Russell Hoban - Pilgermann

‘Here we’re talking like old friends,’ I said, ‘and yet you must be full of rage because I killed you.’

‘Why should I be full of rage more than you?’ she said. ‘I sniffed you out, they castrated you and I ate your male parts. So you killed me, that’s reasonable. A little time one way or the other, it seems a big thing when you’re alive but when you’re dead you wonder what all the fuss was about. When I was alive we hunted you down; now we’re dead and you’re alive and already we’re friends. Very soon you’ll be dead also and you too will wonder why it ever mattered so much who was what and who did what.’

‘And you?’ I said to Konrad. ‘You were the master of this sow, it was you who used her to sniff out the Jews that you tortured and killed. What have you to say for yourself?’

‘What have I to say for myself?’ said Konrad. ‘You lousy Jew eunuch with your soft white hands, in your whole life you probably never done nothing heavier than count your money. You’re all usurers, the whole filthy lot of you, trying to get the whole world in your pocket. Knights going to Jerusalem, they have to pawn their castles to you. Many’s the Christian lady you’ve crept into bed with, I’ll bet, and her lawful husband gone to fight the heathen. Not that it don’t serve them right, they’re nothing but thieves and murderers and their foot on the neck of the poor from the time we’re born till the time we die. Look at my hands next to yours, eh? Mine are more like hooves, ain’t they. They’re that hard. Here I am dead from your Jew magic and how much did I ever have in these hands. Tools to work another man’s land with mostly. Heavy soil and a heavy plough and a six-ox team, you probably wouldn’t have the strength in them white hands of yours to turn a plough like that. How much Christian blood have you drunk?’

‘I wonder what makes Christians think that anybody would want to drink their blood,’ I said.

‘If you don’t drink it you do other things with it,’ said Konrad. ‘Everybody knows about Jew magic.’

‘You’re a Christian, are you?’ I said.

‘What else would I be, you Jew Antichrist-worshipper,’ he said, ‘I been baptized, haven’t I.’

‘And died with your sins heavy on you,’ I said. ‘Died all unshriven.’

‘What difference does that make,’ he said. ‘I ain’t burning in Hell nor nothing like that, am I.’

‘Maybe your Hell will be to walk to Jerusalem with the Jew you castrated,’ I said.

‘Whatever I have to do,’ he said, ‘I’ll do it like a man, I’ve nothing to fear. It’s yourself you’d better be worrying about; the Last Days are coming and then you’ll see what burning is. There’s been signs in the sky, you know — great flaming clouds in the shape of Christ with a sword in his hand fighting the Jewish Antichrist with three heads and seven horns.’

‘Who won?’ I said.

‘You’ll see soon enough, clipcock,’ he said. ‘I forgot, you ain’t even that no more, you’re a no-cock clipcock.’

‘I’m so sorry you’re dead,’ I said. ‘It’s a great loss to me that you could only die once; it would be such a pleasure to kill you.’ Thinking, as I said it, that these dead ones were already like a family to me.

‘It means nothing at all,’ said the bear, ‘whatever you see in the sky.’ The arrows that had killed him were still in him, they nodded as he walked upright with the others. ‘There’s been a Great Bear in the sky all these years and even a Lesser Bear as well and nothing’s come of it, nothing at all.’

‘Did you think anything would come of it?’ I said.

‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘Why should I. You can see anything you like in the sky, anything at all. And what it means is anything at all.’

‘That man who killed you,’ I said. ‘What do you think he’s doing now?’

‘He’s looking for another bear,’ said the bear. ‘He’s hopeless, he’s incapable of learning.’

‘You think you’re quite the thing, don’t you,’ said Udo the relic-gatherer to the bear. ‘You think you’re better than us. I seen you slipping through the woods now and again when you been alive. You wouldn’t say nothing to us then, you wouldn’t stop and pass the time of day, you were too good for us.’

‘If I’d stopped you’d have shot me full of arrows,’ said the bear.

‘Yes I would,’ said Udo. ‘Yes I would just because you wouldn’t stop and talk. If you’d talked with me we could have been friends, you could have showed me where the honey trees were.’

‘Another one,’ said the bear.

‘Don’t take that tone with me,’ said Udo. ‘How much honey have you had in your life and how much have I had in mine?’

‘Whatever I’ve had I’ve found for myself,’ said the bear.

‘Oh yes,’ said Udo. ‘Naturally. The wood is your village, isn’t it. So you know where to find things the same as I did in my village. If you’d come to my village looking for the well or the inn or whatever I’d have shown you where to find it, I’d have had time to stop and talk, wouldn’t I. But when I come to your wood a runaway and a stranger trying to stay uncaught for my year and a day it’s not a word from you I get, is it. It’s nothing, nothing, nothing I get from everybody. The lord and his lot they treat you like an animal till you run off and you think at least if the animals will treat you like an animal that’s not so bad, you’ll be a brother to them. But they won’t, they turn their backs on you. Die, serf! Die, slave! Into the ground with you and give the maggots what they’re waiting for.’

‘Excuse me,’ said the headless tax-collector. A thrill ran through me when I heard his voice, the voice of my brother in Sophia, the voice of my brother pilgrim whose temple I had destroyed, whose world I had blackened and made empty. These new colleagues of mine, these dead men and animals, all of them appeared to me as I had last seen them. So the tax-collector was of course naked and headless and writhing with the terrible swift energy of the maggots that continually consumed him but never diminished his dreadful corpse. I couldn’t bear to look at him but my eyes were again and again magnetically drawn to the horror of him while in my mouth I tasted writhing maggots.

‘Excuse me,’ said the tax-collector to Udo. ‘I don’t want to offend a respectable murderer but when you talk of giving the maggots what they’re waiting for, then I really must say something, I really must put in a word, must mention that you were eager enough to give me to the maggots. You seem to feel very sorry for yourself but you didn’t feel sorry for me when you caught me with your wire and took my head off with your sword.’

‘That were business,’ said Udo. ‘I never wished you nothing ill. Anyhow what’s one pilgrim more or less; you’ve died on the road but here’s Herr Keinpimmel will go to Jerusalem for you; he’ll make the journey for you and say however many prayers you like. So there’s nothing lost, you’ve give the world up for Jesus and I say well done and Amen.’

‘Ah, yes,’ said the tax-collector. ‘My good friend Herr Keinpimmel, the illustrious Jew adulterer. The one takes my wife and the other takes my life. And my head will bear the name of that one who washed his hands and said that he was innocent of the blood of Christ. What more could I ask for? I am happy, I am content to dance with the maggots until …’

‘Judgment Day?’ I said. I couldn’t keep silence, I had to speak to his absent face, I had to look at where his face would have been if he had had a head.

‘Ah!’ he said, ‘At last! The first words spoken by you to me! And it is the Day of Judgment about which you speak to me. It is with this thought, this question, that you break your silence. You cannot look me in the eye because my head is elsewhere but I think that even if my head were here you might not be able to look me in the eye, isn’t that so?’