Monument Maker, page 18
25/8/1884
Great celebrations are abroad in the city of Khartoum. The fleet returned with few casualties and with three thousand bushels of grain and one thousand rifles. The Yezidis tell outlandish stories of mechanical warhorses that breathed fire and automatic men who fought under the control of a magical implement. They’re called Muslims, Fonte said. It is no aberration. What of the balls of lead that dropped from the skies? Randar asked him. What of the body parts that when chopped and sliced continued their attack? demanded Fitchin. I have known such things in snakes, I said, that when they are dismembered they will draw their power from elsewhere and continue on their trajectory. I fought one myself in the streets of Khartoum. True, it was a fortress of snakes, Randar said, and he shook his head. ’Tis the Red Nile now, he said, and it ran hot with the body parts of the infidels.
We feasted on spiced grain and the vegetable alcohol of the Yezidis and we fancied, in the dark, that the fires of the Mahdi had grown dim and infrequent. I pictured a passage, if not out of Khartoum forever, then in and out at will.
You wish to fuck Khartoum, Ecco Omar said, and Randar dropped down into the dirt and feigned copulation with the earth. She is a fine woman, Omar said, but she welcomes all comers and has the attributes of a whore. What does this name, Khartoum, stand for? Omar asked Fonte. It is disputed, he said. Some say it stands for the trunk of an elephant. And where is this elephant? Randar asked. Why, right now we are encamped on its head, Fonte said. Gordon of Khartoum’s palace is its eye and the trunk extends to divide the Blue and the White Nile. When they say trunk, Randar said, I fear they mean phallus! He assaulted his own crotch in order to demonstrate his point. The penis itself has an eye, Omar said, but it is tear-shaped. In that case, Fonte said, we are encamped in its ball sack. There are more than enough of us to impregnate the whole of Africa, Omar said, and Randar returned to his mock-humping of the earth. But there is another school, Fonte continued, its etymology is obscure, but that insists that Khartoum really means Sunflower. The labour of the sunflower, Omar said, is a parable for the sufferings of man. Yet in its triumph over gravity, there is much beauty, Fonte said. A mere circus trick, Omar said, a sad-eyed elephant. Maybe, Fonte said, maybe, and he ran some sand through his fingers. What of the eyes of the peacock? I asked Omar. Is it not true that you worship a peacock angel? Its eyes are everywhere, Omar said, and Randar and Fitchin nodded, solemnly, all throughout the book, all throughout time, all vainglorious. I thought you said I’s, Fonte said, as in me’s. Those too, Omar said, are everywhere. But at the heart of it all is a single flame. The Mahdi’s fires will dwindle to one, he said. And we will rise from the shadows.
27/8/1884
A second assault is launched, this time to Abu Haraz and beyond, to Sennar. Once more the Yezidis join the attack.
29/8/1884
One warship has returned, this time bearing nine thousand bushels of grain. The Yezidis tell tales of metal-plated camels and of black devils, creatures with wings bearing down on them. The dervishes are destroyed, for the moment. We are erasing them from the map, Omar said. Your wife too has been erased, I told him, dissolved in the sun. Here, Fonte said, a memento, and he handed Omar a drawing of a silhouette etched in the sand. Omar simply nodded. This is how history is made, he said. The British, Fonte replied, are well practised in the black art of history.
1/9/1884
Gordon plans to reopen communications with Egypt by recapturing Berber but first he has sent four steamers to attack El Ilafun. Much bounty is expected, and spirits are high. Rumours of a boat that travels by land and that can be divided in twelve have reached Khartoum. All twelve divisions have been sent by the British from the other side of Africa. When it re-members itself in the waters of the Nile its name will be Armageddon.
3/9/1884
The raid on El Ilafun brings coffee and grain and oil to Khartoum. There is much rejoicing. The Lotus Eaters still sing of wombs and tombs even as the people dance around them. Muhammad Ali drives on to a second El Ilafun, deep in the woods, the birthplace of Sheikh el Obeid. Gordon of Khartoum orders the Yezidis and some reservists to take a boat to join him there.
