The plane encountered more turbulence. It started to rock and shake even more than before, the plastic containers clattered on the ground, straps swung uncontrollably from the stall wall, the first-aid kit tipped over and spilled out its contents on the floor, vials upturned, small scissors in the hay. The situation was becoming critical in the stall, Marie was forced to hold onto the edge of the trough lest she be tossed down at the horse’s feet, and, from the plane’s loudspeakers, distant, crackly snippets of pressing emergency announcements could be heard, of which they understood nothing, simply guessing they’d been instructed to return to their seats and fasten their safety belts. All the lights suddenly turned on simultaneously from the hold’s ceiling, throwing the premises into sharp, violent relief, casting a harsh light onto the stacks of pallets visible through the stall’s open door, and then the neon lights flickered on the ceiling before going out, not a single light remained, even the emergency exit lights had gone off. Alert, the horse became frantic in its stall, sensing the growing anxiety in the plane, stomping in place, stepping back, yanking its lead in every which way, tugging on the trough it was attached to. The horse wanted to turn around, and it reared up in the stall, stood on its hind legs, and began neighing, its long mouth open, suddenly baring its teeth and gums in the dark. Marie thought it had managed to get free and, frightened, she bolted out of the stall.
They both abandoned the stall at once, in the same rush of panic and desperation, they dropped the flashlight in their haste and made no effort to pick it up, scrambling along the side of the stall without looking back, refusing to go back, leaving the flashlight lit behind them in the hay, a small slanted beam of light shining between the horse’s legs. They dashed out of the stall and found themselves in the darkness of the hold, listening to the engines drone with immeasurable force. The horse raged furiously in the stall, lurching forward and back with little room to maneuver, it stepped on the flashlight and crushed it like a nut under its hoof, pulverized it with a loud crack, extinguishing in one blow the last sliver of light left in the hold. The stall was impenetrably dark now, hiding the horse’s black figure, its shifting, invisible body, raging noisily in its narrow compartment, locked in on all sides.
They ran away without knowing where to go, they couldn’t find the ladder to the hatch, they wandered side by side in the dark seeking a place of refuge, or even something they could hold on to. They tripped over the loading tracks, the protruding roller bearings and bolt ends, unable to make out the limits of the mechanical rollers aligned on the floor, leaving the designated paths and venturing onto one of the rollers, which were not held in place and began to spin under their feet at each step with the alarming sound of a conveyor belt beginning to move. They danced in place, shuffling their feet on a surface that slipped out from under them, carried by the rollers, flapping their arms pathetically to keep their balance, holding on to one another, but wobbling together, putting one hand down on the ground, Jean-Christophe de G. let go of the bowl, which rolled wildly on ground, they saw it bounce on the metal floor, brutally projected into the air at each jolt of the plane. Not without some difficultly they retraced their steps in the darkness, as though moving against the wind, stooped forward, following a narrow path along the plane wall. They stopped at the door to the hold, which rattled clamorously as though on the verge of becoming dislodged. They could feel the vibration of the fuselage in their bodies, its tremors, its minor shocks, the pressure from the air masses and unrelenting winds through which the plane was passing, knowing that no more than ten, twenty centimeters, the mere width of the plane’s hull, separated them from the night itself.
They crouched down by the door and didn’t move. In front of them, with the straining of cords and the grating of metal, large containers rocked on their bases. They saw through the window the steady blinking of the wing lights, brief, white, silent, intense. They no longer knew where they were. They heard what sounded like whimpers in the dark a few feet from them, Zahir had calmed down, he was making muffled sounds, slightly guttural, plaintive. Zahir struggled to stand, he was sweating, drooling, saliva swung from his mouth, he made no effort to stop it, a frothy foam gathered at the corners of his lips. Zahir seemed drugged, skittish at times, then overcome by exhaustion or indifference. Perhaps he had been given a tranquilizer after the chase, a discreet move, accomplished behind Jean-Christophe de G.’s back, an intravenous shot when no one was looking, a cotton ball soaked in alcohol to disinfect a cut on the horse’s neck and, stealthily, a needle stuck in the jugular. But Zahir’s heart, perhaps pounding at two hundred beats a minute at takeoff, continued to beat wildly, in spite of his being at rest now, of his exerting no energy, Zahir had figured out how to keep his balance in the stall, shifting his weight or moving slightly each time there was a little turbulence, putting his weight on his hind legs to offset the force of the jolts. Zahir felt sick, was nauseous, queasy. He kept still, defeated, eyes open, nostrils flared. He scratched the ground in anguish, made a hole in the straw with the tip of his hoof, a perfectly demarcated and useless hole. Zahir did nothing, was suffering, a diffuse feeling of suffering, light, sickening, and not even of suffering, but simply of nausea, unwavering, still, limitless. Nothing was happening. Nothing, the persistence of the real.
Zahir was aware of nothing but the certainty of being then and there, he had that certainty shared by all animals, silent, tacit, infallible. What lay outside his stall remained unknown to him, the sky, the night, the universe. The power of his imagination stretched no farther than the space in which he stood, his mind was stopped at the walls of his stall and could only return to the confusion of his own hazy consciousness. It was as if mental blinders prevented Zahir from imagining the world beyond his field of vision, cut off in every direction, dark, sightless, metallic. He was incapable of conceiving anything beyond the material limits of his stall, of mentally moving into the night through which the plane was flying, he didn’t feel any irrepressible urge to stretch these limits or go beyond them, and, supposing he were able to accomplish this, supposing he could cross the walls of the plane in thought — leaving his skin, passing through the fuselage — he would have leaped blindly into the sky, four horseshoes splayed in the air, Icarus burning his wings in an attempt to wake from a dream of his own making.
For Zahir was as much in the real world as he was in an imaginary one, as much in this plane as in the haze of consciousness, or a dream, unknown, dark, troubled, where the turbulence of the sky mirrors the intensity of our language, and, if in reality horses never vomit, are unable to vomit (it’s physically impossible for them to vomit, their physiognomy won’t allow it, even when they’re nauseated, even when their stomachs are full of toxic substances), Zahir, this night, spent, stumbling in his stall, falling on his knees in the hay, his mane stuck to his head, matted with dirt and dried sweat, his jaws loose, his tongue slack, chewing air, a bitter drool dribbling from his mouth, sweating, feeling horrible, trying to stand up in his stall, taking a step to the side on limp legs and again losing his balance, on the verge of collapsing unconscious in his stall, falling again, in slow motion, on his knees, going limp, his front legs tucked underneath him, his stomach heavy, bloated from fermentation, feeling food rise up his stomach, now breaking into a cold sweat and suddenly feeling the concrete, physical nearness of death, that sensation you feel when about to vomit, the sour saliva that fills your mouth as a warning, when your intestines contract and vomit shoots up your throat and enters your mouth, Zahir, this night, against his own nature, betraying his species, began to vomit in the sky in the hold of a Boeing 747 cargo plane flying through the night.