The Great Weaver From Kashmir (27 page)

“Jeg undertegnede
, etc. request that you excuse the fact that I am forced to trouble you to come here to Taormina to oversee my burial and other things concerning my departure. As I take it for granted that the embassy in Rome shall demand more detailed information concerning my death, it is my true pleasure to inform you that I intend to ingest cyanide tonight at two o'clock. There is no reason for the suicide. With deep respect, etc.”

He read the letter over, and felt that he had never actually been in better touch with himself than tonight. He had a dismally clear head. On the other hand he regretted most painfully that he was to die without ever having raped a girl or torn out a man's throat with his teeth. But when he considered it more carefully he concluded that his intention was in fact not to scandalize human society.

He had only one letter left to write before he died, to Bambara
Salvatore, only a very few lines, some clever rhetoric that would be enough to convince Bambara of the fact that the son of Signora Ellidaso had not lacked the courage of a visionary soul. His mind searched everywhere for brilliant words. But the moon over Etna sneered straight into his face, making it more difficult for him to think seriously the more roguish it became; it was as if the moon sucked out from his narrow pupils the mere pittance of genius that remained in his soul; it derided this pitiable soul of his like an insolent prostitute who puckers her lips in the face of a saint. Finally Steinn could bear it no longer and hurled himself off the balcony like an acrobatic clown, turning twelve somersaults in the air before hitting the ground.

A little girl sat among the geese by a blue pond in a green meadow. And the geese dabble and drabble or preen their feathers with their beaks. Sometimes they stick their heads into the water and look toward the bottom, with their rear ends up in the air, because these are very discourteous birds. And the girl sits cross-legged in the grass and knits a red sock for her dowry, because she plans to get married when she grows up.

“I'll steal her away!” says Steinn Elliði, and he walks straight over to where she is sitting. But when the girl realizes what he has in mind she slips out of his grasp and takes to her feet.

Damned fox! he thinks, and he runs after her shouting and
cursing. “I'll kill you if you don't stay still!” The geese start craning their necks and screeching piteously. The sun is squarely in Orion and will soon enter Aries, then Libra. The girl rushes around the pond as fast as her feet can pull her. Steinn follows, singing the newest operetta by Verdi:

The gander's lights went on when he heard this, and he and all of his wives started to chase Steinn. The chase lasted for three days. Then Steinn suddenly remembered that he was one-legged and had forgotten his crutches down on the Via dei Vespri, and thus could not actually run. He sat down on the bank of the pond sadly and picked up his flute to comfort himself, while on the opposite side of the pond sat the girl with her half-knitted sock, singing:

Steinn noticed that the flute was not a flute at all, but rather a paltry water gun made of an angelica stalk with a hole at the end. Now he
started to shoot it with all of his might, until he watched the girl fall lifeless to the ground. Steinn was seized with painful remorse, but he resolved, all the same, to go to the girl's father and ask what he should pay – then again, this was only fantasy.

In Cairo a great banquet is being held. He was told that the sultan's wives had risen up against the sultan and castrated him. This was criticized in the papers, and men blamed the collusion of the Bolsheviks. But to make amends the women invited all of the most prominent men in the country to a feast. Steinn dismounted his horse, tied it to the columns in front of the palace gate, and went in to examine the caricatures on the Gobelin. All of the carpets on the floor came from countries famous for textile weaving. Velvet flowed in sumptuous folds from the couches onto the carpets. The windows were near the roof, and sleeping birds cuddled in every window, with the twilight blue sky in the background and a star here and there. Eunuchs carried in wine, and the maidens stepped forth from their bowers and appeared in the banquet hall, clad in long trailing silk veils that could be torn off from top to bottom with one quick hand movement, embroidered with long-legged pelicans and other noxious birds, while their hips and breasts swelled beneath the silk like heavy sea-waves in sunshine mist. Their eyes glittered like black diamonds. And the dandies entered, with white teeth and long
mustaches and fezzes on their heads, otherwise dressed like gentlemen from London and Paris, and appearing to be jacks-of-all-trades, alchemists, and diviners.

After a drawn-out ceremonial greeting two women and two men sat down at each table; the cups are filled to the brim, and a conversation about politics begins:

“Mosul,” said one man.

“Angora,” replied a girl, and she laughed.

“Moscow,” said another man.

“Afghanistan,” said another girl, and she laughed.

“All things must once begin,” said a third man, as if to inject a philosophical profoundness into the conversation.

“All things have been once before,” said a third girl, and she laughed.

“Bena Kipa!” said a fourth man, as if in agreement.

“Bena Kipa, Bena Kipa!” they all said, and they laughed raucously. “What, might we ask, didn't the Chinese know two thousand years before us? Cheers!”

Steinn Elliði had never witnessed a more soulless or idiotic gathering.

The clinking of glasses was heard throughout the hall, and the wine splashed into the air in long arcs, then fell down like rain. Everything was one great Babel of burning eyes, sparkling diamonds, swelling bosoms, sweating hands, and gleaming lips.

“I dream golden dreams,” says one man.

“Behind cinnabar palace walls,” answers a girl, as if attempting to distort his meaning.

“I dream of poison mistresses!”

“Who never existed!” the girl distorts.

“Never existed!”

“Never existed!” echoes the crowd.

