Russell Hoban - Pilgermann

‘I could hear some movement on the rocks and a voice said, “You go in after him, I’ll be right behind you.” Of course I knew that was meant for my ears so I was waiting for them to come at me at the same time from above and below. I knew by then that whoever climbed to the opening above was unable to do it with an arrow on the string, he would have to pause for a moment at the top to reach for an arrow. And if he was going to time his attack with that of the other robber he would probably make a sound. So I aimed an arrow at the space I had squeezed through, I thought that was where I’d first see movement.

‘You know how it is at even the most desperate moments, even in matters of life and death — part of your mind is busy with its own affairs, perhaps making pictures, perhaps making words or singing a song while the rest of your mind takes care of the business at hand. Part of my mind was singing a little song, it hadn’t much tune, it was just something the mind had made up by itself, there were no proper words, it just went:

‘Tsitsa tsitsa bem, tsitsa tsitsa bem,

Tsitsa tsitsa bembel bembel bembel bembel bem.

‘Like that over and over again. When I saw movement in the space I’d squeezed through I loosed my arrow and I heard a grunt. There was a little sound from above as if in reply and when the last robber appeared against the sky my last arrow found him and that finished the business of the day.

‘So that was that. For a little while I just sat there leaning against a rock, looking up at the sky, listening to the bird, feeling the breeze on my face — just being alive and not dead. My mind was still busy with its song, now it was singing:

‘Rukh, rukh, rudz, rudzl, rudzl, rudzuk.

‘I was thinking what a lot of bems and rudzes there are in the universe, what an altogether bembelish and rudzukal thing it is, to say nothing of the tsitsas. I was glad for me that I was alive and sorry for the robbers that they were dead — it was such a good day to be alive in. I recognized that it could just as easily have been the robbers alive and I dead and that would have been fair enough, one mustn’t be greedy, one can’t always win the prize, the action goes on for ever but the actors come and go.

‘It was then that I noticed sitting beside me and leaning back against the same rock our bony friend, all got up for the occasion like a true son of the desert with quite a princely robe and kaffiya and jewelled daggers. “You’re a good boy,” he said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “I like you; you move well and you don’t hang back when things warm up a little. You’ll be lucky, you’ll have a good life and years enough of it. One thing though you must never forget: you must never forget whose child you are, and when I say it’s time for bed you must come promptly and cheerfully; you might as well do it with a good grace because in any case you’ll have to come — no one can say no to me.”

‘With that he whistled and there came not a black horse and not a white one but a dappled grey stallion. Such a horse, a horse of dreams, that one! Almost I wanted to go with Death at that very moment just to feel that horse under me. With a whoop he leapt to the stallion’s back and galloped away like a thunderbolt, what a man! It struck me suddenly, there’s no one more alive than Death; how could there be, he’ll outlive us all!

‘From that moment I called myself Bembel Rudzuk so that I should never forget the bembelish and rudzukal nature of the universe and whose child I was.

‘When I came down from the rocks I found the robbers’ horses tied to a thornbush and with them was the one I had ridden to the rocks. She was one of those clever little mares that can go all day and never miss her footing anywhere, I had her for years after that, she always reminded me of that ride. What a day that was!

‘I found the camels all grazing where the robbers had attacked us and grazing with them were the other horses, both the robbers’ and ours. Two of the horses had been killed but that still left me with four horses more than we had started the day with, and of course the six robber horses were all first-class, much better than ours; robbers can’t afford to ride rubbish.

‘Even better than the horses was what I found in the robbers’ saddlebags: two thousand and forty-two dinars! I couldn’t believe it — all that gold and still they went on trying for more! I suppose they were for ever unsatisfied and that’s why they had to be robbers.

‘I rode back to the rocks and collected the four dead robbers there then I loaded all six robbers and my dead colleagues and the camel-drivers on to the horses and continued on my way to Tripoli with the carpets we had bought in Tabriz. On my return all the dead were buried with the proper observances. We did well in the market and altogether my employers were well pleased with me. As I had been travelling for them when I acquired the robbers’ treasure I offered to share it equally with them but they refused to take so much as a single dinar. They wanted to make me a partner but I preferred to set up in business for myself under my new name and I came to Antioch to do it. I had always liked the look of the place, particularly the look of Mount Silpius in the dawn, and I had heard that long ago there was a statue of the Goddess of Luck here. I’ve never found the place where the statue used to be but I’ve always been as lucky as I needed to be.

‘I have had a good life, I have spent my time as I wanted to spend it, and although I have never grown wise I have through trial and error come closer and closer to Thing-in-Itself, so that when my time comes I expect I shan’t have too much of a jump to make from this state to the next one. I can understand your present bitterness and your regret that you have stayed so long in Antioch but for me what we have done with Hidden Lion was time as well spent as time ever is. To me it seems that the best we can hope for in life is honesty of error; more than that is not to be expected. Sometimes we can see what is wrong action but that doesn’t make everything other than that right action. I have said enough; I have lived enough. I do not forget whose child I am and I am ready to go when called.’

‘You say that Bruder Pförtner has spoken to you,’ I said. ‘Have you also seen your young death?’

‘I have seen only Pförtner,’ said Bembel Rudzuk, ‘on his dappled stallion: that for me is the sign. I have seen him and spoken with him many times since that first time forty years ago but never until this morning has he ridden that particular horse again; it has been understood between us that the horse would be the sign.’

‘I wonder how it is that you also have travelled to the fall of Jerusalem and seen Sophia and my son,’ I said.

‘You have a woman and a child to love,’ said Bembel Rudzuk. ‘I have only you and I have been eating the scraps from your table.’

‘Ah!’ I said. ‘Whenever I think that I have seen the boundaries of my stupidity there suddenly open up new territories before me.’

We both looked across the tiles to where Bruder Pförtner and his generals were. He was now strutting back and forth and making some kind of oration. The sky had become dull and grey. Silpius was intensified in the greyness, became the mountain wholly strange and never to be known, the mountain showing the traveller from afar how far he had come to find that nothing whatever could be known about anything at all. The nakedness of dead Sophia was as if printed on my eyes; I looked through it at the mountain as one looks through a transparent figured curtain. The watchful face of our son was as big as the world.

‘We must do what we can,’ said Bembel Rudzuk. We looked at each other and the images printed on my eyes seemed to double in intensity.