Sirius’ Slaughterhouse—
what is that?
Such a thing has never
existed.
Sirius’ Slaughterhouse—
which of us is mad?
I say there is no dog.
It howls on the seventh night,
howls on the fourteenth night,
beside a crack leading into
Sirius’ Slaughterhouse.
Nightly the moon waxes larger.
There is no trace of a dog.
Not the slightest trace of a dog.
The moon has been sent to the earth
to shed light on all things.
Nightly the moon waxes larger,
shining longer,
shining stronger,
shining down its broad path.
As you know the moon is now at its zenith.
This very evening the moon will wane.
No dog has ever existed.
I say there is no dog.
Silence.
Silence?
The night passes and the storm moves on. From this evening the moon will wane. The skulls are back beneath the grass, lying in great peace. The night passes and passes, and from this evening the moon will wane.
Is there more?
The wind. Nothing else. The wind that will never drop.
At long last a clangour of copper: Clang—clang.
Morning.
Clang—clang.
*
The morning as revelation. The new day is reddening on the mountain peaks. A brand new day. Far above the rats, one might say, if one wanted to say such a thing.
And there was no day yesterday.
It has suddenly struck us. We are wise as after some wonderful liberation: There was no day yesterday.
That’s how it goes when things go as they ought.
Everything is new. There was no day yesterday.
Clang—echoing copper strokes.
The skulls are resting peacefully beneath the grass. Inside the halls morning-pale women are washing the chairs clean as gold, for the day’s meeting. Waves are lapping the embankments on all the shores.
*
Someone is in pain. It did not happen here. Someone is dying. It did not happen here. It was a long way away—and it’s not certain to be true. The world is large. The world contains such infinite variety—and we need not know more about it than that.
The chairs are waiting here. The rats are waiting in the cellar here. Small beetles are sending obscure signals here. Here we shave our chins and make ourselves smart and well-scented for important meetings.
The waves lap against the embankment from ocean to ocean.
The grass grows up and fades. The spring matures, the graves flower. The autumns are cool and fine, they mature and fade. Beetles nibble at each other in the back. He who does not know this, knows nothing.
*
Clang—clang.
Those copper strokes again.
They sound deep, rich, right.
Like everything.
We skulls recognize all confident copper voices. They report that the lines are straight and secure.
Clang—clang.
To the chairs. To the chairs.
To a completely new day.
Completely new—it dawned rosy as a virgin up among the peaks.
We process to the chairs. Our skulls tingle with the morning. Chairs clean as gold. A brand new day.
7
Washed Cheeks
A solitary, thick grove of leafy trees. And the loveliest weather. Warm rain that has a quality of great gentleness, a quality of deep peace.
It doesn’t look as if there is anyone in the grove—although there are actually five men. It is much too quiet in there. Quiet has come to these five men for good.
But who are the five?
Nobody knows.
They are five soldiers, five completely strange soldiers who have been forgotten. They came here shooting or not shooting, came marching through this district together with countless others, but more to one side than the rest. It happened that way. They are very young. Most likely they were highly regarded.
That is irrelevant now. They are lying on the ground in different attitudes, and it is raining on them.
*
Yes, the men are lying on the ground and it is raining on them. They have not moved today nor did they yesterday. It rained on them calmly and peacefully both yesterday and today, the same quiet, warm rain that is raining now.
It rained during the night between the two days of rain as well. The days of rain were linked by a night of rain. During last night, which was unexpectedly quiet after all that shattering hellish din, it rained on the five men in the darkness all the time. Early this morning their stiff cheeks were washed and white.
The colour must be called white, but it is much closer and at the same time much further away than white; it has no human name.
Five men. That’s not many.
One for each finger on your hand.
Practically nothing.
The rain is washing them.
*
Talk of quiet.
The night before last various sounds and cries came from this thick, leafy grove. Gradually, as the night wore on, it fell quiet there. One after the other had nothing more to groan about. There was no more to tell about the five, nor were there more than five of them.
That night was anything but quiet. The earth trembled and death mowed in wide swathes. The five men were furthest off to one side in an outpost, but death sought them there too. They did not fall quiet in a flash; they fell quiet eventually. Eventually. It has been raining since. They needed washing, so there seemed to be some order in it.
Nobody can understand what really happened that night and the preceding days, but it happened in a din that hounded all the animals and birds far, far away to other, quieter places. The five will not be found by animals or birds for a long time. Nor will they be found by people clearing up—for they have other things to do: new and bigger things are happening in new areas every day.
There was no time to search in all the outlying areas. A new great day is shaking the earth at this moment, but far away, and it demands all possible help there. There are many thousands. Here in the grove there are only five.
