B007P4V3G4 EBOK (10 page)

While everything remained motionless below, as though in a
petrified world, he saw how the binge up above became ever more
impetuous, the voices rising continually above the music. The
guests no longer merely groped for food and drink but one
another too. Their movements became wilder, their sounds, even
their laughter, more bestial. From time to time, a bone, gnawed
clean, would carelessly be tossed down, over the balustrade.

As spirits rose this happened more frequently all the time. Not
just bones, but bones with meat still on them too. The musicians
were exhorted to louder and faster playing, the guests directing
more and more of their attention towards the realm below them.
Some were already hanging over the balustrade. One raised his
glass in space and then drank to them.

The true meaning of this junket now became clear to him. They
sought to amuse themselves with them. Like with animals. To have
them fight for the scraps from their table. And possibly then to see
them devour each other in consequence. They had first drunk
themselves into a conscience-less state so as to be able to play this
game with full abandon.

More and ever larger chunks of food they cast down, emitting
cries such as those one exhorts dogs with. A large piece of pie came
down right beside him; he did not stretch out his hand towards it.

They did not stop at scraps. Entire platters of meat, just brought
in, flew down amongst them, leaving an arc of vapour in the air.

But not one of the prisoners moved: they went on being that
petrified group. Many were incapable of rousing themselves but
the strong, too, it seemed, carefully weighed up the effort a
general struggle would cost them against the advantage of capturing a chunk. The only thing he saw, was that they would look
round occasionally, at the food and back at each other again, only
moving their eyes in doing so. Predatory it was.

No matter what was going to happen, he would never join in
with that. He'd done with everything for good. He would calmly
undergo the decline of his body. He would give the enemy no
power over this decision and in so doing, he would preserve a final
independence. Or was he able to decide this because he still had
his resistance? And would his will desert him too, before time? So
that then he would do things which still shamed him now? He
shuddered at this.

They had broken up the symposium. Bar a few, the entire company
had openly turned to the arena of death. While the music was
silent, one of their number made a long speech to them of which
he couldn't understand a word but which had to be very droll for
the speaker was always being interrupted by general hilarity. He
was probably mocking them for their refusal to show interest in
the food they had been thrown, asking ironically whether they
were too sated perhaps, or so spoilt that these dishes were not to
their taste.

The oration was addressed to them but only intended for the
ladies and gentlemen on the balcony who amused themselves,
moreover, by taking aim at individual prisoners. A big, ruggedly
hairy warrior formed their target more than the others. He did not
move a muscle. No one did.

This general rigidity could be interpreted as contempt, and
anger began to rise in the company the way anger does in a
donkeyman when his beast baulks, its legs stretched out, and it
can't be driven on, no matter what.

Then they played their final, trump card. The centre of the
balcony was cleared for a moment and as the music speeded up
and grew into a pandemonium, a tremendous roast boar, suspended
by servants from its spit, was dumped into the arena.

With this the spell was broken. This was too much. Those who
were first to reach it might sate themselves for months. The chance
of living on beckoned from afar again. A general stampede ensued. Groaning, the foremost struck their teeth into the mound of roast
flesh. Atop and beneath one another, they thronged from all sides
now, like piglets to the sow, and the moment they struck lucky
they adopted the voracious movements of larvae.

The strong smell pervading the entire vault, the exciting music
and the jubilant shouts of encouragement from the balcony left not
a soul untouched. The weakest, too, tried to get there; they
sacrificed their last remaining strength for this. Only the dead
remained behind, as did he, the one still intact. His soundness
rendered him as inviolable as the dead.

He wasn't affected but he had changed. In this deluge of events,
his attitude of resigned waiting was lost. He had a part in it, a
most grievous part. The enemy's scheme of depriving them of all
dignity, even of that of suffering, to render them like animals, like
the least among animals, had succeeded. To let them murder each
other. For this was happening. He saw how gradually a bulwark of
fighters and vanquished formed round the boar.

Unhindered, he polished off a few separate chunks of food lying
within his reach, the piece of pie, too. These chunks were still lying
all around, untouched: once the great trek to the boar had begun,
no one had bothered about them any more. Many now fighting
themselves to death there could have sated themselves with these
without any trouble, but nobody any longer possessed the small
amount of reflection necessary for this. As far as he could see, he
was the only one to have preserved his independence.

He was also the only one to keep an eye on the balcony, who
saw their jubilation, the way they were drinking there, the way
they took ever fiercer delight in the meat and blood bath beneath
them. It was striking the way they no longer intervened in any
way, how the throwing and hollering had ceased immediately once
the forces had been unleashed. Seeing how these forces would
bum themselves out gave them the greatest satisfaction apparently.

The more deeply the mob gnawed its way into the boar, the
wilder things became. Those who felt their powers return now
formed a likeminded force of occupation and together they defended the boar against the weaker ones all around. A division
arose between those who were gaining more and more strength
and the ones who were loosing theirs continually. The swine
seemed like a lifeboat, already laden with the shipwrecked, which
those in the water are still trying to clamber into from all sides and who have to be prevented from doing this with force. And the
more the boar was being eaten away inside, the more it began to
resemble a boat, with its rostrum and ribs. Bones were laid bare.
One or two from the occupying force broke off a rib and in this
they had a weapon to batter away with: at hands clamped round
the board, at shoulders rising up from the waves, at faces distorted
with craving.

The music was way past having anything to whip up any more:
it merely followed. All the sounds together formed the voice of
the deity who had created this inferno.

