Hold on to the Sun (16 page)

The moment they passed the gates of the Fair, those who entered were lured by the tent of the fattest woman in the world. Long signs proclaiming the precise sum of her weight, enlarged pictures of her limbs with pythons coiled around them and even her gigantic panties were displayed for all to see. The slick huckster enflamed the passions of the passersby with rapturous cries. And his two underlings, sniggering boys with sweaty palms, collected the entrance fee, and from time to time, with whoops of glee, threw wet and dirty cloths at the faces of the emerging customers. And at the edge of the fairgrounds stood a long green hut, its doorway covered by a heavy curtain and its painted walls sunk in tall weeds. None of those stooping to emerge from the folds of the curtain would say a word about what had happened inside, but their eyes burned as fiercely as the eyes of a man who has seen his own death. It was rumored that it was from the roof of this green hut that the great fire which had destroyed the ancient Fair had begun. But in spite of the suspicion, only packs of dogs would charge the green walls, scratch the planks, and retreat defeated, whining, with the hair bristling on their backs.

Yes, only the dogs relentlessly pursued she-of-the-thousand-faces. They prowled the City in packs. Emaciated,
sharp-clawed, growling. And some said that the souls of the Pythia’s victims had been reincarnated in their bodies, and it was they who were seeking their revenge. Meanwhile, however, she-of-the-thousand-faces succeeded in cunningly distracting the wrath of her pursuers: the inhabitants of the City, drunk with lust for flesh and blood, would throw the dogs the lavish leftovers of their feasts. And the more the packs of dogs quarreled, the more the stalls where roasting sucking pigs revolved on spits—as well as butchers, slaughterhouses, and battle arenas—multiplied. And the remains of blood and charred fat cut black furrows through the grounds of the Fair.

The artisans of one of the City’s suburbs and the guard of the nearby graveyard (which was full, of course, of the condemned) never imagined that there, too, the Pythia had organized a daily meal for the dogs. From behind a rubbish dump, a skinny old man would appear with a cloth cap pulled over his head and a tin tray in his hands piled with the decapitated heads of chickens. An invisible hand had borne them there from the slaughterhouse under the noses of the butchers in their blood and feather spotted aprons. Meanwhile the butchers rhythmically dragged the birds from their cages, pushed their necks into wooden holes, and brought their heavy cleavers down on them like the fists of God on the books of pardons. The dogs, with bloodshot eyes, bounded after the old man to the farthest end of the rubbish dump, tearing his rags with their teeth.
They pounced on the skull bones and bits of feathers, which slipped from the tray into their claws. And while the dogs devoured their rations and pulled their claws out of the blood-soaked earth, the harsh hand of the Pythia continued to reign undisturbed over the City of Joy.

 

Thus the life of the metropolis continued for many years, and the hearts of its inhabitants grew hardened to the sight of the condemned and their corpses piled up in the streets. The whining of the dogs, too, would have turned into a monotonous and routine accompaniment to the revelry and celebration, if disaster hadn’t struck from an unexpected direction. For to tell the truth, the first cracks in the ancient power of she-of-the-thousand-faces appeared without a single battle being waged.

It occurred rather recently. The traffic of revelers streaming to the city grew beyond measure. Multitudes filled the roads by day and by night besieging the city gates. Pleasure pavilions opened one after the other. They contained facilities nowhere equaled for sophistication and ingenuity.

Among the pavilions that were opened, for example, was The Grand Gambling Pit. From the heights of its roof in all directions loudspeakers proclaimed it attractions, and on fight days and racing days tens of thousands of revelers streamed through its doors. Among its attractions was a cockpit for cock fights, and behind it the no less entertaining
rat race, where the competitors scurried on skinny legs through courses fashioned like hills and castles, swam across miniature lakes, and jumped through fiery hoops—with the numbers of the betters burned into their backs. But the attraction to which the Pit owed most of its fame was the knife and blade course, where the customers could place their bets on one of thirty men positioned on the starting line dressed in nothing but a loin cloth. When the whistle blew, and goaded on by the prods of the wildly excited audience, the runners sprinted through a gauntlet of blades and iron rakes. They were refreshed with cold water by the attendants, and went on to the bayoneted tunnels at the end of which the head of the first runner disappeared, to the cheers of the onlookers, into the smoking cell at the end of the course. At the beginning, special zones were allotted in the Pit to games suitable for children and youths, but the youngsters quickly outdid the adults in their boldness. They filled all the pleasure courses with their irrepressible eagerness.

