Bardo or Not Bardo

VII. AT THE BARDO BAR

At night, when cars speed down the boulevard, their breath rattles the bar’s windows. During the day, as conversations and comings and goings permeate the room with a permanent murmur, the trembling glass jingling in its frame goes unnoticed. But at night, it’s a different story. Everything is much calmer after sundown. Consumers disappear, traffic becomes scarce. A heavy vehicle passes by, rumbling, the windows vibrate, then nocturnal silence is reestablished. The neighborhood is deserted. It can be found at a little-frequented exit from the city, far from residential buildings, just next to the zoo. It’s clean, there are trees, long black railings, animal growls, but it’s deserted. The only inhabited building in the area, with the exception of the drinking establishment, is a Buddhist place. Buddhist or rather lamaist, if one holds to the nuances of pointless denominations, adjoining the bar. An old garage transformed into a temple. Recently transformed into a temple by a semi-dissident association of Red Bonnets. These new religious activities have not attracted any more night owls to the bar. From time to time a devotee will come in, inhale a cup of fermented milk with a straw, and then go. That is the total clientele growth. To summarize, hardly anyone is seen here in the dark hours, when the zoo’s doors are closed.

A truck approaches and roars in front of the bar. The windows clatter. Once again, silence sets in.

Behind the counter, the bartender wipes saucers, glasses, cups, teaspoons, puts them away.

Festoons of multicolored garland can be seen outside, suspended there like on a sixties pizzeria façade. Inside the room, the lights are mundane and bright. An hour earlier, there was ambient music, indistinguishable rock songs like those heard in any public place for the last two centuries, but the bartender had turned the volume down when he began his shift and looked for a more exotic station. He came across a Korean music broadcast. It seems to be a cassette alternating between pansori excerpts and traditional dances playing on continuous loop. Sometimes the music is substituted with a Korean commentator who chatters at length in her language, with seductive tones that make Yasar the bartender daydream.

All is calm. The silence is also intruded on by noises originating in the neighboring lamaic temple. Monotonous chants, rhythms lacking any diversity, a prior’s solemn voice, bells: on the other side of the partition, a ceremony has begun.

“Could I get another caffeine, Yasar?”

Freek is sitting on a stool at the bar. He is the sole client. It is apparent at a glance that he is lacking something human. For an Untermensch, he is very handsome, but his body emanates an impression of anomaly. An indefinable touch of abnormality pushes him back into the outskirts where the human subconscious hates to venture. He knows this, he tries hard not to let it bother him, but he suffers from it. It doesn’t make his relations with others any easier. When he speaks, his voice is often filled with emotion, like with all hypersensitive individuals. It is emotional and slightly weird, as well.

The bartender halts his wiping. He thumps the percolator’s coffee filter on a drawer, he screws it back on, clutching it tightly, he slides the drawer back without closing it, he presses the hot water button. His movements are calm. His entire person inspires trust.

“This is your fourth cup, Freek,” he says. “It’s going to make you sick.”

“Don’t need to sleep,” Freek explains. “Have to go back to the zoo. The animals are waiting for me. Have to talk to them. They’re anxious, they’re not sleeping. They’re afraid of dying.”

“Ah,” says Yasar.

“I have to reassure them,” Freek continues after a silence. “They’ve smelled death’s odor. They’re afraid of dying like the clown, like the yak.”

Yasar has turned back around. Now, he is placing a bowl of piping hot caffeine in front of Freek. Freek thanks him.

“What clown?” Yasar asks. “A clown died at the zoo? Tell me about it, Freek.”

“No, the yak is the one who’s dying. I need to go to the zoo because of him. The yak is old and sick. The veterinarian came, he said he still had a day or two. This is the yak’s final night. It’s happening, in a zoo. The bars protect, but they don’t stop death.”

Freek pauses. Facing Yasar, who is friendly with him, he doesn’t have too many problems expressing himself. It’s even the opposite: he seems unable to keep himself from speaking. He dunks his lips in the too-hot caffeine, then revives his talking points.

“The animals are sad behind the gates,” he says. “And sadness is very tiring. They’re in a safe place, they’re protected, but they grow old just as fast as if they were free, exposed to danger. The yak’s gotten old. He’s been feeling very unwell. The nearby animals are worried, they can smell death’s odor. The veterinarian arrives. He says that the yak only has a day or two left. He says this in front of the yak as if the yak were deaf. He takes out a syringe, he injects useless vaccines against old age and death. Then he leaves. It’s night. The smells spread. In their cages, the animals breathe in the smells. It scares them. I have to go and console them. None of the animals can sleep in the zoo at night. They need someone by their side. My words reassure them. The yak needs someone by his side too, to talk to him and help him get through the night. I need to talk to the yak if he’s struggling against death, or even if he’s already stopped breathing.”

