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THE ENDS OF THE EARTH
RAIN
Achille,
gruff in his sheepskin, says – ‘We
shan’t have great wealth. Be assured: never. They bring amounts, on show. As
though it made them ours, somehow. Jewels, as if we’d used our axes to break
down the sultan’s doors and steal. Frescoes scraped off – as if we’d prayed
in caves for comfort when the caravan was lost. And painted saints.... The
good – they look like demons – you need them to fight the others, the bad
demons. The good smooth blues against the scaly greens. ‘Riches,
faith, despair – all goes in a glass case, like Sleeping Beauty – we kiss the
crystal but she doesn’t wake. ‘My
– our – father hadn’t been a miner – “here’s your snap”, my mother used to
say, giving a sandwich. She must have thought a miner would be eager for her,
more used to digging and to tunnels. Then he left. The mine was closed.
Neither ever spoke about their work, so it was as if they did nothing, just
had to leave the house all day and come back tired. ‘You
can’t complain – besides, it makes no difference, the complaining, and the
situation. I knew I was a tragic figure – I didn’t realise that everyone is,
except the stupid who don’t know what’s coming for them. Not all of us have
moral dilemmas, but we all wait for fate, Osud,
judgement, to have its say and invent our crimes. ‘On
the vast empty moors – there, I felt – not free, not solitary, but
overwhelmed. It’s very hot, where once were sheep, there’s dunes, as if
there’s sea receded, returning one day with tidal waves that would raise up
ordinary things, dumping them high, grotesque.’ ‘You and your brother,’ says Zenia, dressed in red,
in case it snows and she is lost. ‘If I’d known how you planned turning
out...! Would I have chosen either? Two puzzles, having anniversaries, moving
so rhythmically on to somewhere. Yves and you could be twins – except he’s
more immersed in himself – both struggling to break out of the carapace. Your
eggs.’ ‘Of course we see things in a similar way,’ Achille
says. ‘We all do. Otherwise each would see things as differently as they
pleased, or as something pleased. It would be crazy. Very interesting, but
unclassifiable, livable but chance. Total fluidity
and happenstance. No social, to each their uncertain personal universe.’ * Yves,
city-suited, says: ‘This village was nearly deserted. I thought I’d
restore the houses, have music in them, in the square – all turning back like
last century, except we’d wear modern clothes, such as they are, and I’d be
the engineer, smoothe down ascents, stop floods and
droughts. Now you see: people were smart: they died, they went away, there’s
only monsters left. Once, long ago, they were shepherds, barmen – now their
faces have caved in, eyes yellow under aspic, teeth a cemetery, the noses
spiked swollen teasels... Dirty wool all round. Food in a credence. Bread, an
onion, and a can of beans. ‘Dusk
brings them out, they scurry, then it’s dark – what do they do all night?
They sleep, the bed’s a pasture full of sheep. Smell the kerosene! * Zenia
sees a vinyl disc – ‘The brass junkies’ – it’s famous, horns in a row, aping
to the snapper. ‘I model myself on the drummer, Ginger,’ Achille says:
‘Talent and fortitude. I’m sure I’ve talent, but it’s latent. I know I have
the power. Don’t exaggerate when you see clues, Zenia: it’s my hidden side –
we all have one – mostly the sculptor doesn’t bother to smoothe
it down – it’s rough and knobbly, invisible when you’re on your plinth.’ Zenia can’t
decide who’s more interesting, Yves or Achille. People who try impossible
things – they always have a following, though it’s perverse. Both brothers
look quite nondescript – human beauty is a myth – if I were a panther, Zenia
thinks, I’d laugh at them! Except the men have machines to make up for their
lack of skills. ‘Our
father,’ says Yves, bending down from height to seem more interested in
shorter people, ‘started in a clan. In Albania, they choose who’s to go to
jail for what is done. He fled, instead. He went on, we suppose, for ever,
fleeing the good, the bad, the dutiful, and the rebellious.’ ‘Our
mother,’ Achille says, ‘came from an Africa. Everybody’s mother did, they
say. Was it the Maghreb? Or Senegal? Congo? She knew each song, and so,
maybe, wasn’t trusted, came from nowhere. That chimes. Professionally, I’m an
expert in Nothing. “Everything”’s been done.
There’s an enormity of Nothing, and you can work on it from anywhere – a
moving tank; from space – or from a shepherd’s hut. A baita.
This was a luxury – tufo walls. There’d have been a
thousand baas, at night a rustling, never quiet. ‘Nowheres seem to fit in Nothing. Families come from one,
and that’s our destination. Where we’ve tried to live right here.’ He
laughs, stands tall – he’s still quite short, a useful travel size. ‘He’ll
do for me,’ thinks Zenia. * The
brothers pick up, drop, loose clothes, stuff books into a bag – Nomades et caravanes d’Orient.... Morality and criminality, Tongues in Trees,
Minima moralia – ‘Throw them out!’ shouts Yves.
