looks up.
‘Pardon?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You said something.’
‘That came from the tap.’
‘Aha. Yes, it’s quite possible, you know, the pipes are copper and very old and sometimes they snatch something out of the air.’
‘I doubt that very much.’
‘It’s true,’ says Melquiades, offended. ‘Sir, you are not going to call me a liar if I tell you that, just last week, we heard reports from the caliphate, through the tap. Can you imagine? There’s half a world between us, yet out it comes, straight from the tap.’
‘I changed my mind.’
‘You won’t have any water?’
‘No.’
Melquiades puts the glass on the bar. Guadalupe rushes through the front door with a bang and a tuft of hazel branches pressed into her palm, the street hard on her heels. She doesn’t look at them, but immediately starts rushing up the stairs.
‘Lupe! He’s here.’
The colours, smells and sounds from outside are fading away. Guadalupe swivels the figurine that is her head, purses her lips into a perfect O and cries through them.
‘Where have you been?’ asks Melquiades, his voice oozing accusation. ‘You know that sir has to write.’
‘Dolly came home all covered in blood! Manuel and Ricardo have sworn they will take revenge. I know I shouldn’t have left you alone, sir, but…the men were weeping with wounded pride.’
Melquiades whistles.
‘Serious stuff,’ he says.
Guadalupe starts coming down the stairs, with eyes fixed upon him.
The hazel branches are raised in the air, ready for the lazy one to feel the lash.
‘Are they still out there? Are they still there?’ he asks her.
‘They’re just leaving. They had to wait for Mum to go into the kitchen to get some St John’s wort for the blessing.’
All three nod.
‘And Dolly?’
‘Dolly stayed outside. She’s waiting for dinner.’
‘Damned canni—’
‘Now hold on a second, sir,’ interrupts Melquiades, underlining his sharp tone by thwacking a palm against the bar. ‘A little respect never bankrupted anyone.’
He raises in hands in apology. Guadalupe, the girl, drops the branches by her side and finds herself in a dilemma. Her black hair is tied into a ponytail from which a few strands have escaped and fallen over the right side of her face. Her slight paleness reminds one of piano keys. Tone and semitone.
‘So?’ she asks him with an impatient swing of the knee.
‘I would like to see her,’ he says.
‘Dolly?’
‘Dolores,’ he replies.
‘All right,’ nods Guadalupe. ‘You can, she’s still… Come.’
She grabs him by the arm and pulls him along. Melquiades calls out to them just before they’re swallowed by the swing of the door.
‘Shall I draw a bath for you tonight, sir?’
He and Guadalupe don’t look back.
‘Because in that case I would have to go get…’
The street chirps and whistles, smoky, full of smiles and red noses, good-hearted back-slaps, children at play, children on the breast, children in the air. When the fog swallows them, he instantly loses all sense of space. He doesn’t know where he comes from. He doesn’t know where he is. The colourful fireworks sketch different hues in the air and announce a bang that knots his stomach even when he knows it’s coming. He lets himself be pulled along, reassured at having someone in front of him.
They find Dolores inside a circle of grievers who are trying, through their cries, to wrench at least a pinch of melancholy from her. The men have already done their grieving, and now they’re hunched down at the far end of the street speaking of weightier matters.
To look at her is to look at sadness. Her stocking-cap is still stuck to her sweaty forehead. Her hair is short and getting thinner and thinner in two marked cuts over her temples. Another year and she’ll be bald. Where is her wig? Will no one ease at least some of this shame? Ashen rings surround her eyes. Tears have cut grey trenches into them. Her upper lip is curled into a sob. You could hold a party between her incisors.
‘…and he had a knife…and he held me, squished me… it hurt…it hurt a lot…and a whole freezer full of dead cats…’
She thrusts her open palm into their faces, as if she wants to stop their advance, though she merely wants to show them the scabby scratch which has deepened her lifeline, and they’re already wailing away. Guadalupe lets go so she can wipe the corners of her eyes. He uses this moment of empathy to slip away. If he’s not careful, this obscene, vulgar sadness will hang itself around his neck too. The colourful strata of fog soften the edges of everything in the street. It’s all becoming less real. He approaches the circle of men, carefully, as if by mere chance, with his eyes turned to the side and down, trying not to arouse their attention. They absently wipe away tears and try to still the bobbing of their Adam’s apples by placing a hand over the neck.
‘…they have some sort of holiday…’
‘…he went there, for sure, our dentist, Curion, saw him…’
‘…but is the zone safe? I didn’t think you could even assemble there…’
‘…you probably can’t, but nobody told them…’
‘…so why don’t we just wait? Why should we expose ourselves to danger, if…’
Ricardo (or Manuel, you can’t quite tell who’s who – they’re twins) raises his voice.
‘…because it’s a matter of honour! A matter of honour and pride! Nobody but the Perrada brothers is going to take revenge.’
They stamp their heels on the ground, and they nod, and murmur, yes-yes. There used to be three Perrada brothers before the youngest one – Doloretto – surrendered to the needs of his heart and decided to become their sister, which the other two let him do on the condition that he buy off their honour with his honour, according to a payment plan. The money that Dolores now earns is not really money.
‘…and so what are you going to do?’
