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1 The Flies Sophie & Stella It’s like long ago –
little crowds harangued by orators. ‘Blood. The imperative of revolutionary
violence.’ The guy’s determined. Could be from Québec. The French,
revolutionaries, still in America? We listen impassively. ‘You don’t agree?’ he
shouts at me, in a come-on way. Why am I here, wandering round the city? – cities are like this, always a bunch of guys, impassioned,
shaking you from your drift. ‘It’s true,’ I say.
‘That’s what occurs. Blood – and sometimes revolution.’ ‘No, no, my friend,’ he
says, and knows he’s won. ‘Permanent. Per-man-ent. Revolution! It’s not a
room that you unlock, and there, it’s full of roasted peahens, hot and
waiting for you. Chairs as well. Create, cast down! Overthrow – then
overthrow again.’ I say again, sidling away,
‘It’s true. It’s just I don’t want down that road.’ ‘It’s true,’ he mocks
expansively. ‘And yet this guy, he’d rather go another way. What’s truth,
then?’ * ‘Here’s novelty! I’ve
found a little cycle that fruits cash. Economics! You gotta pedal! I’m doing
rather well’ – my old friend Pedro. Sitting back. I’m not doing well. I say,
‘The girl I’m with, she brings the food.’ Pedro laughs, ‘I bet she
squawks, when she must sub you! You straight guys, and your sex!’ He used to box, now he’s
slumped and rubbery, slippery like a Turkish wrestler all oiled up. ‘I call it the anarchy of
commodities,’ he says. ‘You’ll have seen the logic of the Strip. Architects
and planners – they love the Strip, it justifies their chaos. Banal boxes,
shacks, kids selling air at intersections; mules and Mercurys. But it functions.
Not liberal, not progressive. No hope, no plan – just turnover. No charity.
Selling what I’m asked. As long as they ask me. Washing iguanas, organising
heists, spying on lovers. It all comes in, people all desperate – a buzz, a
rush.’ I say, ‘So it’s not
economics. It’s chance. As long as they ask.’ ‘Always, that’s how it
is,’ he says. ‘If they ask – is the key. To most everything.’ I tell Pedro about my
brush with truth, the militant guy. ‘Yes, yes,’ he says, ‘of course it’s
true. Not that you need to bother with it. It’s like I say – the women feed
the warriors. You’re just a parasite – they feed you just the same.’ He
laughs. ‘The blood,’ I say. ‘Where
it falls, what happens then? What springs up? Flowers? Nothing? Warriors?’ ‘These people,’ Pedro
says. ‘Trots. They’re like my friends – they went to law school, then got
jobs with unions. First, the union fought for justice: then my lawyer friends
discovered – they must defend the union against its members. Grievances, the
guys complain – “you go so slow”, “you’re office bums” – you know. Chaos.
Then some guy discovers some kind of pattern in it all. But still it’s
chaos.’ He gets up, lets a fly out of the room. There’s still more left. ‘You see,’ he says. ‘Your
trouble is, for you, it’s all first person. You
think it’s all for you. But chaos comes first. And last. It doesn’t care
about you, your eyes, your vision, or your making
sense. There’s logic in it all, for sure, like – the women bring the food to
feed the warriors. I’m not misogynist. Whoever
brings the food is women; who gets fed – is warrior. Me – I don’t go down
that road.’ That’s why we’re friends, I guess, not going
down the roads. ‘Here’s Adnan,’ says
Pedro. ‘He lives here. He’s a refugee. So, he does the risky stuff that might
involve running. Tell my friend what you are,’ he says to Adnan, ‘why they’re
after you.’ ‘Which lot?’ asks Adnan,
anxious to please. ‘Some guys love to fry their
brothers, others to spy at them in cells. I can’t explain. It’s odd.’ ‘Indeed it is,’ says Pedro
expanding, ‘but at the same time, it’s not, so we don’t waste time over it.’ ‘Purity is what you need,’
says Adnan, ‘the core, the diamond, the pressure. You might say there’s a
void, but you have to grasp – the space. Nothing in the universe is empty –
between great clods of matter, distance, energies, there’s what is left, what
it’s all about. A space, the still place where everything has ended and begun
... Space infinitely small or vast – it’s both, it’s all the same.’ He doesn’t say it’s God,
the start and end, the nothing giving birth and burying. Maybe that’s not
what he means. Pedro’s impatient, and he
says, ‘Yes, yes. But people don’t believe in that! They want the flying
donkeys, miraculous dinners, throwing the stones, raising the dead. Now, that
is something! That, I warm to – so does everybody else. Who’d love a diamond
you can’t see? All the things you’d hope are round the corner ... well, they
are: over and over ... Someone tells about them, tall stories, till you hear,
up there, the wings and hooves.’ ‘These flies ...’ I say. ‘Of course,’ says Pedro,
indifferent. ‘We don’t want cash. We want indebtedness. Eggs for life. Onions
for ever. Kind! People pay cash they can’t afford, and pass along. What use
is that?’ ‘That’s how we lived,’ says
Adnan, ‘payment in kind. It’s called a family. Avoid it. They send you out to
fight.’ ‘Not me,’
