There were times when the caravan simply vanished—men, beasts, and supplies. Sometimes the soldiers who were appointed to protect them vanished, too, sometimes they didn’t; after a few days of searching they were found at the bottom of a ravine, mutilated, their throats cut, half devoured by beasts of prey. No sign of their rifles. No one said as much out loud, but some people reckoned that the caravan had taken the forbidden road and crossed the border. That was what the elders thought; their gaze was so eloquent. Who talked? The atmosphere was suddenly oppressive, the old folk scattered, coughing as if they were apologizing for having said too much, whereas the young ones pricked up their ears. Their thoughts could be heard from afar, so noisily were they pounding in their heads.
The forbidden road! . . . the border! . . . What border, what forbidden road? Isn’t our world the entire world? Aren’t we at home wherever we go, by the grace of Yölah and Abi? What need have we of boundaries? What are we to make of this?
The news would plunge the sanatorium into stupor and despondency, men flogged themselves in keeping with the tradition of their region, or banged their heads against the wall, or clawed at their chests, or screamed at the top of their lungs: such an act was a heresy that would bring ruin to believers. What world could exist beyond that so-called border? Was there even light there, or a patch of earth where one of God’s creatures could stand? What sort of mind could conceive of the intention to flee the kingdom of faith for nothingness? Only the Renegade could inspire such thoughts, or the makoufs, the propagandists of the Great Heathendom: they were capable of anything.
And suddenly the event became an affair of state, and disappeared from public view. As if by the wave of a magic wand the lost shipment was replaced with a hefty supplement of sweetmeats, costly medication, and miracle-working talismans, and nothing remained of the rumor, not an echo; better still, over the land there settled a stubborn, hypnotic impression that nothing untoward had ever happened. Transfers, arrests, and disappearances might occur, but no one ever witnessed them, all their attention was elsewhere; not all embers were cold in the kingdom and there was no lack of ceremonies. The dignity of martyrdom was conferred upon the murdered guards, and the news would be broadcast by the NeF, the nadirs (electronic wall newspapers found all over the globe) and through the network of mockbas where nine times a day it was preached that the guards had fallen on the field of glory, during a heroic battle qualified as “the battle to end all battles,” just like all those real or imagined battles that had come before and would come again, century after century. There was no hierarchy among martyrs, nor ever any end to the Holy War; it would only be proclaimed once Yölah crushed Balis, in accordance with the Promise.
What wars, what battles, what victories, against whom, how, when, why? were questions that did not exist, were not asked, and so there were no answers to expect. “The Holy War, it is known, is at the heart of the doctrine, but it is one theory among others! If speculations can be floated this simply, and in one’s lifetime, then there is no more faith, no more dreaming, no more sincere love, and the world is doomed”: that is what the people thought when the ground opened beneath their feet. It was true, what else could one cling to, other than what was incredible? Only the incredible is credible.
And doubt brings anxiety, and misfortune is not long in coming. Ati had reached this point, he could no longer sleep, and he was filled with the foreboding of unspeakable terrors.
Shortly after he arrived at the sanatorium, in the middle of the previous winter, a caravan disappeared along with its guards, who were later found at the bottom of a ravine, trapped in the ice. While waiting for more clement weather to take them back to the city, they placed the bodies in the morgue. The hospital was buzzing, nurses running in every direction with their pails and their brooms, patients wandering aimlessly, swarming in the courtyard by the outbuildings, squinting over at the dark narrow ramp that spiraled down to the mortuary fifteen siccas below, which was in fact the end of a partially-collapsed tunnel that wound its way under the fortress; it had been built in the rock wall back in the days when the first Holy War was raging in these remote parts. No one knew where the other end was; it disappeared somewhere in the bowels of the mountain. It was an escape route, or a wretched dwelling, a dungeon or a catacomb, or perhaps a hiding place for women and children in the event of an invasion, or a place of forbidden worship like the ones that were found these days in the most unbelievable locations. This tunnel was an unsavory place, filled with the furies of past worlds, incomprehensible and so terrifying that there were days when the bottom of the well let out mournful gurgles. The temperature was conducive to rapid freezing.
