Zafar’s there beside me, walking among the trees, carrying the world on his back, he smiles at me and says, “Let me carry you too, Animal, your feet are sore, by the way I forgive all you did, because you did it out of love.”
The buffalo says, “Here I am far from my two Italian greyhounds to offer you a big important job with the Kampani with plenty of salary plus you can ride in my car.”
Evening brings Pandit Somraj walking towards me through the trees. He’s holding two birds, one per hand, squeezing them to make them sing, says he, “No music in this world you cannot learn.”
With night comes Ma, carrying a corpse, its head she has bitten off, is stuffing its guts in her mouth, “Are you hungry Animal, are you thirsty?”
“Fuck off! All of you! Leave me alone!”
The moon rises. By its light I reject all gods including god, all deities, avatars, godlings, I spit in the mother’s milk of holy men, babas, sadhus, gurus, rishis, sufis, seers, priests, rulers of heaven and earth, I shit in the mouths of presidents, prime ministers, chief ministers, politicians, governors, magistrates, generals, colonels, policemen, kampanis, lawyers, jarnaliss, fat-wallet bastards, owners of cocks bigger than mine if any, also smaller, I curse all merchants, chai-wallahs, sellers of cloth, fruit and vegetables, pill-peddlers, magicians, pimps, doctors, sleight-of-hand conmen, beggars, keepers of dancing bears, hunger strikers, Khaufpuris, non-Khaufpuris, the living, the dead.
I am a small burning, freezing creature, naked and alone in a vast world, in a wilderness where is neither food nor water and not a single friendly soul. But I’ll not be bullied. If this self of mine doesn’t belong in this world, I’ll be my own world, I’ll be a world complete in myself. My back shall be ice-capped mountains, my arse mount Meru, my eyes shall be the sun and moon, the gusts of my bowels the four winds, my body shall be the earth, lice its living things, but why stop there? I’ll be my own Milky Way, comets shall whizz from my nose, when I shake myself pearls of sweat shall fly off and become galaxies, what am I but a complete miniature universe stumbling around inside this larger one, little does this tree realise that the small thing bumbling at its roots, scraping at its bark, clawing a way into its branches, is a fully fledged cosmos.
I, the universe that was once called Animal, sit in the tree and survey the moonlit jungles of my kingdom.
“Now I am truly alone.”
Oh how strange this thing feels, so curious to touch, I’d forgotten how it grows in the hand, swells to fill my fist. Close the fingers round its stem, aim it at the stars, pump it like a shotgun to blast the night with living galaxies.
TAPE TWENTY-THREE
That night I died. I crawled down from that tree to find somewhere to finish. Fever was crackling in me, I was dry as a sucked-out, shrivelled orange, the lizard was waiting.
here is the sun
lewd irish nun
Of death I remember nothing.
My first knowledge of the afterlife is light sliding in between huge rocks. I am in a place where giant slabs rear from the earth and lean one on another. Fever’s gone, hunger and thirst are no more, body feels light as a stalk. I know what’s happened. I’ve died and am now a ghost. Is this heaven or is it hell? No fire’s here, in the shade of the rocks it’s cool. High, far above my head swallows are nesting. So weak I’m, newly born into this new life, hardly can I crawl to the entrance.
The outside world has changed. Gone is the burning heat of the Nautapa. A cool air’s leaning up through the forest, each leaf on every tree is clear and sharp in a green cloud light. Across the valley trees on another hillside are churning in an invisible storm. I’m lying on my side, looking up into the sky, which is dark, above me large birds are circling. Not all the potatoes did I eat, this is what comes into my mind, together with the thought that the birds are coming down, soon their wings will cancel the light. Zafar’s voice says, “What an ingenious equation.” I look for Zafar but everything’s dark. Later I become aware that I am still lying in the entrance to the cave, my face is wet. There’s a sound of roaring and rushing. It’s water. Rain is falling out there in the world softening the shapes of the forest, the lines of trees on the hillsides, all are misted in grey rain blowing across and water is dripping down from the rocks and pouring in white chutes down the slopes, the water is in my hands and my face and in my eyes, washing them clean, it’s in my mouth, tasting like no mere miracle. Again Zafar’s voice speaks to me, “If there is heaven on earth, it is this.” So that’s how I know I am in paradise. I drink and drink and drink till my stomach’s hard as a melon.
Towards the end of my first day in paradise the rain clears, a red sun hangs in the west, sending long shadows into the cave. With newly wakened eyes I see what before I’d not noticed, there are scratches on the rocks, and daubs of colour that are not natural marks but like paintings done by a child’s finger. There are animals of every kind, leopards and deer and horses and elephants, there’s a tiger and a rhino, among them are small figures on two legs, except some have horns some have tails they are neither men nor animals, or else they are both, then I know that I have found my kind, plus this place will be my everlasting home, I have found it at last, this is the deep time when there was no difference between anything when separation did not exist when all things were together, one and whole before humans set themselves apart and became clever and made cities and kampanis and factories.
Time in paradise is like in the Nutcracker, it ceases to have meaning, suns and moons migrate into the sky and tumble into the west. Days pass, or maybe it’s just one, or years, or thousands of years, I am immortal. There is nothing of me that will die. The memories of what happened to me in the forest when I was still alive are like pale forms glimmering in darkness and it comes to me what I thought was life was nothing but darkness. The time before the forest is a fading nightmare of a city of stinks and misery, I think of thousands and thousands dead in the last moments of Khaufpur. Our whole lives were lived in the dark. Those who were there with me are now in paradise, where’s no Khaufpur, no India, no trace of flames, hell is not visible from here. These hills, these forests go on forever. Such thoughts are like dreams that attach themselves to this or that, to a bird flying past, or a grass stalk bent under water drops. All things speak to me. From a tiny place inside the curl of a fern comes a voice, that old voice I love, “Now Animal, you are safe, you and all the people of the Apokalis, because he will shelter them, no more shall they suffer hunger or thirst, nor have to do heavy work, never again will they be tormented by the sun nor by burning winds, for he will care for them and lead them to the sources of living water, he will heal their sores and their coughs and fevers and he will wipe the tears from their eyes.”
Thud. Something’s fallen near my head. High above in the arch of this jungle temple, with swallows darting round it, a beehive is hanging. On the ground is a lump of waxy bee-comb. I’ve grabbed it, bitten into it, honey’s running between my lips down my chin, never has anything tasted so good.
Much comforted by this food and by Ma’s words I sleep, in my dreams blind bearded men weep over I don’t know what. Next thing sun’s streaming into the cavern. I’ve eaten more of the honeycomb, then crawled to drink from a pool that has filled among the rocks. In this pool for the first time I see my heavenly self. My new face is skin stretched around a skull, huge and dark are my eyes, my strong chest is a rack of ribs, plus here’s a great disappointment, in paradise I thought I would be upright, didn’t Ma promise it? but stretch as I might I’m still bent. Plus I soon learn that in heaven just as in the earthly world is no escape from crapping, my bowels are weak and watery.