In the neighboring room, a bell rings, a very solemn voice pronounces syllables incomprehensible to those who have not mastered Liturgical Tibetan. Then it stops and, coming from a transistor located behind the bartender, there is a Korean melody. It’s a tune sung when worn out, when fate has been unfavorable and it’s hard to find the necessary energy to go on. A woman adjusts her despair with the violence specific to pansori singers, a violence devoid of any whining, then the chorus picks back up and gives it a more lively coloration, as if the intervention of the collectivity had diverted the sorrow toward new reasons to fight together and endure.

“Excuse me, Freek,” the bartender says. “I’ll get back to this in a bit. You said something about a clown.”

“Yes,” says Freek. “Furthermore, that’s what’s got the animals frightened horribly. After closing time, the clown was found in the raptor exhibit. The clown’s cadaver. That’s keeping them from sleeping too. The clown’s remains in the cage. Smells are stronger in the dark. The animals breathe them in. All the animals in the zoo. They grow restless, they’re afraid. They turn in circles or shrink into corners. They think about the yak, about death, about old age. They think about the clown. I have to go back to the zoo to calm them down. So they’ll be taken by sleep and forget.”

Yasar leans on his elbows in front of Freek. He’s just thrown out the rag he was wiping dishes with. He has the hard face of a man who has suffered, cheeks scarred from smallpox, piercing eyes. The beginning of a tattoo can be seen at the base of his neck, perhaps a souvenir from some journey or passion, perhaps a souvenir from prison. He’s spent a large part of his life within four walls, in fact.

“I still don’t understand this clown thing, Freek,” he says. “I’m trying to picture your words in my head, but some of the details escape me.”

“Oh,” says Freek.

“Yes,” says Yasar. “It’s all clear for you, because you’re going in and out of the zoo all the time, like you were. . as if you belonged to a world that. .” (He sighs.) “But I’m having trouble putting the clown in the scene. I can’t figure out what he’s doing in the cages in the middle of the night. You’ll have to explain it to me.”

“The clown worked in a circus. The Schmühl. Do you know about it?”

“No.”

“He killed himself,” Freek says. “He was brought to the zoo an hour after the gates were closed. After the visitors, children, left. They do that. A lamaist mutual aid group. You have to sign up. The clown was a member, I guess. It’s a special service. They get permission from the city council. There are rules. They follow them. They only go into the cages if the zoo director gives them the green light. They come with the body. There are three of them. Dressed like gravediggers with nothing to lose. Poor guys like us, you know?”

“Not really.”

“Like us. Wearing civvies. They go into the aviary with the body. Sky burials, they call it. Sky burials.”

“They give the body to the birds to eat?” Yasar asks.

“Oh, not all of it,” Freek clarifies. “Otherwise they’d have to wait for days around vultures, eagles, condors. They don’t stay long. The zoo’s watchmen say that it’s mainly symbolic. Some strips, some small slices. A pittance. The raptors are afraid, they don’t approach. They won’t eat any meat under any circumstance. Afterward, the guys walk out with the body. They load it on a little cart and cover it with an oilskin canvas. No one is on the paths. Zoo administration doesn’t attend these things. The zoo is empty. It’s already dark. They leave with the body to go incinerate it. They leave, but the dead clown’s scent continues to waft from cage to cage. It’s powerful in the large aviary, but not just there. It hangs around the zoo for hours. It gives everyone the heebie-jeebies. If no one comes to speak to them, the animals will tremble with fear all night. .”

There is a silence. The music is followed by applause, then the Korean commentator launches into a dense monologue, without pausing, in which neither Yasar nor Freek is interested.

“Sky burials. .” Yasar says thoughtfully. “A very, very ancient custom, it must go back to prehistoric times. I’ve heard about it, but I didn’t know it was still practiced. I’d have never guessed that it could happen here, in the middle of the city. Today. Just a kilometer from here.”

“There are rules,” says Freek. “You have to be patronized by the group, the lamas have to give their permission. And you especially need authorization from city council and written consent from the zoo director. But the vultures aren’t asked for their opinion. The vultures don’t really cooperate. They’re afraid of people who come into the aviary and throw clown meat at them. They don’t like to eat circus artists. I’ll have to speak calming words to the vultures too. I’ll go to the aviary later.”

