B007P4V3G4 EBOK (37 page)

He was in the eye of the cyclone. The little cloud was carrying
the Beast, a silence surrounded by space, the Beast with his State Department. At that same moment, an electrical charge hovered in
his belly and legs like when he thought of the woman he would
go to bed with later on. Then, thirty metres above him but twenty
metres below the surface, he slowly saw a colossal iron shadow
looming up. His body reacted sooner than his mind - when he was
able to think, he was already in a perpendicular spin at full power,
down into the deep. Twenty centimetres above his head was the
water. He felt the pressure rise rapidly: he felt it by the dancing
indicator which began to light up as the darkness increased. There
was no difference between the little dome and the roof of his skull;
it could withstand a pressure of thirteen atmospheres - death lay
at the red line on the dial. At a depth of three hundred and sixty
feet, he levelled the craft, hurtled with buzzing ears a few hundred
metres in the direction the convoy was steaming in, and there he
waited, leering about, with his instruments as so many senses.
Light fell through a church window in deep dusk, almost absent
but penetrating ultraviolet. No submarine appeared. No depth
charge exploded. He hadn't been seen. Were he to continue to
circle this spot, the centre of the convoy would be above him
again in exactly two minutes. What was he to do?

But he thought: the murderer is a figment in the victim's
imagination as the victim is a figment in the murderer's. But every
bullet that strikes, too, is a part of the murderer's body, piercing
that of his victim. Each murder is an obscenity, an intimate
embrace, a sex killing. He saw his wife riddled with bullets and
thought: murderer and victim are two figments, mating.

Then Brose wanted to see the Beast. For a single instant, he
wanted to see his steel body above water stretched out over the
ocean. Then he would hurl himself upon him. The Beast was lost
already any way. Even if he was discovered and shot at from a
mile's distance, his explosion would toss the entire fleet melting
into the air and slurp all the aircraft like liquid aluminium, down to
the deep. If he couldn't reach the Beast's steamer, he would pitch
himself on to the submarine or a ship at random. It made no difference. Cautiously, suspicious like a deep-sea fish that at last wants
to see the sun for once, he began to rise. The indicator ran
back slowly and sun hovered in the water once again. The engine's
trembling was no longer there; what he heard was the quiet flow
against the dome of the water, an impassive element the moon is
tugging at. A small shadow began to take shape above him: just
one, no more. It was the ship of the Beast. Brose rose and let the shadow pass over. With a little snap, the rushing in his ears
disappeared. The submarine was nowhere to be seen any more,
nowhere the churnings of its wake. Brose began to shiver and
suddenly he spiralled up to fifteen feet below the surface. All of a
sudden there was a bright green transparency, a sphere of glass.
On his chronometer, he checked when he would be exactly midway
between the steamer and the convoy. It was possible that a ship or
an aircraft would open fire at once and put an end to the Beast and
his fleet. Slowly, he rose to six feet, to three feet - and then, all of
a sudden, he rushed his dome out of the water.

He shouted. In an ocean of light, the convoy lay there, from
horizon on horizon. The sea was quite built up with hundreds of
silver-grey battle cruisers and dreadnoughts, heavy in the water,
with supernaturally turning radar aerials; in amongst them countless
light cruisers, flotilla leaders, destroyers, mine-sweepers, corvettes,
gunships, frigates, all smoking and baying cheerfully: an immense
city on the glinting water - and above it the blue, booming sky,
full to overflowing with aircraft, tumbling, playing, descending and
rising up from their matrons of mother aircraft carriers. A chalkwhite seaplane touched down, foaming, between the ships and a
jet fighter whistled over him, low down; high, high up, heavy
bombers drew crosses and pentagrams against the sky. Brose
looked and looked, no longer capable of stirring himself, one
second after another. The unutterable body of the Beast! And the
heart, the black steamer with her fat plume of smoke at the centre
of the empty circle: it was dressed and full of music. Oompahmusic, moving off thinly across the sea, she sang as she sailed
along. Sobbing, Brose clenched his steering wheel and began to
dive. For an instant he saw the irrepressible feast split in two; it
foamed around his head and the water closed over him. He had
seen the sun for the last time. That too is no more unbearable than
never to see a certain pebble in a foreign country again.