‘…what do you mean, we’re going to go over there and count all his bones, from the ankles to the crown of his head…’
‘…but he’s got a knife…’
‘…there’s two of us!…two!… He can’t get both of us… we can split up!’
This puts them in a better mood. Some flee from their fates. Fates flee from some others. It’s hard to maintain a balance. It’s hard to remain impartial. It is so easy to pay attention to elsewhere. Mum is arriving at the head of a thinning procession. It seems that not everyone is interested in the affair. He never really got to know their politics. The web of demands knitted by her sons, her brothers, her fathers, seemed too complicated for a single person to follow, especially for a guest, but he could never shake off the feeling that everything might become quite clear with just a little focus. Attentiveness is a virtue, like anything else. Sometimes you have to pay for it, sometimes you can buy something with it. And what pays off? What really pays off?
hide
Her prayer is short and pithy. She silences the chatter of children rolling behind her back with a glance, then plucks a handful of dry leaves from the branch, crumbles them into powder and sprinkles it over the ground in front of their feet.
‘That you may hold on to your head, that you may hold on to our head, that you may watch over the heads of the others.’ In chorus the men rap their knuckles against their foreheads.
‘It is true,’ they say.
Without thinking, he repeats after them this gesture of community.
‘Can we go?’
Mum frames her face with her palms. She’s done her job. Manuel and Ricardo head down the street. The remaining faces are kept aglow by a feeling that transcends them. He envies them. They all know how. Slowly they blend back into the holiday. They know how. Not all at once, and not as if they really cared. For a moment they stay there, a slight twitch of the knee announcing they’re about to move, then they turn on their heels and bow their heads as if they were taking leave of something real, before disappearing into the orange smoke. Into the purple smoke. For a moment Guadalupe’s profile is traced in it (it’s already green). Her task is clear. She must find him. If he stops writing, they’ll eat him. That was the agreement.
hide
He mustn’t do it too quickly, that would attract attention. With cat-like movements he retreats to the wall, turns his face to it, and then, like a crab, slowly slips away sideways. His back makes itself sensitive to their gazes. Nobody is watching him. He holds his breath, silences his heart and silently counts the passing bricks with his lips. When he gets to the end of the street, it’s completely dark. All he can hear, off in the distance, is leather crackling in the joints of a brown-shoe quartet.
careful
The hazel branch slices through the dark and transforms the tips of his toes into a burning ball of pain. Guadalupe’s voice has grown used to a cold, commanding tone.
‘Back.’
A conspiracy of skyscrapers rises above the rooftops of human homes. The doors lock in bursts. Graffiti drips from the walls of public buildings and discomfort crawls over the empty streets. Whoever has not locked himself in is either dangerous or crazy. At night, the Third World comes knocking on the windows of dreamers. The high volume of iron bars is not in the least surprising. It’s funny, when you think that life here used to be carefree. That women in too-high heels and too-mini skirts used to traipse about, and boys used to try their luck and remain in good spirits even if they crashed and burned. Back then, there was no fear of the possibility of coming in last. Reality blithely doled out chances and kept encouraging even the biggest of losers. On the softened edges of the squares and parks people gave vent to their souls and nobody got angry at them for doing so. Teeth bared in smiles. What went wrong? Who begrudged all those people’s children?
Ricardo and Manuel do not heed the traffic signs but power straight on. Ignited by purpose. The dull eyes of vagrants follow them from dark corners where the streetlights don’t reach. For a moment their eyes flash with the passion of want, but fear chokes every move. Together the Perrada brothers weigh more than forty-seven stone and stand a shade over thirteen feet tall. They won’t put up with any crap. If someone wants something, let him come. There’s nobody. They stumble upon a pack of rats feasting on a corpse. The rats scatter. The heatwave did not spare a broken heart. The stench has emptied all the surrounding balconies. They are unfalteringly sure-footed.
The path leads them past stagnant neighbourhoods where ghosts take stock of their former lives and try to determine the moment it all went wrong, past the beach, with its black sand and abandoned amusement parks, playgrounds of defeated wills, past miles of dead asphalt. In the graveyard by the church in which the old priest Mandelbrot continues to publicly battle doubt and asthma every evening, gangs of triads are robbing graves. Ricardo and Manuel are able to remember a different world, but it’s not one they miss. Even the previous world didn’t mean much to them. People like them have the easiest time surviving. Don’t attach yourself to the world. Every subsequent one will seem even worse.
Perhaps it would be easier by train, but to get to some places you have to walk. Sometimes you have to pound the pavement, lick it with your soles, immerse yourself into space and contemplate the world rotating under your feet. Their heads are not exactly empty, but they create no extraordinary thoughts. They’re angry, but not enraged, and insulted, though not gravely so. They would never admit to being scared, although the thought of a network of machines staring, through thermally sensitive eyes and with a threat of violence, from high up in the stratosphere at the surface of the world ensuring the dispersion of the human community gives them the creeps. Sometimes a man’s spirit has to overcome the limitations of nature. That fool had better not think that he can get away without punishment. Nobody is allowed to cast magic all on his own. Especially not with their sister around.