Horror of horrors: it was said that, in addition to the injuries they had sustained during their vertiginous fall, the soldiers had been savagely butchered. No more ears, or tongue, or nose; their genitals in their mouths, their testicles crushed, their eyes gouged out. A convulsive old man uttered the word “torture,” but he didn’t know what it meant, he had forgotten the meaning or didn’t want to say, which only made the terror worse. He crept away, recoiling, murmuring things: “. . . conjure . . . democ . . . against . . . may Yölah preserve us.” In Ati, the event triggered an insidious process that led him to rebellion. Against what, against whom, he could not imagine; in a motionless world there is no way to understand, one only knows if one does rebel—against oneself, against empire, against God—and no one can do that—but then how to move in an ossified world? All the greatest knowledge in the world gives way before the speck of dust that obstructs thought. Those who confronted death on the mountain, who set off along the forbidden road and crossed the border: they knew.
But to cross a border, what does that mean—to go where?
And why massacre those poor devils in uniform when they could have taken them with them, or simply left them to their fate on the mountain? What’s the answer? There were soldiers who had been spared by the renegades and had gone home, only to receive the punishment reserved for cowards, traitors, and heathens; they had ended up at the stadium, on the day of great prayer, and were executed to the sounds of great cheering after they had been paraded through town. To conclude a matter of state necessitates the disappearance of witnesses, in one manner or another.
Ati found his hospital outside of time unsettling: every day he learned of dreadful things that would have gone unnoticed in the commotion of a city, but here they filled the space and invaded minds that were constantly heckled, crushed, humiliated. The isolation of the sanatorium was one explanation. In a void, life becomes strange, nothing restrains it, it doesn’t know where to look for support, where to go. Going around in circles without moving is a horrible feeling; living too long by oneself and for oneself is mortal. As for illness, it destroys many certainties: death will not tolerate any truths that try to be greater than it is, so it reduces them all to nothing. The notion that a border might exist was shattering. The world might be divided, divisible, and humankind might be multiple? Since when? Since always, what else could it be, if a thing exists it has existed for all eternity, there is no spontaneous generation. Unless God wills it—he is almighty—but does God work toward the division of mankind, does he do piecework, from time to time?
What is the border, dammit, what is on the other side?
It is known that the heavens are inhabited by angels, that hell is teeming with demons, and that the earth is covered with believers—but why should there be a border at its extremities? Who was it keeping from whom, and from what? A sphere has no beginning or end. What would that invisible world be like? If its inhabitants are endowed with consciousness, are they aware of our presence on earth and do they know of this unthinkable thing, that we do not know they exist, other than in the form of a horrible and unbelievable rumor, the improbable remains of an obliterated era? So the victory over the Enemy during the Great Holy War was not so “total, definitive, irrevocable!” Failure was right behind us, covering us with
its dust while we went on celebrating our victory.
So where does that leave us? In this calamitous state, obviously: we were defeated, dispossessed of everything, and driven back behind the wrong side of the border. Our world does indeed seem to be the losers’, bric-a-brac after the debacle, embellishing reality is nothing more than painting a dead man’s face and offering him up to ridicule. And Yölah the almighty and Abi his delegate: what are they doing with us on this raft that has been cast adrift? Who will save us, from which side will rescue come?
The air was dense with questions: Ati did not dare look at them, but he heard them, and suffered.
Sometimes, in spite of the strictness of the surveillance and “purification” system, some felt doubt graze their minds; in others it wormed its way inside. Once it gets going, imagination can invent as many leads and riddles as it likes, to be borne far away, except that those who are bold are careless and are soon caught. The internal tension that dwells inside them charges the air around them and that is enough; the Vs have ultrasensitive antennae. It is a common error to believe that the future belongs to us because we possess knowledge. In a perfect world, there is no future, only the past and its legends, articulated in a tale of fantastic beginnings, without evolution or science; there is the Truth, single and eternal, and the Almighty always nearby, watching over it. Knowledge, doubt, and ignorance stem from a corruption that is inherent in an active world, the world of the dead and the wicked. There can be no contact possible between these worlds. It is the law: a bird that leaves its cage, even just for a single flap of its wings, is doomed to disappear; it cannot return to the cage, it would sing off-key and sow discord. Nevertheless, what one person has seen or glimpsed or even only dreamed, another, later, elsewhere, will see and glimpse and think, and perhaps this new person will manage to bring it into the light in such a way that everyone will see it and rebel against the dead man lurking inside them.