But gradually everything returned to calm again. Many had died,
others were sated, the boar was finished, only its skeleton was still
being gnawed at. On the balcony, too, passions had abated. The
men and women had joined in pairs and silently they conducted
their amorous dialogue. The end of the great upheaval seemed
nigh and he who had kept himself apart all the time wondered
whether, after this deepest of humiliations, there would now be an
end of it. He was filled with an intense sadness. That glorious life
boiled down to this and that others took delight in such an end, to
him this was a dislocation of all coherence. But no: he erred in his
view. Life did not begin for the sake of its end. The end is not a
final outcome but merely the last thing. The journey was the
essence, not the manner in which you disembark; it was a delusion
to despise one's entire life because of the way its end was now.

He was suddenly amazed at finding the strength for such
thoughts and for such a feeling. Had all these events stirred
something within him after all? Or was this simply caused by his
having eaten again? Then the others, the ones who had devoured
the boar, would have to sense a dawn among the ashes of their
sensibilities too. And lo: something happened that appeared to be
connected with this.

The music fell silent, the guests on the balcony grew quite mute,
a deathly silence set in. The servants who previously had carried in
the torches now came with long stakes with which they moved
the light baskets that turned out to be fixed to pivoting arms,
moving them a good way out from the wall. Because of this, parts
of the vaulted rock above them, having remained in darkness until
now, were suddenly illuminated. All looked up and kept their gaze
trained upwards, for what they saw, they had never expected to be
there.

Oval holes had been hacked out at'
regular intervals in the
vaulting and in each opening, accessible from the outside apparently, arms and legs resting on its edges or possibly supported by
cords, was a young woman. The unsteady light of the torches
played around as many as twenty such floating bodies. At first
sight, they seemed to be statues, ceiling ornaments, but this wasn't
Greece and only there could such statues have existed.

The music began, a soft, sweet lingering melody; the suspended
women now addressed the world beneath them with movements,
like in a dream at first, more emphatically as the music grew, with
enticing gestures of arms, head and legs. Everything about them
seemed to say: come to us, we are intended for you and there is
nothing we would more dearly like to do than to fulfil that purpose.

Meanwhile, the balcony had become a complete pleasure
ground.

Dash it all. Not satisfied with the havoc they had wrought, they
wished to continue their amusement with those who had survived
it, whose drive for food had been assuaged and who through this
had regained their strength, to continue it by baiting them as
regards their second drive. While they themselves were fornicating
freely there, they attempted to whip up their prisoners one more
time to acts of fruitless rage. Slavegirls served them to this end.
Perhaps they had been promised their freedom for playing this
role, for they vied with one another in seductive movements of
love. They gyrated, they sang and smiled down at the men, and
with their arms they pretended to draw them up to them.

With despair, he saw that this devilish intent succeeded too. His
cave-mates kept their eyes riveted on the sirens above. They got
up in order to be closer to them; they paced back and forth,
restless, as though in a fever. He saw some of them stretch their
arms aloft as if to say: let yourselves drop, we'll catch you. But the
other ones laughed and beckoned and gyrated their bodies.

One now tried to climb up the steep rock face. It was rough;
here and there one could gain a hold. Followed by all eyes, the
balcony's too, he went on climbing. Half way up, his strength
failed him or a support gave way. He plummeted down and lay
there.

Others, too, attempted it, chose the most charming of the
women or the roughest ascent and began, encouraged by a chorus of cries, their daring journey. The start to the vault, only a few
metres removed from the desired goal, when the hands stretched
out from either side almost touched, was nearly always fatal. Each
time someone dropped down, the music would suddenly fall silent
so the thud could clearly be heard.

Once, he saw a he that big hairy
succeed. He was already clutching the edges of the oval gap. But
the same white arm that first had helped him get as far as this, now
thrust him down unexpectedly.

Never before had there been such cheering in the cave as when
this happened.

The longer he viewed all this, the more his soul unravelled. He felt
himself go quietly mad. He felt regret over the food he had taken,
for he wished to die. He stretched himself out on the rock floor,
closed his eyes and resolved not to open them ever again. He
wept over the sight the world still proffered him now on parting.
He would turn away from it for good.

That's the way he lay there a little while, the goings on around
him forced back to a distant clamour. Then a droplet fell on his
chest. The unexpectedness, the strangeness of this cleared his mind
completely and made him abandon his resolve at once. He opened
his eyes and looked straight up above. And lo: there was a
slavegirl right above him. And regarding her closely, things became
clear to him at once. She wept.

Oh, what is it, that powerful thing that suddenly can come into
being between two people? A current? A force field? An invisible
ladder, in this case? He saw that, among all those women, she was
different. No less charming, but dazed and desperate like him. He
was the only one who saw this in the midst of the hellish uproar.
He could not see that she wept but her tear had reached him there.
A second one fell, on his shoulder.

A great desire quivered throughout his being. If ever two
people must be united in this wilderness, they were the ones. He
jumped up and stretched his muscles, felt his strength return to
him as though by magic. Did she see him too? He looked up and
thought she did. Was that a smile breaking around her mouth?
Was that a gleam in her eye? Was it the case that they only
existed for one another now?

With the eye of a hunter, he explored the steep rock face. Every
fissure, every ledge he perceived and then he plotted his way accordingly, like in the past, when reaching a nest of young
vultures was at stake. He gave a sign she would have to understand
if the same fire had been kindled within her. And she did understand, for in reply she crossed her arms in front of her chest, thus
indicating that she would pray for him the while.

Now the alliance had been sealed. Who knows, she may already
have noticed him much earlier on, and her tears had been a call.

Slowly, and uncertainly at first because of his emotion, he began
the ascent. As he rose higher and more perilously, the placement
of his hands, of his fingers, the support of his feet, the transfer of
his weight demanded all his attention. He was inconspicuous doing
this: he was one of the many. Only later on, at the edge of the
vaulting, did he attract general notice.