CoDex 1962

by Sjón

  ‘But who was the maiden? Who was the honey-trap?’

  ‘Gabriel wailed with terror when he discovered who it was that stood by the monster with the unicorn’s head: Lilith!

  Black hair cloaked the curvaceous body of the first woman, she who had joined Satan’s band, the tresses parting over her breasts and loins; between her wet labia glistened predatory teeth.

  He clamped his hands over his eyes but the witch’s image slipped through the backs of his hands and etched itself on his mind’s eye.

  — Look at me, look at you …

  Lilith smiled at the angel. He clapped his hands over his ears but the witch’s voice filtered through his fingers:

  — Gabriel and Lilith, Lilith and Gabriel …

  The angel put his hand over his mouth: she was trying to brainwash him into heresy; by answering he would give her an opening to attack. The golden rule in dealing with the devil’s emissaries was not to let them lure one into chat as they were either fluent-tongued rhetoricians or speech-impaired morons who could in either case ensnare the strictest of believers.

  Amduscias pushed himself forward and the latter mood was on him. The demon struck a pose, flung out his arms and bleated:

  — Gusgi laig Gagriel, Duski laig rubby-pubby, Busbi laig maig babieth …

  Then he rolled his glaring eyes, crouched down, puffed out his cheeks and began to strain with abominable gasps and groans.

  Gabriel spread his wings and rose higher into the sky: what was the meaning of these farcical antics? What were they trying to tell him?

  Out of the demon there now poured a stream of horns, bassoons, alpenhorns, trumpets, clarinets, pan pipes, oboes, saxophones, tubas and cornets. And finally flutes, forcing themselves lengthways out of the devil’s backside.

  The newborn wind instruments wriggled in the grass like snakes, farting feebly at the angel who recoiled in disgust.

  Lilith shouted over the wailing of the instruments.

  — If you fear me, you fear yourself …

  He shook his head in bewilderment and prepared to fly away.

  But the expression in Lilith’s eyes made Gabriel hesitate: he was an archangel – the blood-red hearts of men, the sun-white hearts of angels and the pitch-black hearts of the damned were open books to him. What he read in the she-devil’s heart was compassion, commiseration, complicity, comprehension, communion …

  She pointed to her crotch and whispered: Sister …

  At last Gabriel understood what Lilith was trying to tell him: the horrible thing between her legs was the mirror image of the enigma he hid between his own.

  The Archangel Gabriel’s nightmarish screams echoed through the solar system and beyond; they bounced from star to star, reverberated between the galaxies, until she was woken from her restless slumber by his – her – own screams.

  The angel was confused by the remnants of his dream and unsure of what sex she was or what had happened, but he did remember that by an ugly trick the serpent Satan had performed his will through her: the old corruptor of souls had by a neurological ruse led the doomsday melody astray in the angel’s chaste brain and sneaked it into the amygdaloid nucleus, seat of olfactory and sexual sensation. Gabriel knew that although it might sound like an innocent prank by Beelzebub to confuse her senses in this way, the consequences had been catastrophic: she had dreamed that she was female.

  Gabriel brushed the glowing lock of hair from his eyes; beneath her twinkled the cities of the Continent that was now to meet its doom. He raised the sacred trumpet to blow, but her lips wizened like burning parchment against the mouthpiece, her fingers writhed on the polished metal like maggots, and instead of the angel’s lungs filling with the Holy Spirit she retched. GABRIELLE was disgusted at the thought of obeying the divine command to sound the blast for the battle between light and darkness – SHE had lost all inclination to play the instrument, this engine of doomsday that had accompanied HER for as long as SHE could remember, ever since SHE was a golden-haired boy-child rehearsing in the Almighty’s throne room – SHE no longer knew who SHE should side with in the dreadful conflict that would follow the blast.

  Gabrielle felt tears of rage forcing their way into her eyes, and this was a new sensation.

  She had been betrayed, not by Lucifer and his fiends, no, Lilith and Amduscias of the delusion were merely instruments in the hands of the truth that had craved revelation at this fateful moment: Gabrielle had a definite sex, she was an angel in the feminine; a nonentity who had neither name nor status in heaven and could be found nowhere except in books by old ladies learned in angel lore.

