Antoine Volodine - Bardo or Not Bardo

It took Puffky some time to answer. He walked, squatted, exhaled, saying nothing.

Schlumm thumped him on the head.

“Yes or no?” he kept saying.

“During the seven weeks of the journey, you visit several hells,” Puffky finally pronounced. “But you never realize this. Nothing looks any different from anything else. It’s all an arid parade of blacks.”

“I was told there’d be colored visions,” said Schlumm.

“You can forget about that,” said Puffky. “Anyway, the closer you are to week seven, the less you remember. The less you have the instinct to remember. Even your childhood disappears. Memory shuts down. To fill this void, you can still listen to the voices phonocopied here and there, from outside. But that doesn’t do much. You don’t even know if it’s from the past. You’d like to. .”

“Do you have any phonocopied voices?” Schlumm cut him off.

“You’d like to love what’s been recorded, but you don’t recognize anything anymore,” Puffky continued, scorning the interruption. “You can no longer translate or claim ownership of it. It’s foreign. Hoping for lights overhead is useless.”

Puffky sighed violently.

“You feel mummified and listless,” he said. “From the thirtieth day onward, you no longer want to keep going.”

“You have recordings, grooves on wax?” Schlumm asked again.

“Yes,” said Puffky.

“That interests me,” said Schlumm.

He pronounced these words with the brutality of a police inspector.

“Because of this illegibility of the self that you once were,” Puffky continued, “you stop wanting to explore whatever it might be. Neither the past, nor the present, nor what is to come. This falls over your mind on day thirty-three. It falls over you like a lead veil and weighs you down. That’s what I’ve discovered in my research.”

“I’d like to hear these recordings,” Schlumm insisted.

Since Puffky was reluctant, he prodded him. They exchanged words and several blows. Puffky fought back, but wasn’t on the same level. Though he too had once had a specialized military education, he had never kept his knowledge up to date, and so his boxing was mediocre. He landed five meters away, eyes rolled back, lungs completely deflated.

Schlumm felt no thrill of victory. He was not ignorant of how horrible it was to mistreat those weaker and more intelligent than oneself. Guilt filled his mouth with the taste of charred earth. He quickly tried to mitigate the flavor by diluting it with one or two mumbled sentences.

“I. . I want those disks,” he stammered. “The imprint of those melodies that tell. . I want to know what voices. .”

Those kinds of mumblings.

Puffky sat in a meditative pose. Cascades of soot trickled from the top of his chest down to his hips. It came off him like sweat. The heat appeared to have intensified, but, in reality, it was stagnant. As for the silence, it was more impenetrable than during previous fights. Puffky had taken his seat, giving the impression that he would move no further.

Schlumm crossed the distance separating him from Puffky. He bent down, grabbed Puffky by the front of his monastic rags, unless it was by a flap of skin unconnected to his flesh, and shook him.

“I want to hear these phonocopies,” he repeated. “I want to hear these phonocopies, you hear me?”

Having completed this sterile show of force, he let go of Puffky. The interrogated man reacted with restraint. He was emitting sweat, tiny sobs, and bursts of laughter. He didn’t answer Schlumm.

You could scarcely see farther than the length of your fingers. In all likelihood, the two men were busy coughing in each other’s faces. They remained seated, as if in a state of rest. All hatred between them was draining away, the only thing remaining in their interactions a framework of instinctive, irreducible brutality. An obstinate resistance from one to the other.

Innumerable fractions of hours flew by like this, night after night. Week three of the crossing had come to an end. Finally, Puffky swallowed his saliva and, from his lips, let slip new information.

“The phonocopied voices come from the edge of the wombs,” he said.

“Oh, so finally you’re clarifying things,” said Schlumm. “You could have said that before.”

“Well,” said Puffky.

Schlumm stopped talking for a second, enough time to realize that the information Puffky gave didn’t actually clarify things.

“What wombs?” he asked. “You mean the ones from incarnations to come or the ones from. . The wombs from before, the ones I’ve already. . The ones we’ve already been babies in?”

“You’ll see,” said Puffky. “Everything is recorded in the jukebox.”

“In the. .?” asked Schlumm.

“The jukebox.” Puffky repeated.

“Oh,” said Schlumm.

“Behind us,” Puffky pointed.

Schlumm turned, then froze.

For a long while he inspected the not-light permeating the space.

“I can’t make out a thing,” he complained.

“There,” Puffky pointed.

“Still nothing,” said Schlumm.

He wandered away, groping around in the shadows, the black air. A great mass of soot came off him, it had clung to him during the fights and during the breaks. His hands were shaking. He had some difficulty controlling them, they vainly lost their way before him, but quickly came to rest on a surface. There was a wall made of lukewarm Plexiglas and there was a keypad. A machine was standing there, one that resembled a jukebox, effectively. A fallen-apart jukebox.

“I hope the mechanism still works,” Puffky hoped audibly.

“Me too,” Schlumm threatened.

“Anyway,” said Puffky, “like I told you, don’t expect a miracle. The speakers only give out fragments. More than one person’s been let down by them.”

“What kinds of fragments,” Schlumm fretted.

“Lies coming from somewhere else and short liturgical poems in crypt language,” Puffky explained glumly. “No actual memories, really.”

“But all the same, they’re close enough, right?”

“Not really,” said Puffky.

“Oh,” went Schlumm.

His intonation was lacking in enthusiasm. He was already studying the machine. He flipped a switch. It was a simple toggle button, on which the flesh of his index finger felt an OFF/ON in relief. The jukebox reacted. Its innards glowed stingily, communicating a weak pinkness and some transparencies to certain outer areas. The keypad’s frame lit up around its edge. On the perimeter, three purple neon lights attempted a resurrection. The tubes seemed to want to show a sample of what they were once capable of, but the effort exhausted them. The gas, of course, turned purple, but not enough to illuminate farther than the tube’s walls. The other lights were dead.

Schlumm tapped the keys. His knowledge of jukeboxes had never been put into practice. He amassed doubts and regrets, suspecting that his inexperience might play tricks on him, but not wanting to lose face in front of Puffky. There was the sound of the current inside the loudspeaker, but no voice, phonocopied or otherwise, chose to reveal itself. For several minutes Schlumm fidgeted above the keypad and waited. The minutes remained infertile.

“You have to put a coin into the slot,” Puffky suggested.

“What kind of coin?” Schlumm was dismayed.

“A dollar,” said Puffky.

Schlumm frisked himself. The sum seemed enormous to him. His hands could be heard reluctantly rifling or pretending to rifle through his savings or pockets.

“The money-box isn’t locked,” Puffky stated to console him.

Schlumm was muttering indecisively to himself, but, after fiddling with the fabrics and envelopes covering him for a while, he complied.