“This clown, do you know any more about him?” Yasar asks.

“He killed himself,” says Freek. “There were two of them on the bill, always together. Blumschi and Grümscher. Blumschi and Grümscher, the kings of laughter. One small and one big. I went to see them in their circus, last month. It’s losing speed, a poor circus with a poor public. The clowns take the floor between numbers and speak loudly. They shout, they gesticulate, they lose their balance. They speak into the void. There aren’t many people on the bleachers. The audience is bored. They’re waiting for the trapeze artists, they want to see a trapeze artist’s skeleton shatter on the sawdust-covered ground. They’re waiting for the tamer, they want to witness an accident with the bears, they want a bear to tear an arm off the tamer or his daughter. They’re not amused by the clowns. No one’s laughing. I laugh, but that’s because I’m not. . because I’m different. . I laugh, but no one else does.”

The commentator continues her short speech. She does it softly, but all the same everyone would like her to wrap it up, to put the mic down and bring the music back. It’s a live radio broadcast. On the other end, the commentator is facing the public, and the public appreciates her banter, her flattery, the public smiles loudly or applauds when she wants them to. She is like an animal tamer, the obedient audience grovels before her voice and desires to show that they’re under her spell. She finally shuts up, the audience applauds once more, and there is a blank in the broadcast, perhaps because the musicians left the stage and have been sitting down. At the same moment, during the blank, a Buddhist voice can be heard.

“You hear that, Yasar?” says Freek. “A religious service on the other side of the wall.”

“Yes,” says Yasar. “It’s coming from next door. It was a dilapidated garage. Old car doors, grimy motors, cans of oil. Red Bonnets converted it into a temple. We have an adjoining wall. It was already thin, but with the renovation work I think it’s gotten even thinner. Some days you can hear everything. On top of that we share an air vent. Noises pass through it.”

“They’re about to begin a ceremony for the deceased. A lama is going to read the Book of the Dead. He’s going to speak to someone who died recently. He’s going to give them advice to help them not be reborn as an animal.”

“So you’re a religious expert now, Freek?”

“Not really, no. .”

They listen to the noises coming from the temple. Not much can be heard, actually. A solemn voice, now and then. Not much. Now, the Korean music has returned, a very long piece with syncopated drums and a magnificent soprano voice. Since the radio’s sound is very low, not much can be heard from over there, either.

“It’s sad,” says Yasar after several dull seconds, “thinking about clowns who can’t make anyone laugh.”

“Out of everyone on the bleachers, I was the only one who did,” says Freek. “The spectators watching looked like they didn’t understand a thing. Even the children’s eyes were blank. They barely reacted at all. I was the only one who found them funny. Maybe it’s because I’m not a person. Well, I mean, not a real person. .”

“Hey, Freek! What are you talking about? Of course you’re a person. This isn’t because you. .”

The bartender doesn’t continue. He doesn’t feel like getting mired down in unsettling considerations, he doesn’t want to think aloud about what parts of humanity Freek is lacking. Yasar the bartender’s culture has always been resistant to racism, he has always refused to give in to atavistic urges to reject the Other, he has never felt the need to classify Freek in a disparaging animal category, himself being considered a sort of Untermensch, but he prefers not to think about those things aloud in front of Freek. He turns back toward the percolator, he wipes the wall, he rummages through the basket of cutlery.

“Of course you’re a real person,” he repeats.

A car passes by, the windows tremble in their frame. The lamas’ voices come through the partition. A second car passes by, the driver accelerates, he strains his motor without changing speed, the windows shake.

The door opens. A client enters, not a regular: someone unknown, short in stature, dressed like a Sunday proletarian, with a full jacket too long in the sleeves. He has gray hair, a worn-out expression that the lack of sleep has rendered cartoonish.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” he says.

His voice lacks confidence.

He goes to sit at a table under a fluorescent light, three meters away from the counter. Freek and Yasar greet him, but don’t look at him, Yasar out of professional tact, Freek out of shyness.

“You wouldn’t happen to have any salted buttermilk tea, would you?” the newcomer asks.

“No,” says Yasar. “We don’t have that here.”

“I was joking,” the man explains.

“Oh,” says Yasar.

“Two whiskeys,” says the man.

“A double?”

“No. In two glasses. Two doubles. With very few ice cubes.”

