Mirror in the Mirror: A Labyrinth by Michael Ende (translated by J. Maxwell Brownjohn). (1/2)
Title: Mirror in the Mirror: A Labyrinth.
Author: Michael Ende (translated by J. Maxwell Brownjohn).
Genre: Literature, fiction, novel of vignettes, fantasy, surreal fiction, mythology, philosophical fiction.
Country: Germany.
Language: German.
Publication Date: 1984.
Summary: Taking his cue from a number of drawings and sketches of his father, famous surrealist painter Edgar Ende, the author have written 30 vignettes, bound together thematically like a piece of philosophical music. A narrator named Hor introduces himself and the never-ending, ever-changing house he inhabits. With the help and endorsement of his father and mentor, a young man dreams his wings in order to escape from the labyrinth-city, but misunderstands the nature of the trial he must pass to leave. A student worried he will be kicked out of his room now that the landlord has passed away wanders though the suddenly derelict and abandoned-by-time house. A man gets trapped at the chaotic, nightmarish Transit Junction, from where no train ever leaves and stocks and bonds are the new religion. A dancer stands poised to begin his dance in the pitch black, behind a black curtain, waiting for his cue, eternally. A countess on her way to the ball meets a procession from the Mountains of Heaven, who have been walking for endless eons on the trace of a lost word that holds everything together. A witness describes a strange massacre in the field at night. In a celestial court, a debate is held whether a certain being's incarnation on earth should be allowed or not, until a swift and terrible judgment decides the matter. In a mysterious farm, a strange process of procreation and death goes on forever. You are safe and isolated in your own world, but when you don't heed the messenger's call to leave, leap, and fall, the world you thought was safe begins to crumble to nothingness around you. A homeless homecomer, a hunter of angels, attempts to return to his home and face his life's consequences with his two loyal animal companions. An unfinished bridge, in construction for centuries, connects two sides who can only coexist without plunging into the abyss by believing that the bridge between them is unfinished and has been in construction for centuries. In the desert of the Midday Room, a bridegroom and his bride make endless lifelong pilgrimages to reach each other, led by an impassive, unchanging civil servant. A fury of dancing flames attend a ball at and consume the castle made of multicolored wax. A skater skates on the frozen-solid sky and spells out a message nobody can decipher. A man made entirely of letters takes his flesh and blood girlfriend to the fair, but when she wants his to play a shooting game, his realness gets in the way. A group of farmers find a giant hanger where they can hide their sheep from the butchers that take them and the laws that require them to, but find the structure already has its own strange purpose. A couple attends a bizarre, surreal but banal art exhibition that ends with a bang. A medical intern frees a mysterious ugly creature from an unexplained and cruel medical device, and follows it through the city to witness its strange concert, and the concert's mysterious attendees. The man with eyes like a fish gets on the same streetcar he has been taking home for years, but this time it takes him onward, beyond infinity and logic. (Only the PART 1 in this post, refer to PART 2 for the rest of the quotes).
My rating: 8.5/10
My review:
♥
Bull and a Bunch of Grapes, 1953.
♥ Forgive me, I can speak no louder.
I do not know when you will hear me, you to whom I speak, or whether you will hear me at all.
..I have need of your voice, for mine is failing.
♥ Hor can speak to you no more loudly than the voices you hear as you drift off to sleep, and to hear him you must poise yourself on the narrow threshold between sleeping and waking - either that, or hover like those to whom above and below mean the same.
♥ My name is Hor.
Or rather, I call myself Hor, for who addresses me by name except myself?
♥ When he sleeps, Hor curls up in a corner or lies down wherever he happens to be - even in the middle of a room, if the walls are too far away.
♥ The passage of time signifies nothing to him. He has no means of measuring it save his heartbeat, and that is variable in the extreme. Hor knows neither day nor night. The twilight that surrounds him is immutable.
♥ Perhaps the rooms change size in his absence, expanding or contracting as the case may be. Perhaps these changes are occasioned by his very passage through them, though that idea does not appeal to him.
♥ No, that's wrong. Hor never dreams, nor does he have any memories of his own, yet his whole existence brims with the terror and delight of experiences that assail his soul like sudden recollections.
♥ My name is Hor.
But who is Hor? Am I he? Am I myself alone, or am I both of us, with access to his experiences? Or am I many? Do all the others that are myself dwell outside, beyond that ultimate, outermost wall? Do they all know nothing of their experiences, nothing of their recollections, because those experiences and recollections have no abode outside these walls? Ah, but they have an abode within them, with Hor! They subsist on his existence, assail him without mercy, become part of him. He tows them along like a train, an ever-lengthening train that follows him forever from room to room.
Or does something emanate from me to you outside, be you one or many, you that are as one with me as bees with their queen? Can you feel me, limbs of my scattered body? Can you hear my inaudible words, now or ever? Are you searching for me, my alter ego? For Hor, who is yourself? For your recollections, which abide with me? Are we drawing closer like stars converging in infinite space, little by little and image by mental image?
Will we meet each other, sometime or ever?
What will we be by then? Or will we no longer exist? Will we nullify each other like yes and no?
I have kept a faithful record: that, at least, you will discover when the time comes.
My name is Hor.
♥
Winged Figure, undated.
