City, Sister, Silver, page 25
Before making my way back to the pack, I wandered the halls a while, just to unwind. It was obvious the other tenants had left. But not all of them, somewhere downstairs I heard a radio, a fork clinking against a plate. But the sounds were lacking their usual dimension. No fights, no weeping, no new humans’ laughter, no opening and closing of doors, or clatter of high heels, no old granny shuffling up the stairs … to gossip, no fella in a blue jumpsuit stepping out from around the corner. No one luggin a baby carriage, alone, till someone comes along to help. Just the building’s old, heavy smells. Sad. And downstairs the Zone.
I quickened my gait.
11
SHARKY: “I HAD A DREAM.”
All right, Number Five is here, Bohler welcomed me.
They called me that sometimes because I was The One Who’s Usually On The Way, and generally they had to wait a little before I came bounding in … but it didn’t bother them, I was working for the common cause.
I think it’s time, said Bohler, beginning to unravel the silver from his hair. Guess we’d better go to the forge, huh?
Guess so, said Micka. On the table lay a pair of scissors and a razor.
No, said Shark Stein. I had a dream.
We all froze. Night had finally come at the end of a long day. We hadn’t expected this.
What’s the use of self-criticism? said Micka. The tribe’s dissolved.
I don’t want self-criticism, said Sharky. I had a dream.
We took our seats. For the time being we left our silver alone. And our hair. We just let it hang down.
You know, O skippers and brothers, that I’m merely the bearer of the dream an I don’t mean to insult the community with some kina worthless opinion. But it was a very long, hard dream, an I’m not sure I understand it, but I think it wasn’t meant just for me, I got it so I could share it. It picks up where Number Five’s dream left off, an now I know why in his dream I was flyin in front of him. In my dream, O brothers and bluebloods, there are many snares an puzzles, an it’s not for everyone. It’s a dream about dreams an charged objects, the tribe, the end of tribes, the individual, an Possibility. In case you’ve got questions, here’s my answer: I had the dream today, when I couldn’t get outta the box, while you guys were fightin the stalingos.
As I sensed the voice enter Shark Stein, I took a look around at my neighbors. Cassock had his eyes shut, Helmsman sat resigned, knowin the next thing to come wasn’t a byznys day but the exorcism of the Zone. David just lay on the table, an there was anguish for him in our hearts. Sharky spoke:
My dream’s also about what the earth is. An you have to hold out till the end, O fibbers and squealers, because then I’m going to give you a Possibility.
Go for it, cruel Sharky! Bring it on! We’re ready! we cheered on the Scheherazade, settling in more comfortably.
My dream starts where Potok’s left off. We were flyin over the field of bones an then we came to the Face, an it was kind an glowing, an the same thing happened to me as to Potok: I was flyin in the lead, you know that, O pimps and shoplifters, but all at once the Face turned hard an rough … evil … an all the kindness drained from my arteries an veins, an they grew heavy with blood, an I was scared, a great fear came, you murderers and marauders, an as the dread circled inside my skull my vision dimmed … an the Face constricted into the grimace of the Evil One, a hardwood mask. An then suddenly, you perjurers and falsifiers, I was lyin in the grass an I saw you, highwaymen and brigands, in the grass beside me. We must accept these lives too, I thought, and when I looked again I saw you, Micka, as Brawler, in a tattered fur with blood dripping from a gash in your hand, you, Bohler, as Sad Man, sword in one hand, hammer in the other, and you, Potok, as The One Who Leaps, leaning on your spear, and you, Kral, you were unarmed. And I was The One Who Is In Many Places, and I had a bow and quiver but few arrows. And our eyes, dear conquistadors and infant slayers, were all turned in the same direction, toward the wooden idol of our god, the one farther back in time’s memory than even the city’s Starry Bog. We were gazing into the face of Svantovít, lord of lightning, supreme god of the Elbe dwellers, The One Who Drinks Blood From The Heart Of Darkness And Renders His Children’s Enemies Lame And Fearful, and despite our wounds and hunger and fear of our pursuers, we were happy.