Something disturbing, leading to a question; anger to despondency; dreams to disappointment: Ati had lost his way, that was the only thing he could be sure of. All over the country, in every one of the sixty provinces, nothing ever happened, nothing visible, life was limpid, order was sublime, communion had been achieved within the Just Brotherhood, beneath the gaze of Abi and the benevolent surveillance of the Apparatus. After such a crowning achievement, life comes to a halt: what is left to imagine, to revive, to surpass? Time stands still: what is there to count, what use is space in immobility? Abi had worked his miracle; a grateful humanity could cease to exist.
“Our faith is the soul of the world, and Abi is its beating heart.”
“Submission is faith and faith is truth.”
“The Apparatus and the people are ONE, as Yölah and Abi are One.”
“To Yölah we belong, to Abi we obey.”
etc.;
were the ninety-nine key phrases one learned from earliest childhood, and one recited for the rest of one’s life.
When the sanatorium was built, many many years ago—a cartouche, etched in the stone above the barrel vault of the fortress’s monumental portal, indicated a date, if it was indeed a date, between two fading cabalistic signs: 1984, the year which might have been that of its inauguration, but the short text that served as a caption, no doubt to confirm and describe the building’s vocation, was in an unfamiliar language; things had been going rather well, according to what a few old madmen, long gone, used to say, but no one ever understood what they were talking about, in any case no one recalled them being able to explain anything—the world has always turned in the same admirable and canonical way, yesterday and today, as it will tomorrow and the day after. Sometimes, for days and weeks at a time, life was nothing but penury, and nothing could hold back the misfortune unleashed on the cities and their inhabitants—only this was normal and just, it was everyone’s duty to constantly reaffirm their faith and learn to scoff at death. The prayer meetings that marked the rhythm of the hours and days did all the rest; they installed the flock into a blissful stupor, and the chants that were broadcast from tireless loudspeakers located in strategic spots around the sanatorium in the intervals between the nine daily prayers resonated from partitions to walls, corridors to dormitories, unendingly interweaving their lenitive strains to maintain people’s attention on the verge of abulia. The background noise was such an intimate part of the substratum that no one even noticed when it wasn’t there, when there were power cuts or the aging sound system broke down; something in the walls or in the inmates’ subconscious took over and began to chant as authentically as the truest of realities. In the absent gazes of the praying figures shone the same gentle, vibrant light of acceptance, and it never left them. Acceptance: in abilang Gkabul was actually the name of the holy religion of Abistan, and it was also the title of the holy book where Abi had recorded his divine teachings.
At the age of thirty-two, or thirty-five, he wasn’t really sure, Ati was already an old man. He had preserved some of the charm of his youth and his race: he was tall and slim, and his fair skin was burnished by the biting upland winds, which caused the green of his gold-flecked eyes to stand out, and his natural nonchalance imbued his movements with a feline sensuality. When he stood up straight, and closed his mouth over his rotting teeth to give a smile, he could still pass for a handsome man. He had surely been handsome once, he remembered it drove him to despair because physical beauty is a defect, much appreciated by the Renegade; it attracts mockery and aggression. Sheltered beneath their thick veils and burniqabs, compressed by bandages, and always well guarded in their quarters, women did not suffer too greatly, but for the man who had even an touch of grace the ordeal was never-ending. A wild beard could make one ugly, and coarse manners or a scarecrow’s rags were repellent, but unfortunately for Ati the people of his race were hairless, and their demeanor was gracious, Ati’s particularly so; in addition he had a youthful shyness that filled hefty sanguine types with lust. Ati’s memories of childhood were of one long nightmare. He had stopped thinking about it, shame had built a wall. But at the sanatorium those memories resurfaced: the patients, with nothing better to do, gave free rein to their baser instincts. It pained him to see the poor boys trying to get away, constantly having to fight someone off, but the harassment was so extreme that they eventually gave in, they could not withstand both their assailants’ brutality and their cunning. At night Ati could hear their heartbreaking moans.
