Raduan Nassar: Ancient Tillage

And this was the second: she crossed the threshold, passing me by as if I were a log placed upright before her, impassive, dry and highly inflammable; I didn’t move, a tense block of wood, although I could feel her demented steps behind me and was imagining a dark resin obscuring her eyes, but gradually, the indecisive shadow began to trace bold movements, suddenly losing itself inside the hallway tunnel: I closed the door, I had pulled the string, knowing that somewhere in the house, she would find herself in absolute stillness, her slackened wings flattened beneath the powerful weight of destiny; I took my shoes and socks off right there by the front door, and as I felt my bare feet on the damp wood floor, I also felt my body suddenly obscene, a bone emerging virulently from my flesh, there were spurs on my ankles, what a sanguine crest, such vast passion, expectant shivering! I delved into the hallway, stepping on a dangerous runner, a mild tremor shaking my entire body, yet I walked without making a sound, not one splinter, not one creak, I soon paused at just the right place, it was written: she was there, lying in the straw, her arms at her sides, she could have reached the sky through the window, but her eyes were closed, like those of a corpse, and I still ask myself how I rallied my strength to mount that galloping risk, my flaring back was up and there was a pile of dried straw at my feet, but in a split second no one ever questions the destiny of their own actions, I had only to know for sure, the passing second passes definitively, and in a whirl I lay down burning next to her, launching myself entirely, like an arrow, a poison-tipped rod, and finally, enveloping in my arms the decision to postpone life no longer, I gripped her hand boldly, but the hand I held tightly in mine was limp, there was no word in that palm, no quivering, no soul in that wing, I was holding a dead bird in my hand, and finding myself thus suddenly lost, not knowing which byway was mine, nor that of my faith, the two of us one and the same until then, I watched fearfully as my continent split; what a precarious separation, how uncertain, how many hands and clumps of hair, I ended up yelling out my own part deliriously, praying as I had never ever done before, bringing forth a strange, ringing plea from my feverish lips, ‘A miracle, a miracle, my God,’ I begged, ‘a miracle and in my lack of faith I will bring back Your existence, let me live this singular passion,’ I pleaded as the wild flesh of my fingers tried to revitalize the cold flesh of hers, ‘let this hand breathe with mine, oh God, and in payment for this breath of air, I will soar, lying tenderly over Your body, and with my capable fingers I will remove the golden hook that long ago speared Your mouth, and then I’ll scrupulously cleanse Your wounded face, carefully removing the webs covering the ancient light in Your eyes; I will not forget Your sublime nostrils, they’ll be so clear, You will breathe unknowingly; I will also remove the corrupt dust suffocating Your terrestrial hair, and zealously remove the lice that have left tracks in Your scalp; I’ll clean Your dark fingernails with mine, and will eliminate, one by one, the dragonflies laying eggs in Your pubis, I’ll wash Your feet in blue lavender water and, with my loving eyes, anxiously mend the open wounds between Your toes; I’ll also blow hot air from my own lungs into You, and when Your veins run thin, then You will find Your ragged, fine skin filled with sugar and Your mouth, hardened and agape, transformed into ripened fruit; and soft fuzz will gracefully replace the old hair on Your body, as well as the rank growth in Your armpits, and new, soft curls will grow over the plane of Your pubis, and fine baby down will grow along the sweet halo of Your ever-tumid burgundy anus; and this resurgence will occur in an adolescent body through the same miracle as the appearance of silky-smooth feathers on moulting birds and the new, sparkling foliage on blossoming trees in springtime; then, in a rejoicing, elegant sweep, a gentle wind will once again lend Your hair its lofty mien; I will then dress You in a white satin robe with a large gold-braid-trimmed yoke, and place stone rings containing all the prophets’ gazes on Your fingers, iron bracelets on Your wrists, and olive branches on Your noble head; sylvan resins will coat Your fresh, clean body, and clusters of stars will cover Your boy’s head as if You were riding on a litter of lilies; and You will be served delicacies on grapevine leaves, and also fresh grapes, oranges and pomegranates, and from more distant orchards, reaped from my parents’ memories, dried fruit, figs, and date honey; then Your glory will be more magnificent than it has ever been throughout Your entire history! But now I feel such doubt and ambiguity in this hand, there must be a soul throbbing somewhere in this feeble plaster, perhaps a breath, or a future scar, a premonitory memory of this pain, a miracle, my God, and I will bring You back to life and in Your name, I will sacrifice a rigorous, agile wild animal from among my father’s herd, one of the young, dewy lambs out grazing during the bluish early morning hours; I’ll flex up my arms, then tie up its tender paws, two by two, with knife and rope, immobilizing the frightened beast under my feet; with my left hand I’ll grasp its still button-like horns and gently twist its head around to the pure back of the neck, while with my right, I’ll deliberately strike the blow, splitting its throat, liberating its bleating along with a dark violent rush of thick blood; I will then take the quivering lamb in my arms and hang it upside down from a pole, and the dense blood still running from the severed tubes will flow out onto the ground; I will pierce its hide with a determined reed, strong and resistant enough so that I can, as my uncle used to do on his flute, blow and fill the beast with an ancient, desperate song, inflating it, as only an animal three days gone will inflate; and once skinned, its belly torn open from one end to the other, there will be the intimacy of hands and entrails, blood and virtue, enticement and maxims, of exasperated candles weeping sacred oils and many other waters, so that Your obscene hunger is also revitalized; a miracle, a miracle,’ I was still pleading, inflamed, when all at once I began to feel the anaemic hand I was holding had become the small, warm, fleeting heart of a bird, a crazed red word now moving in my palm! Shivering and blinded from those whitewashed walls, I rubbed the water from my eyes and said, still feverish, ‘God exists, and in Your name I will sacrifice an animal that we may be provided with roasted meat, decant several intoxicating wines that we may become drunk like two boys, and climb steep hills in our bare feet (a stampede of angels, the strumming of zithers, I can already hear the chiming of bells!), and holding hands, together we will set the world on fire!’

