Bardo or Not Bardo

V. PUFFKY

Schlumm entered the cellar like a newborn, head first and chest scrunched, and immediately saw Puffky running toward him. At first, he thought the other man, deprived of visitors for ages, was coming to wish him welcome. In reality, if Puffky was holding out his arms toward Schlumm, it wasn’t because he intended to warmly embrace him. He wanted to take advantage of the opening to reintroduce himself into the outside world. He wanted to shove Schlumm aside and get out of there.

“No,” said Schlumm. “None of that. Cut it out.”

He pushed Puffky back and closed the door after a few blind gropes. The strike plate emitted a voracious screech, then this side returned to silence.

The light was of an inferior quality. Even compared to a weak twilight, it was barely anything. It filtered in from nowhere, it fluttered from nook to nook, and it reluctantly penetrated the eye’s depth. Schlumm felt like he was looking at Puffky through a carbon filter. He saw Puffky trying to get around him to the already-closed door, and he shoved him once more. As if he were doing a jiu-jitsu demonstration, he finished with a twist of the fist and a leg sweep.

Puffky fell to the ground, sending up a plume of soot, and snickered. His eyes were remote, and his head — reproduced time and again on interior bulletins within the Organization, accompanied by acrimonious comments on both his character and philosophical vaticinations — had seen better days. Puffky was exhibiting here this half-idiot face and he was snickering. For a moment, the reasons for his glee weren’t apparent, but he still fixed his intense gaze on a point behind Schlumm’s neck, an intense, malevolent gaze, and Schlumm jumped, suddenly convinced that he was threatened by something hairy. The point was at a spider’s height. He turned around quickly.

“What the,” he said.

In the space of a second, he had braced himself to smack away a giant tegenaria, or worse. But there was no tarantuloid creature tensed on the black wall or swinging within reach of his skull.

The wall, bare and oily, seemed to be made of blocks of coal. No living thing could have clung to or hung from it. After a moment of fruitless observation, Schlumm forgot the spider hunt and cast his gaze toward the place where an opening had allowed him to pass a few seconds ago. Any handle or lock could no longer be seen. Perhaps that detail, that absence, had been the source of Puffky’s troubling jubilation. The door must have been built with a similar material as the walls. It fit into its frame so hermetically that it was like it had melted into the masonry. There was no other discernable solution.

When he had applied to be the one to go down to Puffky, Schlumm had been warned that the mission would be full of anomalies and risks. It would be a nightmare, respites few and far between. Be careful, he’d been told. Always keep your guard up. Never let it down. He explored the wall with his palm, looking for the vanished door, looking somewhere for a reassuring cleft, and, finding nothing, he returned to Puffky. He had gotten back up and was dusting himself off. He wasn’t snickering anymore, though he kept up the psychotic monk’s face that Schlumm, by dint of consulting the Organization’s press, had ultimately come to enjoy. There was a photo of Puffky beneath each of the articles denouncing Puffky’s dissident ravings. This portrait was meant to provoke a feeling of unease and even rejection in the reader, so that from first contact with Puffky, one’s judgment would be unfavorable.

From the Organization’s point of view, Puffky’s ideas were inadmissible. What ideas? Well, for example, the incompleteness of death. Or the ugliness of transmigration. Or the uselessness of prayer during the journey, the ineffectuality of religious knowledge. Or the absolute improbability of an encounter with the Clear Light. And, finally, the infinitesimal odds against anyone being reborn. That kind of blasphemy. Schlumm had skimmed through all that. Not particularly drawn to theoretical research, he had never had any decided opinions on these questions. The polemicists wielded their arguments with an unbearable erudition. Schlumm was mainly interested in images. In illustrations appearing outside the text. Despite his basic mystical education, he understood neither what Puffky said nor what the authorities rebuked him for either saying or not saying. He preferred to examine Puffky’s shifty features, his abnormally-distant eyes, his cheeks that had been sculpted by many tics, and, when the photographer had gotten a full-length shot of Puffky, his gnarled hands that nothing would ever ungnarl. To prepare himself for his trip, he examined it all with curiosity for hours.