*
Those who are here now will remain here. They will never be identified. They are far from where anyone lives and anyone walks. And they are not in a friendly country. No one will organize big search parties. No one will find them except the flies. When the rain finally stops the flies will crawl out. The flies do not let themselves be frightened by cannon.
That’s all there is to it, and no one in their own country knows anything about them. Missing in the storm. In the country far away someone is asking after them day and night. There they have their little circle of desperate friends. No use. The five simply vanished. No one has seen them.
Order? There must be some kind of grim order somewhere. What’s the use of that?
Whiter and whiter the men’s cheeks.
It is so simple. The rain streams down peacefully, and the cheeks lying on the ground are washed ceaselessly. The hands too. Their hands have clenched against something in the hour of extremity. The rain bleaches and cleans these hands too. It soaks them with soft rain water as if to open them, but they cannot be opened, cannot be made gentle. Even if they lie there until everything has blown away, they will not be made gentle. They will forever remain damning clenched fists.
*
The trees in the grove seem to lean closer together in this weather. They stand forming an extra screen of dew and mist. The low bushes, too, spread out even more widely in the rain, as if to close all openings.
The white cheeks form a disorderly heap.
Whiter and whiter, against what is coming: soon they will shine.
An incredible thought, but one that is playing here, waiting.
There is opposition somewhere: No, no, don’
t shine!
Is there no blind order in such matters?
Senseless order, but order. Do not shine. There must be some order that can stop whatever becomes too difficult to accept.
There is certainly order. When matters have come as far as this, then grim order begins. When it is too late. When the storm has passed on, to cause more pale cheeks—then an order that is too late can come to the five lonely men in the grove.
But yet again: the stakes are high.
This is the number five.
What does five mean in such stakes?
It does not mean so much as a jerk in a commanding eyebrow, far less any reason for a dirge.
It means less than a mote in the eye, in the right place. If the number were one hundred times five, or a thousand—the stakes are high, as we said. And the game must be played. Among glittering stars down on earth it will be said that the stakes are high and must be regarded as high.
What does five mean then?
The fingers on one hand, if you count like that.
For each of them being alive meant everything. Being included. Being a reason for existence together with the others. The groves lean in the rain, the five will be washed until they shine. No less than five times it meant everything.
*
They become whiter and whiter. They are nearing an eruption of light that is gaining ground.
They are washed all the day long. At the same time the grove seems to become denser. Another night is being made ready. The darkness will be sufficiently dense in there, as it must and shall. Such things must not lie in the half-dark. There is strict order—however late it may come.
During this third night the polishing is finished.
On the third night it begins.
Slowly, slowly the five faces begin to shine.
*
In densest night, while the warm, friendly rain continues unceasingly, bleaching in its gentle way—then this other thing is ready and erupts, without any gentleness.
The trees do not stir. There is no wind. No animals are padding about either; the storm of death has chased them away. Only grass and leaves, and grass and leaves show no surprise because this is happening: a growing gleam of light from the five.
Their faces appear dimly out of the pitch blackness.
A clear, calm gleam. No flickering. Cheeks that have been washed until they triumph over the darkness, not by the rain but by other things, washed inwards to where they must shine. Silently and steadfastly like deep sorrow.
It is good that there are no people in this area. An ordinary person would not be able to bear it. This light is for those who are behind this cycle of events.
Now there is turmoil in the night. The darkness strides silently along. The grove shrinks to enfold what man brings about, yet cannot endure.
The music in the night—where is it? The rain continues. The gleam becomes stronger, more perilous. A dimly decaying gleam. There are a hundred thousand other places—this concerns only five. They are beginning to shine now.
Beginning to shine in the dark. Tomorrow the rain is likely to stop, and then the black flies will come. Now it is night and no fly dare come out.
The gleam is stronger already. Unwavering. The faces acquire it from unknown sources. The afterglow of crimes that rises up to heaven.
*
A gleam that draws and attracts and creates confusion and movement. In the grove where all life seems extinguished, there is now nothing but movement.
The darkness comes alive, is full of tiny life. The gleam awakens all minute sleeping creatures within reach. They come creeping out, infinitely small, but with the ability to notice anything unusual, moving jerkily towards the gleam in close formation. Attracted by it and lost by it: in that light they will vanish like dew.
Five faces are shining with the increasing strength of decay. Sharp rays that will be stopped by nothing. They pass through trees, through stones, through everything, lit by the need of innocent men.
The small voiceless creatures crawl towards them. They crawl out of their night to become witnesses. Secret voiceless witnesses.
*
What of its erupting?
It had to come.
Tonight they are shining.
It had to come like that. There is order, though late. The tortured faces began to shine and it is a perilous light. It will be talked about late, but this order is late.
The rain is about to taper off. Tomorrow is the day for all the flies.