Yasar disappears the dishcloth he had on his shoulder and gets to work. No one says a word. There’s the sound of falling ice cubes, pouring alcohol, the temple bell, the radio. The pansori singer can be heard. Yasar places the glasses on a platter, and brings them to the small man’s table. Then he takes his place back in front of Freek. For twenty seconds, they don’t speak, both of them, as if the presence of a client behind them is preventing them from picking back up the interrupted conversation. Then Yasar shakes his head.

“You know, Freek,” he says. “In my opinion, they’re exploiting you, over at the zoo. They know very well that you’re going there after hours and taking care of the animals. What you’re doing is still work. Night work. They should compensate you.”

“Oh, I do it for the animals, not to get dollars,” says Freek. “And anyway, they pay me. Some days the director makes me come into his office. He talks to me. He gives me papers to sign. I sign them with my name. He gives me free meal tickets for the watchmen’s canteen.”

“There’s no way they count all your hours,” says Yasar. “I’m sure they’re exploiting you, Freek.”

“No, they do me right. Of course, sometimes. .”

“Sometimes what?”

“Oh, nothing. .”

“You were going to say something, Freek.”

“No.”

“Something that bothers you.”

“Well, sometimes they mistake me for an animal,” says Freek. “The watchmen. It’s an accident, I think. Not out of malice. They grab me on one of the paths before opening time. They don’t listen when I protest, like I’m talking to deaf people. No matter how loudly I complain, they open an empty cage and close it again with a padlock. Next to me they put cold food and some straw for toilet paper. There’s a sign hung from the bars: PLEASE DON’T FEED THE ANIMALS. While the zoo’s open to the public, I keep away from the sign so people don’t think it’s talking about me. At any rate, I don’t get much. The guards leave me there for three or four days. Then, they free me. They apologize. They say it was a truly regrettable mistake, that they accidentally got me confused, and it wasn’t out of malice. They say that I look too much like an animal. That they weren’t paying attention, because I’m tame, and I talk instead of biting or scratching. . You see, Yasar? I’d have to bite them for them to see that I’m something other than. . With all that, Yasar, how should I know that I’m really a person?”

“Stop, Freek,” the bartender says. “You’re like us, like everyone. Half human, half animal. Everyone’s the same way. You, me. . I can’t guarantee I’m a hundred percent human either. I just don’t know.”

“All the same. No one accidentally throws you in cages, I take it? With hippopotamuses and parrots?”

“Oh, I. . I was locked up in a special prison for twenty-five years. . With men and women who’d shot soldiers, ministers. .”

“Who did you shoot, Yasar?”

“Gangsters.”

Yasar was immersed in a hard silence. He’d killed mafiosos, in the past, but only a small number of them, and the species still hadn’t disappeared. To the contrary, it had multiplied, reducing other species’ territories, polluting other species’ daily lives and even their dreams. Yasar floats wordlessly, momentarily in the depths of this failure. The others, Freek and the whiskey drinker, ruminate on what they have said or heard.

A truck rumbles on the boulevard. The windows, and even a few glasses on the shelf behind Yasar, vibrate.

Behind the wall ascend mantras, prayers.

In the radio’s disappointing loudspeaker, barely audible since Yasar lowered the sound for reasons unknown, the Korean singer expresses the pain of desertion, the pain of scorned fidelity, the pain of betrayed filial devotion. She has taken on a quavering, but powerful, intonation. It is possible that its unbearable beauty is why the bartender, without thinking, changed the volume.

The small man sitting behind Freek swallows the last mouthful of his first glass.

“You work at the zoo?” he suddenly asks Freek.

Freek turns toward him. His heart always races when a stranger talks to him. Any sort of direct question agonizes him, he feels like trouble must follow. He fears what humans may think, not necessarily their actual threats, but what they might imagine, their cruel and shameful daydreams, often unconfessed, their unconscious depictions of his suffering or death. He pivots frankly toward the stranger and tries to answer naturally, but he can’t hide the abrupt pallor of his cheeks, nor the nervous quivering of his eyelids, his lips.

“Yes,” he says. “I go to the zoo. I get in through openings in the bars. When the visitors are gone, I talk to the animals. They’d like to be somewhere else. They’d like not to have to die in order to be somewhere else. They shiver in a corner for hours, without stopping. I wait for dusk, I sit near them and speak to them. The animals listen to me. They listen all night through the night, with their ears and muzzles. I try to talk to them until their fear fades away.”

The small, worn-out man stirs the ice cubes in his empty glass, then puts it back down in front of him.