In the thick penumbra of the cellar, it was difficult to determine whether the photographs had caricatured or fairly represented their model. At that moment, Puffky was brushing his clothes, rags through which snippets of his thin flesh were visible. He was avoiding raising his eyes to meet Schlumm’s, and, suddenly, he lunged at Schlumm with a wooden plank.

“I don’t belong to the Organization anymore,” he shouted. “Beat it, Schlumm! Get out of my way!”

Schlumm hadn’t seen Puffky pick up the length of wood, but he worked out the weapon’s trajectory. The plank was going to strike him like a saber.

“Oh,” he said.

Then, because he had practiced martial arts since he was a child, he sidestepped the attack, neutralized the plank, and, without hesitating, retaliated. He struck Puffky in the solar plexus, but this time with much more force than during their first tussle, when Puffky had tried to escape.

Puffky bounced backward and collapsed, battering the ground with his whole body. He was surrounded by waves of dirt. A cloud of soot rose slowly, reminiscent of a drop of ink spreading in a glass of water. Behind these plumes lay Puffky, in a pitiful state, concealed. It sounded like he was in pain. He hoarsely swallowed air and spit it back out. The soot floated majestically, then fell. It was a silent, black deluge.

Schlumm observed Puffky’s incomplete burial. He commiserated with his wheezing. He himself was sunk to his calves in the stuff.

“Listen, Puffky,” he said. “It’d be better if we talked things out. I wasn’t sent here to beat you up, you know. The Organization only asked me for a report on the results of your research.”

“A report,” Puffky coughed.

“Yes,” said Schlumm.

“My research on what,” said Puffky.

For about ten seconds, Schlumm said nothing. He analyzed the shadowy perspectives of the scene that served as a backdrop to this exchange. Near him, the ground was scratched by traces of the brawl that had just taken place and, further away, beyond the asthmatic mass that was Puffky, everything was more or less invisible. Nothing caught the eye’s attention. It was too dark. The vertical surfaces had become ungraspable. All that was left was a fuliginous expanse where Puffky had left footprints when, at the very beginning, he had run toward Schlumm. And still, to decipher these marks you had to strain your pupils until they hurt. The marks were soon lost.

“Your research on the black space,” said Schlumm. “On the length of the journey preceding rebirth.”

“Oh, that’s what they’re interested in,” said Puffky.

“Yes,” said Schlumm.

He was encouraged by what he felt was the beginning of a peaceable interaction between him and his interlocutor.

“There you have it,” he continued. “The Organization would like to know where you are with regard to your exploration of the world before birth. The world that comes after death.”

Puffky sat up on his posterior. Several clods of soot fell off his back and fragmented. Schlumm scrunched his eyelids. Puffky’s silhouette wasn’t clearly defined. Fat clumps hung down from the edges. Bumps and a few diagonal streaks twisted and turned. A new fit of joviality shook Puffky, or seizures. Or perhaps a series of sour burps. It was impossible to know whether or not Puffky was feeding himself, let alone if he had any digestive problems.

“Nothing new in that area,” Puffky claimed once the tremors had stopped. “How long it takes to pass from one world to the next? Nothing new. At any rate, the official sages have already stated the answers.”

“Oh, the sages,” said Schlumm.

“Them, or their bootlickers,” said Puffky. “Their mercenary penpushers who are always drooling over me in their columns. All those ideologues who think themselves researchers. All those opéra bouffe lamas.”

“There, there,” said Schlumm.

“If you want answers, check the Bardo Thödol,” said Puffky. “It’s all in the Bardo Thödol. Don’t count on me for.”

He was interrupted by a coughing fit. He rasped his larynx and expelled a bit of drool into the adjoining shadows. Now he was getting back up. Without shaking off all the lumps sticking to his armholes, he moved his legs and took a step.

He took another step, then several.

Now he was sinking into the dark. He was already shrinking away.

“Hey!” said Schlumm. “Don’t leave like that!”

“Leave me alone,” Puffky shot back. “Go back to the superficial world, if you think you can.”

“Oh, me, superficial,” Schlumm protested.