Under water, Brose realised he was still alive. What had happened? He must have been seen, the little quartz dome must have
shone in the water like a gem. Perhaps the defence was
over-organised: they had taken him to be one of their own craft.
Maybe it didn't cross their minds that the enemy had been able to
penetrate so deeply. Perhaps everyone here at the centre was far
too jolly to keep an eye out.

He moved along with them, at the same speed as the convoy, as if he belonged to it - like the deadly germ in a body tough as iron.
He had nothing to fear. He put up his periscope and trained on the
Beast's steamer. She was sailing three hundred metres on ahead of
him, covered in bunting. Brose looked at his instruments. He still
had fuel for a good three hours but oxygen for two, at most. He
had panted, wept and shouted too much.

Thus he sailed along - in his head, once again, the fleet, an
architectonic swarm of secrets, the sky full of finger tips and
glances, and in front of his eyes a gleaming little film of the heart,
with its plume of smoke, but the music inaudible.

And suddenly he got the hiccups the way a pope once got it
from two thousand years of Christianity. Malevolent hiccups, from
deep within his entrails, every three seconds; at each hiccup into
his hose, the machine shot forwards with a jolt, a defect in the
engine, so that the little steamer jumped from the mirror and
returned there, trembling. He held his breath, swallowed, shifted in
his seat, tensed his stomach muscles, but the hiccups continued,
like a clock. Nervously, he fingered the steering wheel and with
dismay he felt how the hiccups began to tear him down, stone by
stone, propeller by propeller - his dismay was disintegration itself
already. Along with it came the fear; that same instant, a white
pillar of smoke rose up perpendicular within him. With trembling
hand, he retracted the periscope and -gave full throttle. The ocean
began to seethe around him. It was coming, it was coming! His life
lay stretched out in metres before him. Softly the throbbing of the
ship awoke in the water - in the distance, her shadow was born;
the throbbing soon grew louder and created the ship. There she
hovered, keel down, her propeller grabbling helplessly through
the water. Black, thunderous, she stormed towards him. Brose
hiccupped to the point of shaking - death to the Beast! - saw a
broken shoelace, a comer of the balcony of his burnt house, his
father's hair parting, and full of revulsion, he drew the steering
wheel towards him. With the roar of welded armour plate, rust and
shells, the ship rolled by overhead, gliding into the silence beyond
him.

Hiccupping and weeping and making noises, Brose came to
himself, still in the silent space. Automatically, he turned and
desperately tried to find the way within himself. At the last
moment he had dived underneath. Why, why? The fleet ought
now to have been hanging in the sky, aflame, and the war to have
been over. Why had he dived underneath? Not because he could not die - he could die - everything suddenly had become impossible. No hero's death - an impossible death. He could not die. He
hiccupped - it was almost turning into vomiting - he put out his
periscope and sought the Beast. The moment he saw him he
chased over towards him.

Emerging the other side he had turned into a wreck. Death to
the Beast! His mouth was full of vomit, dripping into the hose.
Everything was nonsense! His will was an admiral with a monocle
and he had no one in the world any more! He looked for the ship,
retracted his periscope and, roaring along through the water, he
murmured desperately:

Andra moi eneppe, Moesa, polutropon hos mala polla
Planchte epei Troies hieron ptolietron epersen ...

Thus Brose hurtled, hour after hour, now from one end then from
the other, from the front, then from the rear, below water, towards
the steamer of the Beast continuing, impregnably defended and
full of oompah music, on her way to the mother country.