Under the expert guidance of his father and mentor, the young man had dreamed himself a pair of wings. The fruit of long hours of dreamwork spanning many years, they took shape bone by bone, sinew by sinew, feather by feather. He made them sprout from the appropriate spot between his shoulder blades (it was extremely hard to visualize this while dreaming) and learned by degrees how to move them to good effect.
♥ It was not forbidden to leave the labyrinth-city. On the contrary, anyone who succeeded in doing so was hailed as a hero, a luminary, and became a long-enduring legend. That destiny, however, was reserved for the happy. The laws that governed the lives of the labyrinth-dwellers were paradoxical but unalterable. One of the most important stated that only those who left the labyrinth could be happy, but that only the happy could escape its confines.
♥ Wherever he went, he came across unhappy people who stared at and after him with admiration and longing or envy. Many of them he had met before, though no such meetings could ever be deliberately engineered. The position and layout of the labyrinth-city's streets and buildings were forever changing, so its inhabitants could never meet by proper arrangement. Every encounter was the result of fate or chance, however one chose to interpret it.
♥ The happy are seldom hard-hearted. They tend to be compassionate and eager for others to share in their good fortune.
♥ "It's pointless starting anything," he muttered with a gesture of finality, "absolutely pointless. Good day to you, young man."
The student was rather perplexed. "Starting what? I don't follow you."
"It doesn't matter what!" the manservant yelled. "All beginnings are an utter waste of time. Why? Because they don't exist. Does Nature have a beginning? No, so beginning is unnatural by definition. And in my case? Just as pointless. ..What did I tell you?" he said, turning to the student with an air of triumph. "Chaos only grows the more you try to remedy it. The wisest policy is to sit tight and do nothing." And he took another swig.
"I see," said the student, staring absently around, "so you were planning to tidy the place up?"
"To dust it," the manservant amended. "To dust it, as I have throughout my life. But you can see for yourself what remains of all our moil and toil: dust and ashes. Dust at first and ashes in the end - what's the difference? It's as if we'd never existed. We disappear without trace, that's the worst part."
"Still," the student said kindly, trying to strike an encouraging note, "at least you've let a bit of fresh air in. I can hear the snipe calling out there on the marshes. That's something, isn't it?"
The old man chuckled and coughed. "Yes, yes, Mother Nature goes her own sweet way regardless. Our problems leave her cold. She has no decisions to make, as I do. But man isn't a bird or he'd have wings. Man must live on objective knowledge, young man - that's why he has a brain, and there lies the moral. The moral is: life's not as simple as you think. Make a note of that, young man. ..But tell me this, young man, what precisely is life? ..A losing battle, that's what life is," he said, stressing every word. "So what form do moral greatness and the ethical imperative take? I'll tell you, young man: however futile it may be, and in spite of everything, we must make a start on things. Why? Because we owe it to ourselves to do our best."
♥ "But meantime I can take it they won't kick me out of my garret?"
"I wouldn't bank on it."
"Hell's bells!" the student said softly. "It's idiotic, honestly, being left in the air like this."
The manservant gave another of his asthmatic chuckles. "We're all dangling: you, me - even the heirs and their families." He drew an imaginary noose around his neck. "It's easy to get cold feet in mid-air, too."
♥ When the young woman had elbowed her way back to the fireman's side, she said hurriedly, "We'll never get there - none of us will. You know that as well as I do, don't you?"
"Know what?" he said, switching the heavy bag to his other shoulder. "I don't get you."
"I mean, no train ever arrives or leaves here. It's all a lie. ..Nobody's going anywhere!" she yelled in his ear. "Nobody, nobody!"
♥ As soon as they had fought their way through a tide of humanity and into the concourse, the fireman put the bag down. They stood there side by side, pinned against one of the columns that supported the arch.
The concourse was so vast that its upper reaches were lost in darkness. On the left was a kind of apse, on the right a mezzanine with a gargantuan organ towering above it. High up in the apse, where one might have expected to see a rose window, was a big clock with an illuminated dial but no hands. On a dais below it stood an altar complete with tabernacle. This took the form of a massive safe with five combination locks arranged like the points of an inverted pentagram. Not only the altar and the tabernacle, but every ledge, every balustrade, every surface that lent itself to the purpose, was studded with flickering candles whose wax had run and congealed into skeins, fringes and cascades. Hundreds of ladders of different lengths were propped against the walls. The rush inside the concourse was even worse than it had been outside on the platforms, a swirling, eddying maelstrom of ragged figures. The air was oven-hot - wreathed in clouds of smoke and dust - and smelled of sweat and garbage.
Incessantly cavorting in front of the altar, like ritual dancers, were a number of beggar folk dressed in dirty grey ankle-length smocks. Grotesque apparitions with bulbous noses, goitres, humpbacks, pendulous bellies, carbuncular becks, toothless mouths and stunted limbs, they brandished a variety of implements or made hand signals over the heads of the crowd like bookies at a race track. Every now and then the safe-door opened and a batch of banknotes tumbled out. One of the dancers would pick up a bundle and display it to the crowd, solemnly holding it aloft in both hands, whereupon all present fell to their knees, the organ music rose to a crescendo and innumerable voices chanted, "Miracle and mystery most marvellous!" Once the wads of banknotes had been distributed among the wretches in the foremost rows, the safe-door closed and the ritual began afresh. The lucky recipients fought their way through the throng, eager to get their haul to safety, and their places were taken by others crowding forward from behind. Meanwhile, construction workers climbed nimbly up and down the ladders, depositing wads of money somewhere high overhead.