4/9/1884
Muhammad Ali Pasha is dead! The Yezidis returned with news of the massacre that took place in a forest glade after Ali’s betrayal by a local guide. A thousand men were torn to pieces by black devils that descended from the trees. Worse still, when the Yezidis arrived the devils had ransacked the ships and made off with the white cube that had powered Gordon of Khartoum’s assaults. Three Yezidis were killed in the retreat. It is an ill omen. Gordon of Khartoum lamented that the arrow had not returned to his master, yet he proclaimed the dead fulfilled.
7/9/1884
Gordon of Khartoum sends a secret message to the world. The world will not believe what is happening in Khartoum. Gordon of Khartoum sends them evidence. He sends a writer and two negotiators alongside a pack of feral Greeks who fled their homeland in terror, a group of naked Sun Watchers whom he had to tie together with ropes and drag onboard against their will, and the body of the outlandish woman, which only the writer knows about and which was secreted in the hull in the guise of a gift for Prime Minister William Gladstone. The Yezidis make much mockery of the mission. There is no relief in this world, they say, and they pull grotesque faces. Gordon of Khartoum is wobbling, they say. Besides, they insist, the Sun Watchers will be taken up into the garden long before the ship reaches its destination. He may as well send them wraiths, or dead bodies, they laugh.
They set sail in the Abbas with fifty soldiers as soon as the sun went down. The boat has been fitted with a gun turret and a skirt of wood that dredges the river of debris and exposes its rotten floor. The Sofia and Mansura, two lopsided steamers, are to escort them past the Mahdi stronghold of Berber. Two unmanned sailing boats follow in their wake, tied, like the Sun Watchers, against their will and dragged by ropes the length of the river. The writer is to make clear the situation in Khartoum and to hasten reinforcements. Gordon of Khartoum suspects the writer of naivety and gullibility. He warns him only to set anchor in the middle of the river, never by the banks, and only to forage for firewood in open, isolated areas. Gordon’s own body is constituted on suspicion and disbelief. In God and country his only trust.
28/9/1884
More steamers return bringing more grain; at best we will last until the end of the year. Gordon of Khartoum has become increasingly isolated. He lives in the palace alone, an empty cube, the double of the one that was stolen by the Mahdi, and rumours run about his behaviour. He reads in the tower, no one knows what, all night. He has taken as his companion a mouse who lives in a drawer of his bureau and with whom he dines at night, fastidiously setting a place for it at the table and tying a napkin around its fast throat in order to catch crumbs. The Yezidis claim that he makes violent love with a turkey cock. Others say that young boys have been seen, limping, as they leave the grounds of the palace in the evening.
9/10/1884
A young boy limps into the palace. He claims to have escaped the clutches of the Mahdi and he brings Gordon of Khartoum details of his plans. The Mahdi stands at the White Nile barely one hundred miles south of Khartoum. He marches towards the city with a force of four thousand black devils that claw at their own flesh in anticipation of their prize. At the head of this macabre procession are a group of Greek nuns in bloodied habits whom the devils treat as circus animals and who it is said are forced to eat paper hosts soaked in the blood of their own menses. Gordon of Khartoum damns this world and all of us in it. The Mahdi, according to the small boy with the limp, intends to float across the Nile without touching the waters and to descend on Khartoum from the skies.
