B007P4V3G4 EBOK (9 page)

On rare occasions, I have tried to actually write something, a
poem or a bit of a diary entry, but from sheer awe I do not feel
capable, indeed, not even entitled to put all those white pages
surrounding me to the test. What I might say flows away at once,
as it were, in this sea of blank paper, a sea from which rises, like a
minute protuberance, the secret of Dr Raoul Sarrazin.

Belcampo

By two men who did not speak his language but who could clasp
his arms in an immovable grip, he was chucked down the stone
stairs into the darkness. There he lay and bled. With a booming
blow the iron hatch slammed shut above him.

By the reverberation he gleaned that he had been cast into a
large space. It could be a hall. He was lying on a stone floor; he
could feel damp sand here and there. There was nothing he could
see; it seemed pitch dark there. He could hear something. Shuffling
sounds now and then, other ones too occasionally, as if a paw was
being put down, a body turned over. Breathing, too.

He was not alone there. Animals? Would he be eaten later on?
Had they already smelled his blood? His teeth chattered with fear;
his knees, too, began to tremble and he no longer had the power
to subdue them.

Though he did not know yet whether the end of his life was
imminent, his fear was already accompanied by the feeling of
complete desolation each dying human being experiences in his
last moments of consciousness. No one any longer could do
anything for him; all of humanity had turned away from him: he
was alone. All his past experience appeared to have been deception.
To be betrayed by life itself: this is the bitter end of every man.

Yet, the space he was lying in seemed gradually to clear up a
bit; perhaps his eyes, blinded at first by the sudden darkness, were
slowly getting used to it. He began to discern something, to
distinguish between things in the dark. The pale gleam of limbs, it
would seem. Dim movement, here and there. He recognised human
forms, mainly lying down, a few sitting up. No, he had not ended
up in an animal pit but in a human one. It grew ever clearer. The
entire floor of the subterranean hall seemed covered with a curious
life form, with a layer of the living.

Slowly, the terrible truth penetrated his tortured brain: here, in
this bottom most darkness, the warriors of vanquished peoples
were left to their own devices.

No one any longer spoke a word; not even the whispers
between two of them could be heard; all were completely cast back
upon themselves. Language had ceased to exist. Nothing else
remained but resignedly to undergo the decline of the body.

A movement seldom came, and extremely slowly even then;
movement had become precious, it took away from the only thing
that remained to them and upon which their lifespan depended:
their reserves of strength.

He had a number of wounds but there was no point in
examining them; nothing could be done about them anyway. Just
wait and see whether he would still survive the healing of his
wounds. It was turning into a contest.

There was nothing to do except cling to life. Escape was out of
the question: that which walled them in was the impenetrable rock
of the earth itself. And concerted action could never again go forth
from this realm of shades: at best, concerted death would. In the
feeble dusk which grew no clearer, he distinctly saw attitudes of
dull resignation all around him, of surrender to the waiting, the
waiting for nothingness.

He, too, settled himself down as comfortably as possible on the
warm rock in such a way as to benefit most of its support, closed
his eyes and did the only thing he was still capable of doing and
which they all did: in his thoughts he returned to the past, to
where his freedom lay. He had a sudden urge to re-experience his
entire past life, more clearly, more consciously than the first time,
to realise, before the end, an inner flowering of the images of his
memory the way a tree, too, wastes its last strength in an
uncommon flowering.

Particularly the first part of his life, before the start of the war,
was what he would remember at leisure: when they were still
happy and had feasts, when the world was still a friendly dwelling
place to him. The darkness turned out to help him in this; in the
dark he could bring those images clearly to mind, and the silence,
too, allowed him to hear the sounds of the past more clearly. This,
to all, was the only thing that remained.

He managed to lull himself within his memories to such an extent
that, occasionally, he would catch himself out smiling. In this pit
that seemed like a blasphemy, its negation. It would only happen
when he felt little pain. Each time when, as a result of lying for too long
in the same position, his wounds began to smart, his thoughts
would stray to the war, to his life as a warrior: they became searing.

Besides the fact that the business of war itself is pervaded with
deep suffering, there had moreover been the certain realisation of
fighting against a superior force in this case, of having to experience
the fall of his tribe. To die without issue is already a double death,
but to leave a world behind in which your language is being
annihilated is the most bitter thing of all. And not because of an
inner decline but because of a foreign power.

What splendid people they were! Full of strength and agility,
rich in ingenuity in making use of nature. And their women: so
elegant and so stubborn at the same time, as good helpmeets in
battle as pleasure grounds of passion in times of peace. No, they
had not been brought low by better opponents but by more
numerous ones.

And how many tribes such as the one he belonged to had gone
this way and were still going? During the transport here he had
soon not seen a single fellow tribesman any more. They were
being mingled in. As regards those who must die, too, did they
still conduct their policy: the extermination of the foreign tongue.
Gods were preserved but languages were exterminated: thus was
the conqueror's will.

On one occasion it did occur to him that there was still
something he could do: crawl out of reach of the big stairwell above
him. Stairwell in two senses of the word: the well of all their
empty stares. By touch, he slowly moved himself forwards.

