The Rebellious Sheep

 

 

Everything would be easier if that sheep out in front would finally jump. The nights are long, the pasture very green. The city is dark.

Looking absently to one side, it doesn’t jump. I stop to examine its gaze. It’s their eyes that tell us animals are different. The sheep refuses to jump. The last cafe to close shuts its doors at three. As I leave the place, the trees are very still. The odd car speeds down the street with a freedom it would lack during the day. I’d never thought about sheep until it occurred to me to count them. It seemed like a simple enough procedure. It’s the stillness, the silence and loneliness of the night, that keeps me awake. My steps, which I’d prefer not to hear, in the coldness of my house. The stairs creak as I go up, the echo of rheumatic wood. Those are the bones, the bones of the city that can be heard at that hour when everyone is asleep and that sheep, the one in the front of the flock, refuses to jump. I close my eyes. In the darkness of my pupils, I can make out a green field, a white fence, a flock of motionless sheep. Indifferently, they look from one side to the other, as if looking were unimportant. Then I try to force the one in front to move. With my eyes closed, I concentrate on the act of ordering the sheep to jump over the fence. I don’t know how a man whose eyes are closed but who isn’t asleep can make himself be obeyed. I get annoyed with myself. Why does that stubborn sheep refuse to follow orders? I try to think about something else but it doesn’t work. From out of the solitude of my closed eyelids, in the darkness of the night, I have summoned the sheep, and now that it has appeared, with its thick coat of wool, stubby ears, and feigned passivity, I can’t get rid of it. How is it that our roles have come to be reversed? I have the urge to shout, I’m the one in charge. But it would remain indifferent to that shout too. It doesn’t hear me. The one in front isn’t always the same one. But only an expert can tell one sheep from another, especially if your eyes are shut, if there’s no light in the room, if the city is dark, if the trees aren’t moving, if the phone isn’t ringing. As a matter of fact, the only thing I can say about the sheep in front is that it’s in front. Nothing distinguishes it from the others except that it’s near the white fence and that, if I’m ever going to fall asleep, I have to get that one to jump. If I could get it to jump, it’s likely the others would follow suit. I’m sure they would. They wouldn’t offer the slightest resistance, they would do what the one before them had done, and then I could count them as they jump over the fence, one at a time. Then, gently, sleep would come to me, sleep mixed with clouds, fleece, pasture, and a steadily ascending tally. But the stubborn one out in front won’t budge. Sometimes it gets close to the fence, but only to uproot some grass. It doesn’t look up and shows no interest in what’s on the other side. Sometimes I think it feels it would be stupid to jump, that jumping is something that would only occur to a tired, feeble man who can’t fall asleep. When it comes right down to it, why would it want to jump? From what it can tell, the field on the other side is exactly the same. The grass is no different over there, and the prospect of straying from the flock doesn’t appeal to it. ‘Come on now, let’s go, little sheep,’ I tell it. ‘Aren’t you interested in the unknown?’ It doesn’t look at me. As a matter of fact, not only can I not get it to jump, I can’t even get it to look at me. As far as it’s concerned, I don’t think I exist. But the sheep and all its infuriating stubbornness are real enough for me. I have to accept my rebellious little sheep. In considering people whose sheep jump over the fence every night I conclude they must be better shepherds than I am. My flock is indifferent. It doesn’t feel the thrill of risk, isn’t tempted by adventure. The white wall is the accepted limit of its universe.

‘Don’t you think the wall is a form of oppression?’ I sometimes ask the sheep out in front. It doesn’t answer. Without a worry in the world, the motionless sheep gazes off to one side. The wall, therefore, isn’t a barrier. The fact that my sheep won’t jump gives me a rare distinction. It means I am not their owner. I’m not in charge of the vigil that keeps me from falling asleep. I have no hope of falling asleep.

‘The sheep refuses to jump,’ I told a colleague from the office one night. We were at my house, playing chess. As a simple procedure for falling asleep he had recommended I count sheep as they jump over the white fence. He raised his eyes from the board (holding in his hand a lethal knight). Unruffled (the man is not easily surprised), he asked me, ‘Which one?’

‘The one in front,’ I replied.