He despaired of ever understanding how vice proliferates in proportion to the perfection of the world. He did not dare conclude with a misinterpretation; virtue did not increase with disorder, and it was impossible to believe that depravity was a relic from the Dark Ages, before Abi brought the Light, a relic kept alive to test the believer and keep him under threat. Change, however miraculous it might be, needs time to materialize; good and evil cohabit until the former’s final victory. How to know where one begins and the other ends? After all, good might be merely a substitute for evil; evil is that clever, it knows how to put on fine clothes and sing in tune, just as it is in the nature of good to be conciliatory, even to the point of spinelessness or sometimes treason. It is said in the Gkabul in title 2, chapter 30, verse 618: “It is not given to man to know what is Evil and what is Good, he need only know that Yölah and Abi are working for his happiness.”
Ati did not recognize himself; he was afraid of this other self who had invaded him and behaved so carelessly, getting bolder by the day. He could hear him prompting him with questions and whispering incomprehensible answers . . . and he listened, pricked up his ears, urged him to be more specific, to provide conclusions. The confrontation was exhausting. He was terrified at the thought that he might come under suspicion, that they might find out he was a . . . he did not dare say the word . . . a nonbeliever. He didn’t understand that bloody word, a word no one dared say for fear of making it happen, for common sense, after all, is founded on familiar things one says over and over without thinking .
. . Non . . . be . . . lie . . . ver, it was obviously a deceitful abstraction, never, ever was anyone in Abistan obliged to believe, and there had never been any attempts to win his sincere adherence; the behavior of the perfect believer had been imposed on him, that was all. Nothing in his speech, attitude or clothing must set him apart from the robotic profile of the perfect believer, as conceived by Abi, or one of his right-hand men inspired by the Just Brotherhood and in charge of indoctrination. Ati had been trained from early childhood, and before puberty loomed on the horizon with its raw revelations of the absolute truths of the human condition, he had already become a perfect believer, who could never imagine there might be any other way to exist in life. “God is great, he needs his believers to be perfectly submissive, he hates pretention and calculation” (Gkabul, title 2, chapter 30, verse 619).
The word was more disturbing than that: to disbelieve is to reject a belief to which one has been signed up as a matter of course, but—and here’s the rub—man cannot free himself from one belief without turning to another for support; like treating addiction with drugs, another creed will be adopted, invented if necessary. But how could this happen, since in Abi’s ideal world there is nothing enabling one to do this, there are no competing opinions, not a hint of a premise on which to hang the tail of a mutinous idea, imagine a future, construct a story to oppose the accepted dogma? Every path down which one could play truant has been accounted for and wiped out; every mind has been strictly calibrated according to the official canon, and is adjusted regularly. Under the empire of Unique Thought, nonbelief is therefore unthinkable. But then why does the System prohibit nonbelief when it knows that such a thing is impossible and has done everything in its power to ensure it will remain so? Ati had a sudden intuition, so clear was their plan: the System does not want people to believe! That was their secret goal, because when one believes in one idea, one can believe in another—its opposite, for example—and use it as a warhorse to combat the first illusion. But since it is ridiculous, impossible, and dangerous to forbid people from believing in the idea that has been imposed upon them, the proposition has been worded in such a way as to forbid people from disbelieving: in other words, the Great Ordainer has said: “Do not seek to believe, you are in danger of straying into another belief, forbid yourself only from doubting, say and repeat that my truth is unique and just and thus will you have it constantly in mind, and do not forget that your life and your property belong to me.”
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