The Burrow: Posthumously Published Short Fiction Page 10

  The Truth about Sancho Panza

  By the constant purveying of tales of chivalry and robbery, mostly in the hours of darkness, Sancho Panza, who incidentally never claimed any credit for it, was able over the course of several years so to deflect from himself the attention of his devil, whom he later dubbed Don Quixote, that that gentleman later went on to perform the most outrageous deeds, by which, however, in the absence of their designated object, who was to have been precisely Sancho Panza, no one came to grief. Gaily, though perhaps with a certain residual sense of responsibility, Sancho Panza agreed to follow this Don Quixote on his exploits and thereby had much great and instructive entertainment of him until his end.

  The Silence of the Sirens

  Proof that inadequate, even childish, means may help towards salvation.

  To keep himself safe from the Sirens, Odysseus had stuffed his ears with wax and had himself bolted to the mast. Other travellers might have done the same thing from time immemorial (except for those who were tempted by the Sirens from a distance), but it was known throughout the world that this could not help. The song of the Sirens was sufficient to pierce even wax, and the passion of those they had seduced was enough to shatter more than chains and mast. Odysseus, though, was not thinking of this, although he might have heard about it, and he placed his confidence in his handful of wax and tangle of chains, and in innocent joy at his little precautions, he set his course towards the Sirens.

  Now the Sirens have a weapon that is still more terrible than their singing, which is to say their silence. It is not written, but surely it could have happened, that a man might escape from their singing, but not from their silence. The feeling of having prevailed over them with one’s own strength, and the resulting sense of invincibility, cannot be successfully opposed by anything earthly.

  And indeed, as Odysseus approached, these great singers were just then not singing, whether because they believed they could defeat this opponent only by their silence, or the sight of the blissful expression on the face of Odysseus, who had nothing on his mind but wax and chains, made them quite simply forget to sing.

  Odysseus, though, didn’t hear their silence, so to speak, he thought they were singing and he was prevented from hearing it; fleetingly, he saw the curves of their throats, their deep breathing, their teary eyes, their half-opened mouths, but thought it was all part of the unheard arias that were all around him. Before long, everything slid off him as his eyes gazed into the distance, the Sirens vanished, and just as he was physically closest to them, he was wholly unaware of them.

  They, for their part, never more beautiful, shuddered and stretched, let their writhing hair blow in the wind, played with their claws on the rocks; they no longer wanted to seduce, only to watch the lustre of Odysseus’s great eyes for as long as they could.

  If the Sirens had had any understanding, they would have been destroyed there and then, but as it was they remained, only Odysseus escaped them.

  There is an appendix to the story. So wily, they say, was Odysseus, such a cunning fox, that even the goddess of fate couldn’t penetrate his interior, perhaps – though that is impossible to understand with human comprehension – perhaps he really noticed that the Sirens were silent and merely offered them the performance here related as a sort of sop – to them and the gods.

  A Society of Scoundrels

  There was once a society of scoundrels, or rather not scoundrels per se, just ordinary, average people. They always stuck together. When one of them had perpetrated some rascally act, or rather, nothing really rascally, just averagely bad, he would confess it to the others, and they investigated it, condemned it, imposed penalties, forgave him, etc. This wasn’t corrupt – the interests of the individual and the society were kept in balance and the confessor received the punishment he asked for. So they always stuck together, and even after their death they didn’t abandon their society, but ascended to heaven in a troop. It was a sight of childlike innocence to see them flying. But since everything at heaven’s gate is broken up into its component parts, they plunged down like so many rocks.

  Visiting the Dead

  I was visiting the dead. There was a large salubrious tomb – a few coffins were already standing there, but there was a lot of room left; two coffins stood open, they looked like unmade beds that had been recently vacated. A desk stood off to one side, so that I didn’t notice it right away; a powerfully built man was sitting at it. In his right hand he held a pen. It seemed as though he had been writing and had just stopped; his left hand was toying with a shining watch-chain in his waistcoat, and his head was inclined in its direction. A charwoman was sweeping, but there was really nothing to sweep.