and Pedro laughs. ‘Haven’t you seen the horns and tail? The flies? I’m quite
unfit for service.’ ‘It’s that stuff,’ says
Adnan. ‘The rutabagas – they attract.’ There’s a pile of white and green and
yellow, more knobbly vegetables than you would want to eat. Pedro goes into another
room, there’s parleying, some woman just come in. And clucking. He says, ‘No,
I don’t want them live. Nor dead – just don’t you dare. Life! Surely you can
leave me some of that? Or coca leaves. There’s lots
that like to chew. I don’t. They’re for the mountains. We’re not high up
here, but it will come.’ Adnan says to me, ‘You
know – he drove around my country. I’m not a proper refugee. He picked me up,
and brought me here. He studies me.’ I say, ‘He doesn’t seem
the type.’ ‘It’s all about the
project – talking about himself. No constituted
authorities, just doing things that’s singular. And
so, you reach the universal.’ ‘It sounds magnificent,’ I
say, not much convinced. ‘Well, that’s the
project,’ Adnan says. ‘What is the human being? Probably not magnificent. He
says “What we love today, tomorrow we may not love at all. That’s the paradox
– it proves my other case – that everything’s
dispersed, disordered. Repressed, coerced.” That’s what he saved me from –
the power of others. That makes me a refugee. It makes us all.’ ‘He does all this by
talking, talking about himself?’ I ask. ‘Leave nothing out, and
always tell the truth. People will think it’s lies,
and you – a poor fool. Trudging to a natural death, alone, alone, still
talking.’ ‘Is that all?’ I ask. ‘The
rescue?’ ‘You mean sex? I don’t
imagine so. No one travels for that now.’ ‘You guys,’ I say. ‘Back
there. You might have had democracy – just wait and suffer, there it comes.’ ‘No, no,’ says Adnan.
‘What comes after that. Not democracy. What Pedro
says is freedom.’ ‘To me, it just seems
capitalism,’ I say. ‘To you, maybe,’ says
Adnan, put out, ‘You have to follow arguments, not cut them short. With
spite.’ Pedro comes back. ‘Goddam
fowl,’ he says. ‘Can’t keep them here, alive or dead. And that’s a flaw. Live
things – my system starts to smell of rot. Poor beasts. A nuisance to us all.’
It seems we are a fruiterers. Pedro’s uneasy, says, ‘Of course, I had a
group, when we all had one. Those record covers! Much better than the sounds,
and now – that’s gone. Of course, I couldn’t play – but I could shake.’ We contemplate, and then
he says, ‘Crowds and power. All that. And then – forced to be free. I saw
him, Adnan, sitting on a rock. Seated calm and contemplating – I drove my
Lotus up, and thought, “What a coincidence. I’ll save one guy from being
swept up, lost like a bubble in champagne, forfeiting for ever, something
irrevocable...”’ We look at him, expecting
that he’ll tell us what that lost thing is, but no, of course, that is the
point – you put a name on it when it’s forever lost and gone. If you had it
to hand – it would just be you. Adnan says, ‘Lotus is good
– but it wasn’t, and not a rock.’ Something’s tattooed on
the inside of Pedro’s wrist: ‘poker’? ‘popeye’? He
could have been a star, a very great one. But he loves himself, just as he
is, and didn’t want to be bizarre, I guess. He puts his hand on Adnan’s
shoulder, showing him off: ‘My brother, my comrade,’ he says, and Adnan says,
like a chorus, ‘My brother, my comrade. No tie, no
project. My brother…’ I go back to Sophie’s
place: she says, ‘Off at your hen party again?’ ‘No,’ I say. ‘Whenever I
leave this place, I go looking for a job.’ I open a window, shout ‘Kitty,
kitty!’ ‘You see, when I’m here, I guard the property.’ We have no cat. ‘Don’t let those fucking
flies in,’ Sophie shouts. ‘The window!’ I say, ‘I auditioned today
as a salamander. Opera House. The costume was too hot.’ She’s not listening. She
shouts, ‘Get your papers! Then a job. There’s scaffolders
– those high buildings. A hard hat might suit.’ ‘Not high,’ I say.
‘There’s the impulse to cast down.’ ‘Maybe it’s destiny,’ she
says. ‘Up high, they chew those coca leaves. And, until you get your papers,
no more sex.’ No price at all. ‘I don’t know where they’d
send me back to,’ I say: ‘Besides, that’s about guys they don’t want, not
countries that’ll have them. Us refugees.’ ‘You provoked them,
someone,’ she says. ‘Or maybe it’s all lies. Paranoia.’ ‘Maybe,’ I say. I think, I fell off the
mad donkey: tired of obeying, going where it told me. There I was, back there
in the dragon’s cave. The dragon says it’s a good place, homely: ‘Look at all
the virgins, lining up outside,’ he says. ‘You’re the proof I’m good. I won’t
eat you. You’re too stringy.’ You start thinking how to save yourself. I tell Sophie, ‘The police
picked me out.’ ‘Nonsense,’ she says. ‘No
one cares about guys like you. The dragon’s dead, where you came from. The
line of virgins – that still waits. There’s lots of combat going on, of
course.’ ‘I told them I’d no
record,’ I go on. ‘They said that everyone has one. “We know all about you,”
this guy said. He told me, “Call me Toopip. Lieutenant. You’re the presence
of an absence, a space, and under pressure. A gap. You stand out. Of course,
you have a record: you’re unknown.