We were the people of a tribe that had gotten under the wheel, or into the scissors, as I believe, dear huntresses and she-judges, is the term in fashion round the Pentagon these days. But in our tongue of the time we said: under the hammer. And this Svantovít … he was no lightweight flower-and-sheep lover, as our revolting Marxist teachers claimed … he was an idol of rage for the old people of Bohemia, which of course in those days was called something different … the wood of this statue had been drenched countless times in the blood of sacrifice. The more sacrifices there were, the stronger our idol and the more strength it gave us to hunt fresh victims. It’s only logical. But our teachers didn’t tell us that, it was forbidden. They had to say the new, modern-day man was different, more amazing, better. Extremely gifted, they told us, you recall, you psychopaths and paranoiacs. They didn’t tell us anything. So we had to find out for ourselves. We served Svantovít and he protected us. Only … we were a small tribe, and even though we had many young warriors … one by one they fell in battle … and as a result there were more women and girls in the tribe than men … priestesses, sisters, girlfriends, and brides, very many indeed … we couldn’t keep them satisified … we were too worn out from brawling … so they decided we had to move on, butcher a nearby village or two and bag them some guys and boofalos … why should I be givin birth all the time, said one, it’s a pain, let’s just steal someone else’s kids, what’s the diff … so we obeyed the mighty Eva, O my brothers, you idol worshipers and fanatics, and sallied forth … leaving the statue of Svantovít behind … we were proud and thought we had strength enough … we wiped out a few settlements of soft people and bagged some guys for the women so they could find satisfaction in the arms of slaves … so they’d shut their mouths and stop complaining … we preferred hunting and hacking … only then we got under the hammer.
We had the Pšovans pressing us from the north, the Axe People closing in from the south, the Zličans’ sturdy stockades before us, and suddenly the Curly Heads charged from the rear. A classic hammer and pincers. At first we fought back … but they kept pressing and pressing us … we fell into booby traps … the women started grumbling again … we even considered a truce … temporarily … that’s how much of a mess we were … dunces, Eva scolded us, why’d you leave Svantovít there? Fools, see if I sleep with you again … but she was the one who’d decided not to drag it along! It was unjust! As things got worse and worse, our only strength was fear … it was kill or be killed … no more killing out of exuberance and joie de vivre … now the tables were turned and we were the hounded ones … we had to leave our old people behind in the woods, there was no one to carry our charges … we’d already lost all we owned anyway … fleeing. And then we came to the deep forest, the hunting ground of the Lemuz tribe, an especially hateful and brutal horde of subhumans who’d formed an alliance with their age-old enemies the Doudlebs in order to crush us. After we managed to fend off their attack, our female comrades put all the little children to death … we knew what awaited them otherwise … surrounded on all sides by inconceivably loathsome tribes … we began to resign ourselves to the thought that the human race would soon be extinct … the women also took up arms … in battle they were even more savage than us … it was out of the question that they would end up with some other inconceivably loathsome guys that didn’t know how to do things right … they knew we wouldn’t be bringing them any more slave boys to put through the paces … like us, the only thing they could do was appeal to Morana, goddess of death and winter … they touched our ribs and led us into battle … all we had to eat was roots … and apples.