“It’s not just animals,” he says. “I’m in a funk myself. Once you’re aware you’re trapped in life without any way to get out. . And then, when you think about those who did get out. . When you imagine what happens to them after. . At this very moment, for example. .”

He attacks his second double whiskey.

“And do you know how to get rid of humans’ fears?” he continues.

“No,” says Freek. “Not humans. For that, you have to go to a lama.”

He clears his throat. He successfully talked with the stranger, but the effort hurt his vocal cords. Now he figures he can end the dialogue without offending the other man. He turns toward Yasar, toward the shelves lined with multicolored bottles.

“Can you make me another caffeine, Yasar?” he says. “I’m going to drink one more bowl and then go. The animals are miserable. It’ll be a difficult night for them. I have to leave. They’re whining in the darkness, they’re waiting for me. They’re going to need me. They’re terrorized by death. Like the yak. Like the clown.”

“Hey!” exclaims the Sunday-dressed proletarian. “How did you know I’m a clown?”

He lifts his arm, an arm with a too-long sleeve, in the half-theatrical gesture of a man who has been drinking.

“Oh, you’re a clown?” asks Freek.

“Yes,” says the man.

He puts his hand back on the table.

Yasar is once again busying himself with the percolator.

A lama’s indecipherable voice wends through the air vent.

“I went to the circus the other day,” Freek says. “There were two clowns, Blumschi and Grümscher. One small and one big. They blindly greeted each other from different ends of the floor. Then they ran at each other, they crossed paths but didn’t touch. They often fell down.”

He pauses to thank Yasar, who’s given him a piping black bowl. He leans over it, he breathes. He skims the liquid with his lips to test the temperature. He doesn’t risk inhaling it in. He breathes again so that the temperature will drop. It doesn’t drop.

“When the big one fell down,” continues Freek, “the little one would stop running and rush to help him get back up, but it didn’t work. The big one struggled and shouted. It was very funny. He struggled, he refused the little one’s help, and he fell back down. It was very comical. But no one laughed, except me. One of the two is dead. I heard some watchmen say he killed himself. He must have been part of a lamaist group. His body was given to the vultures earlier, to the condors, the eagles. Sky burials, they’re called. They go into the raptor cage and throw pieces of the body at them. I didn’t get near. I was busy talking to the yak. I couldn’t see if it was the little one or the big one.”

“It was the big one,” says the man as he takes a drink of alcohol. “It was Big Grümscher.”

“You’re sure?” Yasar asks, leaning on the counter.

“Why would I lie to you?” says the man as he swallows another mouthful. “I’m Blumschi, his partner. We worked together at the Schmühl Circus. You must have seen the posters, Schmühl himself put them up in noticeable places, near stoplights, at the entrances to parking lots. Posters with our names on them. Big Grümscher and Little Blumschi, the kings of laughter.”

He drinks.

“The kings of laughter,” he repeats. “Inseparable. Together forever. More than partners, actually. Much more. Inseparable brothers. And now. . Now, like the dead once they’ve passed to the other side, I must go on alone. It’s so frightening. . going alone. . So painful. . Grümscher! Can you hear me, Grümscher? How am I going to do it now, all alone, with an unlaughing audience?”

A sob rattles him from head to toe.

“Grümscher!” he says.

“You’re a weepy drunk,” Yasar observes.

“Not really,” says the clown.

“You probably shouldn’t finish your second glass,” Yasar insists.

“I’m drinking to Grümscher’s health,” explains Blumschi. “In the temple, they’re reading him the Book of the Dead, right now. Shaven-skulled bonzes. They do that. And I’m drinking in memory of Big Grümscher.”

“It’s helpful to read the Book of the Dead,” Freek intervenes. “Where he is, he’s really very alone. He needs someone to reassure him and tell him what to do. You know, if he can hear a voice, even if he can’t understand it, he’ll feel relieved. He’ll be less afraid. Even if it’s not true, it’ll give him the feeling he’s not entirely alone. You should speak to him, instead of drowning yourself in whiskey.”

“What do you want me to. .” says the clown.

His eyes open wide. He looks both drunk and anxious.

“Wait, wait, what are you saying?” he asks.

“He’s saying that you should call it quits on the whiskey,” says the bartender.

“I’m saying that it would do him good to hear your voice right now,” says Freek. “He’s just beginning. It’s very difficult, at the start. It’ll have an effect on him. He may not recognize your voice right away. But it’ll do him good.”

