Jáchym Topol - City, Sister, Silver

But it is said … Yellow Woman tethered Wolf Cub to her horse and broke through the encirclement. They couldn’t tell which way they were going, the snowstorm blinded them. But they reached the mountains and spent the winter there. Yellow Woman tied branches to Wolf Cub’s broken arms and the bones grew back together. They hunted. Somehow they survived. Wolf Cub saw that Yellow Woman’s belly was growing. She wanted to go on though, high into the mountains. The Earth is full of graves, she told him … the Earth is a grave, c’mon, you know … we have to go as high as we can.

The Earth swallowed up Dull Knife’s people and turned into a pit. No one knows where Dull Knife lies. All they know is he threw off his collar.

Yellow Woman took Wolf Cub higher and higher. She avoided the gullies and gorges where there might be bones. When they came to a place where there was nothing but rock, she suggested it might be appropriate to build a cottage there. Then she and the child rode on. They were trying to get to Kanaka, where there were still people who lived the old way, and lots of trees.

It is said that two braves, Wanatabe and Ishtu, spied their silhouettes on the horizon and rode off to face them without telling anyone in their pack. Great joy, brother, Ishtu said … I’m sick to death of hunting those stupid Wasichu … they don’t know the rules, they get frightened … they smell disgusting … they don’t know how to speak. And Wanatabe was joyful too, because now he was hunting people again, which required skill and strength. Because even a small child of the Lakota tribe could tell that the two beings riding toward them on the horizon were also people. No Wasichu knew how to move like that.

As soon as Wolf Cub saw the horsemen, he knew what they had in mind. He reached for his club. But Wanatabe and Ishtu left their arrows in their quivers. Are you people? Wanatabe asked formally. Ishtu made the sign for tribe. Yellow Woman replied that they were from the pack of Dull Knife. We heard … Ishtu signed … that you had done away with tribes and that all of you were slaughtered. Wanatabe left his fingers in his horse’s mane … this is a great … a great and sacred moment … dear brother and brave sister … welcome among the people of Sitting Bull. The child opened his eyes and reached out for the braves’ shiny ornaments … he remembered them from previous lives, but his father and mother had lost theirs … the four Déné knew the Lakotas had more than enough ornaments … so they dug their heels into their animals’ flanks, riding fast.

One other member of Dull Knife’s pack, Necklace, the Nez Perce, also made it out of the encirclement … but he didn’t remember how, later he claimed to have been carried off by an eagle … he wandered the region on foot until he stumbled across some chicken reeducation farms, trounced the subhumans, and helped himself to their armaments and accoutrements … the militiamen dogged him, tightening the noose, but he sliced through the knot … and made his way to the forests, where there were neither people nor Wasichu … he nursed his wounds there, feeling at peace … I’m a person, he said to himself, but after a time he set out again, he didn’t want to be alone … they hunted him and killed his horse with a machine … but he crawled on … and after many days he came to a forest where the Crows still hunted and the nonpeople hadn’t been yet … he saw some girls gathering wood … there were many trees … the girls screamed in fright at the beast creeping toward them on all fours … but one of them, She-Raven, recognized him … she knew who he was and wasn’t afraid. Welcome, she said … this is a good moment, for coincidentally … she said, unbraiding black strips of skin from her hair … by truly rare and remarkable coincidence, today ends the time of mourning for Little Shield … he was a good husband … and I’m cooking a doggie in the kettle as we speak … the meat must be quite tender by now, and I venture to presume, O warrior, you would not spurn a morsel … provided, that is, you have the time and the inclination … be my guest. Ugh, Necklace said, and he collapsed. She-Raven assumed that this was his way of expressing consent.

And so, dear friends and enemies, said Sharky, of the last thirty people they say three managed to escape, thereby thwarting genocide once again. And a certain crackpot, that is to say mystic, infers from these numbers the identity of the man who at a certain age chose to take on the responsibility that was lying out in the desert … spread his arms … and tried to do away with tribes … but seeing as you’re practical types and the cream of scholarly society, boys, I’m sure you know the name of this nearly extinct people. Bohler! The Irkuts, Mr. President! Outstanding … Micka! The Ingush,* boss minister! Marvelous … Potok! The Ikvas, fuckbrain hippie! Brilliant … our spiritual caretaker will answer on behalf of our missing colleague … the Inuits, potatohead! Very good. You’re well prepared. There’s various things, paths, snares, an pitfalls … various possibilities, you know what I’m sayin … an as your reward, tattoo the name of this people a thousand times on your sweet little hearts. Got it?

Bohler banged the window shut, it was getting cold outside. Sharky went on smiling and talking to us. We were almost the only ones left in the building. Beneath us was the Zone. We knew our pseudodroog was relating his dreams so persistently because he was parting with us … going home, as he put it. I had no idea which place on earth he called home. His business.

An now I’m gonna tell the lot of you, said Sharky, another made-up story from my dream about reality, but not about the pack, it’s about the Individual. Once upon a time lived a man named Rimbow, who wrote: I die of thirst beside the fountain, blazing hot with chattering teeth … or maybe it was someone else … probly a woman, same diff … but shortly after Rimbow ditched his old maman, he got tangled up in kulchur sections an went through some horrid stuff with phone idiots, an that’s what I’m gonna tell you about.

Rimbow put colors together with vowels an consonants, changin his tongue … inventin an alphabet … pavin the way for those that came after … but there was always someone phonin him up, cause there’s lots of idiots that donno what it is to drink solitude … an they wanna talk about their thoroughly boring lives an discuss the problems of tribes an crews … Rimbow mixed his solitude with Firewater an stuck it in his alphabet, which he was makin for people without a tribe, cause he was a seer an knew what traps were yet to come … it was obvious … but the idiots kept phonin him up an schedulin appointments an gabbin away at conferences, expressin their views on the things of the knowable world … there were frictions and squabbles, and voting too, mostly about chuckles and slavery, as usual … he needed the chuckles, after all he was human … he’d tried making a meal of air, rock, coal, steel, but it didn’t work … so he had to go to the conferences and listen to the views and speeches … it was awful … and since he didn’t pick up the phone, the lobbyists would come over with plans on how to get rid of the other lobbies, which is in every special-interest group’s job description, and since he happened to live on the ground floor, when his friends passed by and saw the lights on, they’d knock on his door … so he lived in the dark … drew his eyelids down like blinds and flapped his ears back like a dog … girlfriends and secretaries made him appointments with psychiatrists … saying: Don’t be crazy! He was, but as he wrote once from the woods … it’s all the same how it ends, it’s my power, my path, that’s what’s important … and when his friends broke down the door, he had a fake beard on, and said: I’m someone else! And just to confuse em he added: But that’s not me either! He was trying to stop the wheel of the world, at least for himself, if no one else. And every time he hit his stride and the mysterious symbols of his alphabet were beginning to take shape … his friends would steal into his place, plug the phone into the wall, and call an ambulance … he’d wake up in a straitjacket and his friends would come and sign him out and say: There, you see, it’s gonna be fine now … and he pretended not to see the wheel in motion, and with all the shots and pills he really didn’t anymore … he tried his best to give the impression he was satisfied again, and his employers in Scabieville, smiling benevolently, withdrew the black mark … and he began going to conferences and presenting his views on the visible and listening to other views and excitedly debating them, and the whole thing started all over again.