And on the paths of the fairground, under the chains of lanterns flickering in the gloom of the eternal fog, a band of dwarf musicians strolled. In their oversized jackets they looked like hangers which had escaped from a wardrobe. Their big heads hung over the necks of their violins, and they swayed between the legs of the people emerging from the stalls, leaving behind the piercing sweetness of old love songs.

And so it was that in the face of the rising, seething tide of revelry, the Pythia’s chastisements made but a faint impression.

One last deadly weapon remained to she-of-the-thousand-faces. But the recent prosperity and level of sophistication which the City of Joy had attained neutralized this ancient arm as well. For a long time, no sooner was one of the revelers attacked by feelings of regret for even an almost insignificant trifle—no matter how slight—than the pangs of conscience would dig their teeth into him and bite so deeply that they threatened to finish him off within the space of a few days. Many hopes had been pinned on the work of a team of scientists who had developed a strain of animals (so far, small animals) with sterilized souls. But in the meantime, in order to solve pressing problems, and on the recommendation of the Patrons of the City, the Breast-Beaters Street was created.Warning posted up on the walls of all the Fair booths instructed all those afflicted with the first symptons of distress to hurry to this place.

The sound of weeping and the cries for mercy were audible in the surrounding streets. Green-capped attendants circulated among the waiting people, and, gripping him firmly under the armpits, conducted the next in line to the entrance of the street. In the street itself the doors and windows of the houses had been sealed shut, and all along its length, on a jutting stone ledge, sat the elected members of the Pardoning Board. They passed their time by rattling collecting
tins for charity, gnawing crusts of bread, and shrieking with laughter. The next in line hesitantly approached the entrance to the street, casting stealthy looks right and left. The attendants removed the purse stuffed with payment for the treatment hanging ready around his neck, and with one last push sent him in. The members of the Board, without stopping their chattering, looked him over cursorily, and without undue effort diagnosed the cause of his guilty conscience. Immediately, and in accordance with his sin—slander, gluttony, murder—a long tongue would grow out of his mouth and slide rapidly to the floor, almost crushing the members of the Board (who made haste to get out of the way huddling together like a startled centipede). Or his intestines, squirting juices and acids, would coil themselves around his body. Or knives and rifle-barrels would shoot out of his nails. He was speedily removed, and the next in line was thrust into the street by the attendants’ practiced hands. The affected member would usually remain in its enlarged state for a while before returning to normal. The sight of the pardoned sauntering through the streets with their swollen members became a source of pride to the people of the City, a living proof of the triumph of progress.

 

So it was that in the face of such an unprecedented burst of revelry even the fabulous powers of the Pythia failed. The lists of the guilty grew longer and longer, but although
she changed her face ceaselessly, the ancient form of her punishments could not keep up with the scope of the guilt. Sometimes she would pause exhausted to take a breath of air on one of the hills surrounding the City. She would pass a heavy hand over her brow and contemplate the valley obscured by fumes. But a moment later the dogs would encircle the old man crushing his hat between his hands, and she’d be obliged to change swiftly into another shape and escape at a run.

 

The anxious queue outside the green hut, too, grew shorter and shorter. There, behind the curtain, the person entering would hold out a hand, which detached itself from his shoulder and floated for a moment in a small space full of arms. At last, the tongue opposite him, underneath a pair of dull eyes would click, “Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.” But now the revelers preferred other pavilions, and the call of the last of the fortune-telling booths, too, was losing its fascination.