Only then did the fireman perceive that every wall, every column and pilaster including those of the arch against which he was pinned, consisted of similar wads of banknotes. The entire building was constructed of paper-money bricks, and it was growing continuously, because the tabernacle spewed forth more wads every time the door swung open. And all the time, the innumerable candle flames danced and swayed and the wax dripped and ran.
♥ "You're in luck, Chief," the man said with a cooked grin. "This is a unique opportunity. You won't get another chance, so make the most of it."
"In luck?" said the fireman. "How do you mean?"
The stranger gave him a fishy stare, his fingers toying nervously with the envelopes. "It won't cost you anything - it's a free offer. Go on, help yourself."
"Free?" The fireman shook his head. "I'm afraid I'm too poor to be able to afford something that costs nothing."
♥ As he listened, entranced, the words impinged on his consciousness:
Wanderers in time and turmoil,
aimlessly we ever roam.
Here and Now defy attainment
save through selfless love alone.
So let every soul prepare:
eternity is Now and Here.
♥ "Try it," she said. "To defuse the bomb, you'd have to open the bag. If you open the bag, it'll go off."
"Then we'll ave to get it out of here."
"If you can find it," said the woman. "There's no point in worrying, believe me. You can only wait till the moment comes."
♥ In a pulpit on the left of the altar stood a gaunt old man whose huge, hooked nose lent him a vulturous appearance. He had a kind of paper mitre on his head and was flinging his arms around wildly as he addressed the crowd.
"Blessed are they that partake in the mystery of mysteries! Money is truth - the one and only truth. All must believe in it, blindly and unswervingly. Your faith alone can make it what it is, for truth, too, is a commodity subject to the eternal law of supply and demand. Our God is a jealous God who tolerates no gods beside Himself, yet He has given Himself into our hands. God is become a commodity, that we may possess Him and receive His blessing...
.."Money is all-powerful!" proclaimed the preacher. "It unites us in the communion of give and take. It can transform anything into anything else, mind into matter and matter into mind, stones into bread and nothing into something of value. It reproduces itself in perpetuity, it is omnipotent, it is the guise in which God dwells among us - it is God! In a world where all enrich themselves at the expense of others, all become rich and none counts the cost. Ah, miracle of miracles! What, you may ask, is the source of all this wealth? I will tell you, my beloved brethren. It derives from the future return on itself! Its own future profit is what we now enjoy. The greater our present wealth, the greater the future return, and the greater the future return, the greater our present wealth. Thus, we are our own creditors and debtors in perpetuity, and we forgive ourselves our debts. Amen!"
♥ Some time later he crawled between the feet of the crowd and along a wall until he came to a confessional so festooned with congealed wax that it resembled a stalactitic grotto. With a supreme effort he dragged himself inside and shut the door, then slumped into a corner and passed out again.
He didn't know how long he had been there when a giant sound close to his ear recalled him to consciousness. The din outside was as loud as ever, but this sound issued from a small grille in the partition that divided the confessional in two. It sounded like the quiet, inconsolable sobbing of a child. Not having noticed a single child in the whole of the concourse, the fireman was taken aback. He tried to peer through the grille but could see nothing. The sobbing gave way to some half-whispered words:
"Dear God, where are you? And what's become of the world? I can't find it - it isn't there any more... I'm dead - dead, even before I've been born..."
♥ A heavy black curtain, its extremities lost in darkness overhead and on either side, hung down in perpendicular folds that swayed back and forth from time to time, stirred by an imperceptible current of air.
♥ Every now and then, when he grew tired, he would reverse his pose once more and become a mirror image of his former self.
♥ Or mightn't they be looking for him at all - might the performance have been postponed for some reason? Had it been cancelled altogether without his being informed? Perhaps everyone had gone home, oblivious of the fact that he was standing here, waiting to begin. How long had he been standing here? Who had assigned him this position, told him that this was the curtain, instructed him to start dancing as soon as it rose? He began to work out how many times he had transformed himself into his mirror image, and that mirror image into the mirror image of itself. Then he sternly called himself to order. The curtain might catch him off guard - it might suddenly go up to reveal him staring blankly at the audience, his steps forgotten. No, he must preserve his composure and concentration.
But still the curtain didn't move.
♥ At some point he lost all faith in the curtain's chances of ever going up, but he knew at the same time that he would never bring himself to move because the possibility that it might yet confound his expectations could not be dismissed altogether. He had long since abandoned hope and ceased to feel annoyed. He could only remain where he was, whatever might or might not happen. He had ceased to worry about his performance, too. He didn't care whether it was a success or a fiasco - he didn't even care if it never took place at all. Now that his performance no longer mattered to him, he forgot his steps one by one. In the end, the very inertia if waiting made him forget why he was doing so. But still he stood there, supporting leg and working leg crossed, facing the heavy black curtain whose extremities were lost in darkness overhead and on either side.