And songs

arise,

   claps

      resound

in hundredthousandmillionfold myriads of primitive forests where gigantic steeds of stormcloud rear, and drunken hippos lie upside-down on cliffs

like
Rhodymenia palmata,
⁸³

stand on their hind legs and fume,

neigh,

rear,

  hiss,

    snort,

        pish

like the fate of the millions.
“Il piacere, il piacere!”
my lords.
⁸⁴
The goal of life is joy. Or better put, the joy of life is the death that swallows the consciousness of the living in the bottomless oblivion of the lunatic. From every direction, “Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!” “Up with the wine, Ave Dionysus!” In howling laughter and weeping song slumber the mysteries of the lotus blossom. “OM! My lords and ladies, OM!” And the men pour cup after cup into the faces of their wives and drink the wine madly as if from living springs and groan the Tibetan prayer like fiddles with slackened strings:
“Om mani padme hum!”
⁸⁵
And they lean over their concubines like lotus blossoms over turbid ponds. Oh, the joy in the lotus blossom! Until everything starts to fall into silence; the revelry is at its climax; here and there silk is heard torn, frenzied creatures pant, and the eunuchs sprinkle wine and perfume over the gathered guests, who entangle themselves like kelp on the floor and up on the couches; they strew roses over the corpses and howl like devils in this glorious graveyard. And it is twelve midnight, and from the nearest minaret comes the cry:

And the birds in the windows respond with a sleepy chattering:

The pelicans lie in the torn and soaked tatters scattered here and there or hang like signal flags from the legs of overturned tables. And from the minaret comes the chant, for the third and last time:

The jacks-of-all-trades, the alchemists, and the diviners stand up dreamily and sleepily and wrap their heads in the drenched silk rags woven with the images of pelicans. It is three minutes past
midnight. “Gentlemen, we are almost late for the nighttime prayers; let's hurry to the mosque, or, if nothing better, out into the fresh air, where we might be fortunate enough to locate the east. Let us honor the memory of the prophet!” The outer doors are opened and the blue night steps in; a fresh breeze from the stars blows throughout the hall; and the men hurry off to prayer. But behind them lie the maidens like saplings, strewn across the floor and over the couches, dead drunk and naked.

Salvation is much closer than most people suspect. On the doorsteps Steinn met a Benedictine monk whom he recalled having had as his traveling companion on the Rome-Paris express. And this Benedictine monk addressed him with redemptive words.

“Leicester Square! Leicester Square!” said the monk as he laid a hand on his head, and Steinn grabbed the monk's cowl and followed him. And the monk repeated the redemptive words at every third step:

“Leicester Square!” one two three. “Leicester Square!” one two three, “Leicester Square!”

In a short time they arrived at Leicester Square, where a great celebration was clearly in full swing. The crowd was so enormous, both on the square itself and on the streets leading to it, that the streetcar and automobile traffic had been stopped, while old women and children were trodden under by the thousands, without anyone
noticing or taking the trouble to gather these poor wretches together and bring them safely away.

What was happening?

Steinn pressed his way through the crowd and didn't stop until he could see the cause of the celebration. In the center of Leicester Square, Jesus Christ was being crucified. It was the crucifixion that everyone had come to see; around him circled the throng. Christ hung there upon an enormously tall tree and had obviously been nailed up in a hurry, probably without having been judged or subject to due process of law, because they hadn't given a thought to tearing off his clothes. He was dressed according to the latest fashion, like a young intellectual, poverty having long since ceased to be a virtue; his shirt was of fine-woven silk with a pattern of tiny stripes and golden buttons on the sleeves, diamonds on his tie, his hair carefully curled, his socks of bright-colored silk, a crease in his trousers, shoes with a gentlemanly cut. The bright, close-shaven face had radiated visibly with talents and virtues up until today, but now it was sweaty and deformed, the eyes bloodshot. Steinn could not understand at all why the man did not frown at the mob clustering around him.

What a mob! Because no matter how far he looked out over the crowd his eyes never came to rest on anything but whores! Mere whores! All of mankind, nothing but simple, accursed whores! Whores who demand bridal gifts and bridal gifts and bridal gifts! Whores who want to clothe themselves in silk and diamonds, feathers and furs, and demand music, roses, and happiness! – either emaciated whores or fat whores, dirty whores or spruced-up whores, dainty to the depths of their souls, beautiful whores or ugly whores, foolish or gifted, their voices dusky or fair. They stand here in one
mass like sardines, and shout at Jesus Christ the crucified: “I, I! Me! Me!”

And then Steinn noticed that he was no exception: he himself was a whore just like all the rest, and when he glanced down he noticed a huge stain on his jacket, just below his chest. There he had spilled his champagne glass during his last orgy. And he was even about to ask the Crucified One for a new jacket when lightning started to flash and thunder to boom, and Heaven and Earth to quake. The day of wrath was at hand. The sun darkened and the cliffs were cloven, and from them ran dead men in underwear, at their wits' end. And it seemed to Steinn as if the curtain of the temple was torn asunder from top to bottom.

“Brussels – Berlin – Moscow!” calls out the train attendant in the first-class waiting room at the station in Basel, as if these were three villages situated next to each other, and the clock strikes. It is morning, and within two minutes the express train is on its way. And all day such a heavy rain patters on the compartment windows that one could imagine that the train was running along the bottom of a rushing river. Through the rain one can dimly see forests, fields, and human dwellings like moving pictures behind mica, and the rain claps robustly on the station pavements like applause in a huge hall. Evening comes and the light dwindles.