Breyten Breytenbach - All One Horse

I berate People and tell him he can be had up for non-assistance to a species in danger of extinction. I ask People what he did with God’s corpse. We spirited it away into the earth so as to beef up the subsoil, he says. Does it make the plants grow, I ask. No, the ground in these parts has a weird white taste but there is a sweet-water fountain not far off. People is wont to come here to be reminded that there’s something he ought to remember. Then he has a sip of water and promptly forgets himself in the clear liquid. I tell People not to worry, that there is no sense in thinking about what has been forgotten, that there may have been Nothing to remember in the first place (which naturally sends the mind frantically fumbling for presence), and anyway that the subconscious is quite old enough to take care of itself. I also posit that water is the soul of the mirror.

It is not that easy to kill nor is it clear that you ever succeed. If there is successful Sonderbehandlüng there must be a you. I, God, cannot be dead without there being the knowledge of death, some instance to know I am dead. Therefore, if I, God, am killed, you exist. Welcome indeed!

There is the woman who tried to do away with her husband. First she poisoned him, then she strangled him, then she bashed him over the head, than she tried to slice him up with a buzz-saw and when she saw that the saw wouldn’t do it she dragged him into the car and drove him to the lake where she dumped him. But the lake was frozen. He died some time later of pneumonia and of blueness of the body. Through bloated lips he croaked: ‘I love you.’

Story tells the following — it takes place in White city: three young Matsetedi bucks out for an evening’s fun intercept a squatter with a funny hairdo. It is a dark and stormy night. They bundle him in to their car, two of them sit on him. Where to? They take him out to the cold lake near Clearwater Fountain. There they knife him repeatedly. Because there’s no end to his groaning they drive the car over him, risking hurting the tyres. Off they go for a late beer but after a distance they realize he must be hanging on to the back fender going wop-wop-wop over the night-tinted tarmac. So they stop again and it takes a lot of stomping before all breathing ceases. He died of overtiredness. Before the judge one young Shiny Face pleads innocent: ‘I did kick, your Honour, just for fun, but I couldn’t have done much harm, as I was wearing my soft poofter pumps.’

In the Bois de Boulogne there are persons soliciting passers-by for sexual panhandling. Most of them are Brazilian. On a dark night one of the skirted and rouged ones inadvertently steps out right into the spearing headlamps of an oncoming car and gets picked up by Sonderbehandlüng . (It had thought that the sex could be a purse or a roll of banknotes; it wasn’t intent upon meeting thus the foul breath of the Pimp.) During the course of the night twenty more cars on the look-out for a quick screw pass over the corpse without noticing it. With hardly a shudder of the body. Things that go bump in the night. Will you recognize Orgasm? In the early morning it takes a lot of piecing together to come to the conclusion that the defunct was in fact a transvestite. (Though who would ever know for sure or give a damn? No service, no money.)

God ‘is a Brazilian’. And all God is one Word. Also: freedom will come to him or her who lives the longest. And: some persons carry the cough between the legs.

I had disappeared for a long time. Friends found me in this rainy city. During the past time I had grown to know the king and the princess of the land, or those accorded the roles, sometimes, the courtiers and the courtesans and the actors and the spies, the buffoons at court. I take my friends down a gentle green hillside to a vantage point overlooking the narrow mudwalled street penetrating the city. Dusk fell, a perpetual grey cloth of rain. The king was returning to town from an inspection of the districts with his entourage. He precedes the night. The cantering pace, the clinking hooves, the dark-hued fluttering panoplies, the burnished breastplates glowing dully in the half light. The princess comes by all in silver, rouged cheeks and glittering eyes, six ladies-in-waiting carrying the train of her dress. She must be wearing boots for the mud. I wave. She doesn’t respond. Nobody acknowledges me any more. Knights and hunters gallop by, pull up their chargers sharply to tumble over the necks of the steeds and perform summersaults on the ground. They slap their thighs with gloved hands. The street is lined with people bearing spluttering torches. Tomorrow the festivities are due to commence. Tomorrow the king will officially be within the gates. There will be popcorn and rattles and flowers to go to the sea. My friends accompany me to the inn where I had been staying for a long time. We must leave. I must fetch my robe. At the inn I inquire after Mustapha, my travelling companion. We have to go now to that distant place. The innkeeper looks at me down his brown nose. He indicates a small box made of tarnished silver on the mantelpiece. The box is filled to the lid with red soil. Did we not know that the trains no longer run? And that the last red boat had gone? Look at the rotting carcass, waterlogged among the bobbing lights of the harbour.

Flying north. Day swirling with cloud and fog. Craft trembling, can’t make out land at all. Friendly passengers. Some one starts up a song. Coming in to land at Copenhagen. Won-derful won-derful Co-penhagen. Approach so low down narrow street, that immense wings must sweep over rooftop terraces of the tall buildings on either side. Pilot must know his town like inside of hand. Yet just suppose somebody left a potted palm or his coffin cooling out there for the night! Stopover, leg stretch for those who so desire. Make nodding noises at fellow passengers in airport lounge. Exchange words with old bearded Indian philosopher and another person. Immediately excise other person from narrative. Ancient sage has gentle moist eyes, but with turban resembles some other Ayatollah Fannattick. Tell him about situation back home. Class analysis. Sorry, but Indians will never fit into Africa. Must evacuate. ‘I’m sorry to have to do this to you but it is all in the cause of self-knowledge.’ The elderly traveller’s headcloth trembles. Back to the plane. Long time in taking off. Travelling through landscape. Plane not quite fitted out completely. Work continued during stopover, left undone. Part of pilot’s cabin still in plywood. Old Indian sage strapped in back there whispering sadly to young woman to his right. He’s suffering from abdominal pains now. Long eyes and whiskers shivering. No time at present for young woman in this story. Pilot points out pictures rushing past: confused cemetery, rubbish heaps with disparate objects sticking out. The way it all goes, the blue-eyed pilot says, terrible, into the earth with no distinction: books, cartons, mouse-shit, corpses. But ah, you must answer, exactly why it’s wonderful; we all decompose similarly — corpses, mouse-shit, cartons, boots; couldn’t happen unless we all share same thought, life ; couldn’t happen to a nicer guy; seamlessness! (All one horse.)And up. Day silvering with fog and cloud. No see nothing. Dangerous? Phantom ships bumping along in the void. One hostess starts handing out glasses of champagne, moving up and down aisle with her comfortable and friendly Tina Turner body. Is she forgetting you? Saving you for last? You to back, to toilet. In passing attract hostess’s attention with one-finger-raise. She will indeed serve you. Toilet uncompleted. No throne to sit on. You urinate. And now prick breaks off in your hand. Oh no! Asafoetida! You there with half the appurtenance lying in your palm, puckered, pinkish, perfectly shaped, long like palm. No bleeding. Try flushing it down. Won’t go — swimming sluggishly on grey-green surface like sickly goldfish among detritus. You think: this can’t be happening to me. You think: if this were a dream some fool would be sure to give it a Freudian reading. Zip up. No bleeding. Must matter-of-fact return to seat without raising eyebrows. Thought flaking through head: some unprimed passenger will by and by be sure to come screaming out of the head. Purser will have to cock an eye at all the company’s privates. Will have no handle on you, no way to point you out. No bleeding. Could be naturally smallish organ. Discreet charms of the bourgeoisie. Must return. The yellowish champagne will by now be sploshing over your seat.