The destroyed faces are shining, and it is impossible to describe. It is not what one calls light. The creeping things vanish before it, as smoke vanishes. Torture vanishes too, at last.
What has happened tonight will never be made known. The millstones sink with their load to the bottom of the sea.
If a five-fold light were to shine afterwards through earth and trees and stones? Nothing. It will never be made known.
The decaying gleam is there only tonight. It will never be made known.
8
Fire in the Depths
The road that winds up the mountainside is deserted, no life there at all. No sound to be heard either. Nothing but stone and persistent sunshine. In the gashes in the rock stand a few hardy trees, their dry knuckles exposed, beside old, stunted bushes.
The heat comes from the steep walls of rock, which rise straight up from the roadway on the inner side. The sunshine is splintered against this wall and magnified by it.
On the outer side of the road there is nothing but blue air hanging in a heat haze above a deep valley far below. That’s where the people are, that’s where there’s life and movement. No one travels up here on this mountain road any more.
This abandoned road in the mountain was blasted out with poor tools and much toil once upon a time; now it is useless and forgotten. The wound in the mountainside has darkened: in the cuts you can no longer see so clearly the boundaries of the ages, endless stone ages. It all hides itself beneath complicated patterns of moss and a common surface colour. The large crevices in the rock, left after the upheavals of other epochs, have through the millennia been blown full of dust and seeds. Fertile soil for bushes and tussocks of grass. Dynamited masses of stone that tumbled downwards during the building of the road are now darkening scree at the foot of the mountain far below, overgrown with eager woods and thick layers of dead leaves.
*
From a crevice somewhere in the rock wall, about twice the height of a man above the road, there hangs a faded loop, as if placed there for pulling oneself up through the clefts in the stone. The loop hangs there all the time, but no one comes to grasp it. The slack noose hangs and hangs. No one has looked to see whether it is there day and night and forever. It must be, for it is always hanging in the same way. If a strong mountain wind is blowing one day it swings a little in the gust, just as any rope would do.
The slack, slightly withered noose or loop fits in with the rest of the unchanging scene, hanging there as if by chance.
To be grasped?
No, no one has done that. There is life in the rope. It is a part of something. The rest of the splendid serpent is hidden among the stones.
There is something about this that makes one reply instead: Nothing has been said about it.
Nobody knows of anyone who has tried to grasp it.
*
The road leads to a deserted valley. Once many people lived there, but life was more strenuous than in other places, and so one by one they went away. The last one left long ago, and the houses that stood there have disappeared. So no one returns. No one has any business there. So the road falls into disrepair. Eternally patient the loop hangs from the crevice. To be grasped. As if waiting for a long time—perhaps, all the same, someone will. A man cannot explain what kind of patience this is.
And men do not walk here.
Living things that look dead are avoided by men because they feel a numbness in themselves at the sight. A man is not like that. A man’s blood is warm,
his thoughts leaping and wild; and stubborn and impatient too. A normal man is a bird among birds, with the bird’s unexpected plunge, and with the bird’s wall-breaching song in his throat.
And what is this?
A loop.
Waiting year out and year in for someone to grasp it. Not a comfortable state of affairs.
But patience gets its reward.
At last a reward.
At last a man on the road.
Such unbelievable, cold patience has not been waiting for nothing. A man will come here. What more he will do is his own affair when he arrives.
There are many bends and turns on this road. The man has just started on the very first of them. How far up will he walk? But he is walking quickly so far—considering how steep the road is and how hot the day. It looks as if some strong incentive is driving him on.
What does he want?
He is a man with the heart of a bird. It is fitting that he should be walking here above dizzy heights, with the blue air beneath him.
He is just walking. He rounds another bend. The ascent and the sunshine make him breathe heavily. He is not a bird in everything.
He seems to be pushed forward by his own hot breath, on this road where nobody walks. It is good enough testimony that he is on the road at all. He is searching for something. It looks as if he is driven to it.
He is already beginning to peer upwards along the steep walls of rock to his left. He never crosses over to the other side of the road, although the most beautiful view is to be had from there. He does not look down into the valley. He looks quickly and searchingly at every new chunk of rock that comes into view as he rounds the bends. He is obviously expecting to find something.
How has he found out about it? No one is likely to have told him.
He is a young man.
There’s that too. A young man.
Curious not to go over to the edge where the view is, and the freedom puts flight into one’s brain. Instead he scans the confining rock wall where it is difficult to breathe and the sun’s heat is burning.
So he must know about something that is irresistible to someone like himself.
The one bend after the other. Irresistible. He has a young heart, which cannot find rest. All it can do is search, and never mind about the result. The heat from the walls meets his own burning urge to walk, and to walk fast. He does not pause, scanning the walls as he walks.
The Boat in the Evening Page 8
