Mouroir

The God Eating

In this way one comes down into the desert. It is grey all around the eye, grey and barren and dry as if from some ancient and unlifted curse. Scattered about dimly observed in the myopia are darker objects. One is not certain whether they are alive or living only in the black stultifying flame of death. The curse is a flame. These perceptions may well be cacti or cactaceous rocks, all clarity damped off, daubed with a minute immobility now and dark with the colour of damson. Dark with the colour of damnation? One is not sure. Yet one senses the heterosis, the hybrid vigour of things unpleasant to the imagination because the eye is too shy to concentrate.

He focuses — that is, he allows his vision to grow on the grey sand. A fly is scribbling minute tracks of immobility where he looks. The fly has a blue metallic weight, fur-powdered legs, two hairy protuberances which must be eyes, two transparent wings folded back. The nun wears a veil over her bearded face. Where the fly has imprinted the earth seems freshly disturbed though frozen. And so he decides to dig, hoping perhaps to uncover a flame. He sifts the sand through his hands. He feels the grittiness under his nails. He has the pattern of walking the excretion of the fly’s tracks under his nails. When he has dug a shallow grave he comes upon something of a lighter colour. It may be a placenta, the interred afterbirth of a long-gone pilgrim. But no, he sees; it is a newspaper still slightly damp. He remembers that he has heard a newspaper referred to as a kite. Over the creased and flamelike surface signs are sutured. Words. Yet one senses the heterosis, the hybrid vigour of things unpleasant to the realization because the eye is too shy to concentrate. He deciphers a sign: “EYEGO”.

Other people have passed through these regions then. Perhaps they understood the way in which one comes to the desert. Perhaps they even lingered on, attempting to stay. Perhaps too all of this was not always as stripped and as captured as it now appears. A little higher up where the skimming eye scans the bulk of a horizon it notices what he understands to be ruins. The humbled leftovers of long-gone inhabitants. These sombre greyish and crumbled walls have become part of the hillside, tracks, an exposed labyrinth of departed life. The hue is that of rocks. Or cacti seen against the sun when one is near-sighted. Spiky words in a lost tongue.

And when he climbs to where that settlement once was he finds that it is not deserted after all. Some nomads must have decided to stop there for the winter. At the highest spot of this former town around what must once have been the central square a few of the buildings still seem intact. There the tribe of travellers has found refuge. It could also be that they simply had a breakdown of transport. He sees their cars and caravans eroded by weather, as colourless as inferior metal, broken down, half hidden in the gullies or deflated upon their axles when out in the open along one side of the square. The whisper of smoke curling out of the airholes of one of the dull forts.

He comes upon the band of runagates and puts a hand on his heart to introduce himself. An old man looks him over with cool fingers. The old man has a long grey beard moved by the wind. Like oily smoke. He wears also a long greyish coat and high boots which are very smooth and polished. All the other members of this group appear to be women. But of that he cannot be sure for there are children too and even though the greybeard with the boots may still be very vigorous it would be unlikely, he thinks, that they are all his offspring. The women are covered by long colourless dresses. Their heads are shadowed by hoods. Deep within the darkness of the hoods the eyes are watching him, shiny and pinpointed flies.

He comes upon the group of vagabonds and introduces himself. “My name is Nefesj” — this he says to the old man — “and I am the foreigner.” The old man laughs at him. The many women and the children look at him with the broken flies of their eyes and some of the children laugh also. They allow him to stay. Rather: they don’t chase him away with stones and songs.

Often now he wanders through the hulk of this long-lost town. Apparently no restrictions are imposed on his movements. He sleeps in the lee of one of the disintegrating walls where the stars aren’t quite as glittering, as hard. At times he imagines insects or tiny animals among the stones, lepidopterous flitting, lizards, leporine shapes leaping away through murk and crack. The labyrinthine walls of alley and outhouse merge with the rocks. The winter has come. He climbs away from the ruins. Out here he is aware of distances, greyish, the cool fingers of the piano — except that all his silences are engulfed by a greater silence. And now he notices patches of snow as if dirty beards had been put out to dry. Bleeding from the soil. Fluttering above ground. Marked in the snow then he observes tracks, coals, immobile passage. A flame may have dribbled. But the signs are left by a horse learning to write these surroundings, ostensibly belonging to the old man with the boots. The grey horse lives around the settlement. In some way it must be inseparable from the fortunes of the stranded travellers. An obbligato.

In the dead village itself — among the buildings changing in nature without ever really changing their nature — and the rotting snow-dusted vehicles, there sounds do not lift off the ground. The furry jar is never cracked open, the kite never secretes. But he is convinced that there must be other males in the community. Behind the walls where it is darker even if there are no roofs he fancies the succulent swishing and whispered ah-ing of copulation. And sometimes he hears the guttural coughing of male chests coming from one or another of the caravans. Nothing is demanded of him. He attends of his own free will the ceremonies taking place in the largest inhabitable house bordering on the square. These gatherings, he decides, must be of a religious nature, but although he doesn’t remember the days of the week he knows that they take place regularly. Always they are of the same pattern. Always he finds patterns and symmetry and repetitions which are rhythms which he cannot grasp. The old man sits on a low wooden bench facing the wall in the largest room. His boots reflect a dull glow in the half light. Greedy the boots are, monopolizing the light. His beard is grey upon his coat and his eyes are tiny blue wings. On either side and ranged behind him on similar benches the women sit. Nothing happens for a long time. On occasion the patriarch may erupt in laughter. Or attempt singing a very serious but tuneless song. No other men are ever present except for the beard and Nefesj. Then a brazier containing smoking coals is brought into the room. The acrid smoke stings the eyes. Over the meagre heat the old man usually warms a chunk of meat. He then passes the meat around and everybody present bites off a piece and chews it. The meat is grey and old. Sometimes it is alive with maggots. Or flies. It is the meat of a grey horse. It is not always heated.

Like seeing it grows darker and less clear. Too dark to read the wounds in the newspaper. In this way one comes down into the desert. The maggots in the meat are lighter in colour. They are blind and minute. Wingless pale fat flies. A foetus. Immobility. Behind the walls he perceives women giggling. Among the crumbled remains of the long-gone outpost he comes across some carvings. These are the leftovers, dark, hybrid, one would expect to find in a burial place. They flake to the touch. They are faceless, defaced. Defeated perhaps? Blind as defecation. He notices that in the cold the cars are plundered. The annealed vehicles still sport aerials, the feelers of an arachnid, useless as armes blanches in a battle lost and buried in a dream. He decides to no longer attend the religious meetings. He has seen the grey horse with the wind a cold flame in its mane.

Also the meetings are no longer conducted in the big house up by the square. The laughing old man with the mirrored boots has retired to his caravan. There in conclusion the private ceremony will be enacted. Yet one senses the metamorphosis and the heterosis. In this way it will be done. Like news. Wires. A kite of dust. Word goes through the corrupted pattern of the once-existent town: the old man pronounces the word behind the sagging partitions of his greyish caravan. “We never had a horse” — this he says — “so go and fetch the man called Nefesj. The one who is said to be the foreigner.”