Menchu swore that she was telling me the truth.
CLEOPATRAS
I rode a bus along with about a dozen fully veiled women. Through the slits in their garments you could only see their eyes – and I was astounded by the care and beauty of their make-up. They were the eyes of Cleopatras. The women gracefully drank bottled water with the aid of straws; the straws would disappear into the folds of the black material and find, somewhere within it, the women’s hypothetical lips. They’d just put on a movie up front, intended to improve our commute – on the screen was Lara Croft. Now all of us women looked on in fascination as that lithe girl with the gleaming arms and thighs felled soldiers who were all armed to the teeth.
A VERY LONG QUARTER OF AN HOUR
On the plane between 8.45 and 9 a.m. To my mind, it took an hour, or even longer.
APULEIUS THE DONKEY
A donkey breeder confided his story to me.
The deal with donkeys is that they are a rather costly investment, returns are slow and it takes a lot of work. Outside high season, when there are no tourists, you have to be able to finance their food and take care of their coats – they have to be kept neat. This dark brown one is a male, the father of a whole family. His name is Apuleius – that’s what one tourist lady called him. That one over there is called Jean-Jacques, although it’s a female, and that lightest one is Jean-Paul. I have a few more on the other side of the house. Now, in the off-season, only two are working. But when the morning traffic starts I bring them out here, before the tour buses arrive.
The worst are the Americans – most of them are overweight. Oftentimes they’re too heavy even for Apuleius. They weigh twice as much as other people. The donkey is an intelligent animal, it can evaluate weight right away, and it will often start to get upset just seeing them come off their tour bus, all overheated, big sweat stains on their shirts, and those trousers they wear that only reach their knees. I get the sense the donkeys can tell them apart by their smell. So they’ve got problems with them even when their dimensions turn out to be all right. The donkey will start kicking and making a fuss, blatantly trying to get out of working.
But my donkeys are good, I brought them up myself. It’s important to us that our clients leave here with fond memories. I’m not a Christian myself, but I understand that for them this is the pinnacle of their excursion. They come here to get on my donkeys to tour the place where a gentleman named John baptized their prophet with water from the river. How do they know it was this spot here? Apparently it’s written down that way in their holy book.
MEDIA PRESENTERS
There was an attack this morning. One person was killed and several wounded. The body has since been removed. The police surrounded the place with red-and-white plastic tape past which you could see enormous bloodstains on the ground; flies circled above them. A motorcycle lay on the ground, and near it a pool of petrol turning opalescent; beside it a plastic bag of fruit, tangerines tossed out, dirty, grimy; further on some rags, a sandal, a baseball cap of indeterminate colour, part of a mobile phone – where the screen had been now gaped a hole.
People clustered over the tape and looked on in horror. They spoke infrequently, in half-whispers.
The police waited on giving site clearance because a journalist from one of the important stations was supposed to come and do a story. Supposedly he particularly wanted to get those bloodstains on camera. Supposedly he was already on his way.
ATATÜRK’S REFORMS
One day, in the evening, when I was already lying in bed after a whole day of walking around, looking and listening, I remembered Aleksandra and her reports. I suddenly began to miss her. I imagined that she might be in the same city, that she was sleeping with her bag beside her bed, in the silver halo of her hair. The Fair Apostle, Aleksandra the Just. I found her address in my backpack and wrote her an Infamy that I had learned of here.
When Atatürk was carrying out his intrepid reforms, in the 1920s, Istanbul was a city filled with half-wild stray dogs. A specific breed of them even developed – a mid-sized dog, with short hair, a light-coloured coat, white or cream-coloured or a patchy blend of those two colours. The dogs lived around the docks, between the cafés and restaurants, on the streets and squares. By night they went hunting in the city; they scrabbled, they dug through the rubbish. Unwanted, they returned to their old natural behaviours – they grouped together in packs, electing leaders like wolves and jackals.
But it was very important to Atatürk that Turkey be made a civilized country. Over the course of a couple of days, special forces caught thousands of the dogs, who were transported to nearby islands that were uninhabited, without flora. They were set free. Denied fresh water and any kind of food, they fed on one another for three or four weeks while the residents of Istanbul, especially owners of homes with balconies overlooking the Bosphorus, or people going to the fish restaurants along the waterfront, heard the howling from out there, and were then tormented by the waves of the disgusting stench.
During the night more and more proofs of human wrongdoing came to my mind, until I was drenched in sweat. For example, that puppy that froze to death because it had been given an overturned tin bath tub for a kennel.
KALI YUGA
‘The world is getting darker and darker,’ the two men sitting next to me agreed. As far as I had understood, they were flying to Montreal for a conference that would be attended by oceanographers and geophysicists. Apparently since the sixties incident solar radiation has fallen by four per cent. The average rate of light on the planet going out is around 1.4 per cent per decade. The phenomenon is not pronounced enough for us to be able to detect it ourselves, but it has been noted by radiometers. Radiometers have shown, for example, that the amount of incident radiation reaching the USSR from 1960-1987 actually decreased by one-fifth.
What is the reason for the darkening? It isn’t known exactly. It is supposed that it has to do with air pollution, soot and aerosols.
I fell asleep and saw a frightening vision: an enormous cloud appearing from beyond the horizon – evidence of a great, eternal war taking place in the distance, ruthless and cruel; destroying the world. But it’s okay, we are on – for now – a fortunate island: azure sea and clear blue sky. Beneath our feet warm sand and the protruding cubes of shells.
But this is the island of Bikini. Everything will die soon, be burned, be lost, in the best case scenario undergo a monstrous mutation. Those who survive will give birth to child monsters, twins conjoined at the head, one brain in a double body, two hearts in one rib cage. Additional senses will appear: the feeling of lack, the taste of absence, the ability for particular precognition. Knowing what won’t happen. Being able to smell what doesn’t exist.
The dark red glow grows, the sky turns brown, it gets darker and darker.