Jáchym Topol - City, Sister, Silver

Settle in now, O vultures and scavengers, cause things’ve gotta come to an end an I haven’t even begun, Sharky warned us. My dream continues, an it’s about another pack. It’s fast and slow, and you’ll find out what the earth is under your feet. So don’t shake your heads an quit tryin to solve the unsolvable a while, believe me, there’s various paths, various possibilities, various things … an one of the paths was the path of the people of Dull Knife when their pack’s G-night began.

The fleeing tribes mixed together. And then what was left of them was herded into corrals. And enemy tribes were herded into the same corrals so they’d kill each other off … the tribes’ time was shattered, and the new people, who wanted to give the land their own name, couldn’t stand them … they put collars on Dull Knife’s people, forcing them to eat the same ridiculous things and move the same ridiculous way … at least that’s how it seemed to the people in the corrals … and they called their slavemasters Wasichu, white spirits, on account of their ridiculous skin color, and didn’t consider them human, because only they were Déné, people. And coincidentally, the people who locked them in the corrals considered them to be the subhumans.

The Déné were dying because the grass there stank and the water was undrinkable … there weren’t any moving animals to shoot at or chase, and no eagles either, there was nothing there but vultures … the Déné didn’t like them … and soon there were no more enemies either, the Déné wiped them out, all except the Wasichu, of course.

And … for the Déné this was the worst part … the corrals didn’t have any trees in them. The Déné, you see, laid their dead to rest in the treetops. They knew what the Earth was, they knew the Earth was a mass human grave. It was totally obvious to them that only fools and slaves to Evil buried or burned their dead. They knew the heaps of dead and ashes were overloading the Earth. They had dreams about the next tribe or nation thrown into the pits sending the Earth veering off its path. Forfeit its place, lose its mysterious way, and go shooting off somewhere, up the ass of the old Invader, or more likely the Devil.

That was the Déné’s teaching. That was why they gave their dead to the trees, the air, the wind, and the eagles and their ravenous cousins … some of them they didn’t like, but what could they do, that’s the way it was … and since the corrals didn’t have any trees, they buried and burned their dead Wasichu-style, but they knew what it did to the Earth. They got bored and died, and in between they drank the Fiery, of which oddly enough there was plenty … in spite of its being strictly forbidden, since, as stated in numerous studies and dissertations, the Déné after consuming it in large doses turned into “psychopathic murderers.” However, there were several kulchural foundations that for tax purposes supported basket makers, poetasters, and daubers, and so the Fiery went to the reservations by the wagonload … and some dailies even ran humanist articles about the subhumans’ art. When the juries laid eyes on the hungover works, they said all kinds of crap, to keep the metal flowing and earn their living, the critics tuned up their ballpoints, and the guilt-tripped idiots expounded their views with impunity ad infinitum … and, dear listeners and anchorwomen, it got to the point where all the boredom and pointless death drove Grinning Man to kill his wife … he was under the influence of the Fiery, so no one blamed him for it, but it was no good … and when he came to again, Grinning Man bitterly regretted his deed and slashed his wrists and spoke to his wife, begging her to forgive him … and maybe she did and maybe she didn’t, no one knows since she never revived … and then Necklace cut off his little sister’s nose, laughing as he did it … also under the influence, so he didn’t know what he was doing … and everyone realized he did it because of the collar, no one said a word, but they knew that what was going on wasn’t any good. And it has been objectively established that Natanis’s collar made him climb a tree, tie his legs to a branch, and drop headfirst into an anthill, and as numerous prominent studies and several dissertations have noted, the Déné said to cut it out … but he told them to cut it out an watch, and they shared his fate like brothers, because he suffered his collar in silence, until at last he was so ashamed he decided … to have it out with death … overnight he sobered up, but he didn’t change his mind … and along came Pte-San-Waste-Win, and she said: Firewater is worse than Thunderstick! Smash the bottles and slaughter the Wasichu who sell you this filth in exchange for your women. You immoral drunkards. You’ve forgotten everything. Are you still people? The men were all drunk at the time, and it seemed like a good idea, so they went ahead and did it. Pte-San-Waste-Win was powerful and they usually did what she said. When nobody was watching, she put an end to Natanis’s suffering too. The Déné slaughtered all the Wasichu, including the corral overseer, who had the most titles and sat on many boards of directors. Whenever they had complained to him that there was nothing to eat, he had told them to eat grass. So they killed him and stuffed his mouth with grass, and he’s still eating it now. They had their fun, but they knew it was time to disappear.

They put together rifles and pistols, which they weren’t supposed to have. Some time ago, though, they had taken apart a bunch of them and braided the barrels and triggers and hammers into their hair, along with their clasps and feathers. The Wasichu laughed at them, rattling on about stupid barbaric ornaments and childish superstitions. But there were no more Wasichu around now. And when the people of Dull Knife’s G-night began, a great many more Wasichu stopped laughing at those ornaments. They stopped smiling, they stopped being.

The men on horseback led the way, followed by the women and children on foot, they didn’t have too many horses yet. Not far from the corrals, they knew, were a few squadrons of cavalrymen. It is said that Grinning Man and Necklace led the charge. They had sinned greatly and nothing mattered to them anymore. The cavalrymen weren’t expecting it, and that day plenty of them stopped laughing. Grinning Man fell and found out whether his wife had forgiven him. He wasn’t the only one to fall. But they got lots of rifles and horses and their strength began to return to them. In a nearby woods the riders dismounted, and Dull Knife took on the responsibility that was tumbling across the prairie. All right, all right, brother, said the others … Chief Joseph, Little Bear, Ollokot, Sleeping Rabbit, Abenak, Bloody Knife, and the rest … okay, but you know … they didn’t have to say it, but they began to live by the rules again … and Dull Knife nodded because he knew … what would happen if he didn’t steer his people through the pitfalls and they fell in the traps and snares, if he didn’t make the right moves, if his heart turned sour with fear. They headed north, back to their home.

They had their own language and clung to it, foolishly, dully, fatuously … just as they clung to their motion, and with every step toward G-night, away from the corrals, their strength returned to them … they were from various tribes … Chief Joseph and his son, Necklace, were Nez Perce; Wovoka, who taught them to dance the forbidden dance, was Paiute; the rest were mostly Cheyenne … but it made no difference now, they were a new defensive community, and they traded words because they needed to understand one another in order not to perish, or at least not right away … they were the Dull Knife pack.

And Dull Knife’s heart did not turn sour, just the opposite, now it was sweeter and redder than ever before, and the pulse of Dull Knife’s heart helped his people move through the pitfalls … steering clear of the traps and turning the snares inside out.