Puffky shrugged. He continued onward.

Seized by apprehension, fearing he’d disappear forever, Schlumm followed him.

The light had faded even more. The ground beneath their feet skidded and packed with a snow-like sound. They were leaning forward and no longer speaking. Thus unfurled ten or fifteen minutes, then a week. From time to time, Schlumm caught up with Puffky and beat him to force him to say where he was going, or to ask whether the cellar had an end or not, or if one of them was dead and which, or if they had both died and how long ago: those kinds of questions. Puffky never unclenched his teeth. He revealed nothing. He kept moving, giving the impression that he knew the way, sometimes going in large loops around a hypothetical obstacle and sometimes taking shortcuts through the dust and pellets, sometimes squatting to rest. He’d taken charge of setting the pace.

The indivisible darkness reigned. In a description of the nothingness that Puffky had once, before his disgrace, been authorized to publish, he’d spoken of a series of moonrises over the black plains, over the colorless powdery dunes, and moonsets over tarry horizons far removed from compass points. But here, no star. There had to be a vault around somewhere, doubtlessly a heavenly one and thus far above them, but no matter what time it was, no star appeared.

When they reached week two, Schlumm started to go mad. The walk had worn him out. He split into several Schlumms, several personalities, none of which were familiar to him. He closed his eyes and tried to look for memories that would have belonged to him alone, so he could give some meaning to his presence by Puffky’s side or on his heels. The only thing he could rekindle inside himself was his duty to torment Puffky until the other man expressed himself, and he was fighting with Puffky, but without formulating precise demands anymore. His interest had waned, the reason for the interrogation had been cast out of his consciousness. When he got to conduct yet another round of questioning, he preferred to remain silent, and, from then out, he started holding onto Puffky, keeping his mouth closed. Puffky imitated him. They bashed into each other wordlessly, they continued forward, they squatted to catch their breath, they fought.

One day, Puffky decided to speak.

“The time between death and rebirth is forty-nine days,” he suddenly whispered.

“That’s long,” Schlumm commented.

“Seven whole weeks,” said Puffky. “A law of nature. The Tibetans have pronounced it in their books for centuries. Don’t tell me you didn’t know that.”

“Oh, I mean, Tibetans,” said Schlumm.

The rancors of childhood had engulfed him without warning. The school suddenly loomed in his memory, with its small windows and rooms through which traveled a glacial wind. He remembered having struggled to learn by heart the seventy-seven secret prefaces to the Bardo Thödol and having failed a written examination on the order of the hells during the journey. The teacher’s name was Thotori Dordji, like the author of the prefaces’, or maybe he was a reincarnation of Thotori Dordji, and, in any case, he would thrash the dunces with whatever happened to be in his hand at the time, religious objects on his desk, silver bells, sacred shells, or other things. While he was being mauled, Schlumm would examine the images of demons painted on the pillars, the walls. Despite the numerous corrections he had received, he remembered no pain. He only felt the shame of having succeeded so poorly at learning the fundamentals of science.

“What about the hell worlds?” Schlumm shouted, as if he were having a convulsion. “In what order do they appear? What about the colored visions? The blinding dull red, the weak red, the blazing vermillion, well? The shining blue? Is it in the same order like the Tibetans said?”

It took Puffky some time to answer. He walked, squatted, exhaled, saying nothing.

Schlumm thumped him on the head.

“Yes or no?” he kept saying.

“During the seven weeks of the journey, you visit several hells,” Puffky finally pronounced. “But you never realize this. Nothing looks any different from anything else. It’s all an arid parade of blacks.”

“I was told there’d be colored visions,” said Schlumm.

“You can forget about that,” said Puffky. “Anyway, the closer you are to week seven, the less you remember. The less you have the instinct to remember. Even your childhood disappears. Memory shuts down. To fill this void, you can still listen to the voices phonocopied here and there, from outside. But that doesn’t do much. You don’t even know if it’s from the past. You’d like to. .”

“Do you have any phonocopied voices?” Schlumm cut him off.