♥
Conversation in the Depths, 1953.
♥ "Who are you?" the countess inquired of a youth dressed like a harlequin. He was walking beside the carriage with a pole on his shoulder. The other end was carried by an almond-eyed girl in Chinese costume. Suspended from the pole were all manner of household utensils, and perched on top was a tremulous little monkey. "Are you circus folk?"
"We don't know who we are," the youth replied. "Not circus folk, anyway."
"Where do you come from, then?"
"We come from the Mountains of Heaven, but that was long ago."
"What id you do there?"
"That was before my time. I was born on the way here."
Their conversation was interrupted by an old man with a big lute slung across his back.
"We used to perform The Neverending Play, my fair lady - the lad here wouldn't know. It was a play performed for the sun, moon and stars. Each of us would stand on a different mountain peak and call out the words. The performance was continuous - it had to be, because it held the world together. Most of us have forgotten all about it, though. It's too long ago."
"Why did you stop performing this play of yours?"
"A great misfortune occurred, your ladyship. One day we noticed that a word was missing. It hadn't been stolen, nor had we forgotten it. It simply wasn't there, and without it we couldn't continue the performance, because none of it made sense any more. It was the one word that held everything together. That's why we've been on the road ever since, in the hope of finding it again."
The countess raised her eyebrows, "The word that holds everything together, you mean?"
"Yes indeed," said the old man, nodding gravely. "You too must have noticed that the world now consists of mere fragments, none of which bears any relation to the rest. That has been so ever since we mislaid the word. To make matters worse, the fragments are steadily losing their cohesion and falling apart. Sooner or later, unless we find the word that can bind them together again, the world will disintegrate completely. That's why we're journeying in search of it."
"And you really believe you'll find it some day?"
Instead of replying, the old man quickened his pace and hurried after the others. The almond-eyed girl, who had now drawn level with the carriage window, said shyly, "We trace the word on the surface of the earth as we go, that's why we never come to rest."
"Ah, said the countess, "so you do know where to go, do you?"
"No, we allow our steps to be guided."
"By whom or what?"
"By the word, of course," the girl replied with an apologetic smile.
♥
Janus Head, 1953.
♥ "It is undoubtedly true," the woman rejoined, "nor have we ever disputed, that preliminary steps towards incarnation have already been taken. However, as the documentary grounds for our application sets out in detail, the applicant proceeded on the assumption that this court would recognize the absolute necessity of adhering to a definite timetable for incarnation.
"It is obvious that one particular set of circumstances can only occur at one particular point in time. To anticipate incarnation or defer it would introduce an entirely different set of circumstances, thereby thwarting the whole purpose of incarnation or, at best, gravely jeopardizing it. And that, in turn, would put the applicant at an unfair disadvantage which infringes his right to equality under the law. The court can hardly render itself guilty of an offence which it has a duty to punish in others. Our application stands, therefore, and we await a favourable decision."
"Nonsense!" the bald-headed man broke in. "One point in time is as good as another. If that were not so, every applicant would be at an automatic advantage or disadvantage. The circumstances referred to by my learned colleague are undoubtedly present, but their favourable or adverse effects on the self-incarnator can never be perceived in advance. In other words, whether the moment of incarnation may be favourable or unfavourable to any particular person is something that emerges only after the event - in many cases, not until incarnation is complete. Let us pay no homage to false mysticism! Where would we be if we tried to subject incarnation to cosmic programming, so to speak? The idea is quite simply ludicrous!"
"Ludicrous," retorted the woman, who was also becoming heated, "is an apt description of your mechanistic and materialistic approach - ludicrous and, worse still, cynical! Your belief in fortuity is a denial of human dignity. Men are not rabbits. A man's nature is rooted in his destiny. Being unique, it depends on a unique set of circumstances. That is why it is as criminal to thwart the process of incarnation as it is to destroy a life already in existence: it is murder, my learned colleague! My client has devoted centuries to preparing his incarnation. He brought his great-grandparents together, and his grandparents, and his immediate progenitors - a feat requiring the utmost accuracy and attention to detail. Had his great-grandfather not had a tooth drawn on a certain day, he would never have met a certain young woman who happened to call on the same village quack in quest of a plaster for her blistered heel. But for that encounter, they would never have married and had children, one of whom, a girl, became - or was destined to become - the present applicant's grandmother. I could cite a thousand, nay, a million more such details, yet you seek to destroy this marvel of causality. Would you really slam the door in my client's face at the last moment? Would you really compel him to begin the whole laborious task anew? By what right? Even if he did start afresh, the product of his labours could never be what it is now. My client may have something to give the world - something he van only give now and under present circumstances. Think of the great saints, the men and women of genius, the heroes and heroines of history! What would the world be today had even one of them been denied the right of incarnation? How can you shoulder the responsibility for that?"