“I don’t know how to talk to a dead person,” says the clown. “I’ve never had the chance to. . And anyway, have you really thought about what it means to talk to a dead man? Thinking he can hear you? That he’s listening to you, from his dark world, from. . It’s frightening. . And if he misinterprets what you’re trying to. . Did you think about that? If, instead of reassuring him, you end up terrorizing him? No, I really don’t see what I could. .”

“You only have to do what you were doing onstage,” Freek suggests. “When he was struggling, when you yelled advice in his ear to help him get back up and he pretended not to hear you.”

“Or else, you only have to murmur phrases from the Book of the Dead,” says Yasar. “Reassuring formulas.”

“For what I know of the Book of the Dead’s formulas. .” Blumschi protests. “Big Grümscher could have. . he could recite entire pages by heart. He loved Buddhist magic, he was a member of a mutual aid group that read the Book of the Dead to those suffering in the streets, to vagrants, to the tatterdemalion. . He took courses at the lamaist school. We were inseparable, but that put a chasm between us. I’ve never. . I’m completely incapable of. .”

“They’re reading it next door,” says Freek. “You only have to listen to a passage and repeat it.”

Blumschi drinks. He doesn’t retort. He puts his glass back down. Under the ice cubes, the liquid is transparent. If my count is correct, he’s just finished his fourth whiskey.

There is still the background noise of the radio in the bar, along with the diverse ringings and murmurs coming from the Buddhist ceremony on the other side of the wall. The officiant’s voice is distorted by the path it had to travel before arriving behind the counter. It is however a minimal distance, with negligible obstacles, a few bricks, a square of fine wire mesh. It’s a mystery what the dead man can perceive of this voice, being an incalculable distance away.

“You can’t distinguish anything, anyway,” Blumschi complains. “Not a syllable.”

“I’m going to turn off the radio,” Yasar proposes. “I can also undo the grill on the vent duct. They put the temple in the old service station next door. The vents to the bar and the garage are connected. We’ll hear everything.”

“Great,” says Blumschi.

He pushes his chair back. He rises. He is drunk.

“Well,” he says. “One last drop to your health, my old Grümscher. And then, you’re going to see how I communicate with the garage and you.”

He grabs his glass, he examines the ice cubes which offer him nothing more than poorly flavored water. He staggers. He collides with a table.

The bartender turns off the radio. Then he climbs on a stool, loosens something behind the bottle shelves, above the bar’s partition. Suddenly, the sounds coming from the neighboring building transform. It feels like they are right in the heart of the temple. The lama’s profound bass resonates inside the bar as if the lama was standing behind the counter, between the percolator and Yasar.

“Oh noble son,” says the lama, “I am once again going to repeat this first page of the Bardo Thödol, so important it is for you to hear and to understand, without which you will be lost for the forty-nine days of your journey through the Bardo.”

“Well?” says the bartender. “Don’t tell me you still can’t distinguish the syllables. It’s quite stunning, isn’t it? Go on, Blumschi, you don’t have any more excuses. Have faith! Repeat everything to your friend.”

“Pour me another whiskey,” Blumschi says, panicking. “I. . This feels obscene. I’m not drunk enough for public speaking.”

Yasar hesitates for a second, then he stretches his hand toward the bottle. He prepares the drink Blumschi requires.

“He needs guidance,” says Freek. “Don’t make anything up, give him the same advice the monks do. Let yourself guide him through what the monks say. The most important thing is for him to recognize your voice. Your voice and your way of speaking. He has to know that his friend is still nearby to help him. It will do him immense good. It will help him not drown completely in terror.”

“Oh noble son, Grümscher,” the lama says, “I am addressing you as I will every day for forty-nine days. It is absolutely necessary that you lend me your ear and do your best to understand the meaning of my words. What I am telling you now is meant to ease your crossing of the Bardo. If you listen to me without distraction, you will be less afraid when you are walking the Bardo’s dreadful, narrow passages. You will even be able to escape the disastrous prospect of endless rebirth and death, and rebirth again, and death again. You will be able to liberate yourself from this long chain of suffering.”

The small clown takes hold of the glass Yasar filled. He swallows several mouthfuls with glum anxiety.

“Put your glass down, Blumschi,” says Yasar.

“Yes,” says Blumschi as he wobbles, not putting his glass down.

“Talk to your friend,” says Yasar. “Everything is strange and unpleasant to him right now. If that’s the case, he won’t even realize he’s not alive anymore. He doesn’t know how to react at all. Talk to him so he knows that a friend is trying to help him.”

“It’s obscene,” says Blumschi.