  In a fit of curiosity, I tweaked at the kerchief that shadowed her face. Only then was I able to see her. She was a Jewish girl I had known once. She had a broad white face and narrow dark eyes. As she smiled at me in her rags that were making an old woman of her, I said: ‘You must be putting on a performance?’ ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘a little bit. You can tell, can’t you?’ But then she pointed to the man at the desk and said, ‘Now go and introduce yourself to him, he’s the boss here. Until you’ve made yourself known to him, I can’t really talk to you.’ ‘Who is he?’ I asked, more quietly. ‘A French nobleman,’ she said. ‘His name’s de Poiton.’ ‘What’s he doing here?’ I asked. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘it’s all a big mess. We’re waiting for someone to put it all in order. Is it you?’ ‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘That’s very sensible of you,’ she said, ‘but now go and say hello to the boss.’

  So I went and bowed to him; since he didn’t raise his head – I just saw the tangle of white hair – I said ‘Good evening’, but he still didn’t stir; a small cat ran around the edge of the table, it seemed to have jumped up from her master’s lap and disappeared back there. Perhaps he wasn’t looking down at his watch-chain at all, but under the table. I wanted to tell him why I had come to him, but my acquaintance tugged at my coat-tail and whispered, ‘That’s enough.’

  With that, I was very satisfied. I turned to her and we strolled through the tomb arm in arm. Only, her broom was bothering me. ‘Put the broom away,’ I said. ‘No, please,’ she said, ‘let me keep it; you can see that tidying up here is no sort of work, can’t you? It really isn’t, but I take certain advantages from it that I don’t want to be without. By the way, will you be staying here?’ she asked, changing the subject. ‘I’d be happy to stay for your sake,’ I said slowly. We were now pressed tight like lovers. ‘Stay, oh, do stay,’ she said. ‘I’ve been longing for you. It’s not as bad down here as you maybe think. And what do we care, we’ve got each other.’ We went along in silence for a while; we no longer had linked arms, we were holding each other in an embrace. We walked along the main aisle, there were coffins to right and left; the tomb was very large, certainly very long. It was dark, but not completely, there was a kind of twilight which tended to brighten a little in spots where we were and form a little ring around us.

  Suddenly she said, ‘Come on, I’ll show you my coffin.’ That surprised me. ‘You’re not dead,’ I said. ‘No,’ she said, ‘but to admit the truth: I don’t know my way around here very well, that’s why I’m so glad you’ve come. In a little while you’ll understand everything; even now you probably see everything more clearly than I do. At any rate: yes, I have a coffin.’ We turned right down a side path, again between two rows of coffins. The layout of the place reminded me of a large wine cellar I’d once seen. On the way we passed a small, quickly flowing stream barely three feet wide. Then we reached the girl’s coffin. It was fitted with a pretty lace-covered pillow. The girl sat down in it, and beckoned me to her, less with her index finger than with the expression in her eyes. ‘Sweet thing,’ I said, pulling off her kerchief and pushing my hand into her thick soft hair. ‘I can’t stay with you yet. There’s someone down here in the tomb I have to speak to. Won’t you help me find him?’ ‘Do you have to speak to him? Promises are all invalidated here,’ she s
aid. ‘But I’m not from here.’ ‘Do you think you’ll manage to get away?’ ‘I’m sure,’ I said. ‘Then you shouldn’t waste any time,’ she said. She looked under her pillow and pulled out a shirt. ‘This is my shroud,’ she said and passed it up to me. ‘I’m not wearing it, though.’