“You’d like to love what’s been recorded, but you don’t recognize anything anymore,” Puffky continued, scorning the interruption. “You can no longer translate or claim ownership of it. It’s foreign. Hoping for lights overhead is useless.”

Puffky sighed violently.

“You feel mummified and listless,” he said. “From the thirtieth day onward, you no longer want to keep going.”

“You have recordings, grooves on wax?” Schlumm asked again.

“Yes,” said Puffky.

“That interests me,” said Schlumm.

He pronounced these words with the brutality of a police inspector.

“Because of this illegibility of the self that you once were,” Puffky continued, “you stop wanting to explore whatever it might be. Neither the past, nor the present, nor what is to come. This falls over your mind on day thirty-three. It falls over you like a lead veil and weighs you down. That’s what I’ve discovered in my research.”

“I’d like to hear these recordings,” Schlumm insisted.

Since Puffky was reluctant, he prodded him. They exchanged words and several blows. Puffky fought back, but wasn’t on the same level. Though he too had once had a specialized military education, he had never kept his knowledge up to date, and so his boxing was mediocre. He landed five meters away, eyes rolled back, lungs completely deflated.

Schlumm felt no thrill of victory. He was not ignorant of how horrible it was to mistreat those weaker and more intelligent than oneself. Guilt filled his mouth with the taste of charred earth. He quickly tried to mitigate the flavor by diluting it with one or two mumbled sentences.

“I. . I want those disks,” he stammered. “The imprint of those melodies that tell. . I want to know what voices. .”

Those kinds of mumblings.

Puffky sat in a meditative pose. Cascades of soot trickled from the top of his chest down to his hips. It came off him like sweat. The heat appeared to have intensified, but, in reality, it was stagnant. As for the silence, it was more impenetrable than during previous fights. Puffky had taken his seat, giving the impression that he would move no further.

Schlumm crossed the distance separating him from Puffky. He bent down, grabbed Puffky by the front of his monastic rags, unless it was by a flap of skin unconnected to his flesh, and shook him.

“I want to hear these phonocopies,” he repeated. “I want to hear these phonocopies, you hear me?”

Having completed this sterile show of force, he let go of Puffky. The interrogated man reacted with restraint. He was emitting sweat, tiny sobs, and bursts of laughter. He didn’t answer Schlumm.

You could scarcely see farther than the length of your fingers. In all likelihood, the two men were busy coughing in each other’s faces. They remained seated, as if in a state of rest. All hatred between them was draining away, the only thing remaining in their interactions a framework of instinctive, irreducible brutality. An obstinate resistance from one to the other.

Innumerable fractions of hours flew by like this, night after night. Week three of the crossing had come to an end. Finally, Puffky swallowed his saliva and, from his lips, let slip new information.

“The phonocopied voices come from the edge of the wombs,” he said.

“Oh, so finally you’re clarifying things,” said Schlumm. “You could have said that before.”

“Well,” said Puffky.

Schlumm stopped talking for a second, enough time to realize that the information Puffky gave didn’t actually clarify things.

“What wombs?” he asked. “You mean the ones from incarnations to come or the ones from. . The wombs from before, the ones I’ve already. . The ones we’ve already been babies in?”

“You’ll see,” said Puffky. “Everything is recorded in the jukebox.”

“In the. .?” asked Schlumm.

“The jukebox.” Puffky repeated.

“Oh,” said Schlumm.

“Behind us,” Puffky pointed.

Schlumm turned, then froze.

For a long while he inspected the not-light permeating the space.

“I can’t make out a thing,” he complained.

“There,” Puffky pointed.

“Still nothing,” said Schlumm.

He wandered away, groping around in the shadows, the black air. A great mass of soot came off him, it had clung to him during the fights and during the breaks. His hands were shaking. He had some difficulty controlling them, they vainly lost their way before him, but quickly came to rest on a surface. There was a wall made of lukewarm Plexiglas and there was a keypad. A machine was standing there, one that resembled a jukebox, effectively. A fallen-apart jukebox.

“I hope the mechanism still works,” Puffky hoped audibly.

“Me too,” Schlumm threatened.

“Anyway,” said Puffky, “like I told you, don’t expect a miracle. The speakers only give out fragments. More than one person’s been let down by them.”