 

And thus, one day at dusk, while the Fair continued to seethe with its usual commotion, the bulldozers dug foundations in a new suburb under one of the Pythia’s bastions. Her stock of the thousand faces suddenly ran out, and at the very same moment, at the back of the fairgrounds, a pack of dogs succeeded in breaking through the walls of the old green hut.

For a moment the dogs recoiled from the dazzling light bursting through the planks, but they immediately recovered and ran howling after the fleeing figure. It was on top of the hill when the first, the boldest of the dogs, stuck his claws into her dress and dug them into her flesh. The smell of her loins sweating from flight momentarily dizzied the dogs. They stood on their hind legs and unthinkingly swallowed the chicken’s heads flung into their jaws. Whining furiously, one dog then attacked his fellow, and they savaged each other with stiff tails.

The dogs spun around with rage when the heavy shadow of a big, dark-eyed bird circled above them. Then in one magnificent leap, they flew off in her wake with outstretched necks and wings and mauled her with their beaks. In the descending evening, the big dark bird came streaming down and flooded the earth with a black, bubbling river. Shrieking, the hawks then assailed one another, casting red, fast-moving shadows.They landed quickly in an avalanche of earth that covered the river with rocks. Bright flames rose from the rubble and illuminated for a moment the sunset sky. But the evening breezes quickly scattered the flame’s tongue and only pink smoke remained to cover the cheeks of the clouds.

When the dogs dispersed at last with their tails between their legs, licking their snouts, the contents of the Pythia’s purse were left strewn over the rubbish of the streets.
Around the broken comb and wilting rose the pearls from her necklace lay scattered. One of the pearls gleamed for a moment in the last of the dying light, and reflected, as in an inverted mirror, the jubilation of the City of Joy and its Immortal Pleasure Pavilions.

THE DANCE OF THE THINKER

It began in the days of the great disasters, when hopeless-ness and despondency covered the land like manure and brought forth blossoms of despair. There was nothing then to strengthen the spirit of man. Only he, the thinker, rose up like a lion to compose his dissertation on the subject of despair. He discovered double meanings and hidden meanings in destruction, and his thoughts reached extraordinary heights of subtlety. From early in the morning he scratched his letters in tortuous lines, and when evening fell he swept up the pieces of paper and stuck them, one on top of the other, onto a tall spike.

The cries of lamentation of the afflicted beat against his chamber door. But under his pen they were transformed into profound words. At first they were the voices of strangers, and later the cries of his father and mother, his wife and his children—which in the end died down. One by one.

Then, when silence fell outside, his thoughts sailed onto new seas. Heroically he crossed the waters, borne forth on
the sharpness of his sentences. Like delicate bridges they led him with admirable precision along the razor edge between abyss and extinction. And thus he, who had never learned to steer a boat, succeeded in pulling the ropes of the eternally billowing sail, balancing his body in a marvelous rhythm on the planks, as in a dance.

When after a while he raised his head, he no longer saw the shores from which he had sailed. The waves had carried him to other seas, opposite other shores, where people lived who did not know that the planks of his raft were the beams of ruined houses, and the cloth of his sail—the torn clothes of the dead.

When currents swept him toward one of those shores, the natives of the place would blow festive trumpets, hang lanterns of colored paper on the streets descending to the sea, and come out in their multitudes. For his part, he exerted himself to entertain the distant crowds. For after all it was for their sakes that he continued to polish the dance of his thoughts. From time to time he would improve it by adding an unexpected leap or a special glide. And when they, too, seemed insufficient to him, he would go so far in his innovations as to courageously tear a plank or two from the waves, or, in a burst of emotion, wave the rags of his sail.

And thus, between one movement and the next, tottering backward and forward, his meditations sang, “I am sadness, I am joy, I am perfect despair! Even if the sea dries
up, even if the land is laid waste, I shall go on dancing, I shall go on gliding on high. I am the irrefutable argument!”

With increasing daring he would rise and bend, retreat and approach. With pure spirit his body ruled the waves. It seemed to him that he could hear the cries of admiration from the shores, “See what a man of spirit! He has striven with matter and prevailed! Man has never achieved such transcendence! A spiritual man! A hero of the spirit!”