The bald-headed man shouted back at her, redder in the face than ever. "And how can you, my learned colleague, be certain that your client would not turn out to be the greatest criminal of all time and a blight on humanity? If so, wouldn't it be better to deny his right of incarnation? Your arguments are nothing but untenable hypotheses. When and under what circumstances a person becomes flesh is as fortuitous as the order of cards in a deck. Your talk of responsibility, of human dignity, as if our devotion to them were not far greater than your own. Your arguments, my learned colleague, would ultimately conduce to utter irresponsibility by rendering it impossible for us to arrive at any rational decisions. If everything were imbued with hidden meaning, even the extracted tooth of a man's great-grandfather, everything would become meaningless and inconsequential - disastrously so. There are far too many people in the world already, you know that as well as any of us. It would be truly irresponsible, to approve every request for incarnation on principle. That would achieve the very opposite of what you, my learned colleague, have so forcefully advocated: the preservation of human dignity. The responsibility is ours because we are empowered to act. We cannot evade that responsibility by taking refuge in pious platitudes. Under the terms of the Incarnation Code, your client is redundant. Although I regret that necessity compels us to act so rigorously in individual cases, I am convinced that this is the wisest policy. The application must be denied."
♥ The other spectators seemed almost unaware of what had happened. They still resembled an expanse of reeds stirring gently in the breeze.
♥ Propped against the wall was a grandfather clock, a giant that struck the hours unceasingly: hours of contrition, hours of prayer, hours of leisure, morning hours, hours of the day.
And hours of the night.
♥
The Plant Man, 1947.
♥ The big round table revolves as slowly as a rotating planet. Displayed on its massive top is a landscape complete with mountains and forests, towns and villages, lakes and rivers. Likewise revolving in the midst of it all, tiny and fragile as a china figurine, are you yourself.
..In the distance, ranged around the walls, you can vaguely discern closets and chests; a big old grandfather clock that shows the sun and moon; painted representations of the stars and on occasional comet; and, far above you on the underside of the cupola, the Milky Way. There are no windows or doors. Here you feel secure. Everything around you is familiar, well-knit, stable, dependable. This is your world. It turns, and you, snug at its center, forever turn in concert with it.
♥ The painted stars slide apart to reveal something so strange and unfamiliar that you refuse to credit its existence: your gaze is engulfed by an endless void, a luminous darkness, a silent tempest, an interminable flash of lightning.
♥ Will you catch me if I fall?" you ask. "Will you bear me up?"
The shrouded figure slowly shakes its head.
"If you learn how to fall, you will not do so. There is no above and below, so where can you fall to? The heavenly bodies are in balance. They circle each other without colliding because they are akin. That is how it must be with us. Something of me is in you. We shall hold each other in balance - we ourselves, nothing more. We are circling stars, so let go, be free!"
♥ But something has changed. The crack doesn't close, and beyond your painted stars, beyond the bounds of your well-knit, stable, dependable world is the something that has destroyed your faith in it. You cannot resist that something, but you refuse to acknowledge its existence. You feel you have sustained a wound that will never heal, and the sensation persists. Nothing will ever be as it was.
♥ "You will not know me until you join me," the shrouded figure replies, "so come!"
"I have no wish to," you call back. "Why should I?"
"Because it is time."
"No," you retort, "- no, this is my world. Here I have always been, and here I intend to remain."
"Leave everything," the figure says. "Do so freely - do so before you must, or it will be too late."
"I am afraid!" you cry.
"Leave your fear behind too."
"I cannot!"
"Leave yourself behind as well."
♥ Something is going on around you - something you take a while to grasp. The world that was so familiar is familiar no longer. It is turning against you. Shadows descend from the dome overhead; grey, hungry, shadowy figures; little faces and big, alternately appearing and disappearing; an agitated swarm of scurrying limbs and bodies that dissolve and take shape in turn. What are they? What are they up to? Where do they come from? They issue from the chests and closets, from the clock, from the walls themselves, from everything in which you once felt so snug and secure. None of it exists any more; it is destroying itself.
And as the dome slowly revolves around the focal point that is your tiny, fragile self, you are forced to accept what is happening. After all, you yourself called these things, these creatures, into being. They are still afraid of you, their creator, or so it seems. They lurk in distant corners and hug the walls. They plaster themselves against the stonework, caressing it with every inch of their nebulous bodies, and the painted stars turn pale. Whenever they do this, the building becomes as indistinct and nebulous as they are themselves. They are robbing your world of its reality, sucking the substance from it, turning it into a phantasmagoria. They are obliterating that which never existed.
Yet they seem insatiable, for they are slowly and steadily closing in on you. Only the table with the massive top and the landscape on it continues to revolve with you at its centre. Your realize that they will obliterate you, too, because you never existed either.
♥
Liberation, 1960.
♥ Home.
Do you have a homeland? Are you a son of its soil?
Who asks?
Who answers?
The eyes are open now, but still there is only darkness and emptiness.
..What did I expect?
To reach home. And now there's only darkness and emptiness. You ca never go back - I should have known. I'm not the man I was: that's why nothing is as it used to be. I know that now.
♥ So it's getting light after all, he thinks a long while later. And he realizes, even as the thought crosses his mind, that it is he who must create the world around him before it can exist.
..So everything depends on himself for its future occurrence, its future existence, but he has yet to comprehend what he sees.
♥ Instead, he feels he is being brought to book on account of this very house. He has shouldered a burden of guilt - a heavy burden, of that he's sure, because he can feel the weight of it more and more keenly. What was his offence?