“Go on,” Yasar encourages him. “It’s not obscene. It’s a moment of very strong friendship. Pretend like you’re together again on the circus floor, before the public. Like obscenity doesn’t exist.”

“Before the public. .” Blumschi grumbles as he staggers. “Like. .”

Then he overcomes his reluctance and launches into it. He moves his arms and pretends to flap between the first tables and the counter. In his pauper’s clothes, held together with four safety pins, he is grotesque, but that’s precisely what he’s going for. In an instant he has become a clownish character who makes no one laugh. He widens his despair-laden eyes and grimaces dazedly, and now he is raising his pitch, whining in an acute voice.

“Can Big Grümscher hear me?” he bawls. “Does he hear Little Blumschi? Yes? No? Where is Big Grümscher? Has anyone seen him, perchance? Where is Big Grümscher hiding? Oh oh oh! He wouldn’t happen to be hiding in a big, big vulture’s big, big gizzard, would he? Or on the crematorium’s big, hot grill? Where could Big Grümscher be hiding? In the Bardo? Could Big Grümscher have gone and hid in the Bardo?”

A car passes by. The windows clink. Blumschi takes a drink. He puts his glass down on the counter with an imprecise gesture.

“It’s useless,” he says. “I’m sure he can’t hear me. Even if he could, it’d just be a bigger nightmare.”

“What would?” asks Freek.

“If my voice reached him,” says Blumschi.

There are two seconds of silence.

“Oh noble son, Grümscher,” says the lama, “you have remained unconscious for several days. When you left this void, you asked yourself: ‘What happened? What has come about?’. . You try to consult your memories, but everything is hazy in your mind. You have trouble recognizing the world around you.”

“Go on,” says Yasar. “Continue, Blumschi. Too bad if it’s a nightmare. It’s for his own good.”

The clown opens his eyes wide. They are damp with tears. He makes a ridiculous, exaggerated grimace, but his expression betrays an immense sorrow.

“Does Big Grümscher hear me?” he bawls. “Does the big buffoon hear me or not? Well? Has he had enough of being unconscious? He opens his eyes, and what does he see? The acrobats’ crossbar, where the big straw mats sway when they’re hung up, that’s what he sees! And he consults his memories, and what does Big Grümscher say? ‘What’s come about?’ he says! ‘What happened? And why is Little Blumschi all shook up, why is he crying and blowing his nose so loudly?’”

The clown gesticulates. He spins around, stretching out his arms, like a shaman on the brink of a trance, though it is obvious he hardly believes in the spectacle’s worth. On top of that, his gestures are uncertain. With the back of the hand, he slaps the platter Yasar had used to serve his whiskies. The glasses go flying, a saucer rolls off, everything shatters on the ground.

“Oh, blasted yak rot! I broke your dishes,” he says, doubtlessly relieved to have found a pretext for taking a break.

“It’s nothing,” says Yasar. “I’ll clean it up. Don’t stop.”

“You are having difficulty deciphering the universe which has welcomed you,” continues the lama. “You understand nothing. Nothing is familiar to you. Without an effort on your part, you are going to be as ill-equipped to interpret the post-death world as a baby in the post-birth world. React, noble son. Do not let yourself become submerged in dread. Do not imagine either that you are finally walking into reality. Everything around you is just another illusion. Do not become attached to this illusion, as deceitful and vain as the existence you just left.”

“You’re acting like Big Grümscher was attached to this existence,” Blumschi remarks.

He picks up a piece of glass from the ground. Tears run down his cheeks.

“Leave it,” says Yasar.

Blumschi gets back up. He didn’t even have time to cut his palm. He is standing in the small puddle, surrounded by nearly-melted ice cubes, alive, not even wounded. He is comical. No one feels like laughing.

“Do not become at all attached to it,” says the lama.

“Is Big Grümscher still listening?” Little Blumschi suddenly continues. “Does he hear Mister Lama, huh? Is he listening to Mister Lama? Is he not letting himself become submerged in dread? Is floating in vultures’ gastric juices not doing anything for him? Oh, but I heard that the Grümscher is a little afraid. . Don’t be afraid, you big straw mat! It’s for a laugh! It’s just an unreal world! It’s a silly illusion! You have to get used to it, Big Grümscher! Don’t get attached!”

Sobs suffocate Little Blumschi. A truck passes by. The windows tremble. Blumschi has slumped into a chair to cry.

“I can’t,” says the clown. “It’s too absurd. It’s making everyone suffer.”