“What kinds of fragments,” Schlumm fretted.

“Lies coming from somewhere else and short liturgical poems in crypt language,” Puffky explained glumly. “No actual memories, really.”

“But all the same, they’re close enough, right?”

“Not really,” said Puffky.

“Oh,” went Schlumm.

His intonation was lacking in enthusiasm. He was already studying the machine. He flipped a switch. It was a simple toggle button, on which the flesh of his index finger felt an OFF/ON in relief. The jukebox reacted. Its innards glowed stingily, communicating a weak pinkness and some transparencies to certain outer areas. The keypad’s frame lit up around its edge. On the perimeter, three purple neon lights attempted a resurrection. The tubes seemed to want to show a sample of what they were once capable of, but the effort exhausted them. The gas, of course, turned purple, but not enough to illuminate farther than the tube’s walls. The other lights were dead.

Schlumm tapped the keys. His knowledge of jukeboxes had never been put into practice. He amassed doubts and regrets, suspecting that his inexperience might play tricks on him, but not wanting to lose face in front of Puffky. There was the sound of the current inside the loudspeaker, but no voice, phonocopied or otherwise, chose to reveal itself. For several minutes Schlumm fidgeted above the keypad and waited. The minutes remained infertile.

“You have to put a coin into the slot,” Puffky suggested.

“What kind of coin?” Schlumm was dismayed.

“A dollar,” said Puffky.

Schlumm frisked himself. The sum seemed enormous to him. His hands could be heard reluctantly rifling or pretending to rifle through his savings or pockets.

“The money-box isn’t locked,” Puffky stated to console him.

Schlumm was muttering indecisively to himself, but, after fiddling with the fabrics and envelopes covering him for a while, he complied.

“Your dollar is just to trigger the mechanism,” Puffky concluded. “Don’t worry, Schlumm, you can get it back at the end.”

“What end?” said Schlumm. “Listen, Puffky, don’t take me for an imbecile. I know for a fact that I just lost my only dollar.”

“You had to spend it sooner or later,” Puffky remarked.

“Shut up,” Schlumm snapped. “It’s starting.”

In the bowels, several gears had juddered. Galvanized by the dropping of the dollar, the membranes were now transmitting punctured bladder sounds and sweeping sounds. It was hot, stuffy, and dark.

“What if I squatted back down?” Schlumm asked no one in particular.

And, without waiting for an answer, he turned to Puffky.

“It’s stuffy down there,” he explained.

The jukebox grumbled the start of an inflammatory duet, then stopped and made noises like ruminations. The static contained devastated and almost-human nasals. Little by little, one could wrest from this phonetic paste elements that, in a sense, might claim to have some meaning. This blended with lingering precellar odors, with some kind of molded or trampled memorial clay, with remainders of dreams experienced on the surface world or in the cellar, another time, or elsewhere, and by whom unknown. Those kinds of recent or distant adventures.

There was suddenly an announcement from the loudspeakers.

By Johannes Schlumm, the dynaminister, the machine said. Sword cast for the bread.

“Short mass for the dead,” Puffky translated.

“Oh,” said Schlumm. “It’s like that.”

“Yes,” Puffky confirmed. “They talk in crypt language.”

“Are they Tibetans?” Schlumm asked.

“I doubt it,” said Puffky. “This isn’t their kind of thing.”

At that moment, the machine specified that the mass could be performed for any occasion, throughout the entire migration, with immediate benefit for the male or female deceased.

“They’re lying,” Puffky muttered. “You very quickly lose the ability to listen. There you are, unmoving, deaf to admonitions, when there are any. You’ve stopped thinking. You float open-mouthed under the soot, as if you were completely detached from your fate. You’re not interested in the past or future.”

“Nice program,” Schlumm commented, then shut up.

Puffky didn’t add anything more.

The machine continued palavering. It explained that it was first going to play the Introit. Then, there was only a sputtering, a few pulverulences. A blast of air caterwauled inside the pipes and nothing formed from their opening, neither melody nor prate.

“This thing is broken,” said Schlumm.