Even playing noisy music, you’ve not been reported ... You’re not natural.” ‘“No,” I said. “I can’t
stand music. I prefer my own, my silent thoughts.” Then they enrolled me,
Sophie. I work for them, and they ignore me – it’s a deal. They said, “Aren’t
you curious about your friends, Pedro, Adnan? Their activity?”’ ‘“No, not at all,’ I said.
‘Toopip said to travel, go to their homes, where they came from: enquire and
quiz.’ ‘It’s quite unsafe,’ says
Sophie. ‘And the language?’ ‘I didn’t think about the
language. And it’s safe. I’d be in the police.’ I tell Pedro, ‘I’ve a task
– to investigate your origins.’ ‘This Toopip,’ he asks,
‘what’s he? A Thai? A Turk? The thing is this – food and water. You need
those. We eat the swedes. The rest just lies, stagnates. Maybe use it as a
fuel ... Those Chinese guys – the Great Helmsmen – they all had plots. Up at
dawn from lonely beds to care for lettuces, cucumbers too. There is an end to
that as well. Then you go, you plough up Africa, water from the poles. You
bend the future, but ... And you,’ he waves a hand at me, ‘you’re to go to
where we came from, Adnan and me. Those places are quite hard, you know. A
guy could lose his breath.’ ‘For my purposes,’ I say,
drawing up some height, ‘the boundaries must shift. Strife, armed and not – that cannot interpose. If I must, I’ll empty
countries, elasticise the frontiers, twist the laws. Decontextualise, that’s
the word. I’ll do my work, whatever costs arise.’ ‘Hmmm,’ says Pedro. ‘That
Sophie. A good person – all she touches turns to grit. Not diamond dust,
between you two – it’s ground-up rock. You want to
live – she wants to give you tasks and reasons.’ ‘You don’t know her,’ I
say. ‘I don’t need to, if I’m
right,’ he says. ‘Grit. It’s not intuition, this gift I have. When you master
something down and down, you empty it. Whether it’s Zen or Nietzsche – or you
and Sophie – my certain knowing leads to the disaster. In the end, all that’s
outside and strange, it goes inside, subjectified. No more the world, about
itself – it’s just become my knowledge, personal – I’ve sucked them in, the
masters and the trivial – I’ve emptied them. They’re shells of dragonflies
...’ ‘Yes, yes,’ I interrupt.
‘But if you tell me all your sins, or what you’ve done – I’ll spare myself a
journey, please Toopip as well. And what a favour I have done for you, and
Adnan too – to say you’re being spied on and suspected ...’ He’s not pleased. Indeed,
he’s angry. He says, ‘I’m sure I’ve seen the title – maybe by Euripides or
such – The Flies. The name is good. People get tired of living always
in the shadow of the dark bird – wings, always wings,
they make the breeze unceasing, wheesh of air on feather – “Away, the shadow!
Show us the whole damn bird,” they cry. You see, they want to see their sins
– but sins are not the eagle, they’re the flies. They multiply, they cast no
shadow. In and out the house, the hut, the palace – always round, some
circling, others crapping in your food ... Were I a Frenchman living in
America – I’d call for revolution too! But revolution isn’t half of it –
however difficult it seems, that is the easy road.
From darkness into light. But there’s no light. There’s
flies,’ and he waves towards the dead and dying vegetables, stacked
where guys have dumped them: ‘The more they come, the more they bring the
flies. The less you want to eat them.’ Where does this leave me? I say, ‘Rescuing people.
That should count as a good.’ I’m uncertain. Their destinies, changed
utterly. ‘My country,’ says Pedro, ‘is clay. But not the kind you make men from – it’s
cooked. Cooked earth. If you break it, it doesn’t mend. Little ovens, full of
bones. Some of them yours.’ ‘I think you can repair
that stuff ...’ I say. ‘No. None of your
bricolage!’ he shouts. ‘Broke is broke. Even the flutes is
broke.’ ‘Here’s your bag packed,’
says Sophie. ‘No, no,’ I say. ‘No need.
Everyone has stuff everywhere.’ ‘Your passport, then?’ she
laughs, ‘or do you have a gun, shoot your way in?’ ‘Pedro said he’d seen my
bones – those little ovens everywhere, like tiny bomb shelters in the scrub,’
I say. ‘I’ll miss you so,’ she
says. ‘What luck, iguana sandwiches and mescal. Day
of the dead. All that.’ I say, ‘What can Pedro have done, I wonder? I’ll go and get his
blessing,’ and I do.
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