He disowned this house, his home, and abandoned it. He betrayed it by becoming a great man elsewhere, a fearsome slayer of heavenly messengers, a celebrated angel-hunter, for his skill at hunting that form of game was unsurpassed. Countless were the angels he slew and gutted for the sake of their glossy feathers and supple hides, which he sold to the mighty lords of the disenchanted world and their even mightier ladies, who used them to embellish their ceremonial robes. He hunted angels with net and trap, or shot them so neatly that their precious plumage remained intact. It was a profitable business.
But then he grew homesick and left everything behind, intending to return home. And now here he stands, more of a stranger than in any foreign land, and rats have taken possession of his long-abandoned house, nesting and proliferating inside it like some virulent disease
That is his offence. He has until daybreak to clean the house and rid it of rats, or the building will be burned down and he himself destroyed.
No use deceiving myself, he thinks. It's hopeless - I should never have returned.
♥ The homeless homecomer hears his own heart pounding in the sudden hush. Although he cannot grasp what the animals are doing, he is powerless to resist the foolish hope that surges within him.
♥ The homeless homecomer watches them go, and now, quite suddenly, all the hope he thought he no longer possessed wells up inside him like a fountain of warm tears. He feels its flow permeate his bones, his limbs, his breast, his throat, his eyes. He knows now that his homecoming has begun at last.
♥ Her face, dark and shadowy till now, reflects the light of dawn. She is gazing with serene expectancy at the steadily paling sky. Form out of its radiance, still so distant as to be almost invisible, yet bright-hued as any bird of paradise, comes the day's first pair of beating wings.
♥ The bridge we have been building for so many centuries will never be completed. Like an outstretched hand grasped by no one, it towers above and beyond the precipitous cliff that border our land and overhang the dark, bottomless chasm beneath. Its soaring arch disappears into the dense mist forever rising from the depths.
♥ Many people doubt the very existence of another side. In the course of the last two centuries these sceptics have established a church of their own, a schismatic offshoot of the old, orthodox faith. Its members style themselves "One-Siders." Originally a derisive nickname coined by the orthodox, this sobriquet was later adopted by the schismatics, who now take a certain pride in it. Their beliefs do not inhibit them from working on the bridge with undiminished vigour, as our moral code prescribes. That is why they have ceased to be persecuted, as they sometimes were in the old days, and enjoy equal - or almost equal - rights. They are identifiable by a small, vertical nick in the left earlobe, this being symbolic of their "one-sidedness." The orthodox majority call themselves "Halfers". While not doubting the existence of another side, they know it to be unattainable.
♥ Foreigners are often puzzled by our ready acceptance of a fact that strikes them as patently self-contradictory. Our religion forbids us to doubt - on this point "One-siders" and "Halfers" are of one mind - that the only part of the bridge in existence is that which we ourselves have built. Unbelieving zealots and heretics, who have sometimes arisen in the course of our history, are summarily conducted to the point where the bridge peters out and compelled to walk on. Needless to say, they fall into the chasm.
Anyone not born and bred in our country may find it hard to accept that the very precondition for travel between our side and the other is a firm belief in its impossibility. Were this basic tenet of our faith to be seriously undermined - of this we feel sure, and all our sacred scriptures confirm it - our part of the bridge would collapse and we ourselves would perish. Outsiders should therefore keep a bridle on their tongues and refrain from inquiring too closely into the secret of our faith. Excessive curiosity would lay them open to the fate that overtakes heretics of our own race: they would discover for themselves that our bridge is unfinished, and that a chasm still separates our side from the other.
♥
Armed Love, 1960.
♥ It was a room and a desert combined. Bare walls loomed on the horizon, hazy with distance. Nothing but sand lay all around, dune after dune of it stretching away interminable on every side. High overhead hung a white-hot sun - or was it a lamp with a bluish enamel shade? Its harsh light killed every colour, leaving only white planes and black shadows. It was a skeletal light, dazzling, unbearable, murderous: the malign glare of a cosmic welding torch.
Set in the molten blue of the sky, one in the north and another in the south, two huge doors towered above the shimmering skyline.
♥ "We have to get there first," the faceless man said crisply.
"Of course, of course," the bidegroom muttered, "and it won't be long now. That's why I chose the direct route, straight from that door there to this door here. The direct route's always the shortest route, isn't it? Any child knows that."
"No," the faceless man replied impassively, "not in the Midday Room. I told you so at the outset, but you wouldn't believe me. Any detour would have been shorter, but you refused to listen. Now it's too late - we've come too far."
♥ "There's only one way to find out," the faceless man said drily, "and that's to go through that door over there."
"We'll never reach it," the bridegroom whispered. "It's always ahead of us, always as far away as ever. It's not a door, it's a mirage."
"Nonsense," said the faceless man, unsmiling. "Mirages come and go. That door has been there from the first."
The bridegroom nodded. "Yes, ever since I started out - every since I was young."
"Then it isn't a mirage," the faceless man retorted with finality, and strode off.
♥ In silence, the two of them traversed another wide expanse of desert, trudging along in the blinding light for hours or years on end.
♥
Maternal Showerbath, 1953.
♥ The wedding guests were dancing flames, and the ball, a glittering social function, was held in a waxen castle of many hues. The translucent, multicoloured walls, turrets, gates and windows cast a glow that reached far out across the slumbering countryside.
