That’s why it’s maybe best to do what Bucephalus has and bury yourself in the law books. Free, his sides no longer being gripped by his rider’s thighs, under restful lamplight far from the clamour of Alexander’s battles, he reads and turns the pages of our dusty old books.
AN OLD JOURNAL
IT SOMETIMES SEEMS as if the defence of our country has been quite badly neglected. Until recently, we never thought about it, and just got on with our business; but the events of the past few days have got us worried.
I run a shoemaker’s on the square in front of the royal palace. I’d just opened my shop for the morning when I saw that that every street was guarded by armed men. They’re not our soldiers: it turns out they’re nomads from the north. In some way I can’t get my head around, they’ve pushed forward into the capital, even though it’s so far from the border. In any case, they’re here, and every morning it looks like there are more of them.
Since they’re nomads, they camp under the open sky and look down on living in houses. They’re always busy sharpening their swords, filing their arrows and practising on horseback. They’ve turned this peaceful, painstakingly clean public square into a stable. We do sometimes try to go out of our shops to clear away at least the worst of the mess, but it’s a pointless effort and it puts us in danger of being trampled by the wild horses or injured by their riders’ whips.
There’s no talking to the nomads. They don’t speak our language and barely have one of their own. The noises they use as speech make them sound like crows. All you hear these days is that crow-like croaking. Our way of life, our laws, are incomprehensible to them, and irrelevant. That must be why they’re also hostile to any attempt to communicate with sign language. You can talk till you sprain your jaw and gesture till you dislocate your wrists, they won’t have understood you and they will never understand you. They often just grimace; then you can see the whites of their eyes rolling and foam spilling out of their mouths, but they’re not trying to express anything, nor even to frighten you; they do it just because that’s how they are. What they need, they take. You can’t really say that they use force. When they appear, you step aside and let them have everything.
They’ve taken many a good piece from my stores as well. But I can’t complain when I see, for example, how bad it is for the butcher across from me. As soon as he brings in any supplies, it’s all torn away from him and guzzled by the nomads. Even their horses eat meat; you’ll often see a rider lying next to his horse with both of them tucking into the same piece of meat, one from each end. The butcher is too afraid to stop bringing in the deliveries. We understand why, so we’ve scraped together some money to support him. If the nomads stopped getting their meat, who knows what they’d think of doing; that said, who knows how they’ll act even if they do get their meat every day.
The other morning, the butcher thought he could at least save himself the work of chopping up the meat and just had a live ox brought in. He can never do that again. I had to go and lie on the floor at the very back of the workshop for more than an hour, with all my clothes, sheets and pillows piled on top of myself, just so as not to hear the ox’s screaming; the nomads jumped on it from all sides and tore out chunks of warm meat with their teeth. It was quiet for a long time before I dared go outside again; they were sprawled around the ox’s carcass like drinkers around a barrel of wine.
It was then that I think I saw the king himself at one of the palace windows; he never usually comes to these outer buildings, he lives in the innermost of the palace gardens; but this time—at least this is what I thought I saw—he was standing at one of the windows and looking down, his head bowed, at the commotion in front of his palace.
“How’s this going to turn out?” we all ask each other. “How long will we need to endure these burdens and ordeals? The royal palace is what attracted the nomads, but it doesn’t know how to drive them away again. The gate stays locked; the guards, who used to have a ceremony of marching in and out, now stay behind barred windows. The job of saving the country has been left to us artisans and business people, but we aren’t up to it; we’ve never claimed to be capable of something like that. It’s a misunderstanding, and we’re all going to go under because of it.”
IN THE PENAL COLONY
“IT’S A UNIQUE PIECE of equipment,” said the officer to the travelling researcher, looking over the familiar machinery with an air of admiration. The researcher seemed to have taken up the commandant’s invitation only out of politeness; he’d been asked whether he’d like to witness the execution of a soldier who’d been sentenced to death for disobeying and insulting a superior officer. Even in the penal colony there didn’t seem to be much interest in this execution. At least, there was no one else here with the officer and the researcher in this steep, sandy little valley enclosed by bare cliffs, apart from the condemned man himself, a stupid-looking, slack-jawed individual with scruffy hair and a dirty face, and a soldier who was holding a heavy chain attached to smaller chains that restrained the condemned man at his wrists, ankles and neck, and that were also connected to one another with an even smaller set of chains. The condemned man looked as submissive as a dog, as if they could have let him wander around the slopes on his own, and would have only needed to whistle for him when they wanted to start the execution.
The researcher wasn’t especially interested in this machine and paced up and down behind the condemned man, almost visibly indifferent, while the officer made the final preparations, first creeping under the machine’s foundations, which were dug deep into the earth, then climbing a ladder to inspect its uppermost parts. These jobs could have been left to a mechanic, but the officer performed them with great zeal, whether because he was a particular fan of the machine, or because there was some other reason why the work couldn’t be entrusted to anyone else. “All right, it’s all ready to go,” he finally called out, and climbed down off the ladder. He was very out of breath, with his mouth hanging open, and he’d stuffed two ladies’ handkerchiefs into the collar of his uniform.
“These uniforms are really too heavy for the tropics,” said the researcher, rather than asking about the machine as the officer had expected.
“True,” said the officer, washing his oily, grease-covered hands in a bucket of water, “but they’re a symbol of home; we don’t want to lose our connection to it. — Now have a look at this machine,” he added immediately, and dried his hands with a cloth while he pointed at it. “Up to this point, I’ve had to do some of the work by hand, but from now it’ll run automatically.” The researcher nodded and followed the officer, who tried to cover himself for all eventualities by saying: “Of course, problems can come up. I hope there won’t be any today, but you can never say for certain that they won’t. After all, the machine has to operate non-stop for twelve hours. But if problems do come up, they’re always very small things that you can easily fix.
“Wouldn’t you like to sit down?” he asked in the end, then reached into a jumble of wicker chairs, pulled one out and offered it to the researcher, who felt he couldn’t say no. He found himself sitting at the edge of a pit and threw a quick glance into it. The pit wasn’t very deep. On one side, the earth that had been dug out was banked up into a rough wall; on the other side stood the machine. “I don’t know,” said the officer, “whether the commandant has already explained the machine to you?” The researcher made an ambiguous gesture; that was all the officer wanted, because now he could explain the machine himself. “This machine,” he said, taking hold of a crank handle and leaning on it, “was invented by our old commandant. I worked with him on the very first trials and was involved in everything until it was completed. But the credit for inventing it is all his. Have you heard much about our old commandant? No? Well, it’s not an exaggeration if I tell you that the whole way the colony is organized is his work. When he was on his deathbed, we, his friends, already knew that he’d made the colony’s structure so self-enclosed that his successor, even if he arrived with thousands of plans of his own, wouldn’t be able to change anything of the old man’s, at least not for many years. And our prediction has been borne out; the new commandant has had to recognize that fact. It’s a shame you never met the old commandant! — But,” the officer interrupted himself, “I’m rambling while the machine stands here waiting in front of us. It consists, as you can see, of three parts. The lower part is called the bed, the upper part is called the engraver and this part suspended in the middle is called the harrow.”