Among the high concrete fencing, which obscures the private worlds of the solemn people, Manuel places a hand on Ricardo’s shoulder to stop him. Something has stirred in the half-darkness ahead of them. They strain their eyes to make out the alien outline and their hearts begin to beat faster. It moves towards them, its shadow growing with each step. The emerald globes reflect the cold light of the display. When they see it, they vanish from the thermal scan. Each atom in their bodies comes to a halt. They can’t risk any sudden movements. They quickly forge an agreement in thought. All dimensions of their bodies have become superfluous, so they have to bury their courage. Their calves tighten as they slowly, slowly, drop to their knees. The rough concrete surface makes their kneecaps whimper with pain, but they don’t acknowledge it. They look at the ground, straight down. They press their lips together. If it sees their teeth, their bodies will soon be tenantless, like the thousands of run-down, sucked-out buildings they have left behind. They touch the ground with their foreheads. The concrete stings imperceptibly. They spread their arms, placing their open palms on the ground. Their rumps remain in the air, unguarded. They are of this world, they say in the language of nature. They know where their place is. The tiger walks silently between them and lashes their hips with its tail.
They don’t know how much time they have spent quietly bowing down before the higher force. With bated breath they listen for whether the beast will change its mind. A window fails to contain the cry of an orgasm. The fluttering wings of pigeons spoil the silence. The rocking of the skyscrapers in the high-altitude wind fills the air with the coarse grinding of foundations against rock. They rise in tandem and fill their lungs with air. It doesn’t faze them. They’re all the more convinced that they are, in spite of everything, right. In their shred of life they have to follow their own decisions. They will not give in to dispersion. They will not allow someone else to settle behind their eyes.
They break into a run. Adrenaline pours into the space left behind by fear. They compete with each other and remain absolutely parallel. Street to street, park to park, dry hydrant to dry hydrant, everything passes and hardly gets noticed. Their steps echo louder and louder, with an ever more forceful meaning, the chopped sound reverberates off the walls and upends paper bins, they go under overpasses, over bridges, past hollow rows of petrol pumps, past watering holes for horses, the sound throwing the slaves of cardboard castles into despair, the bandits retreat from the pavements, the dealers melt into the scenery, the prostitutes finally fall silent for a moment, the night predators respectfully blink in their wake and the whole city inexorably pushes them forth into the embrace of their destiny.
When they find themselves in front of a full car park, they don’t stop. They race over the metal roofs that bend under their weight, interrupting some protracted sexual intercourse in the back seat of a black Oldsmobile. They storm into the crowd with the force of a discharge that has been building up for years. They break the membrane without effort and silent cries of complaint hang in the air, unanswered. Whatever survival instinct doesn’t move out of the way, they elbow aside. Bare curiosity cannot withstand the onrush of need. If it is justified, even the sea will part in half, not to mention a bunch of people.
Chairs have been gathered from everywhere. Worm-eaten bar stools that tilt perilously under the emaciated arses in faded jeans, plush leather sofas with spiral coils peeking through, plastic garden chairs borrowed from a thousand and one family picnics, rows of pews from abandoned religious buildings, stitched up bags filled with styrofoam… Max didn’t discriminate. He’s thrown everything he could get his hands on into this space. People are very understanding. If anything, they are mad at themselves for not having queued up earlier. Now all that is left are some strange uncomfortable-looking black cubes nobody wants to be the first to try, so they stand around them in a hesitant circle looking at them, slightly befuddled.
Anwar, Marjorie and her lover, the soldier Mus and his cohorts were invited to sit in the first row. Brian and Rupert are lurking about in the corners and surreptitiously passing around a hastily rolled joint so they won’t have to share it with anyone. Ludovico, with Semyona behind him, is standing taut as a string almost directly below the stage. The faces of the others blend into each other and play the role of shop-window mannequins. There are so many of them I won’t bother telling you who they are. For the most part, they are lovely and fetching.
Zoja is backstage with Max and the old guy, who is recovering from hypoglycaemic shock. A very shy man with a guitar has walked onto the stage, slowly, as if walking on eggshells, and now he’s playing in a way that will ensure nobody will want to do him harm. Quietly and gently.
‘So you’re a soldier, yes?’ Marjorie’s lover asks Mus, who is sitting next to him. Marjorie is on his other side, beside Anwar.
‘Well…you could say that I am, but right now I’m not here to…’
‘A soldier in uniform. I’ve never understood uniforms. Do they really work?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, are people really so stupid that they believe in uniforms?’
‘People are very receptive to things.’
‘Ha, you can say that again.’
‘People are…?’
‘Just a figure of speech. That reminds me… My father, once, when I was around ten, got an idea, yeah that’s it, that’s it, Selena, my mum’s name, that’s it, Selena, we’re going to be rich, rich, this came over him pretty much twice a year, in the morning he would get out of bed and race to his desk and start scribbling crazily over an endless stack of paper, all the while muttering, we’re gonna be rich, Selena, kids, let’s go for ice cream, and he’d take us to the first ice cream shop, Mum would of course have to pay, she worked as a cleaning lady in a building on the East Side, she’d scowl but she believed him anyway, each time, how bloody naive, and my brother and I always warmed up to his enthusiasm, we’d look at each other covertly and cross our fingers, silently mouthing his mantra, we’re going to be rich, we’re going to be rich, no more of those second-, third-, fifth-hand clothes, no more of those crappy pencil cases and those always-empty fountain pens, we’re going to be rich, hey, every six months our family moved up ten floors, for a week, you know, before once again having to move down, down, down, and it was back to Father’s sunken cheeks, back to Mum’s disappointment, which she was actually great at hiding, but the things that she desperately clutched in her fists then lay around the flat broken and bent, their broken form clearly saying what was going through her head, and I was not attentive enough to get it then, but my brother was starting to cotton on to what it all meant, well, what I was saying, that particular time he got the idea of selling uniforms to people around the world, I can clearly remember his lofty airs, the solemn words he spoke, there are thousands of us, millions like us that have been let down by the nation states and let down by corporations, and we don’t have religions, and we don’t have traditions, but we’re still alive, every man in his own way…’
Anwar leans forwards and listens more carefully. Mus raises his eyebrows in an attempt to show compassion. Marjorie runs her hand over her lover’s taut chest, which is rising and falling in an excited rhythm.