We got pulverized in that last awful battle, only thirty of us turned up at the agreed spot afterwards, the tribe was devastated. There were just three women left … where’s Eva? we wondered, she was powerful, gave us strength … she was wounded … and one of us had to kill her and bring the rest her hair, so it wouldn’t fall into enemy hands, we divided it up … we have to get back to Svantovít, we’ve got no choice … but the prospects were poor … of us making it all the way through those savage inhuman tribes … we were ambushed by runts in the swamps, we’d never seen such inhumans. They carried wicker shields with a turtle painted on them and their bodies were coated in mud. They attacked screaming Ninja! Ninja! and killed two of our comrades. Then we encountered the Croots, with whom we had once maintained a shaky alliance, since they were as pitiless as us, it made sense to join forces and hunt down those who were weaker … but the Croots turned us over to the Chebeks, whom we’d tyrannized since time out of mind, in return for boofalo and slaves … only a few of us escaped … the women had all fallen, and without their presence, their other fragrance and other agile moves, we were done for … we needed to steal some women … but out of eight men to start with, just five were left, and one of them was Kral … who didn’t even carry a weapon, the nut, he’d only survived by a miracle … for days on end he’d just doodle in the sand … whatcha doin there, Kral … we teased him … hey doodler, come have a dance an jump somebody … the only reason he’d lasted in the tribe was his powerful sister Eva, she protected him … leave him alone … he makes letterz, we’re gonna need them so we don’t forget anything, so we can be with our fallen ones … c’mon, Eva, we remember every bone, every bit of flesh, we’ve got every slain tribesman in our hearts … you do, yeah, but not your children … oh yeah, right, we scratched our greasy manes, and whenever we didn’t happen to be out murdering and ambushing, or being murdered and ambushed, which tended to merge, we pestered Eva and Kral, whadda you wanna remember all that nonsense for anyway … none a your business, said Eva, go hunt me up a couple slaves, I’m gettin kina restless … finally the five of us, Brawler, Sad Man, The One Who Is In Many Places, and The One Who Leaps … and Kral, made it to the statue of Svantovít. And the four of us, you bandits and cattle rustlers, just you recall, the four of us stood there and pleaded with him, and Kral, the poor wretch, broke off a twig and scribbled in the sand while the four of us waited, and Svantovít spoke … remember, you defilers of virgins and slayers of children, you know what he told us … and we went and stood around Kral, remember, you scalpers and censors, we stood around him on all four sides and Brawler struck first and Sad Man tore off his fur and The One Who Is In Many Places spat in Kral’s face and The One Who Leaps speared him … and then we beat him to death.
We obeyed Svantovít, you generals and dispatchers, and when Kral was dead we cut out his heart, chopped it into four parts, and ate them … we sacrificed our brother, you judges and undertakers, so we could survive … and his heart was sweet and pulsing, and our strength began to come back to us … and Brawler looked at his healed arm and screamed and The One Who Is In Many Places stomped the ground and Sad Man laughed … The One Who Leaps dashed uphill, holding his nose … he smelled smoke, and pointed his spear in the direction it came from … and we raced off, no longer feeling hunger or fear, but intoxicated with savage joy, we were eager … Kral’s heart lived in us, we felt it like armor in every artery, every hair on our body … and we ran downhill, four brothers united by sacrifice … at the bottom was a fence of posts … we probably should’ve waited for nightfall … but Brawler whined impatiently, Sad Man nodded, The One Who Leaps licked his lips, and The One Who Is In Many Places rose … and off we went, creeping through the grass like snakes … The One Who Is In Many Places suddenly stopped and spun around, eyes flitting, arrow at the ready … a dog came running out and Sad Man hammered in its skull … The One Who Leaps scaled the palisade and opened up the gate … and Brawler charged in first and cut down two men … they didn’t expect an attack in broad daylight … and the rest of us charged in after him … swift and silent … darting in and out of cabins, killing left and right … our enemies were too stunned to react, they’d never seen a horde or heard the cries of foreign warriors … we slaughtered a lot of them before they rose to the defense … and that only made us more eager, we let them feel our skillfulness and new strength, and then they didn’t feel a thing. Lying glassy-eyed on the ground, chin up, in their beards an arrow, a bloody sword wound, a bite mark … some of the slaves welcomed us and rebelled against their masters … but we slaughtered them too, our strength was great and it grew with the blood … the women put up more resistance … scratching and biting us, some ran themselves through … and we only spared the ones who resisted, beating them till they lay still … any women who begged for mercy we kicked aside and chopped in two and smashed their childrens’ heads open against the cabin walls … then everyone was dead and we went to the few women we’d spared … and raped them and gave them our seed, because we knew our time had come.
And we were never naked and miserable again. We made the women we’d spared dig a pit and burn all the corpses. We watched them closely, taking note of anyone who wept over the body of her man or child. A few of them fled … we let them go. But three stayed. They realized who we were. They didn’t weep. We wanted sons only from them. We forayed through the surrounding area, massacring settlements of soft people. And then we came across a new tribe. They had yellow skin and slanted eyes and rode beasts we’d never seen before. At first we thought it was a single creature with two heads and six legs. Then we slayed a few and realized what they were. They didn’t have any special power, they bled like all the rest. And they too left behind only flesh. They were unsuited as slaves, didn’t like to work. We took their horses and our strength grew. After that the yellow people too avoided our lands.