  But who had blinded Gabrielle? Who had deluded her as to her own nature?

  Gabrielle struggled against tears and blasphemy.

  She tore off the trumpet and flung it at the sun, which now rode high over Bikini Atoll, and there the instrument melted, yes, it went up in smoke along with her youth and everything she had stood for in the minds of devils, gods and men.

  Gabrielle spread her wings and kicked off from Planet Earth. She found to her joy that she had not lost the gift of flight. She soared lightly over the earth: her departure would not make a decisive difference to the course of universal history. The human race was possessed of such a strong urge to self-destruct that sooner or later they would invent something that would surpass her wind instrument. The Prince of Darkness would continue to rove around the abyss in search of night quarters for his homeless shadow army; she didn’t know any jokes black enough to console that joker. And as for the powers that be …

  — That’s us!

  A woman’s voice illuminated the eternal darkness; the glow resonated a moment on the moons and nebulae – everything became nothing and nothing became everything.

  Gabrielle stood meekly in the palm of Sophia’s hand, celestial soles planted on her index finger to the north and her wrist to the south. Gentleness lapped her ankles and fluttered the snowy skirt of the robe that hid her bright legs and all her blessed flesh.

  And she is no longer part of our story.

  But Gabrielle was wrong to believe that life on earth would continue after her disappearance; her disposal of the trumpet in the aforementioned manner had greater and more momentous consequences than simply her own emancipation.

  Before the beginning of time, the Creator of heaven had engraved every movement and groan, every gesture and victory cry of Armageddon, on the instrument; and since his handiwork was now shattered into its atoms in the sun’s ocean of fire, there was no question of that course of events ever being played out to the end.

  The power struggle between light and darkness was over.

  The angels and fiends, who had clashed over Creation in everything from the smallest blade of grass and most minuscule mayfly to the highest mountain ranges and deepest canyons, put aside their quarrels and headed for home. They floated up from the battlefields like a ribbon of mist, up to heaven or down to hell, leaving nothing behind but everything.

  At 12.27 in Kükenstadt, time stood still.

  The earth is no longer the divine or diabolical place we know from old books: without hate or love, cradle or grave, it is a matter neither for stories nor poems.

  Sic transit gloria mundi…’

  ‘Is it all over then?’

  VIII

  18

  ‘Time was murdered three years ago.

  Heaven and hell are closed, the trumpet will not be blown, angels will not descend to earth, no devils will rise up from the abyss, the dead lie quiet in their graves. Nothing lives, nothing dies.

  * * *

  An ambulance, which has been painted black and converted into a hearse, waits in a paved square in front of a three-storey building. A withered creeper covers the front of the building from pavement to eaves, parting around the sooty windows and the faded sign over the half-open front door: GASTHOF VRIESLANDER.

  On the other side of the whitewashed door waits Loewe, my wretched father, wrapped in a woollen blanket, clutching a scruffy hat
box in his claw-like hands. He stands between two men wearing wide-brimmed hats, long leather coats and gleaming boots; one holds the door-handle, the other a battered suitcase.

  The curtains do not move. The dough does not rise on the kitchen table. The mouse in the boiler room will not finish giving birth to her young. The pendulum of the clock is fixed in mid-upswing.

  It is a moment of parting.

  In the reception area behind them stands a group of people with words of farewell on their lips: a grey-haired old man clenches his fists, a sullen waiter examines his palms, a tearful cook throws up her hands, a randy serving boy clasps his knuckles to his chest, a drunken proprietor rests a hand on the hip flask in his back pocket, a stern Inhaberin lays her fingers to her lips.

  But the farewell will not reach the invalid’s ears.

  Their tongues have withered in their mouths, their eyes have shrivelled in their sockets and their desiccated faces are twisted in a ghastly smile.’

  ‘Is nothing happening? Make something happen!’

  ‘Do you see that there’s a button missing from the left sleeve of the invalid’s jacket? The thread’s hanging loose down his arm. Pull it and what happens?’