There were haughty, golden flames that moved with majestic deliberation, and slim, silver flames that flickered numbly to and fro, and minuscule flames that darted in all directions, and big, serene flames that barely moved at all. Many were dazzlingly white, others dusky orange or crimson. There were glittering flames, too, with plumed headdresses of smoke, and visible here and there, as on any important occasion, were votive candles of grave and dignified mien. Many thousands of guests had been invited to the wedding-night ball, and I was one of their number.
We all sustained our fiery existence on the castle's multicoloured wax, consuming it liberally and without regard to petty considerations of expense. First to melt, of course, was the enormous roof of green wax tiles, which seeped through the rafters, ran down the thick, black candle-beams in the attics, and flowed in viscous streams through the bedchambers and halls of the upper storey. Then the marbled wax of the upper floors dissolved too, flowing along the galleries and down the broad staircases in variegated cascades that formed stalactites and stalagmites, fringes and grottoes. The more the building melted, the more wildly and exuberantly the wedding guests disported themselves. In a positive ecstasy of pleasure, they became rapturous conflagrations and whirled in fiery dervish dances of delight. Some joined hands and sped in line through the halls and passages, others wheeled and spun in clusters, and others swayed and glided around in pairs, their flickering forms entwined in stately sarabands and tangos.
As the fiery feats proceeded, so the castle gradually dissolved into snail tracks, cones and caverns of bizarre conformation. And the more the waxen halls and architraves, columns and staircases became transmuted into light and heat, the fewer the flames that were left. They went out one by one, drunk and replete and exhausted. When dawn finally broke, only a handful of dancers still flickered on a multicoloured lake of congealed wax. Then even those last, indefatigable revellers subsided, circled the floor once more, and ceased to exist. The morning breeze gently wafted a little plume of white smoke across the broad, smooth expanse, and the ball was over.
♥ A skater was gliding across the sky's broad, grey expanse, head down, woollen scarf streaming out behind. He could do so because the sky was frozen solid.
The crowd, looking on from below with their noses running and their mouths ajar, pointed at the sky and applauded whenever the skater brought off a particularly difficult leap - upside down, of course.
He described sweeping curves and loops as he skated, repeating the same figures until his tracks were engraved on the sky. It transpired that they were letters, possibly conveying some urgent message. Then he glided off and disappeared over the horizon.
The crowd stared up at the sky, but no one could decipher the skater's alphabet or read what he had written there. His tracks slowly faded, and the sky became a broad, grey expanse one more.
Everyone went hone, and the whole incident was soon forgotten. We all have worries of our own. Anyway, who knows if the message was really so important?
♥
Cage on Wheels, 1960.
♥ The man consisted entirely of letters. Innumerable letters, of course - an astronomical number of them, but nothing else.
His girlfriend, as anyone could see, consisted of flesh and blood - and what flesh and blood! It was a pleasure just to look at her, let alone touch her.
♥ The problem was the unusual nature of the target. You had to shoot yourself, or rather, your own reflection in a metal mirror, and the man composed of letters felt far from real enough to draw such a hazardous distinction between himself and his mirror image.
♥
♥ In situations of this kind, so people always say, the waiting is the worst part. My own experience doesn't confirm this. Our mood was cheerful to the point of euphoria.
♥ "Don't you people have any doors to get in and out by?" the husband asked.
"No." The girl blushed faintly as if she had made an embarrassing admission.
"So what did they do," the wife broke in, "build around you, or something?"
The fat girl nodded sadly. "Yes, they walled us in, but we were still growing - they forgot to allow for that. We all belong to the same family, though you mightn't think so to look at us."
"But you can't even exchange a word with each other!" the wife exclaimed sympathetically.
"That's not so bad," said the girl. "We'd only squabble the whole time. The worst part is, we can never go to the exhibition, even though we're the ones that sell the tickets. If it weren't for us, no one could get in at all."
.."Tell me," the husband went on quickly, noticing how sleepy she looked, "what would you do if you were free to move around?"
"I'd go inside and ask them why we have to sit shut up in here all the time."
"But if you were free to move around you wouldn't have to, so you'd have no reason to go inside."
The fat girl stared at the husband in surprise. "You're right," she muttered. "I might just as well go on sitting here. I'd never thought of that."
♥ In the first room they were confronted by a sheep standing in a corner with lowered head and drooping ears. Consulting the catalogue, the husband discovered that the title of this exhibit was Sheep. He read it out in an undertone.
"Very selfish, isn't it?" his wife said nervously.
The sheep emitted a faint, lugubrious bleat. The woman gripped her husband's arm and hissed, "Let's move on, quick!"
The next room contained a showcase with a feather duster propped in one corner. The husband looked up the title - Feather Duster - and read it out, again in an undertone.
The wife circled the showcase, surveying the exhibit from every angle. "No doubt about it," she said at length, with a satisfied nod.
The adjoining room was ankle-deep in desert sand. The title, needless to say, was Desert Sand.
They plodded through it.
The next exhibit, a burning torch entitled Burning Torch, was stuck in a rack with some aces and hatchets. Then came a net of exceptional length, entitled Net, suspended diagonally across the room. Standing in the room next door was a grandfather clock entitled Grandfather Clock.