  Night

  Buried in the night. The way you sometimes bury your head in reflection, so utterly buried in the night. All around, people are asleep. A little bit of play-acting on their part, an innocent bit of deception to be doing it in houses, on firm beds under firm roofs, or sprawled on mattresses, on sheets, under blankets; in reality they have gathered as they did then and later too on wild terrain, in a camp in the open, a vast number of people, an army, a tribe, under a cold heaven on a cold earth, thrown to the ground on which a moment before they stood, face to the ground, brow in the crooks of their arms, breathing regularly. And you, you’re keeping watch, you’re one of the sentries, you communicate with the next man by waving a burning stick from the driftwood fire beside you. Why do you keep watch? Someone has to keep watch, they say. Someone must be there—

  Our Little Town

  Our little town is situated nowhere near the border; the border is so far away that perhaps no one from here has ever been there, there are wild upland plateaux to cross, but also broad fertile valleys. To think of even a part of the way there is exhausting, and it’s not possible to think of more than a part. There are great cities along the way as well, many times bigger than our little town. Ten little towns placed side by side, and another ten little towns crammed on top of them from above, won’t make one of these enormous and densely packed cities. If you don’t lose your way going there, then you are bound to lose your way in the cities, and to skirt them is impossible because of their size.

  Even further than the border, if it’s even possible to compare such distances – it’s a little like saying a 300-year-old man is older than a 200-year-old man – much further than to the border is the route from our little town to the capital city. While we do from time to time get news of border wars, we hear almost nothing from the capital, we, the citizenry, I should say, because government officials have quite a good line to the capital; in two or three months they are able to get news from there, at least so they claim.

  The odd thing, which repeatedly perplexes me, is how we in our little town are content to abide by instructions that are issued in the capital. For hundreds of years no political change has occurred that was instigated by us. In the capital city, meanwhile, supreme rulers have replaced one another, whole dynasties have been exterminated or deposed and new ones begun; in the previous century the capital city itself was destroyed, and another one founded far away from it, only to be destroyed itself and the old one rebuilt – but all this has had next to no impact on us. Our officials were always in post, the most senior ones came to us from the capital, the next grades down brought in from elsewhere, the lowest from our own midst, and so it remained, and it was good enough for us. The highest-ranked official is the senior tax inspector: he has the rank of colonel and is addressed as such. Today he is an old man, but I have known him for many years, because he was a colonel already when I was a child. To begin with, his career advanced apace, then it seems to have stalled, but for our little town his rank is quite sufficient, we wouldn’t be able to cope with anything more exalted. When I picture him to myself, I see him sitting on the veranda of his house on the square, leaning back, with his pipe in his mouth. Above him the imperial flag is fluttering on the roof; while on the sides of the veranda, which is of a size that sometimes smaller military exercises are held on it, the washing has been hung out to dry. His grandchildren, in attractive silk clothing, are playing around him; they are not usually allowed to play on the square, as the other children are considered unworthy, but they are drawn to it nonetheless, and like to push their heads between the bars of the railings and, when the other children are having an argument, they join in from above.

  This colonel, then, is the ruler of our little town. I don’t think he has ever shown anyone his credentials. He probably doesn’t have any. Perhaps he really is a senior tax inspector, but is that all? His office is very important in the town, but for the citizens there are others that might be more important. We almost have the impression here that people are saying: ‘All right, you’ve taken away everything we have, why don’t you take us away too?’ But he hasn’t seized power, and he isn’t a tyrant either. It has been the way of things from the olden days that the tax inspector is the senior official, and the colonel follows that tradition as much as we do.

