Breyten Breytenbach - Mouroir

Soupirez librement pour un amant fidèle,

Et bravez ceux qui voudraient vous blâmer

Un coeur tendre est aimable, et le nom de cruelle

N’est pas un nom à se faire estimer:

Dans le temps où l’on est belle,

Rien n’est si beau que d’aimer.

Literature, oh dear — and he shakes his head very primly. Keen apparently to act as guide and let them see all the advantages of this motel complex, the attendant invited them to follow him to a large area lying somewhat lower than the café’s floor. They found themselves in a self-service shop with counters and shelves exhibiting all kinds of toys, condiments, bottles of wine, and especially motor accessories: from dashpots to piston springs to valves and sparkplugs, from filters to radios and lubricants. There is also a wheel-shaped bookcase which can be pivoted. A clerk or salesman presents himself. He wears a neat and expensive striped suit with a bow tie and a thick black moustache tied like a supplementary tie under the nose. This is our Travelling Library, all the most recently published books immediately available — the petrol attendant proudly whispers in Angelo’s ear whilst clutching at his sleeve with a hand rimmed with black nails. Indeed, the newest editions are there and each volume has a mirror for a cover: one by one the books are pulled with a flash from the shelves by the agent (or librarian perhaps) and given into Angel’s hands with an expectant smile and a twinkle in the eye above the moustache. There is something by Jorge Luis Borges; there is a totally unknown long poem by Dostoevsky entitled “The Kiss” and there is another one dealing with the tactical problems of Bonaparte’s retreat from Moscow; There is the Popol Vuh ; there is Ludwig Prinn’s De Vermis Mysteriis and next to it Abdul Ahazreed’s Necronomicon ; there is The First Principle ; there is D. Espejuelo’s On the Noble Art of Walking in No Man’s Land ; there is a treatise on the first French motor enthusiasts who traversed the Sahara from the Algerian coast and far past Pépé de Foucauld’s wind-covered grave in Tamanrasset to Timbuktu (that is, those enthusiasts who weren’t stuffed into a cooking pot along the way); there is something about popes and something concerning space travel. He takes a thin volume and opens it. Starts reading. “During this period the evenings become purple. This phenomenon should probably be ascribed to the fluctuation of seasons — change summed up in a combination of factors: the days longer and ever warmer so that more unused light is left over at the fall of evening; even when day has already died. .

“But this is no treatise on bullfighting. . ”

He turns the pages, reading a paragraph here and a sentence there. The excellent type page and the neat type font please him: it resembles a carefully penned handwriting.

“It is only: a tentative description of the moth chamber which Angelo and his wife, Giovanna Cenami, so much wanted to see. (Concerning the moth chamber more exte — ”

“. . oozing water, salty, and not of the cleanest, of course constituted a major problem which the guardians didn’t know how to solve. How water could so constantly penetrate the room, in fact the whole house, was in itself an enigmatic mystery which even the most acute research has not yet been able to elucidate. Although there’s water over the surface and although the chairs stand several centimetres deep in water (but the upholstery remains dry) — the moths’ appetites don’t seem to be stimulated. The question thus arises: how do the moths procreate and what do they live from since the ceiling too is smooth and no one has ever observed them clinging to the walls. For certain these are not the same moths (of the Sphingidae family alone several kinds have been identified: Leucophlebia afra with pink and orange wings, the ochre-coloured Polyptychus contrarius, Sphinx funebris — several varieties here of, such as conimacula, peneus, maculosa and ovifera — the Atemnora westermanni , and many more) it was argued at a given time. The answer to this was: (i) that there’s no window or aperture through which new arrivals could enter; (ii) that nowhere in the rest of the house and in truth nowhere in the immediate environment have any other moths or even butterflies or dragonflies or wasps or meatflies or suchlike (lepidoptera of whatever nature, be it as eggs, caterpillar, pupa, chrysalis, cocoon or in the final stage as imago) ever been noticed; (iii) that the moths, whenever the door is opened to enter the dark room, have never attempted escaping; and (iv) that, according to the calculations of the supervisors — difficult to be sure, and not scientifically exact — an unchanging number of moths are present. One must make certain that all are counted, that the total tallies with that of the morning and the numbers entered in the book: a drudgery.