“Don’t stop, Blumschi,” says Freek. “Don’t cry too loudly. You don’t want him to hear you crying. Keep helping him like you were. The big one’s afraid. He’s woken up and is afraid. It does him an enormous good to hear you. Don’t stop shouting your inanities. I’m sure it’s doing him an enormous good.”

“Who cares about my inanities?” says Blumschi. “He can’t hear me.”

Blumschi sniffles. He sits up straight in his chair. He listens to the religious man’s voice describing the best attitudes for the dead man to adopt should any problems arise, but now the discourse is in a ritual Tibetan which the least useful intonation no one in the bar can glean.

“You never know,” says Freek. “But maybe, down there, in the dark, he understood. He wanted to laugh in the dark. Maybe. He was afraid, then he was less afraid.”

“Poor guy,” says Blumschi. “He didn’t laugh for months at a time. He was drowning in depression and couldn’t get out. Nobody found us funny anymore. Big Grümscher was a great clown though. I’m not saying that just to indulge him, or because I loved him like a brother. I’m saying it because it’s true. He was a consummate professional. But we still couldn’t get any laughs from the bleachers anymore. Sympathetic murmurs, yes, two or three snickers, but no laughs. Big Grümscher started to feel like it was too much, in the circus, in life. He felt completely useless. Nothing helped convince him to the contrary. In the last few days he was dwelling down there for good. He was convinced he was lost in an awful dream.”

Yasar sweeps the glass fragments, the ice cubes. He makes the puddle disappear. He thinks about Blumschi, about Grümscher, about Freek. He recalls the years in captivity, he reflects on the strange pointlessness of existence, no matter what anyone wants. He rinses the ground under the table, he takes the mop near the counter. We all feel like we are lost inside an awful dream, and, if you add together all the insignificant moments of the present, the dream carries on.

“You know,” Blumschi says, “when a clown can’t make anyone laugh, he can go mad with grief. You go onstage, the projectors blind you, it’s freezing cold, the circus reeks of old beasts, the smell of piss rises from the sand, and you’re there, to thrash around, to shout, like you’re extremely lonely, with the hope that, despite everything, someone on the bleachers will soon start laughing, in the darkness you can hardly see because of the lamps. But no one flinches. No one giggles or roars. And it’s unbearable. It drives you mad. Years like that, living it night after night. Waiting for laughs that never come.”

“You made me laugh,” says Freek. “I went to see you at the Schmühl Circus. I saw both of you. The kings of laughter, like on the poster. I was in the dark, on the bleachers. The third row. There were some children. They had stopped talking. The closest ones were annoyed that I was sitting next to them. They tried to move away. I didn’t dare laugh out loud once I realized that I was the only one who found you funny. But I had a stomachache. You made me laugh. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so much in my life.”

“Yes, but with you, it’s not the same,” says Blumschi. “You’re not really. . I mean. .”

Freek jabs his nose into his bowl of caffeine. He still had the bottom to finish.

“Each one of us is mired in his own awful dream,” the clown says. “You’re there, petrified with grief on top of the stinking sand, and, as petrified as you are, you keep struggling, emitting sounds. . You wait for a friendly laugh to echo from the dark. You wait for a friendly voice to encourage you, agree with you, pull you from there. . And nothing. Nothing comes. . The darkness remains silent. You do the best clownings in your repertoire, and the children move away. No bursts of laughter. . So you don’t even believe in friendship anymore. You move away yourself. You close up. You don’t even try sharing your grief with Little Blumschi. You go hang around under the acrobats’ crossbar one night. You go hang around under the acrobats’ crossbar one night, and you hang yourself.”

Blumschi is once again slumped in his chair. He spoke those last sentences in a broken voice. Mucus and tears soil his cheeks. Yasar rinsed the mop in the bucket, then he washed Freek’s bowl, some saucers, a spoon. At one point, he closed the air vent connected to the temple. The reading of the Bardo Thödol became a distant, uninterpretable murmur. Grümscher can perhaps be heard better right now in his mysterious darkness, but the lama’s guidance is unintelligible.

A police car races down the boulevard. The revolving lights color a wall red and blue for a second. The windows quiver.

Freek has left for the zoo.

Yasar turns the radio back on. It’s the Korean music program again. For those in the know, it is now a traditional dance, accompanied by a popular oboist, the hyangpiri, an hourglass-shaped drum, the changgo, a cylindrical drum, the puk, and flutes. For others, it’s just lovely music that can be listened to for hours, because it’s rhythmic, because it’s beautiful, and because they are extremely lonely.