‘Ana, Pedro, it was Ana, my hunger was for Ana,’ I suddenly exploded in a peak, expelling in one isolated, violent jet the hardened core of my ripe, pestilent boil, ‘Ana was my illness, she was my insanity, my air, my splinter and chill, my breath, the impertinent insistence in my testicles,’ I yelled with my mouth wide open, exposing the texture of my raving tongue, ignoring the guardian hidden between my teeth, spattering clots of blood, releasing the nauseating words that had been forever locked away in silence, ‘I was the crazed brother, the raving brother, the vile-smelling brother, I was the one with the slime of so many slugs and the devil’s slobber coating my skin, ticks in my pores, confused ants in my armpits, and profuse fruit flies celebrating my filthy body; go get it quickly, Pedro, hurry up and bring me the washtub in which we bathed as children, the warm water, the ash soap and scratchy sponge, the white, fluffy towel; wrap me up inside, wrap me up in your arms, dry my tormented hair, then run your earnest hand down the back of my neck, hurry and fulfil this tender ritual, it is up to you, Pedro, you opened our mother first, you were the one toasted as the hallowed eldest,’ I said, foaming and in pain, slipping lasciviously on strange saliva, yet even having fallen into possessed wrath, I was still able to see my brother covering his face with his hands, terrified by the impact of my fury, it was impossible to figure out the cracks in his burnt-brick face, impossible to read the expression of his mouth, to determine which stone spark was, perhaps, shattering his eyes; it was clear he was probing for support, was definitely in search of solid, hard ground, and I could even hear his cries for help, but seeing him in such a profoundly startling, still position (it was my father), it also occurred to me that he might have withdrawn as an exercise in patience, that there in the dark he might be consulting the elders’ texts, the noble, ancestral pages, leafing through in search of serenity, but in the current of my trance the blending together of his pain and respect for the writings of the ancients no longer mattered, I had to scream out furiously that there was more wisdom in my madness than in all of Father’s wisdom, that my illness suited me better than the health of the family suited them, that my remedies had never been written about in textbooks, but that there was another medicine (mine!), and except for mine, I acknowledged no other science, and that everything was merely a question of perspective, and only my point of view held any meaning whatsoever, and that it was the apposite prerogative of gluttons to test the virtue of patience with other people’s hunger, and I said everything spasmodically and obsessively in a verbal rage, and wreaking havoc, I overturned the sermon table, destroying clamps, bolts and moorings; nevertheless, levelling off, aware of the plumb, establishing a different balance, while using all my strength to go steadily beyond, and tightening mainly my clandestine muscles, I was soon to rediscover everything animalistic about myself, my hooves, jaws and spurs, and an oily grease coated my sculptured self as I galloped, my feathered mane flying behind me, my Sagittarius paws denting the soft belly of the world and, consuming a grain of wheat along with a fat slice of wine-soaked wrath in this pasture, I, the epileptic, the possessed, the crazed, I, who was starved, summoned into my convulsive speech the soul of a flame, a veronica cloth, and a spattering of mud, then I mixed into this flowing broth the spicy name of our sister, the perverted name of Ana, and removing the nectar of my dagger from the fringes of these tender words, embarked passionately with my quivering flesh into urgent confessional voluptuousness (such shivering, so many suns, such agony!), until all at once, my limp body dropped sweetly from exhaustion.