‘…and all these people, all these people will buy uniforms and stand together and show themselves to the world, hey, here we are, don’t think we’re all alone, each for himself, there is strength in unity, and then he’d rattle off political slogans so old they were already worn out to transparency after being shouted out loud so many times, but back then I still didn’t know that, and it all seemed so interesting and wonderful and in any case I had never before seen Father so, almost, yes, strong, strong or something, I was seeing him like that for the first time, and it impressed itself on me like an immensely important thing, we’re going to be rich, we’re going to be rich, because Father had finally come up with something smart, how easy it is to get a child to believe you, well, and then, once again, he took out a loan and bought acres of material and hired a Chinese seamstress, a neighbour, her family was even worse off than we were, and she slaved over that pile of black uniforms for two months, while he was busy writing philosophical advertisements, building a brand, he told us, I’m building a brand, and I knew brands only from cigarettes and it all seemed strange to me, Mum just headed obliviously off to work, and it all stopped having any effect on my brother, and he again started going out and not coming home until morning, although he was – how old? – barely fourteen, well, and, of course, when Father went out into the world to sell his wisdom and his uniforms I waited at home for him, breathless, and when he finally came back, not having sold a single one and not having found a single person who was willing to listen to him, he wasn’t even ashamed! It didn’t work out, he’d tell us. Mum almost fainted because who was it that would have to get us out of the hole? She, who else? But Father, without an ounce of shame, went back to the desk, scribbled, and half a year later, something new, what do I know, wait, let me remember, some system for more efficient mail delivery, a reform of the toll stations, all asinine of course but soon, again, we’re going to be rich, ice cream, and so forth and so forth, but now I don’t know whether I was so angry at him because he never made it, or whether I was angry at him because he managed to get my hopes up every single time.’
Anwar weighs whether to tell him that he thinks he’s just met his father in the car park. Mus presses his lips together and nods indulgently.
‘I don’t think the idea of uniforms is all that bad,’ says Marjorie, which, against all expectation, pleases her lover.
‘Ok, yeah, the idea, maybe the idea is doable, but, you know, people! Not to mention all the obstacles that your brain itself sets up, so you have to fight with your own physicality, with dopamine receptors, with pride, with will, not to mention family expectations and the fact that your demands also have to reach others, and let’s not even talk about all those system structures grinding away on their own, about the thousands of petty resentments, about the disharmony between space and time, about the conspiracy of the whole bloody universe working against you, how hard it is to even get up in the morning, let alone to organize things your way on this planet of apes, and let’s just give it a rest with this lousy illusion of freedom… An idea is not enough. Father had no clue that he had to compete not only with the state and the corporation and religion and tradition, but also with football clubs, strip clubs, alcohol, with a thousand and one feelings of inadequacy, with the collapse of entire layers of hopes and dreams, with gambling, with Tetris, with human evil and to the exact same degree with human kindness, with the daily, constant, all-encompassing lowering of standards, that he ultimately had to compete with poetry… Well, I don’t know. Only complete loonies are not paralysed by the world.’
Anwar bellows, ‘If that were true, we’d still be living in caves!’, and a few people listening to the music whisper a fierce shhhh. He lowers his voice and continues.
‘Look, I don’t know you, I don’t know your story, although you keep trying to tell it to us, and I can’t cross that abyss between you and me, but I’m old enough and I’ve experienced enough to tell you this. Your father’s defeats are not your defeats. Fuck, even your defeats are not really your defeats. And all this drama about a paralysing world is just a miserable flight from yourself. I can confirm, from first-hand experience, that you will know exactly when the world really makes it impossible, when it ties you up and won’t let you breathe, closes off all exits and just takes it all out on your fate… And only then, at that moment, will you clearly hear the voice of God: you have been given knowledge of the real value of freedom. Freedom is not the at-will manipulation of facts. Freedom is a moment of peace.’
Marjorie’s lover won’t give in.
‘Maybe we’ll have to go back to the caves. Maybe all this civilization was just a brief respite from the truth. A lie borrowed from the future.’
‘But why the hell do you seem so satisfied with that being true?’
Shhhh.
Sincerity is contagious. Mus places a fragile hand on the young lover’s beefy thigh.
‘I’m sorry, I don’t know… But, can I tell you… Well, it’s all the same… Still, can I tell you something?’
He doesn’t answer. He turns his head towards him and cocks his right eyebrow.