  ‘He’s blinking and peering round but he can’t force out a word.’

  ‘What do you think he wants to say?’

  ‘Let’s go?’

  ‘Loewe swallows the dust in his throat, licks the scum from his mouth and whispers: “Let’s go”.

  The words tear apart the silence like the command of a demonic god.

  The fetters of death fall from the two men and with mechanical movements they continue from where they left off three years earlier. But they are so weak that the one holding the door-handle hasn’t the strength to open the door any further. He looks helplessly at his colleague, the suitcase falls from the latter’s hand with a thud that shakes the guesthouse, and by leaning against the door together they manage to edge it fully open. They tramp with heavy feet out into the night with my father between them, still clutching the hatbox, drag him to the hearse, lean him up against the side like a plank while one of them goes back for the suitcase and the other struggles with the rear door of the vehicle, and when the former has lugged the suitcase out into the square and the latter has managed to open the back, they pummel the invalid and his luggage inside, laying him flat on the coffin-rest, then shuffle along the vehicle and struggle together to get in on the driver’s side; the door swings open with an ear-piercing screech, one of them loses his footing, sinks zombie-like to the ground and stiffens, while the other treads on his shoulder and slumps into the vehicle where he seizes the ignition key with both hands and manages after several attempts to start the engine, then, gripping the steering wheel, he heaves himself up in the seat, puts the hearse in gear, stamps on the accelerator and drives off.

  The hearse crawls a complete circuit of the darkened square, the engine noise booming off the houses and shaking the gold-painted signs over the shops; from the coffin-rest Loewe sees the globe swinging over the grocer’s shop, the pretzel over the bakery, the cup and saucer over Café Berserk, the razor over the barber’s and the spool of thread over the draper’s.

  The invalid doesn’t see how the booming of the engine hurls open the doors of the church and reverberates in the nave until the lime crumbles from the walls and the palm-size altarpiece falls to the floor. On its back appears the front of the painting of the Saviour from Nazareth; the wound in his side, the nails and the crown of thorns would have put an end to all controversy over the artist’s ability or lack of it.

  Nor does he see how the memorial to the inquisitive chick receives the engine noise in blind silence: blue moonlight will never again be reflected in the black stone eyes, its story will never again be recalled for amused tourists – in the beer cellars of Kükenstadt there is no one to lend it his voice and cry: “Can I see?”

  The hearse swerves round the corner of the town hall.

  The only thing Loewe can hear over the engine noise is the driver grinding his teeth when his fingers lock on the steering wheel and he expends the last of his strength on turning it. Once round the corner death overtakes the driver; he sinks down into the passenger seat, the steering wheel slips from his grasp and straightens up, and the hearse rolls down the street towards the river.

  The square vanishes from my father’s sight, but for one moment, when the hearse drives over a bump in the road, the roof of the guesthouse appears.

  A candle glimmers in a window.

  In the attic room sits Marie-Sophie, the dear child, on the edge of her bed, her face buried in an open book. The candle stub in the holder on the chest casts a glow on the contents of the room: the chair, chamber-pot and wardrobe. The saint has vanished from the gaudy picture over the bed, the hut that rested in his hands lies shattered in the forest clearing, its inhabitants scattered like matchwood among the ruins.

  But the syrupy-yellow light of the candle does not fall on the girl’s face or the pages of the story, it stops at the plait on her neck, leaving her in the shadow of her own head, bowed in sorrow.

  The angel Freude no longer taps at Marie-Sophie’s west window – he collects no more dreams in his book – and even if he did return there would be nothing there for him: she is not dreaming, she is not awake.