22/10/1884
A letter has been delivered to Gordon of Khartoum. The small boy with the limp was entrusted to carry it from the lines to the palace. Gordon of Khartoum read it to his mouse and laughed. It is a forgery, a dastardly piece of ill prophecy. It claims to be from the Mahdi himself. It praised God and urged that Gordon of Khartoum, too, might be brought to the light. It talked of mercy and compassion and peace. Then it revealed that the will of God, the one true God, was against him. The will of God, the one true God, holds the Nile by the throat and denies all passage. The will of God has set the reckoning in Khartoum. The will of God has taken the Abbas and all that it held. The Mahdi is in receipt of wraiths and dead bodies. The writer, the poor Greeks, the negotiators, all of the soldiers, the tiny yachts dragged upstream against their will, the skirted ships, the coded papers, the cutlasses with their ornate handles, the smooth wooden rifles, the woman who gave up her sex as a sign, the women who melt in the sun, the ciphers that would serve to decode the specifics of our situation, the guarded pleas, the political caricatures, the aimless doodles, the personal effects, the mementos from this prison on the Nile, the truth of what has happened here, all were delivered unto him and further, into the fires of hell. Gordon of Khartoum’s mouse laments the vanity of the plans of mice and men, even as it wears a small bib and eats at the table like a man. Mice have no time for tales, says the mouse, which has been given a secret name, known only to Gordon of Khartoum, but which rumours claim is one of the prophets of the New Testament. I say John, but Fonte says Elisabeth, Estabeth of the Cross; Xstabeth. It is said in The Book, Fonte told me, that before Mary gave birth to the Messiah, God had her cousin, a barren woman, give birth to a holy child in seclusion. She became the example for Mary. The litter of mice, I said, seems no example for a messiah. Is Khartoum any better? Fonte said. The mouse speaks of vanity. What of the turkey cock that he has taken as a lover? I asked him. That, I grant you, Fonte said, is more likely a John.
Gordon of Khartoum laughed when his mouse said it had no time for tales. Gordon of Khartoum heard it as tails. How happy, he thought, is a poor ragged mouse that pays no heed to its tail. Give me a command of four thousand mice and I would happily lead them to a meeting with the Mahdi.
Now Gordon of Khartoum looks to the west. He stands on the roof of the Serail as a silhouette and he watches as the waters, too, are taken up by the sun and the moon, and what is revealed there.
3/11/1884
A fleet of ghostly vessels approaches our fate. A thin tunnel of smoke rises in the distance. Soldiers stand by the water and fire salutes high into the clear blue air. The Egyptian flag ripples in the breeze. Groups of people stand waist-deep in the waters of the Nile in silent exultation. It is the Bordein, the last ship to leave Khartoum, returned encircled by an invisible consort. It lies low in the water, like an unblinking eye. Everything is still. The people walk backwards out of the water as a figure appears on the deck and says something in a language no one understands. A lone soldier, in full body armour, wades into the water. As he approaches the boat the figure leans down and places a smaller boat, not much larger than the palm of his hand and with three small sails, into the water. It moves across the silent waters towards us.
It is a second visitation, a second trespass of time. It is the angel of death taken the form of a small solar bark. The soldier opens his arms and holds the boat to his breast. Then he retreats from out of the water. The Bordein turns slowly in the water, with a sound like the splintering of a coffin, and then floats off above the water, to return to its new master across the water. The bark is the sign that everyone is dead and will not return.
Now Britain holds the direction of the future, Gordon of Khartoum says. Aye, Fonte says. ’Tis a black art they practise. Black soldiers are beautiful, Gordon of Khartoum says, and he touches my face. Even in a time of deathly angels, Gordon of Khartoum acts tenderly. I think of the peace he brought us, the terrors he brought to an end, how he traded them for a final terror that better matched the image of himself. I saw Gordon’s face in Khartoum, the two sides, out of sync, mismatched and pitted against each other. I reached out, without thinking, and returned his touch. I held his head in both my hands. I felt the weight of the future.
Later that evening he requested my presence at dinner. I sat at the table next to the creature whose name is Xstabeth and ate biscuits and drank strong coffee. There are books on everything under the sun, the creature mocked. Gordon of Khartoum laughed. My companion is a great source of strength, he said, and he broke some biscuits onto its plate. What do you know of prophecy? I asked it. Mice know nothing of such things, it said. We are forgiven of history, exempted from time. All it asks of us is the shedding of our garments. Our disrobing is its pleasure. It is an insatiable lover. Does it always talk like this? I asked Gordon of Khartoum. Oh yes, he marvelled, ask it anything you like. What of my father? I asked it. Do you know anything of the afterworld? We know nothing of fatherhood except as a form of gravity, the same gravity that draws us to the decomposing bodies where we love and lie. Mice love? I asked it. Do not planets dance around the stars? it said. You know of stars? Their stuff is inside us, it said, and it picked up a small crumb from its plate with both its hands and ate it.