‘You said… What did you say? That back then your father seemed strong. I understand what you’re talking about. I don’t know how to start, basically. Um… Yeah. A strong father.’ A nervous laugh. ‘I come from a different place. I won’t go on and on about it, but, yeah, it’s very different. Time flows more slowly. People are…different. I’m not so good with words. What I want to say is… My father is very strong. He always was. My grandfather, for example, isn’t and I know that too, but for all his many faults, it was always easier to hang out with him. Maybe it shifts from generation to generation. Maybe my son, if I ever have one, will also be a hard man. I’m not. Maybe that’s why you’re a hard man. I don’t know. I don’t know you. But, just now when you were talking about it, it made me think of… Where I’m from, my family is practically an institution. They’ve been there for, oh, so long. Ever since… God knows when, I’m not so good at history, just the bits I got from older people. But a long time ago. And that shows on people, I can’t say it doesn’t. They grow sort of, like, in accord with things. They grow into old clothes. I don’t know if you’re following. But, you know, while we’re on the topic… they grow into uniforms. They adapt to them, like they were special to them. And that’s all well and good. But, my experience, you know, has taught me that things aren’t always the way they seem. Have you ever seen Japanese watermelons?’
‘Watermelons?’
‘You know what watermelons are?’
‘Of course I know.’
‘Well, I thought of them because…watermelon transporters in Japan used to be extremely bothered by the fact that watermelons are round, since they took up too much space in shipping, more than they actually deserved.’
A nervous laugh. ‘So they found a solution. When watermelons are still really small, they stick them into square boxes, and then when they grow, they reach the edges and can’t grow any wider, they fill every inch of every corner, so that in the end they’re nice and square and ready for the lorry, even if it’s not in their nature. Do you understand?’
‘I understand.’
‘Now, I don’t know if any watermelon exists that simply doesn’t give in, breaks the box and, all strong and round, flexes its round muscles in the gardener’s face… There probably aren’t any like that, but I’ve always asked myself what happens to those that don’t even reach the edge. That chill out in the box, stay small, and nevertheless manage to keep their roundness. I’ve complicated things a bit…’
‘No, no, I’m following.’
‘People are just different, that’s want I want to say. And we just don’t fit into some of those uniforms that float down to us from above. In such cases strong fathers don’t help. Of course, that doesn’t stop them, because it’s not in their nature to leave anything alone. Especially if they have clear expectations and if experience has taught them that reality is at their service. Strong people don’t understand freedom like you, you know?’ This is for Anwar, who is beginning to bristle. ‘And where does all this lead? If the watermelon has reached its limit, there’s no force in the world that will push it farther. Any efforts in that direction turn into the usual barbarity. The crazy gardeners can then bother them for years, can badmouth them, abuse them with their hands, they can flatter, try to bribe, they can tattoo their will in big fat letters on the arse, and what will they achieve? Nothing. And when I was listening to you, I had to think… What if our lives are just a long experiment to find out whether or not we manage, in spite of everything, to sew our own uniform? My father went the well-trodden way. Your dad at least tried.’
‘Bold words from someone wearing a soldier’s uniform.’
‘I’m still sewing.’
When Anwar leans back, the back of his chair sags slightly and the sensation of falling fills his stomach. He quickly levels himself and exhales to let out the weight of the world.
‘Oh, boys. Anyone who is twenty and doesn’t believe in a better world needs a heart. Anyone who is forty and still believes in it, needs a head. But I don’t want to lecture you. Sew, sew away. For as long as you can. But watch that you don’t find yourselves all sewed up. Every stitch costs something. And unstitching becomes more and more difficult. There are no instructions. No path is the right one. Sometimes hatred leads you into a trap. Sometimes love does. Sometimes good intentions, sometimes bad ones. I finally went down on my knees when the Sherdedovs killed my father and sisters. Maybe that’s the easiest path…but, you know, today I can’t say that I regret it. It’s hard to renounce courage and hope, and may you never have to. Maybe a few lucky ones really will manage to get through everything, through life, with their sense of control intact. But those who will fail – who will realize that they’re desperately clutching sand. Who will then unclasp their fists…’
He covers his mouth and shuts his eyes. Mus stares at the floor. He’s embarrassed and he doesn’t quite know why. Marjorie’s lover runs a hand over her shoulder and pulls her closer. It’s hard to shake off the feeling that he’s achieved some sort of tiny victory, but it would be in horribly poor taste to celebrate it. He focuses on her warmth. He’s satisfied, somehow, with her. Zoja’s leg peeks out from an enclosure at the edge of the stage. Excitement charges the air. That’s what they came here for. That’s why they risked it.
Marjorie allows herself a smile.
‘And I never even knew my father.’
A string breaks. Cries of indignation can be heard coming from outside.
‘You remind me of my papa,’ Semyona whispers in Ludovico’s ear, while he is angrily furrowing his brow and gathering courage for the most radical act of his life.
I am your cruelty. Your drive for the ugly. Your constant restlessness.
Zoja walks onto the stage. Applause envelops her. Whistles. Warm, voracious cries.
‘You have the same smell. Of freshly skinned pelt, don’t ask where I know that smell from, mixed with the sweat of exhausted people, the sweat of tortured people, the sweat of people on their deathbeds. Don’t ask…’
Her movements are so common, almost vulgar in their ordinariness. As if she moved that way every day. In the morning that’s how she heads into the bathroom and that’s how she goes to answer the door.