“No,” said Puffky. “The silence is part of the Introit.”

“I still want to speed it up,” Schlumm said irritably. “How do you do that?”

“Like you did with me,” said Puffky.

Schlumm heavily reared back on his lower membranes, then walked over to the machine and stared at it while clenching his jaws. Then he began kicking it so it would scream out some text. Fluffy curls of dust drifted across the Plexiglas slopes and bounced off, blemishing Schlumm’s shoes. The neon lights were not holding up well to the shocks. Their purple sparkled for a moment, then weakened.

While Schlumm was soliloquizing in its company, the machine engaged its modest defense system, spitting out a fetid cloud meant to frighten off possible assailants. The gears, in their distress, eructated into the mucus membranes the miasmas of prisons and medieval dictatorships. If the attacker had had enough energy to reflect, he would have noticed the threat, he would have compared this effluvia to what men and women had inhaled long ago, when day and night they slumbered in hell, in camp barracks or subterranean pits, and maybe he would have moved away. But nothing stirred in Schlumm’s memory. He beat the machine for a while with the bruising extremities of his limbs and makeshift weapons, such as his scarf, or fistfuls of compacted soot, or filaments of flesh mixed with a bit of earth or bone.

By now, most of the lamps had given up the ghost. It was getting even darker. Everyone was perspiring. Schlumm’s monastic robe, the traditional rags covering his body, could have been wrung like a washcloth. Under the attacks, the machine stood like a humble, substanceless block.

Time passed, then came a moment when Schlumm had already finished his dance. He was no longer moving about or frothing. He was rasping fewer commands that Puffky, though not far away, had trouble hearing.

“Deliver your message,” Schlumm was saying. “Talk. I know you can talk.”

He was tottering over the demolished keypad.

“Come out with what you’re thinking,” he was insisting. “Or else, I’ll. .”

Information on the external worlds, the machine decided.

“Oh,” Schlumm commented. “It’s about time.”

Advice for the crossing of observable darknesses, the machine squawked.

“Good,” said Schlumm, delighted. “Here we go. It took some time, but here we go.”

“You’ll see, we won’t get far,” Puffky warned, then sniffed, like a connoisseur.

“Don’t try to influence me,” Schlumm said indignantly. “I want to judge for myself, without anyone else.”

He returned to his place beside Puffky, his posterior sinking two-thirds of the way into a friable and silky heap, which was like a chair made of friable silk.

Lesson twenty-eight, the machine whined.

“Oh, no luck,” Schlumm groused. “Looks like we missed the start of class.”

“We’ll miss the end too,” Puffky prophesized.

“Oh,” said Schlumm.

By Bogdan Schlumm, the desperadoboist, the machine continued. Lesson on deviousness.

“What the,” said Schlumm.

“Shh,” intimated Puffky.

. . Being a vegetable among vegetables. Waiting. Especially that, waiting. Seeing the why of the drizzle or the watering can. Feeling growth, looking for the why of the apple scabs. Not relying on the moon for light. Respecting conformity, not breaking anything, but understanding your roots. Being thus, a rebellious vegetable, dangerous in the humid night. Blocked in every direction slyly cursing. Like in mud sleeping, but not sleeping. Quietly following the movements of the gardener and his spade. Always imagining that you will escape the blade and, at the first opportunity, acting by surprise and swiftly. Suddenly waiting no longer. Suddenly unmuzzling yourself from the earth. Snatching the gardener, splitting him with a violent incantation. Destroying him at the top of your voice. Roaring from your rootlets, splitting and destroying him.

Response by Wolup Schlumm, the dodecaphone.

“What does this gobbledygook mean,” Schlumm whispered in Puffky’s ear. “I can’t catch a thing.”

“Shh,” said Puffky. “Don’t talk at the same time as a dodecaphone.”

Seeing a wretched table, a long, wretched table, said the machine. Hating. Especially that, hating. Heeding the sky-dove’s frizzle o’er the slaughtering pan. Pealing croaks, brooking the lie of the dappled crabs. . Caught me trying all the loon’s delights. .

