Glouchenko doesn’t listen. He doesn’t hear. He sniffs.
“It smells like musk,” he says. “There must be stable nearby. . Hang on, no, what am I saying? It doesn’t smell like horse. . More like a zoo, a bunch of wild beasts. . Pfff! That’s really fucking strong!”
He gropes around. An indefinable object falls behind him and breaks.
“Those imbeciles brought me to a zoo. . They think they’re so funny. . It just goes on and on. . Their damn lousy joke’s gone on for hours now. Since last night, even, if I’m adding it up right. .” (A pause.) “Hey, morons! You think this is funny? Come on, it’s over now, cut it out! Turn the lights back on, now! You hear me, boys?”
He cups his ear. Not the least response.
He then starts carefully examining the air again, bit by bit, the dark air surrounding him, which is at present much hotter and much more humid than it used to be. We hear horns, the gong’s moving resonance, but all that does not currently interest Glouchenko. The smell of urine, on the other hand, mobilizes just about every one of his senses. He uses it to guide his steps. It acts like a magnet to him. He is drawn to the trail, associating it with the end of darkness, associating it with life, liberty, and deliverance.
“Mario Schmunck here,” the special correspondent subtly intervenes. “We were cut off. The station is telling me that the connection’s been reestablished. So I am speaking to you once again, directly from the Bardo, on behalf of Studio One-Five-Zero-Nine.” (A pause.) “The calendar shows that Glouchenko’s journey is nearing its end. Glouchenko has been here for almost forty-nine days. He has inexorably moved toward the place and time of his rebirth. He has not listened to any advice, he has seen nothing, he has not been terrorized by whatever may be. . To cross through the darkness, he has not ruminated on the ideas about death and the Clear Light that were given to him several years ago. He has not remembered the teaching he received, he has not counted on his instinct and his mediocre intelligence, and here is the result. .” (A pause.) “Please note that I am not judging him. Since he was tired, why would he keep himself from sleeping? When I take his place some day, I sincerely don’t know whether I myself. . What I’m about to say isn’t at all orthodox. But still, sleeping seems like a good way to escape the nightmares of the Bardo. .” (A pause.) “Yes, right, that was a personal opinion. Yes, I should have kept it to myself, but. . I promised, I know.”
At the same moment, Glouchenko lets out a sigh.
“I’m dead tired,” he says. “My legs are barely holding up. And my head, let me tell you. . My brain feels like it’s completely empty. .”
He takes several steps.
A beat.
“Hey, it looks like there’s a light over there,” he says. “Straight ahead. Yes, there’s a brighter line in the dark. Like the bottom of a door. . I’ll go that way. . That’s where the smells are coming from. . It’s getting sharper now. .”
“At this very moment,” says Mario Schmunck, “Glouchenko is moving toward the light he has glimpsed. He’s groping around, his hand comes to rest on a knob. He’s finally found a door. He pushes it open without any particular difficulty.”
The door opens onto the night, a dark night. It’s cloudy and starless, but the contrast between the night and the shadows whence Glouchenko comes is so great, everything appears distinct, as if it were high noon. Glouchenko rubs his eyes. The nocturnal light is painful. He is beneath immense trees, deep in a wet, warm forest. We see a lush landscape and, here and there, pairs of living beings. Glouchenko hears noises. He is a short distance from a couple of copulating monkeys. The noises belong to the midnight forest: tropical chirps and shouts in the background and, much closer, simian moans of love, the rustlings of leaves.
“Hey, you, over there!” Glouchenko calls. “What are you. . Well, those two don’t seem bothered. . Hey! Were you the ones who cut the power earlier?”
Glouchenko observes the macaques for a moment. First with bawdy curiosity, then with a growing feeling of love. He likes these monkeys, he suddenly feels powerfully attracted to them. He is filled with the urgent desire to be their son.
The clamors and hot silences, the jingling of drops on black puddles, the monkeys’ racket in the high branches, the dripping forest ambiance, the smells of wild beasts, of rotting wood, the mustiness of drey, the rasps of scales and chitin on everything, the vapors rising from the mud, the shrill grunts and juices of coitus, the odor of anthills. All of this surrounds Glouchenko.
“Glouchenko is approaching the sexually-joined monkeys,” Mario Schmunck describes. “He is filled with the pressing desire to be their son. He isn’t afraid, even though the macaques are growing in size as he advances. The closer he gets to them, the more steps he has to take to reach them. . The couple now appears gigantic to him. . The male and female rise up before him like mountains. . He’s drawn like a magnet to the womb. . He’s walking toward it excitedly. . He’s still shrinking. .”
A beat.
“He doesn’t understand any of what’s happening,” continues Mario Schmunck. “He now only has a single wish in his head: to melt lovingly into these two beings, becoming a seed, their successor. . All his memories have disappeared. He is afraid of nothing. . He doesn’t realize how tiny he is. .”
“Okay,” says Glouchenko. “I’m going to rest here, while I wait. I’ll go in there.”
“He has practically no awareness of what is happening,” Mario Schmunck comments. “We can just make him out in the fray.”
A beat.
It is hot. It is midnight. The forest sways beneath darkening clouds. Sometimes, for a second, the landscape is silent, but soon the cries of monkeys return, the rustlings of plants, the drone of selva cicadas.
“It’s over,” says Mario Schmunck. “I don’t know if I’d have behaved more intelligently, in his place. More gloriously. I don’t know.”
I don’t know either, and here, I am speaking in the name of everyone.
We hear a brief electrical whirr.
“Yes, sorry,” says Mario Schmunck. “I didn’t realize I was still on the air. . No, of course, there won’t be any more egocentric asides. . Okay. .”
So, Glouchenko. Or what remains of him. . He’s going to lose consciousness any second now.” (A pause.) “That’s it. The counter’s reached zero. Glouchenko has lost complete consciousness.” (A pause.) “He exists no longer.
A pause.
He exists absolutely no longer. He’s going to get to live again.
III. SCHLUMM
I was on a train; these things happen. I wasn’t traveling for pleasure. I had been entrusted with a task I had to carry out during the ride. An unpleasant task because it involved sending a man back into the nothingness whence he came forty-eight years before, like me, which is to say probably by mistake. It always sickens me a little to have to take out someone the same age as me and whose fate, deep down, could be compared from beginning to end with my own. I had been escorted until the last second and forced to climb into the car without any directions. It’s one of our hierarchy’s techniques, it rests on the conviction that, with each one of us perpetually lost in our own existence, there is no need to know where one is really going, especially when the vehicle in which one’s work will be carried out is being driven by someone else. Nonetheless, since I had struggled in the last few instants, I was able to wring out a few images and give myself an idea of the path I would be taking. I had been put on an urban line, in a large city, let’s say Hong Kong so as to say something and to respect the principle of verisimilitude on which it is customary to lay every narrative murmur. Let’s say on the line going from Mongkok to the sea. This line sees little use at certain hours. Clarifications can be whispered here without causing harm to the Organization, and even completely false clarifications always reassure the uncertain who are listening.