I’m the one who pushes your head to the ground at night. I’m the one who drags you back into the cave when you would like to raise your fist in a display of never-fought-for victory. ‘And you both hold your shoulders the same way. I could play lullabies on your tendons. But you take pains to make sure that it’s only obvious to the touch. You’re very careful about how things look. You are both hiding something. Right? What are you hiding?’
She clears her throat, which doesn’t strike anyone as strange. It becomes a part of her, her cough, a completely human concern. What right does she have to something like that? And then she just smiles.
‘Mmm?’
I am despair cast over the service station of your aimless wandering. I roll you up without warning. I splice myself into you, between consciousness and cognition. I am a dark thing. Dark.
‘You both have completely shaved heads. What does that mean? Papa, I never dared to ask him. He’d always been like that, ever since I could remember. And he kept his old pictures of himself hidden away from me. I can’t even imagine him with hair. But if he had it, it must have been long. And yours? Did you ever have long hair? Before you shaved it off?’
I am everything that you have, but don’t want, and all of what you don’t have, but would like. I am the heir of the unelected.
She draws in oxygen and lets carbon dioxide escape from her lungs, through her vocal chords, and into the metal microphone, where it is converted into electric signals and whisked through black cables into the quivering diaphragms of the speakers nailed to the walls, and these then shake the air her way. She laughs and her laughter emerges broad, rough, tremendous. Ludovico shows his teeth.
Semyona puts her hand under his tunic and gently prods at his emaciated ribs.
‘But Papa was chunky. You are…you’re so skinny. Why are you so skinny? Doesn’t Mummy give you anything to eat?’
Ludovico pushes away her encroaching hand. I am the prey of shadows. Your isolation, your disintegration. Her words lick the midget ears of those seated around. Ludovico is trying to catch her eye. He doesn’t know whether she can even see him, gazing as she is at the bulb of the spotlight. That irritates him utterly.
I am the real thing. You in your worst moments. When you want to kill, I’m with you. When you rejoice at misfortune, I’m in your hidden smile. When you hate a stranger, I’m in your bitter gaze. When you are making sweet love to all your addictions, it’s me whispering in your ear more. More. When you take off your cloak of kindness, when you seize the whip of your selfishness, when you would like to put your pain into flesh and word, at that time I am by far, far the kindest.
‘What is she doing?’
Semyona pulls down the edge of the tunic. On Ludovico’s shoulder blade a corner of a tattoo appears.
Zoja has undone her bra and in a carefree movement whipped off her shirt. She went on stage barefoot. She’s in denim shorts. Nothing else. What is she doing? Why is she doing that? The people are breathless. They did not expect such disclosure. She covers her breasts with an arm. What is it that her face is trying to tell us? Is it cold? No courage. No fear. Not a single thought-through emotion. Ludovico’s muscles tense up. Semyona is hanging on to the tunic, moving slowly, inch by inch. Ludovico’s hand slips behind the fabric over his belly and reaches down to the inside of his thigh where he has taped a knife. He feels its steel against his wrist. A little higher, the loose touch of his castrated sex. Her face looks so damned charitable. He wraps his palm around the handle, grips it and pulls.
Show me your back, if you dare. I’m a monster on a stake-out. Zoja turns around and the shock that the audience had till now found attractive disappears. We have created a world that was not created for us. Her back is an orgy of hacked-up flesh. The scars have accumulated, overtaking each other in long furrows, the torturous pulls of drunken ploughing cattle. If she managed to get through that, think of everything you, you, sheltered people can do. And Zoja doesn’t consider it the price of presence. Suffering can’t buy anything, suffering only increases the value of beauty. Those who never put a price on the most valuable things will always find buyers. That’s why they’re here, all these people. They came without being forced. Fine people, constantly on the lookout for the source of beauty. Like moths to a flame.
That offends Ludovico. Nobody has suffered more than he has suffered. He has a monopoly on pain and he can’t bear to see it given away so freely. Is nothing sacred any more? Is there anything they won’t throw to these gluttons? Did he suffer all those days for nothing? And his life, his shredded life, will he just let them take away everything he spent years clutching to his heart? Were all those cats sacrificed to uncaring deities? He was the only one facing the storms. The only one devouring anxiety. The only one kicked in every last soft wet rag of his body by the passing of time. And that bloody criminal up there now wants to offer these things to everyone for free?
I am the rage of the one who was scammed.
Even Semyona, who has seen the ugliest of things, is shocked at Zoja’s back. She leaves Ludovico’s alone. What’s a simple tattoo compared to this butchered skin?
‘That woman must have seriously insulted someone.’
Ludovico’s very bones glow.
I am the wrath of the universe. A tempest of gravity. I’m a black hole, a magnet of galaxies. I am a quantum Gatling gun, the tomb of stars. Light doesn’t dare approach me, I drink up all light. I am the greed, the gluttony of all things. I am primeval, elemental, the Pre-prophetic!’
Quietly, silently, though he is yelling at the top of his voice, he climbs on stage and, knife in hand, makes for her.
‘I’ve got terrible stage fright,’ the guitarist says and squeezes the neck of his guitar like he’s strangling a duck.
‘Why?’ asks Zoja.
‘I’ve never seen a crowd like this.’
