Jan Slauerhoff - The Forbidden Kingdom

We did not have much time to empty our bowls. We were soon kicked to our feet, blindfolded and led away. Were we being taken to our deaths? If so, why had they given us food? Or was this an extra refinement? We walked for four hours in uncertainty, and probably only a few of us were seriously afraid of death, and perhaps a few longed for it. But we were all filled with fear of torture — no one was too jaded for that. Anyone stepping out of line, through stumbling, was immediately pushed back, which proved that we were surrounded by a sizeable escort. We stumbled on like this for hours. It was becoming hotter, and the sun was blazing down more fiercely on our uncovered heads. If only the blindfolds had been tied over our skulls, that would have been a relief.

Suddenly the sunshine became less fierce. Was it evening? No, we were passing between high walls and we could hear and smell a great mass of people surrounding us. A screeching that grew louder and louder, the fumes of sweat and cooked and burnt meat and rotten fish; we had experienced this often enough when sighted to know that we were being taken through a Chinese town. At first we walked along a wide road, then we were constantly prodded to turn a corner. We were grabbed from all sides and hot hands groped at us, curious hands, large coarse ones and also small children’s hands, and nails cut into our flesh, accompanied by shrill laughter. Sometimes one of us was hauled into a window, had long pins stuck into him and was pushed out again.

This ordeal lasted for hours. Then we suddenly halted, bumping into each other like the carriages of a braking train. We heard a loud creaking sound, and a fierce wind hit us, the shreds of our clothes flapped around us, and the smells of decay departed. Behind us was the crowded town, and ahead of us must be a broad empty plain. It was as if we had been submerged in oil and mercury and were now suddenly surfacing in a vacuum. At first it was painful, and our breathing accelerated. Then most of us revived, but for some the transition was too violent, and they fell down unconscious; it took many blows with rifle butts to get them to their feet. On we went again, and the wind remained strong but the sun was no less fierce for that and this plain was sandy, so that the soles of our feet baked as we walked. Our escort must be less numerous now, and no longer prodded us in the right direction, and many stumbled, hitting their heads or arms on sharp stones, and continued bleeding, while sometimes people fell into a mouldy, soft mass of wood and landed on dry human bones.

Finally it became dark. The sun ceased tormenting scorched heads, but the plain remained just as hot. The guards drove their herd through a narrow doorway into a stone enclosure. The blindfolds were removed, and we could see the stars above us. On the top of the wall stood the food bowls, too high to reach, and after an hour a hand passed them down to us, moving quickly — which meant that the man doing it was walking upright. So the prison was a half-sunken pit; on the outside one could walk at ground level, and escape, but where to?

Everyone remained lying down and slept heavily, sometimes groaning. Many could not stand the following day, and they were left where they lay. The day was less hot, the ground softer and undulating. Some could smell that a great expanse of water was approaching. We approached it at about midday, and waded in it to cool down, but as for quenching our thirst it was a disappointment: the water was brackish, almost salt. In the evening we stopped in the middle of the plain. A prison was unnecessary now, since all of us stayed lying where we had been allowed to slump down.

The same applied the following morning when we struck camp. Those who could still walk were blindfolded again. The ground remained flat, but many of us stumbled over our own feet. By midday people were no longer prodded till they stood up. They were allowed to get up calmly. It was frightening to be left alone in this way. I managed to wrench off the blindfold. In the middle of the bleakest desert we had been left to our fate. In the far distance was a black strip, moving as slowly as a caterpillar: the Chinese escort returning. Scattered across the plain, people were wandering round in circles, and every so often one would fall and not get up again. I tried to yell and call a few of them together, but my voice could not escape my parched throat.

I went over to the closest one, untied his blindfold and told him we were free. He no longer understood me, sat down and stared vacantly around him. I sat down too, simply to await death. It seemed horrific to me to lie there on the plain and be eaten by vultures. My hands started digging a hole, but did not go very deep.

At night a cool wind crossed the plain, on its way to the sea. It passed over the down-hearted, cooling their bodies, and driving away death, which was sitting ready in the shape of vulture to start the process of decomposition.

Nevertheless I woke, very early, as the sun was just poking its head above the horizon, and a shadow fell across my feet; I saw the stone casting it. It was a hexagonal chunk of basalt. There seemed to be some characters on it. But I knew that the Chinese, as children, have a mania for writing on everything. So why not on this stone? But underneath I saw Latin characters too. So people of my race had once been in this desert. They had had the energy to carve letters on a stone. One doesn’t do that at death’s door — or had it been their own tombstone? It was a language I could not read. The letters had almost worn away.

It was midday, and the stone was a crude sundial, so that I could determine a direction, and I headed south. In order to get back to Hong Kong? I scarcely dared hope, but something compelled me to go south. Perhaps also because in that way when I set off my injured left cheek and neck stayed facing west, in the shade. Towards evening the following day I saw a black dot on the horizon, and approaching it, saw another such stone — so that I was on a path that had been trod before. I felt an impulse to depart from it, since I had no desire to tread in long erased footprints. But a hundred metres farther on there was some water in a hole, brackish, murky water, yet not undrinkable for someone who has endured thirst for three days. I drank and felt sleepy, but did not want to sleep here, and went on till I could go no farther.

My scorched skull was pounding, and my hair was thinning. Among Europeans, only the Portuguese can stand the tropical sun on their bare heads with impunity. My consciousness shrank in my hot head, as if my brains were being boiled and my life was exiting through my cracked skin. But I wanted to be free. Now, here, in the greatest kingdom on earth, far from the hated sea, I was lost; no one at all still thought of me or tried to penetrate the depth of my soul. A man cannot live without reason, without disasters, without desire and antipathy. Perhaps, though, I needed to be here for something, and then at any rate I would stay alive. But first sleep, and somewhere cool. Another mile, then I would find it, or else death.

Another grave; I used to skirt them, afraid that something was lying in wait for me. But now it was different, a spot where there was at least shade and perhaps some coolness. I walked round it. It was not a grave like so many others, though the womb shape was retained. The entrance was lined with green and blue porcelain tiles, which in the arid wasteland had the effect of splendid flowers. The grave was almost intact. Around it stood three crudely carved stone horses up to their bellies in the sand. I sat on the saddle of one of the horses, and jumped off again — perhaps I had already gone mad; sitting on a horse here, amid the white heat, in the harsh red and yellow desert, beneath the clear blue sky, like a child on a roundabout, that was a good way of doing so.