Finally - he had lost track of the convoy for ages now and was
wildly roaring back and forth, pointlessly, at great depth - everything went black in front of his eyes, he slumped forwards, let go
of the steering wheel and, without oxygen to hiccup still, he slid
slowly down to the deep, hour upon hour, with his craft, gently
turning and somersaulting like a meditating fish; the little dome
was tenderly being pushed in, and at the end of the journey he
came to a halt, almost unnoticeably, in an oozy world of ink and
illuminated monsters, extinct millions of years ago. There his craft,
languid and sleepy, dug itself into the sand, along with him.

Once every few centuries, however, soft floating and humming
would suddenly set in during that night, a mirage - this was he
himself, a realisation of existence, a boundless amazement: Bernard
Brose - Bernard Brose.

Carel van Nievelt

Her last breath had been peace, as had her last glance been love.
Peace and love likewise reposed in the marble smile which the
finger of death had etched around her pale mouth. Still and
painless, as if in a soft swoon, she had slipped away in the mist
that no gaze will penetrate.

But such battle had preceded that reconciliation between living
and dying! - Battle by the body, the young body that wrestled
and contorted itself to shake off the.annihilator who, unsuspected,
in one of his grimmest guises, had ambushed it. Battle by the heart
which had to part from him whom it loved and whose life was
but one within hers. Battle by the clouded brain that in its feverish
delirium felt itself to be accosted by visions of terror, terror of
that which, hideous, depicted itself in the human imagination
gripped by its most bitter fear.

Yes, had she not, only the night before, risen up from restless
sleep and tortuously gripped the hand of him who did not move
away from her couch, and had she not spoken to him in a hoarse
voice, eyes wide and staring, of the tortures of hell?

Reinout, my beloved, save yourself! she had said unto him.

Save yourself! It is all true what the Christians teach, the things
we have rejected so foolhardily. I have seen it: my soul in its
oppression has revealed it to me. Reinout, there is a God, a zealous
God, a fervid grey-beard on a bank of clouds. And at his right
hand is his son, Jesus of Nazareth; and around them both are
legions of believers singing hosannahs to the strumming of golden
harps; and deep beneath their feet bums the eternal pool of
sulphur, full, full of doomed ones, wringing their hands and
gnashing their teeth. Reinout, I have seen it all. I died: I sank away
in that which is unfathomed, but like a bubble of air in water, thus
my soul shot up to the Eternal Throne. They dragged me before
the radiant judge: brazen, like the tone of a trumpet, the judgement
sounded from his mouth: 'Down with the adulteress who has not
sought grace through the sacrificial blood of my Son! She has despised my word and rejected my covenant. Forgetting herself in
unlawful passion, she has desired the flesh over sanctification. She
has been dissolute and hardened in all this. Into the pit with her!' I
cried out to the Saviour for pity but angrily he turned away from
me: 'Too late! Was I crucified for naught? I know not them who
have not known me.' And then I was seized and cast down; flames
writhed around me, a fiery fume became my breath, waves of
sulphur slammed together above my head - I Here,
internally, it is still here - the fire, the Reinout, save
yourself! Flee into the desert wilderness and do penance for our
sins! Do penance, Reinout, and pray for me! For, I burn! I burn! All
is true what they preach in their churches. Our lust was our fault
and our unbelief is our doom!

Olga! he then cried, steeling himself against the abundance of
his suffering, stop! Here: drink, my darling! It is thirst that scorches
your throat, it is the fever that makes you dream of this devilry
and which stirs up the memory in your sick mind of this misbelief
of your youth. Drink, sweetest one, drink!

No, no! No water will quell this fire, this fire will not be
extinguished. My Reinout, save yourself! Do penance! Pray for me!

Olga, come to your senses! What do you fear? Have our lips
ever lied? Was our unbelief not honest, was our love not true? -
And even were it all true what you believe to have heard and seen
- Pray tell, have we not both sinned together? If the glow of hell is
marked down as the penalty for that which did us both such good,
made us so blissful in each other's possession - oh, my all, my
love, shall I then not be with you in the fire? ... Olga, look at me!
Am I not your only one, your faithful one?