Standing by the stage exit, he fixes one eye on the audience and then immediately looks away. His whole body shivers. Zoja takes a step towards him and to him this feels like a tacit threat. He’d like to concentrate on the music, on its autonomy, its independence from the instrument, on its effect, and not think of its cause, its human origin, which is why Zoja’s body – which from his perspective is growing bigger and bigger – unsettles him.
Max smiles benevolently at the old man who is resting in the only armchair they have backstage, his legs stretched out over the velvet edges, his arms dangling, his palms facing upwards, and giving the air of a man who has cheated death. His face gradually turns the colour of living skin. He’s utterly calm. He keeps watch over the situation through slowly rotating eyeballs. His breathing is deep and steady. Now is not the time for rushing.
Zoja is by the guitarist’s side. She takes him by the upper arm, then envelops his hand in hers and squeezes his electric response.
‘Don’t be afraid,’ says Zoja. His lips form a frown, he looks down and exhales sharply.
‘Don’t be afraid,’ she repeats. ‘There used to be no end to the crowds. These few hundred people are a drop in the ocean compared to the intertwined bodies that used to flock to see far more awful things. Nobody has come to judge. They’ve come because they’re lonely. Because they’re afraid nobody understands them. Because they have it hard.’
‘That doesn’t really help me much,’ he says softly, pale in the face. ‘My music is just sound. It can’t do anything for anyone.’
‘There are no demands here. They’ve just come to convince themselves that somebody, anybody actually still believes.’
‘I don’t know whether I believe.’
‘It’s not your job to believe for them.’
‘But when you said…’
‘You just have to do your magic.’
‘Do magic?’
‘When you’re up there on stage and you’re running your fingers over the strings, just forget where you are. Forget about all that wood and all those stones and all that glass and all that nylon and steel and all those hearts and all those eyeballs, forget that time is passing, beat by beat, forget that everything true is true. Step into the void that’s floating unseen in space somewhere beyond our galaxy. Don’t sing to the people. Sing to that empty space. There’s nothing there but your sound. Your sound is the only thing that exists. Your whole life is your sound. For as long as you’re in this place, for as long as this place is your sound, you were never born and you’ll never die. You have no parents, you have no children, nobody knows you. Nervousness? Nervousness is something you feel on the train when the conductor comes to see whether you’ve got a ticket. When a stranger asks you for a favour. When you’d like to say I love you to someone you don’t love. Nervousness is when you’re hungry. But you came to create. You came to light up the emptiness. You came to work magic. Leave the nervousness to them.’
‘To them?’
‘To those people who came for something.’
‘What have they come for?’
‘For something that nobody can give them.’
‘Get out there, lose yourself, sing.’
A kaleidoscope of emotion washes over his face, his muscles twitch every which way before stiffly resigning themselves to their fate. But you know that face. It’s the one that floats in the mirror on all those difficult mornings. Zoja gently nudges him, and his stride as he moves out onto the stage, into the space, is almost calm.
‘Lupe!’
The hardwood floor squeaks under her steps. His fingers smart. It goes slowly with just one hand. The handle moves silently downward. The door opens. She wedges her head into the slot.
‘Lupe, please bring me a glass of water.’
‘Water?’ Her voice is dry and smooth.
‘Water, yes.’
‘Would you like something else?’
‘Just water.’
With a rapid swing of the forehead she points at the type-writer keys and nods. Then she disappears.
I took my shoes off. Now I’m barefoot. I nudge the shoes under the dirty cloth hanging from a little table bestrewn with flyers that are encircling an almost empty plastic bottle of water. We used the water to moisten the diabetic’s forehead. Max observes me with bated breath. Mr Ž—has wandered far, far away. I don’t know whether the guitarist heard what I told him, but he seems to be enjoying himself on stage. His eyes are closed and he’s turned his face skywards. Forget about them. Become sound.
Life sometimes makes you feel like it’s taken you in its hand and moved you closer to the sun. And sometimes it seems that the fingers around you have formed a fist and turned off all the light. In total darkness, it’s easy to forget the light. Did they lie to you? Did they take you for a fool? Did they try to sacrifice your soul on the altar of their failures? Did they conspire against you because prisoners of shadows hate people with rays in their eyes? It’s so simple to surround yourself with the drowned. But that is only an illusion. It’s so simple to convince yourself that you live among a crowd of gluttons. Then you hide yourself and set up walls, you defend yourself against attacks by imagined armadas and you can no longer tell the difference between an offered hand and the thrust of a knife. That’s the worst thing that can happen to you in life. Love should never be allowed to lose its transparency. It should never be allowed to wrap itself in a veil of threats. Love me, otherwise…otherwise…otherwise I will unmask my love as a complicated pulley which I use to try to draw my fears from the well to the light. Under the heavens. To the scarlet fields of our steps. Love me, otherwise…otherwise you’re not a part of the community of lovers of life. Love me, otherwise you’re a horrible, forgotten, cursed thing. Eat me. Devour me. Love me.
Love is not greed. If someone demands it, he doesn’t deserve it. If someone bets on it, he’ll lose the bet. If someone uses it as a rope to pull himself free from quicksand, it will snap in his hands. Love will never save anyone.