  As the window disappears beneath the hill the hearse’s engine falls silent and the girl’s name rises from the invalid’s lips like steam from newly ploughed earth after a sunny day, and he strokes his twisted bird’s claw of a hand over the lid of the hatbox: “Marie-Sophie…”

  The hearse crawls noiselessly down the street over the last stretch to the riverbank, and Loewe sees the only people who had been out and about on that long-ago night: four men who are standing in front of the police station; on the steps three military policemen are roaring with laughter over a bit of sausage which one is balancing on another’s nose, while a young man, who looks as if he has lost his inner poet, stands with one foot in the gutter. He stares up the street, smiling on the side of his face that is turned towards the uniforms. The invalid wrinkles his brow anxiously as the hearse brushes against the upper arm of this unfortunate man who seems worn down by the wait. He is unaware that this is the citizen of Kükenstadt he knows best apart from my mother: Karl Maus. And Karl Maus will never know that what he has been waiting for all this time has been and gone, leaving behind only a black stripe like a mourning band on his sleeve. He continues to wait.

  The hearse runs through a road block, slows down and stops on the riverbank; a barge is floating low in the water against the dock; the helmsman, who had been sitting on the rail smoking his pipe when the blast came, lies sprawled on the bank, thoughtfully contemplating the cold ashes.

  Loewe stretches out on the coffin-rest and kicks the rear door until it flies open, then crawls out of the hearse with the hatbox clasped under his left arm, dragging the suitcase behind him with his right. He looks round in search of life; there’s no one here to help a poor wretch who doesn’t know where he’s going.

  But out on the river floats a silvery feather from the Elbe’s guardian angel, and a single pitch-black bristle from the beard of the Elbe’s demon lies like a thwart amidships.

  It’s as big as a Viking longship and the quill of the feather reaches to the shore like a gangplank. My father struggles over to it with his luggage. He perches on the beard bristle, puts down the suitcase on the vane at his feet and hugs the hatbox to him. A good while passes like this with nothing happening: the Elbe no longer flows to the sea, its rushing voice is silenced.

  The only movement in the eternal night is the invalid’s ribcage, which trembles with his weeping, and the only sound is the sob that bursts from his throat and is carried over the doomed Continent, over woods and fields, over towns and cities, over lakes and plains, over hills and mountain peaks.

  Europe becomes Eurweep.

  At the Ural Mountains in the east and Gibraltar in the south the gust of weeping turns back on it
self in search of its origin and blows my father off the beard bristle. He rises to his feet, spreads his arms, captures the sob, and lets it carry him out to sea on the feather.

  Puff-puff-puff, Puff-puff

  Puff-puff-puff, Puff-away,

  Puff-puff-away, Way-away,

  Puff-way-away, Way-away,

  Way-way-away, Way-away …

  Loewe’s silvery vessel rocks on the North Sea. Off the coast of Denmark – level with the small towns of Natmad and Bamsedreng – lies a ship at anchor, its navigation lamps illuminating the night, lights burning in every porthole, coloured bulbs glowing up the mast and stays, its name painted in white letters on the black hull: GODAFOSS.

  The invalid sits huddled on the beard bristle in a world of his own; it is not until the feather has floated to the ship’s side and the swell has begun to drive it away again that he wakes up to the fact that the ship’s engines are revving, the ship’s whistle is being blown. He leaps off the bristle, seizes it with both hands and paddles for dear life to the side of the ship, where he grabs his chance to bang on the hull with his oar. After he has been tapping on the hull for some time, succeeding only in scratching at the letter “A” in the ship’s name, the silhouette of a man appears at the rail, and a moment later a rope ladder is thrown over the side and a sailor swarms down it. He pays no attention to the feather and beard bristle, having apparently seen stranger craft, but addresses my father in a bizarrely singsong language, conveying to him with the help of hand signals that he wishes to throw him over his shoulder and carry him aboard, but they’ll have to leave the suitcase and hatbox behind. When my father cries: “No!” and bursts into tears, the stranger gives this puny wretch a thoughtful once-over, then tosses him and his luggage over his shoulder without a word and climbs aboard, where they are met by his double. The second man whips the invalid over the rail and sets him down at his side, simultaneously greeting him and laughing at him.

  The invalid looks small on the deck, the throbbing of the engine shakes him from head to foot, the wheelhouse towers over him, the flood of lights hurts his eyes and at the top of the mast he sees a flag bearing the accursed symbol flapping on its pole.