“Apart from the mysterious origin (or apparently mysterious, because although the phenomenon has not yet been explained the modern researchers never say die: let’s rather state that comprehension is provisionally absent) it is not at all a weird or even a creepy experience to visit this room. Inside there is a gloom of a shade between violet and mimosa which, if one could believe one hypothesis, could be ascribed to the colours of the moths’ wings. If this were the case these wings would have to be mirrors 3(or like mirrors). In fact the wings (and at times the bodies too) are covered with microscopic scales, together with hair, and these scales are easily rubbed off like coloured dust: the colour of the wings is defined in this way, be it as pigment itself or through the intervention of light in a kind of erosion. Don’t handle them: when dead they become extremely fragile. The space is filled with the ceaseless whispering of wingbeats and if the visitor has enough pluck to stop moving and extend his hands and face, he will feel the fluttering touch as leaves of a book full of wind when, let’s say, he should one sunny afternoon under a tree touch sleep with his eyelids, like the grazing lip-kisses of a pair of lovers under the hedge. So incessant and unbroken is the muttering and so gratifying the fluttering that the visitor truly loses all sense and knowledge of his own suchness ( quiditas ), decomposes, becomes absorbed in — ”

So that then, in a weird way — somewhere it was fixed beforehand, but not very clearly so, because reference points fade, memory and anticipation are telescoped, in space the stupefactive mind tumbles with its oceans and its continents and its ice-caps, hypnotically over pole and counter-pole — so that you then obscurely know in advance what is going to happen. The future is unyielding. The dog licks its own sour vomit. When you, dressed in grey just like your fellow failures, ungainly — the clothes fit loosely, too big, the white bodies reserved, reluctant to react to the signals of the will, cold, deadened — when you are permitted to assist at the races in the arena. Together with the supervisors. A forbidden privilege which must be kept secret. The old ruined arena in the hollow of a valley out of sight from the central complex of buildings. And where you may see then how the horses run around in circles, without riders. Or are you seeing bulls? Until they are utterly exhausted. Your friend, the one with the grey hair, the middle-aged one — it is believed that he was the successful manager of a factory in earlier times, long ago — your friend is also with the throng of competitors. You watch him hobbling along, ouch-ouch, desperate and disheartened because of his corns. You know he is encouraging the others to persevere, to fight the senseless battle, and that he himself has no chance at all ever to be the first to stagger across the finishing line. Before your very eyes he is transformed into a black bull with bobbing and ill-fitting shoulders, with swinging lobes of fat. The supervisors cheer with stupid red tongues, shouting raucously at their favourites. When the race is over your friend comes looking for comfort in the rotten paddock. He wants you to congratulate him. He wants you to pretend that he hasn’t failed once again, as always. You must kiss him on the salty, sweaty head, between the ears. But it’s not sufficient. You must also touch with your lips his slack pink mouth, slippery with phlegm and grume and tears. It nauseates you, but as a compassionate companion in distress you feel obliged to do so. And how the supervisors then celebrate the bets they have won or lost, how they pass the night playing cards in the small wooden structure. Where, if you sit quiet like an unuttered sound and if you don’t commit the unforgivable sin of dozing off, no notice will be taken of you. Where you may be tolerated. Grey as the mouse. Don’t let the light catch your eyes! And in the morning which is full of autumn you, you and your fellow patients, will be escorted back in a low trailer hooked behind the slow tractor, all along the winding gravel track, up the hill. Right to the central institution at the top where there will not yet be any sign of life. Now you must remain sitting very quietly among the others in your grey clothes. Not be conspicuous. So that the supervisor on the tractor, and the other one who sits in the wagon with his head nodding away the sleep, may forget all about you. Because the tractor continues past the buildings. Goes, creaking, through narrow alleys. Hedges on either side. Other enclosures, gardens, lawns. The green draughtboard. A faint drizzle and pools of mistiness in every fold and hollow of the high landscape of hills. Everything green. Wet right through. Heaven with its grey beard. A watered bleeding. There is light and there is sombreness but there is no sun. Neither reflection nor images nor shadows nor mirrors. Only this rolling land where it is high and chilly. Khepera does not know this kingdom. The earth is barren. The talisman, the dung beetle, is absent. Green and blue. And you with your dull carcass not knowing the differences between memories and projections or imagination. The grey outcrops of your indistinct condition. The nakedness of the mind. We are the rubbish of society, the initiated ones, the self-absorbing brotherhood. We are the zombies. Whence then suddenly these