And it’s true. We live among hungry people. They devour everything from memories to respect. But nobody knows the taste of love. With stretched-out tongues they chase after it, and just because they devour everything else, they are convinced that it is the same with love. They will eat beauty and they will eat eternity. They will eat poetry and shit politics. That’s the reality of people. But it’s not all the same. I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying here. I’ll crumple the piece of cardboard in my pocket and throw it in the corner. I’ll find a way out of my mouth.
The guitarist pushes past Zoja, with his guitar in front of him, and enters backstage as triumphantly as if he’d just broken through the Ubanga front. The broken string hangs from the instrument’s neck like a loose, bronze spring. He couldn’t finish his set. He’s out of breath, beaming, flushed and exhausted. His chest is tight and he’d like to smile, but then he senses Zoja’s gaze in the back of his neck and again turns humble, so as not to ascribe too much importance to his fifteen minutes of flourishing. Still, he’d like to keep on feeling proud of himself. They listened to him and they didn’t all seem turned off. True, some were chatting, but attentive ears could hear past those surely important conversations that were serving as a backdrop for his sound. Music for the masses. Of course they’re going to chat. After all, they’re only people!
He wipes his face on his arm and walks over to Max, who has moved towards the seated old guy, laid his hands on the backrest, almost touching his hands, and pushed his face forwards, into his. In profile he looks a little like a pear-shaped mole. The reddish hair on his forehead has congealed into a sweaty wire. Now, when Zoja has gone on stage, Max doesn’t even look at the guitarist any more, so it’s up to him to convince himself of the niceness of his performance. The pop of the string and the awkward flight from the tolerant gazes buoyed by smiles has robbed him of the applause that he perhaps, or perhaps not, deserved. In the moment before he disappeared from the stage, he felt a kind of restlessness in the air, but he’s convinced that it wasn’t caused by him. He sang to them of loneliness. What else is there to sing about?
‘I’ve never told anyone this, to be totally honest.’
Max’s voice lowers. His nose is dangerously approaching the face of the old man, whose eyes have sunk back into their sockets. His jaw is slipping back and his neck is pressing back into the hard chair to escape the progress of the pale, freckled face that suddenly desires contact.
‘But my whole life I’ve been suffering from a very aggressive form of dissociative identity disorder.’
The guitarist, who has placed his guitar on the floor and taken a last sip of water from the bottle, suddenly feels as if he’s inadvertently barged in on something very intimate, so he purses his lips, raises his eyebrows and tightly clenches his fists. He looks around to see whether he might find something interesting in the space with which he could distract himself and stretch some sort of none-of-my-business cling film of privacy over the painful scene. There’s nothing. He turns slowly, takes three quick steps, and leans a shoulder against the wall, making sure that the audience won’t see him peeping at Zoja’s relaxed form.
‘One moment I’m fully present in the secondary order of human existence. I have a past and I am part of history. I am also a collection of my consequences and a shaky node of the consequences of all other people. Where I’m going to be placed and where I will place myself depends on my hand and mouth. I cannot deny myself as an artificial being. My family is my family and those edges of its story that touched me became the edges of my story. When I look at my skin, I see it’s sewn together from rags. I know where each rag came from. There are no holes, no empty spaces. I’m composed. My inner feeling is a mere drive to make sure I don’t stay in one place. I’m not a stone. I’m not a statue. I am a scarecrow of human things, stuck in the field where ravens come to peck at the seeds of beauty. I know that the word beauty triggers in me a semantic drift that facilitates my presence and existence. I know that that’s the path to the other side. But as long as I’m not there, all the other words wreck me. I know that it is other people who say when you’ve succeeded. Success. It makes me sick. I know that there’s no other way. That there are no other people other than these. That they are dead, or that they haven’t been born yet. I know that contact with emptiness does not outweigh contact with living beings. Emptiness is attractive because it doesn’t have a single determinate form. Emptiness is attractive because it’s not proud of being itself. I know that human is a technical term. I know it’s courage when you transcend this. I would like to believe that I will succeed sometime. I hope. I know that without people things would be harder for people. But I am not happy for them. I know that nobody wants to deny what he’s been told he is. I know that this is violence. And I know that nobody deserves it. I know that I’m better off, that I’m worse off, that I am. I know that everything I know is real, because knowing is the only thing I know can appear to me as real.’
Zoja undresses.
‘And then…wait, is that really my voice? Do I really speak like that? Your eyes are avoiding mine. What does that mean? The muscles in your hands are retracting, to escape the touch of my hands. What are you afraid of? Do I want something from you? Didn’t you come here because you wanted something? What did you want? Would you like to see them? Would you like to see her? She reads. She reads aloud. That’s all. Look at me!’
Zoja undresses.
‘Thank you. Thank you. Then, without motive, without reason, I land in the primary order, at once, all at once, I just am, and all the crap peels away from me, the entire human lineage, and the letters slip from me, they rinse themselves off, straighten themselves into a point without dimensions, and my self-awareness, my self-knowledge and my self-esteem stretch across the membrane of existence, they make nothingness and light disappear and I become a being. Then everything becomes a moment, and it’s deadly serious, and it’s deadly funny, and the tongue can only scribble, swing stupidly over all the grated bits that want to show us life as something that has to constantly lie to itself. Then I see what violence is in reality. Violence is people who have built an entire world out of words just to briefly escape what cannot be escaped.’
Zoja is naked. Some guy has climbed on to the stage. He’s holding something very empty in his hand.