We were four: the dark princes of Morana, protecting one another from four sides. Our land was desolate, anyone we hadn’t slaughtered or enslaved had fled, so we ordered our slaves to build a tower. It had to be tall so we could see far. We wanted to see like eagles. We wanted the tower to touch the clouds.
Our first women all had died, but not before giving us children. Our sons slept on dung out in the cold. We humiliated and beat them to make them hard. Those who survived did not love us but they feared us. Our daughters could fight as well as our sons. But they also knew how to do other things. They would gather roots, and from them and pebbles and the claws of beasts of prey they could divine our direction. They could heal their brothers’ wounds by applying spider webs and saliva and birch compresses. One of them was powerful. Her name was Soaring and her strength was great. She governed the slaves and directed the building of the tower. Even her brothers obeyed her.
One day she divined a direction for us and we rode a long way, to a great river. We came upon a beaten path and stopped the caravan. Spears came raining down on us. One of our sons laughed and rode forth into the forest of spears, screaming at the foreign warriors in our tongue. They answered him in gibberish. He returned with foam and blood spurting from the flanks of his horse. What to do with such rabble, fathers, our son the wolf called out, they do not even know how to speak, they are němci, they are mutes, and that was how the Germans got their name in Czech. In one of the mute people’s carts was an old woman and a little boy who spoke like us. Maybe that’s why we spared them. The boy had an odd thing. A transparent stone, bright red in color, and when we held it up to the sun it turned gold. There was a fly inside, but it didn’t move. We shook the stone, trying to make it fly. Maybe it was dead. But it looked like it was in flight. Its wings weren’t bent and they still had their colors. Cautiously we examined the stone. It was magic. The stone had stopped life but without crushing it, it had the life inside it. How did that happen … we wondered. And what are you called, boy, one of us asked … respectfully, in case he was a sorcerer. Samo,* said the boy. One of us gave him a dagger and a sword, another draped him in his crimson cloak. We also loaded his bow and arrows onto the cart. To ward off his wrath. After all, we had killed his servants.
The magic unsettled us. We possessed the strength of Morana, we’d seen our enemies scream and die in convulsions, begging for mercy. Seen them flee. Knew all about the movements of the slave girls when we lay down with them. Some realized what awaited them, and squirmed beneath our weight, sensing that this was already death. But the boy’s stone was death of a different kind. We spent our time running and fighting, in the stone there was no time. Maybe we should’ve killed the boy and destroyed the stone.
We put our new slaves to work on the tower. It grew, but slowly. Ever since we’d seen the stone, we knew that new things were happening. We feared for our time. And we were more frenzied and cruel than ever. We were at war with all peoples, hunting and hounding them. They were wretched. Morana loved us alone, Death herself was our sister. The four of us were bound by the pact of the torn-out heart. Only we had had the strength to sacrifice our brother, King David, and eat his heart.
Soldiers from other nations began to come into our forests. Before, we had always driven them out. This time we waited though. The tower was growing, but didn’t yet touch the clouds. How far is it to the sky, we wondered. The top wasn’t even as high as the mountains on the horizon. We hunted down more slaves, but many warriors preferred to die rather than obey our commands and the lash of the whip. As time went by, though, we reared a new breed. A slave breed. Our sons tested their swords on the old and the weak. The slaves were afraid to grow old.
Then it happened. Soaring ran away. With one of the slaves. Our sons, humiliated, begged us to take them along. But we felt this was our business. We rode off. Brawler and Sad Man, The One Who Is In Many Places and The One Who Leaps, riding in silence. We urged our horses on. We didn’t know why Soaring had done it. She could have had any man she desired. Her brothers would’ve done anything for her. All she had to do to end her solitude was give us a direction. But instead she had abandoned us. With a slave. From some cowardly clan, not even a warrior. We urged our horses on, we knew we’d catch them.