‘We’ve lived it all. You don’t read, Achille, you think: don’t burden us with
snobbery....’ ‘Where
do we go?’ asks Zenia. ‘We’ve little time, then we must evacuate. Maybe they
only need our space, there’s fresh people coming in. Or else they’ve dropped,
spilled something – or an attack.... Marauders? The young? The old?’ ‘Oh,’
says Yves, ‘just wild weather, I expect. It happens everywhere – for some,
leaving is for ever – no water, winter or summer all the time. It seems quite
urgent – but it never is. There’s ample time for fear, dread, and hope.’ ‘We
have to walk,’ Achille says. ‘They only bus those who say they may return.’ The
stones of the little house are firm – it’s the roof, the floor, the rest,
that’s finished. ‘It
could all be fixed,’ says Yves. ‘I’d do it – but the landscapes shift, and we
shift with them. There’s seep and sand and crack. Best not trust what’s
underfoot, walk light and wear a mask.’ ‘No trains, if there’s a poison,’ says Achille. ‘A
crash. No road if it’s a flood. We’ll have to walk to Zenia’s.’ ‘Oh,
well,’ says Zenia. ‘The trouble is – I’m between houses. Between most things.
Work and money too.’ ‘Yves
and me – we didn’t live by happenstance, expedients, or finding empty shells
and creeping in, like crabs,’ Achille says. ‘We had a plan. Now there is
none. We’ve nowhere left to go.’ ‘It’s
clear,’ says Yves. ‘In all I did, there was a progression – a seed that
sometimes sprouted, and on you went, and it might be grass, or palms. You
were long gone – you’d never know. The palm – that might become an arm, l’homme armé,’ and he laughs.
‘Or an odd seed, big as a bobbin, that might become a tree. Tales – a strophe
that becomes a Ramayana. How we went to Africa, what we did there. What use
we made of Siberia, the expanse. How we recovered from a war. Kosova –
someone remembers that, and who stayed, who left. How they suffered, every
one.... Each becomes strange, muddy and ethereal. Anyway – time fools us all:
it seems there is progression. One thing after another, big grey clouds each
holding the tail of one in front – it seems there is a story, plot, a
logic.... And yet – people see events, history, quite differently. A sequence
without meaning, without reflection. People act “as if” it’s like that, as if
events don’t have an eye, or even hundreds, set in a circle ... watching
everything. So, are they right?’ ‘I
imagine – yes, a thousand eyes set in one brain, that all at once – they
weep,’ says Zenia, trying to make up for her inhospitality, or indigence. ‘If
I knew more about your life, Yves, I’d see there was growth in it, I’m sure.’ ‘No,’
says Achille. ‘Yves and I discard all the precedents, and expect to find
another route. Not force, not violence – they’re venomous, they disappoint,
they vitiate. Another way, there had to be, that’s not the state, nor the
unrestricted will. Not soviet and not kibbutz. But – it’s too late. It’s gone
beyond us. There is no return, it’s coda time, recapitulation, climax....You
can see – it’s what we live, right now.’ ‘It
sounds grand,’ says Zenia. ‘So big I don’t understand a thing. It’s true,
that people who can’t find a way ahead – they always say that it’s too late.
No doubt it is....’ ‘Ahead?’
asks Achille. ‘It’s not a march, Zenia.’ ‘I
constructed,’ Yves says. ‘Achille found the sites. All hypothetical. All left
behind, all trace and record – left back there, the baita.’ ‘Thought
experiments – they’re done in empires,’ Zenia says. ‘The
earth now,’ says Achille, ‘is Austro-Hungary. The rich and educated – they’re
the Austrians.’ ‘Assez vu, assez connu. That’s where we’re at,’ says Yves. ‘Look at
the mist. I’ll go down, see if there is anyone.....’ and off he goes. It’s
cold and silent. He
goes invisible – the mist is motionless, covers the valley. They
never see Yves again.. They
daren’t go in the mist. It kills everything: a
test, or a mistake? ‘There’s nothing left for him to build,’ says
Achille. He and Zenia – they are suspects. It seems
improbable: sex? The suspicion lasts. ‘They
never say if they have poisoned you,’ Achille says. ‘A question? Is it worth
it, an inquiry, that will last out your life?’ They
don’t know how to respond, and Achille presses on. ‘You may have thought –
our project sounds like ‘model villages, potato soup’. It isn’t so, but leave
it there.’
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