Here the couple bumped into another visitor, the husband's boss, who greeted them warmly. He was carrying a live lobster tucked rather awkwardly under his arm.
After a little small-talk, the boss inquired abruptly, :How do you like the exhibition?"
Husband and wife exchanged an uncertain glance and mumbled something about "Only just got here" and "Can't really judge yet."
The boss cut them short in a loud, unabashed voice. "Well, I'm sorry, but I'm bound to say this kind of thing leaves me cold. Art? Personally, I think it's an insult to one's intelligence."
"Art?" echoed the husband, taken aback. "You mean this is an art exhibition?"
..Then, just for something to say, the husband inquired about the lobster. Was it to be boiled or grilled?
"Neither!" his boss replied indignantly. "It's a stray - it turned up on my doorstep a few fays ago, but I can't leave it at home because my wife threatens to chuck it out of the window as soon as she's alone with it. She claims the poor, harmless creature ruins the upholstery. It's a complete fabrication, of course - she only wants to spoil my fun. You know my wife! Anyway, I'm compelled to carry the creature around everywhere, though it naturally isn't a long-term solution."
The other two deplored the inconvenience he was suffering and expressed the hope that things would sort themselves out very soon. Then they said goodbye and resumed their tour of inspection.
♥ In the next room they found the word GREEN painted on the wall in big, red letters. Surprisingly enough, the title wasn't Green, as the husband had surmised, but Letters.
"Original," he murmured, and his wife nodded. "But apt," she added.
♥ Displayed on a wooden plinth in the middle of the adjoining room was a tin can - an ordinary, cylindrical, unopened tin can entitled Tin Can.
.."This," declared the critic, levelling his tiny forefinger at the can, "is a masterpiece!"
Eager to exploit any source of cultural enlightenment, the husband asked, "What criteria do you base your judgements on?"
"First," explained the bearded mannikin, "I ask myself what the artist was trying to convey. Then I decide whether the means he uses are adequate for his purpose. This perfectly enclosed, unopened tin can expresses the total impossibility of any form of communication. Nothing inside it can escape, nothing outside it can enter. The artist is telling us, with the utmost cogency, that mutual communication us quite impossible, and the means he uses to communicate that fact are entirely convincing."
"Isn't there a contradiction somewhere?" the husband hazarded cautiously.
The miniature critic scowled. "Of course or it wouldn't be a work of art."
"So this is an art exhibition!" said the wife.
The critic glared up at her, momentarily flummoxed, but quickly pulled himself together. "That, he said, "is wholly irrelevant."
♥ "A postman got blown up, but that was unintentional, of course."
"You mean a fireman," said the husband.
"No, a postman," the girl insisted, "it it was his own fault. He should have been delivering mail, not hanging around here. That means he isn't officially dead."
♥
♥ The intern couldn't classify the creature, but it was beyond doubt the ugliest living thing he had ever seen. Not unlike an outsize spider, it had a spherical body and a multitude of black, hairy, extremely mobile legs, but instead of being stiff and articulated, insect fashion, the limbs were as rubbery as a squid's arms. At every blow the creature sustained from the swiftly descending piston, its countless extremities writhed and squirmed in agony. Half dazed, it made repeated attempts to escape from its terrible place of confinement, but there was no way out.
The intern watched the unfortunate thing for some time, wondering just how essential it was to alleviate a patient's sufferings by inflicting pain on another living creature. It wasn't so much that he pitied the captive for its own sake - it was far too repulsive for that. His abhorrence of gratuitous pain stemmed from a basic attitude which enjoined a measure of respect for any living creature's right to exist, whatever its nature. Unable to see any reason why the beast should be subjected to such torment, he ended by pitying it after all, if only because it was so inexpressibly hideous.
♥
♥ Truth to tell, he had never felt at home anywhere. When colleagues at the office spoke of their home life he listened in silence, vainly trying to picture what it was like. Over the years, however, he had grown as accustomed to this deficiency as someone suffering from a minor physical disability which has to be accepted for better or worse. Because he lived alone, his day was irrevocably over once the door of his apartment closed behind him. For as long as he sat in the streetcar, on the other hand, all kinds of possibilities seemed to beckon. He had no clear idea of their nature, just experienced the same absurd little thrill of anticipation and the same absurd little pang of disappointment, evening after evening.
♥ He lay there for some seconds. Then it dawned on him that he had no chance of getting home on foot from the middle of this boundless plain. Quite apart from the distance involved, he didn't know the way - couldn't even get his bearings. Struggling to his feet, he saw that the streetcar hadn't gone far - in fact it seemed to be travelling slower than ever. He began to run, but it put on speed again. With a supreme effort, he managed to reach the step and half climbed, half hauled himself aboard. He crawled inside the car and lay on the dirty floor with his face buried in the crook of his arm, panting hard.
It was a long time before he felt strong enough to stand. Carefully, he dusted off his knees and elbows. His suit was torn in several places, his left trouser leg sodden with blood at the knee. He had lost his coat and hat.
He leaned in the doorway with his eyes closed. The through-draught had regained strength, and he let it play over his sweating face. He had abandoned all resistance, signalled his universal acquiescence. Whatever happened from now on, it would accord with his own wishes.