  But even though he lives among us without too much in the way of distinctions, he remains set apart. If a deputation goes to him with a request, he stands there like a wall. There is nothing behind him – at the most one might think one heard a couple of distant whispering voices, but that’s probably an illusion; at least for us, he signifies the limits of power. One can only see him in his official capacity. As a small boy, I was there once when a deputation of citizenry asked him for some government assistance, because the poorest slum district had recently burned to the ground. My father, the blacksmith, a respected figure in the community, was a member of the deputation and had taken me with him. This is in no way unusual – every Tom, Dick and Harry tries to gain attendance – it’s almost impossible to pick out the actual deputation from the crowds there; since such receptions usually took place on the veranda, there are also individuals who swarmed up ladders and scrambled over the balustrade to participate in events. The arrangement was such that about a quarter of the veranda was set aside for him, and the rest was filled by the crowd. A few soldiers stood guard, some of them flanking him in a semicircle. Basically, one man would have been enough, such is our fear of these soldiers. I don’t know exactly where they are drawn from – it’s certainly far from here – but they all resemble each other, they don’t even really require a uniform to be identified.

  They are short but vigorous men; the most striking thing about them is their strong teeth that seem to burst from their mouths, and then a certain twitch in their small slitty eyes. These two qualities have made them a terror to the children, though a delight as well, because they like nothing better than to be continually terrorized by those teeth and those eyes, and then to run away from them in dread. This dread is probably not completely gone from the adults, or at least it has left a sort of after-echo. Other things have contributed to it as well. The soldiers speak a dialect that is quite incomprehensible to us – they can hardly get used to the way we speak either – which produces a certain unapproachableness in them that corresponds to their character; they are so silent, serious and rigid, they don’t do bad things and yet the sense of badness emanating from them is almost unbearable. For instance, a soldier may walk into a shop, buy some small item and stand there leaning on the till, listening to the conversation, probably not understanding it, but looking as though he understood it. He himself doesn’t say a word, just looks rigidly at the person speaking, then at the one listening, with his hand on the handle of the long knife in his belt. It’s repugnant – you don’t feel like talking, the shop empties, and only when it’s completely empty does the soldier leave the premises. So, wherever the soldiers set foot, our lively populace falls silent. That’s the way it was then as well. As at all official occasions, the colonel stood bolt upright and in his extended hands he held two bamboo poles. This is an ancient practice and means more or less: he supports the law, and the law supports him. Now everyone knows what to expect up on the veranda and yet each time we get a new fright, and this particular time furthermore the designated speaker did not want to begin: he was standing facing the colonel, but his courage left him and, making various excuses, he pushed back into the crowd. No other suitable party came forward to speak either – there was no shortage of unsuitable parties – there was a great confusion, and envoys were dispatched to various noted speakers among the citizenry. All this time the colonel stood there perfectly impassiv
e, only his chest rose and fell noticeably as he breathed in and out. Not that he was breathing hard, he was just breathing very distinctly, in the same way as, for example, frogs breathe; only that they always do, whereas here it was unusual. I crept through the ranks of the grown-ups, and observed him through a gap between two soldiers until one of them shoved me away with his knee. By now the original speaker had collected himself and, stoutly propped up by two fellow citizens, he gave his speech. What was so moving was that throughout this serious speech, describing our tragedy, he kept smiling, a very humble smile, that tried vainly to elicit a smile in response on the face of the colonel. Finally he came out with his request – I think it was for tax relief for one year, but it may equally have been for cut-price timber from the imperial forests. Then he bowed low and held the bow, and so did everyone else bar the colonel, the soldiers and a few officials who were hovering around. What was ridiculous in the eyes of the child was the way the people on the ladders on the edge of the veranda climbed down a few rungs so as not to be spotted during this decisive pause, and contented themselves with peeking out from time to time just over the floor level of the veranda. This went on for a while, then an official, a little man, stepped up to the colonel, sought to rise up to his level on tiptoe, had something whispered in his ear – the colonel was still impassive, apart from the deep breathing – clapped his hands, whereupon all stood straight and announced: ‘The petition has been rejected. Depart.’ An undeniable feeling of relief spread through the crowd who all made their way down. No one paid any particular regard to the colonel, who had become a human being again, like the rest of us; I just happened to see how in exhaustion he dropped his poles, which fell to the ground, collapsed into an armchair pushed into place by a couple of officials, and hurriedly jammed the pipe into his mouth.