illegal and irrational expectations? Because rising and falling over the curves and the contours of the hills, along narrow paths entirely exposed, peeled, without destination, with wind present everywhere bitingly cold and humid, a wind which should not be there since we lack all directions of the wind — just unlimited space without panoramas — because rising and twisting the road is taking you to that which you remember, or try to conceive of, as the outer gate. Perhaps they will forget you. Perhaps they will unthinkingly pass through the last gate. And you will be outside . Where are you then? Far, very far off in the weak blue sky you see someone flying. You see that pale body dangling high, draped over a bar, a trapeze hanging from two kites as blue as blue flags, loftier still behind and in front of him. The flags tell the shivering breaths of the wind. Is it an Icarus? Could it be the son of Daedalus who built the labyrinth? Mew-Man? How sad it all is! This maze has no walls, no corridors or shafts, no cellars or ruins or caves or heart-chambers or love. Grey and effaced. The labyrinth of star tracks. The invisible stars. The white net which has dissolved in light, which no longer exists. And there is no sun to scorch the wings, no sea of foam and destruction in which to plunge. There is no feeling in the fingertips. The objective doesn’t necessitate a journey. It is a trip without destination. Disconsolate and faint and immobile he hangs from heaven. And drawn against the skyline, on the hill’s shoulder, the outer gate. It is a guard post. Small wooden structure. Stored darkness. But there is neither wall nor stockade nor fence that needs watching. Beyond the actual gate of entry — deserted and grey — the path has long since been overgrown and fallen into disuse. And the supervisor of the guard post will emerge even before your slow tractor with the trailer full of grey dopes reaches the dividing line, which cannot be observed, between in and outside. He will come forth and stare at you with a hand above his eyes, and the rifle will be heavy on his shoulder. And sheepishly he will indicate that you must turn back, return, go back to a slightly darker crease in the hill. Through the dew-wet grass he will follow, under the cap lined with fur against the cold his mouth will sag open slightly, and where he walks, where he deposits his traces, the grass blades are darker, snapped, lifeless. And in the slight dip in the bare hillside there will be more soldier-supervisors, with a vehicle parked nearby. In the car a radio will then be playing. A warrant-officer in charge of the supervisors here in this last, scarcely camouflaged ambush before the final gate, will get out of the car. He will not close the door of the vehicle. So that you too will then hear the radio, but there will be no news broadcast over the air, and no announcements will be made. For we are immobilized and forgotten in the coup d’état which is so much older than our most ancient history or fumbling in the past or in the future. Music will flow from the loudspeakers, grey, like heaven and its flier without dimension or reference. The commander will approach his men, there where your trailer with the grey span has been stopped, and you too in the bunch. So that he will then look at your lot in amazement whilst cranking the field telephone in an attempt to communicate with a central control point for further instructions, or to sound an alarm, or to report, or maybe just to hear if there’s a respondent on the line. For, with the earpiece pressed to the head — he would have lifted the flap of his fur cap over the ear — and with his carbine on the other, heavier shoulder, also with the mouth hanging open a little and drooling slightly so that the lolling pale red tongue, like that of a bull, may be seen in its cavity, he will say: “And are you here too, Turd Breytenbach?” He will talk into the mouthpiece of the instrument but you will know that the contact has not yet been established — only, you won’t be sure whether it could ever be done, whether it has ever functioned at all; you will not know whether he’s only trying to impress you, or if it’s just part of the ritualistic pattern. “But that’s dangerous! Do you think then that we can allow you just like that, in a greyish way, to leave?” And he will sigh. He will say that it is an emergency situation after all. That he himself cannot make decisions of such portentous importance. Of the far-reaching implications. That it spells big trouble. That there must be a huge fly in the ointment somewhere. You will feel grey and deaf and deceased. Your body with its organs and senses and idiotic excretion. Clothes. It is not the gay coat which makes the gentleman. An insensitivity. A dulling. The officer’s tongue will fall around limply and a darker liquid will be bothersome in the mouth. He will consult his men while listening to the field telephone for a connection with a deciding core somewhere. When they will ruefully nod their heads. “Not that I think you shouldn’t be liberated,” he will say. “That is if the decision were to be made by me.” And also: “This I can assure you — the President himself often thinks about it. I have heard him, the President, saying on occasion: ‘Look, the temptation is strong to just let him go, that is if the decision were to be made by me; I consider it every Tuesday.’ I distinctly heard him say ‘Tuesday’.”