He could easily have gone upright, stepping over the others;
though he had indeed been weakened by his injuries, he could still
draw on a large quantity of reserves of strength even so. They had
been given food during their transport, extras too, occasionally,
from women along the way. He still had muscles, he still even had
fat. If he preserved his energy as much as possible, he could hold
out a good while yet. But why, really? Merely to let his thoughts
roam for a week, a month longer. Absurd, was what it was.

When he was out of reach of those to come after
descendants, he thought abandoned himself to his
memories again. To bring each family member and every friend to
mind yourself, and to recall words passed between you, to call up
each human image from the past and be in its company. And
meanwhile he felt how, slowly, his body disappeared. Down to the
bone. To take leave of himself.

He had been lying like that for days on end now. Days? There weren't any, not any more. Time ran on in a straight line. The
alternation of day and night was something from his previous life,
something of which only now did he realise the splendour.

The trace of murky light continued to prevail; the adjustment of
the first hours had soon reached its peak. Perhaps, when the senses
themselves were affected in the end, a short period of clarity might
come through a last hyper-sensitivity of his eye.

The only thing left to him of the world was the stretch of ground he
covered with his body, the one he could feel his way across by touch.
That, in a way, was still his. It was still so kind as to bear him. This was
really his entire fatherland now. Passing his hands over it, he would
sometimes imagine a river valley at each little groove, a mountain at
every rise. He felt like caressing this ground because it still bore him.

This was the way they were lying there, together, like a pale
fire slowly glowing to extinction. No one any longer knew how
long they had been lying there like that. They couldn't care less
any more, either. An imprisoned criminal continually counts the
days, even though he has got twenty years, scratching long
ladders of numbers into the wall of his cell. Time, in fact, becomes
all-controlling to him. Here, time had been suspended for ever,
nothing was expected from outside any more.

Was that something approaching in the air? Was his gaze struck by
growing light? Or were his eyes already being affected? Impossible.
That only happened at the very end, and he was still possessed of
all his strength. Slowly, a soft dusk spread overhead, the vaults of
the cavern began to glint here and there. Dusk burgeoned to light,
the inconstant light like that of torches, ever increasing like that of
torches being carried in.

This turned out to be the case. Up above, at the base of the
vault, corridors seemed to terminate and enemy servants appeared
there with big torches which they placed in iron baskets fixed to
the rock face.

Now that the entire space was lit up, the prisoners saw one
another for the first time: their corrupting bodies, their eyes, and a
general revulsion arose. This communal suffering gave no feeling
of solidarity, no mutual sympathy; things were too far gone. The
dead lay between them, and those who merely breathed, who
didn't react to the light from above.

Many, however, still looked round and up above, like he did.
What did this mean? Did they want something more of them?

It would soon become clear. The enemy servants who had
placed the wore the clothing of the
disappeared down the corridors through which the fumes of the
torches was being sucked away as well, and now they began to go
back and forth to a large balcony, shaped by nature or by man,
protruding from the rock face. The smell of food pervaded the
space.

He saw there was a long table on the rock balcony and people
were busy carrying a feast of food to that table: huge tureens,
salvers piled high with meat, dishes full of vegetables and bowls
laden with fruit. And many buckets of wine. Everything was
clearly visible; lamps and candles were being put among the fare
all the time.

Was this a vision? Was he dying?

Not yet. It went on. Men with stringed instruments now
arrived. They arranged themselves to one side and began to tune
up. Because of the resonance in the cellar vaults, this jangle of
scrawny sounds acquired a certain fullness.

Were they going to serenade them? The serenade of the dying?
But why then all that food?

No, the guests stepped forward. A jolly company of men and
women decked out most richly, the women mainly with their own
abundance, gathered at the table. In the centre, on the tallest chair,
a copious matron sat herself down. She had the allure of supreme
power. The wife or mistress of stadtholder or war lord, herself
perhaps even an empress, she seemed to be the soul of this revel.
She gave the signal to be seated, one more for music, she gave the
signal to gorge. And together they gorged themselves at length,
bringing meat and wine to their mouths by turn.

And as they drank, their mood became more exuberant. It
seemed as though they were not being whipped up by the music
and the wine alone, but also by the deep humiliation they wished
to inflict on the captured enemy. To have him perish of want in
sight of their plenty, to let him die in sight of their joy in life.

If this truly was their intention, then it utterly misfired. The mental
state of these prisoners could no longer be fathomed by a healthy,
free human being. Deeper humiliation was no longer possible for
them. On the contrary, each sound, every glimmer they could still
allow to sink in, was welcome. Something was going to happen after
all, there was still something to come. And that music, the most
heavenly thing on earth, resounded then: solace and rapture in one!

Who cared whether it was being played to mock them now; not
by the musicians: they simply had to and, who knows, perhaps
they were making an extra effort in fact: to do them a last kindness.

By no means everyone experienced it in this manner. Many
would only hear it in the distance, as sounds calling them from the
other side, singing of their release from their suffering. Others, less
far gone, looked up the while, mistaking it for the opening up of
heaven to reveal an image of what awaited them there. Some, with
their last remaining strength, stretched out their arms towards it.

Only those who were intact discerned the full reality. He, too,
who had been cast inside last and was the least dilapidated
therefore, who still had command of almost all his strength, for his
wounds had much improved. Nothing escaped his notice. After all
that time of enforced deafness and blindness, the use of his senses
was an intense experience in itself: to assuage the hunger of his
eyes, to slake the thirst of his ears.