He placed his knight in a position that would doubtless lead to my demise. I don’t know how to counterattack so, even if I’m winning, this sends me plummeting into defeat.

‘Force it,’ he advised dramatically.

I can only win when I’m playing against myself, when my right hand is playing against my left hand.

That night, exasperated at having lost again despite having been ahead and having taken one more piece than he had, I decided to force the rebellious sheep. As soon as I went to bed, I shut my eyes and made the field appear and the sheep graze. It was the same old field and the same flock. One sheep, not far from the others, was grazing near the fence. ‘Jump!’ I ordered dictatorially. The sheep didn’t budge, didn’t even raise its head. ‘Jump!’ I said again, and I think my voice echoed in the silence of the building, across the dark city. ‘Jump, damn you!’ I repeated. It didn’t hear my shout. It went on grazing near the fence, without looking up.

Then I armed myself with a stick. I don’t know where I found it because I don’t tend to keep weapons in the house. I hate violence. Brandishing the stick, I approached the sheep, the one in front. It didn’t seem to see me, or if it did the stick didn’t mean anything to it. I shook the stick in the air, above the sheep’s curly nape. My first blow landed on the sheep’s head, between the ears, and I seemed to be squashing something soft, probably thick curls of wool. Then, slowly, the sheep turned its soft, dark eyes toward me. ‘Jump!’ I yelled, exasperated. But once it had turned around, the fence was behind it. Its black eyes were now trained on me, but despite my fury the word fence meant nothing to the sheep. How is it possible that it couldn’t understand such a simple command? ‘Jump!’ I shouted again, and landed a second blow, hard and furious, on the same spot. This time the sheep retreated, staggering, its back to the white fence. We were separated from the group, face to face: the other sheep were grazing, the pasture was green, beyond the fence lay another identical field. Was there any reason for it to jump? ‘Jump!’ I said again, and with the third blow a trickle of blood began to wet its curly fleece. Looking at it, the blood mixed with wool, excited me. There were pieces of leaves and twigs tangled in the curls. I felt the urge to remove them, to pet the sheep, and also to kill it. ‘Why the hell don’t you jump, you damn sheep?’ I shouted. This time I struck the sheep’s soft, fluffy back. That sheep was going to die an unnatural death one day, but for now it was content to graze, to chew the cud along with the others, even if doing so meant I’d never fall asleep, that sleep would be denied me forever because making the sheep jump was the only way to get what I wanted. Bees, dark leaves, and tiny stems were tangled in its fleece. The dark, viscous blood stained the wool slightly. The other sheep were grazing.

The animal looked at me, failing to understand what I wanted. The fence was behind it, a simple, harmless white fence that could be jumped over easily if the sheep would only try. ‘You can do it, jump!’ I shouted as I hit it again on the back. Something seemed to crack, but it wasn’t the floorboards or the fence. The sheep continued to retreat; now it was a few steps away. To hit it again, I had to move toward it, something I found revolting. Why was it so stubborn? If it would only realize, if it were capable of understanding what I was asking for; its legs quivered, and with each blow the animal seemed more defenseless. ‘Now it’ll bend its legs,’ I thought. It’s going to lie down on the ground until it bleeds to death, until it dies, but it won’t jump, it won’t go over the fence and make the others follow it.

The stick was stained, and looking at it excited me. ‘That’s the only way to deal with you,’ I told the sheep. Then I plunged the stick into its belly, taking advantage of the fact that the animal was on its side. I didn’t know sheep had pink bellies. I’m a man of the city, I’m not used to looking at sheep, admiring their undersides, oh, such a soft belly. The sheep was heaving its last breath, it was going to die at any moment, without having jumped. I hit it again, this time in the pink area, hit its soft flesh, its tender sheep flesh that would no longer make it to the slaughterhouse because the sheep hadn’t jumped, because it didn’t know that the fence was a surmountable obstacle. As I sank the stick into its soft underside for the last time I trembled and was overcome with drowsiness. I was happy. In its flesh, its warm pale flesh that I was now touching with my eager hands, the stick was still. And it was that warmth, that gentle contact that made me drowsy, and I knew I was going to fall asleep. Stained with blood, clinging to the sheep’s ravaged but still warm entrails, I was going to fall asleep, like an innocent child who still hasn’t jumped over the white fence.