Antoine Volodine - Bardo or Not Bardo

“No, evidently, he doesn’t hear me,” he mutters.

At the same moment, the gong resounds.

“Listen to me, Schmollowski, make an effort to pay attention!” the monk exhorts. “Remember what you read in the Bardo Thödol ! You’re facing an astonishing opportunity, seize it! Starting today, you can end the painful cycle of death and rebirth. . You just have to want it. . Forget what you’ve lived until now. You always took it for a journey in the real world, when in fact it was pure illusion! Disinterest yourself in your past, Schmollowski, your passions from another time! Take advantage of your death, Schmollowski, don’t squander it! This journey is a thousand times more important than the one that preceded it!”

“Yes, yes, I’m aware,” says Schmollowski.

He is wearing an anthracite-gray tracksuit with sandals. You can hear the squeaking of his steps on the gravel and clods of soot, the sand. Sometimes he slips on the coarse earth, sometimes he sinks in to his ankles.

“What do you think?” Schmollowski asks. “Sure, I read everything the R. B. A. sent me. Their profession of faith, their explanatory brochures, all the material. .”

Gong.

“I liked it,” Schmollowski mutters.

Now that we have grown accustomed to the darkness, we can describe it with a greater exactitude. A very thick twilight-black reigns, contradicting every notion of landscape near or far, but all the same one does not walk through it blindly. Schmollowski, even if his sandals don’t help, is progressing in a straight line without stumbling, and, after a moment, we perceive that he is following an already-traced trail. There is no landscape to properly speak of, no image, but, when we try to imagine the decor, we know that we are moving through a vast black plain. We trample something that looks like a path surrounded by fields of charcoal. Our eyes don’t need to be open for us to realize this.

“Don’t worry about me, comrade lama!” Schmollowski shouts at the loudspeaker. “I’m not following your instructions to the letter, but I’m inspired by them. My life in the Bardo is organizing. I’m not squandering it, tell your R. B. A. comrades. I’m fully enjoying my journey, the possibilities offered to me. . Every morning, at the same hour, I hear your voice announcing the day’s program. After that, once the silence comes back, I’m free. Free! My movements, my thoughts, my time. I haven’t been this free since. . oh my! So many years. .”

“The biographical synthesis at my disposal,” says the lama, “assures that you had great qualities, that you were intelligent and sensitive. You put these qualities into the service of social vengeance and egalitarian punishment. They helped you plan attacks, murders. . You killed quite a lot of people, from the newspaper clippings I see here. . Camp managers, sellers of misfortune, billionaires. . But, deep down, you were the opposite of a brute. .”

Gong.

“You must be able to grasp my words. And anyway, if our priests speak the truth, it’s enough to have read the Bardo Thödol a single time to remember it completely after your death.”

Gong.

Schmollowski acquiesces in silence. The priests speak the truth: the Book of the Dead has embedded itself in his memory without a single line missing. He knows it by heart. But, in this precise moment, he is not thinking about the Book of the Dead . He is thinking about the material conditions of his stay in the Bardo. They are good, especially if compared to the thousand bothers that spoil the living’s lives. The advantages are considerable here. Schmollowski looks them over. No dietary worries. Hunger is unknown. So you don’t spend your time looking for or preparing food. You don’t eat, you don’t digest. . No digestion, another great advantage. No need to squat in some ditch at any moment to expel foul matter out of yourself. That also implies you don’t have to fear stepping in feces. Even if it’s where the dead roam like dogs for forty-nine days, you don’t have to constantly scan the ground to avoid droppings. .

“Also,” Schmollowski mutters, “physical fatigue doesn’t make itself felt, or so little. . You feel like you’re in great shape twenty-four hours a day. . Otherwise, you’d have to find a place every evening to bivouac, lug around a sleeping bag with you. . All those idiotic joys of camping. While here, from time to time, I sit on the ground to recuperate a little. . That’s all. . I sit, I wait for the loudspeaker to signal a new day. . The comfort is relative, but it’s tidy.”

Gong.

“Nice and dry, not cold, no cowpies,” Schmollowski says.

Gong.

“This week begins a new phase of your crossing,” the lama announces.

Gong.

“Wait, a hill,” Schmollowski murmurs. “A kind of large sandy pile. I’m going to climb to the summit. See if I can see anything.”

“Throughout this second week,” says the lama, “you are going to be confronted by irritated divinities, bloodthirsty divinities.”

Schmollowski scales the hill. It’s a small dune. Despite his declarations on the absence of physical fatigue, the ascent drains him. He arrives at the top breathless and sweaty. He pivots, and, rear first, lets himself fall on the extremely black sand.

“I’m going to take a short breather,” he says.

Gong.

“Do not be terrified by them, noble son,” says the lama. “They have a hideous appearance, but they are not any less benevolent than last week’s divinities. The book we sent you included numerous illustrations, do you remember? You pinned them to the walls of your cell. Recognize them, go and meet them without fear. Renounce immediately everything that made you an individual.”

“That’s where we diverge, comrade lama and I,” Schmollowski mutters.

“Renounce, be one with them, dissolve into them. .”

“No,” says Schmollowski, “ That’s where we. . ‘Noble son, renounce, cease to be a person!’ ‘Join the collectivity of the nothing!’ ‘Noble son, cease to be conscious of yourself!’ No, there’s no way I’d adopt the Red Bonnets Anonymous philosophy. No way I’m accompanying them on this territory. No, really. . it’s too suicidal. I won’t walk. .”

Gong.

“Not for me!” Schmollowski shouts in the direction of the loudspeaker. “Too suicidal!”

“Now at the moment,” the lama proclaims, “you are going to be confronted with an enormous, dark-brown being, with three heads, six hands, four legs. .”

“What haven’t they come up with!” says Schmollowski.

There is a smile at his lips. He has always been a connoisseur of post-exotic or fantastical stories and tales, he even composed some of his own in prison. Then he jumps. He stretches toward the darkness while screwing up his eyes, like he’s scrutinizing it. His smile fades. Suddenly he’s not smiling at all anymore. He’s on high alert.

Because now he hears footsteps trampling the night and the gravel, at a certain distance. Let’s say some sixty meters away, more or less.

“Hang on,” he breathes, “that’s right. A form’s coming up the trail. It’s coming toward me.”

“This being will be surrounded with blinding flames,” the lama describes, “and it will stare at you while sneering, with its nine large, open eyes, in abominable fixity. Then you will see garlands of skulls and freshly cut human heads swinging across its chest. And, as it approaches, you will notice it walking intertwined with a terrifying goddess. Thus it will progress toward you, while copulating with this irritated goddess, both of them howling and moving about like a nightmare. .”

“I love it,” says Schmollowski. “How I adored that book. . It’s part poetic, part insane. .”