“Puns!” Schlumm was outraged. “They’re throwing crypt language puns at us!”

Responses and lessons were strung out, impossible to memorize or even follow. The text wasn’t a living one, it evoked no recognizable experiences, it presented a complete opacity that disappointed its listeners terribly.

“Wordplay with neither head nor. .” Schlumm grumbled.

“This is what happens to memory after week three,” said Puffky.

“This is worse than death,” said Schlumm.

“Oh, worse,” said Puffky.

From time to time, the jukebox would lighten the mood by narrating dreamlike sketches taking place in parallel hells to those of the wombs or the surface world. One was thus entitled to supplementary tragicomedy, to the adventures of Abram Schlumm, the egalitarian, or Freek Schlumm, the Untermensch, and even other poets of the same tribe, even more infamous and minor heteronyms. They were expressed in general language, less closed than the dodecaphone’s: all the words were intelligible, and the syntax hardly strayed from beaten paths, but, in the end, only a few snippets could be obliquely understood. To make matters worse, between responses and playlets, the machine would sometimes daydream. It muttered exquisite corpses, producing surrealist sayings.

Autopsy believed to take, the machine would say. . Out at sea the old garden spider broke the box of clowns. . We flew away in our own secrets to tell. . I repeat: we threw away ten-hour foam secrets who yell. . Without spindrift names, the bonzesses laughed. . They had foretold piercing our memories, TOWARD THE PLOP. . I repeat: they had four gold piercings of sour mulberries, TO WARD THE FLOP. .

While all the responses were being pronounced, an intense non-sympathy with the texts ran through the listeners’ spines. Entire clusters of nights went by, we remained sitting, growing thinner in the dark, we couldn’t recap anything, repeat anything, we no longer knew what was happening.

The machine sputtered in its corner, illuminating the surrounding mounds, humps, and clods.

Neither Puffky nor Schlumm stirred or flinched. They were slumped, side by side, scrutinizing the sole purplish ray to come out safe from the beating. This smear of color brushed against their toes so sadly that it incited them to become even more immobile. On account of the scene’s drained appearance, and because of how miserable the light was, it was tempting to imagine the two men as working a theatrical ceremony with neither plot nor dialogue, and whose rehearsal had fallen apart. Since the old rags enveloping them gave them an asexual appearance, they seemed to be silently brooding on the reasons they had so poorly interpreted their role as two blind mendicants, perhaps having drunk to forget their degradation and their fears, now distraught in the disaster’s midst. This brooding was prolonged and inconclusive.

At present, there were few notable differences between Schlumm and Puffky. Schlumm had aged, his shoes had split apart, his clothes and even his skin had taken on the indistinctly ragged hue that without fail betrays the inhabitant of inescapable tunnels, the guest of what Tibetans, in their fictions, call the intermediary world, claiming, quite wrongly, that it is enough to wander there for forty-nine days to be reborn in the hereafter or beyond. Schlumm was now huddling against Puffky, as if Puffky had always been his best friend. He was no longer holding onto his legs. The heat of the space had defeated him, as well as the appalling idea that there was no womb at the cellar’s end, and so no hope of getting out. Whatever the length of eternity might be, he was going to have to get through it with Puffky, without being reborn and without understanding a thing, grasping at echoes he would have to pretend to identify and adopt and love like they came from his own head.

For a brief fortnight, their situation changed little. They meditated and dozed in turns. Their oppressed breathing was palpable. Sometimes, a jolt of somewhat forced joy would shake Puffky, with mad hiccups and shivers. The jukebox was the ultimate consultable archive, the sole spark of intelligence. It grumbled continuously and softly. Everything would have been different if we could have determined whose memories it was adulterating.

Dreamt of you, Schlumm, the machine fleetingly sighed. Dreamt of you. . Junks in pocket, you went back up June 27^th Avenue, TOWARD THE WOOD STOVE. .

“This Schlumm,” Schlumm said suddenly. “He reminds me of someone. His face is on the tip of my tongue.”

“We’re there,” said Puffky.

“What,” said Schlumm, his voice ponderous, drenched in somnambulism and bister. “What. Where are we.”