I turned to Gordon of Khartoum in awe. A talking mouse made up of the stars, I said to him, is truly a remarkable thing. Khartoum has become a place of miracles, Gordon of Khartoum said, in these last days. This is how it was written. If only relief could make it through, I said, we have so many wonders to share with the world. I have come to believe, Gordon of Khartoum said, that the wonders are bottomless when you give yourself up for dead. Excuse us, he said to the mouse, but we will retire to the book tower in private. The mouse shrugged and continued eating.
11/11/1884
It has begun. The Mahdi’s forces attack Fort Omdurman, a holdout on the opposite bank of the White Nile. The assault came by night and the sky was lit up by terrible shadows flitting back and forth. We could hear the drums of the dervishes, their rhythms so unlike our own, closer to the passage of the blood than the beating of the heart. From the roof of the Serail they appeared as insects, a plague of beetles scaling the walls of the fort, climbing over each other in the passion of their prophet, a simple boatbuilder. In the darkness it was as if a single creature, made of shadows, turned itself inside out. The assault was beaten back, for now, but it is a matter of time, surely, until Khartoum is lost. The Yezidis sharpen their blades and talk much of the refounding of Eden. First there is a clearance, Omar said. A place for the garden to grow. Then there is the planting of a seed. Then there is the watering and the feeding. What form does this watering and feeding take? I asked him. He hesitated. It is a form of prayer, he said. Then there is a tree that grows in the centre of the garden, a tree with many eyes. In its shadows all things are remade.
Do you support the overrunning of Khartoum by the Mahdi? I asked him. We came here to take his head. Of course, we hope it is a final battle. An ending requires a beginning. Besides, he said, there is that which remains.
Have you felt the lick of a flame? he asked me. In the gleam of his sword I saw his head upside down. His eyes flashed. Yes, I said, I have. That means we’re close, he said.
I spent the afternoon with Biraggo Fonte. He is inexplicably high-spirited. What is our part in all this? I asked him. How have we come to know Gordon of Khartoum so well? I have asked myself the same question many times, Fonte said. At first I regarded him as a god. If not a god, a redeemer, which is the same thing, I sometimes think, though only in moments of weakness. Now I see him as a man. That, perhaps, is my Khartoum. You speak like a Christian! I said to Fonte. How so? he said. What you have described, I said, is the Incarnation. Still, Fonte said, I search my memory, I regard my feelings, I travel throughout my body, from the loop of my heart to the maze of my intestines, and I find no trace of a cross. Khartoum, as you talk of it, is the cross, I said. Listen, he said, do you know of the Arabic practice of “bearing fruit?” I confessed that I didn’t. I’m not surprised, he said. It is a form of bhakti, of redemption through action. But it is ill thought of and much maligned. Man holds the sun within him, he said. It is that which illuminates his days. But how is this sun passed on? It is transmitted via the phallus. Can a man transmit via man? That is the question. Is there a lineage that is not born of woman? Born is the wrong word, perhaps, reborn, I should say.
What of the women that became Sun Watchers? I asked him. They lay naked on the beach until they were taken up in sun stuff.
The religious impulse has many tributaries, Fonte said. In that it is like the Nile. He drew a deep breath. What do you think of the concept of man-on-man? he asked me. I find it humiliating, I said, to be ridden like a pig or a farm animal. You choose your words well, Biraggo Fonte said, and his eyes narrowed in secret joy. The veil has many names. Khartoum, he said, is another.
12/12/1884
Can you imagine the taste of the flesh of a donkey, freshly killed, starved itself, roasted on an open fire, on the beach at Khartoum, during the siege of 1884, beneath the walls of the palace, where Gordon of Khartoum—it is said—has congress with turkey cocks and mice carry crucifixes, while all around you, in the distance, fires like eyes light up the land and the sky and with no way out except through the same release of flesh that you choke down in gratitude? The taste is not what you would expect. It is soft and strong.
