exhausted bull:
‘What on earth are you doing in my dream?’
6
T HE B LIND O LD M AN’S D REAM: A P ROPHECY
I OPENED MY mouth, and the hot wind blew in. No sound came out. My insides burned. I screamed, and the blind old man hit me on the head. I was about to hit him back when I saw that he had feathers about his neck, and quills and glow-worms on his face. His arms had bony wings, as if he had been trapped midway in transformation from a skeleton into a bird.
‘Answer me,’ he shouted. ‘What are you doing in my dreams?’
He had the eyes of a bull and the feet of a dog. He kept beating his bony wings, with an expression of tormented ecstasy on his bristling face. I was trying to wrench myself from his calcified grip, when something unpleasant happened to my eyes. I found I was no longer in the forest. I started to scream again, but I heard my own sound somewhere else. The old man laughed. He had the tongue of a cat. He waved his wings over my face and an excruciating pain shot through the back of my eyes and when I looked I saw fierce soldiers behind him. Everything had changed. It was a burning day, and the soldiers were clubbing men and women in a crowd. They hit the women till they became a mass of writhing worms. The pain went through me again and the scene transformed and I saw men bound to stakes, the great ocean behind them, soldiers with guns in front of them.
‘Fire!’ the blind old man commanded.
And the soldiers shot the men for what seemed like three generations. Then things began to change horribly. I felt myself flying at terrific speed, the wind almost snapping my neck. The blind old man flapped his monstrous wings in the heated air. And I became absolutely terrified because I realised for the first time that I had accidentally hurled myself into the blind old man’s dreams.
I flew into a world of violence, of famine, of pullulating hunger, with beggars swarming the city centre, with maggots devouring the inhabitants, with flies eating the eyeballs of the children who were half-dead with starvation, with traffic jams everywhere, and people dying of hypertension at their steering wheels; with gases burning in the air, multiplying the ferocious heat of the sun; with housing projects built by corrupt businessmen collapsing and crushing to death their inhabitants all over the country; with soldiers going mad and shooting at people, emptying their guns at students, butchering their mothers, while riots quivered all over the landscapes; with the prisons overcrowded and exuding an unbearable stench of excrement and blood; with children poisoned by their mother’s milk, the mothers having been poisoned by just about everything; with the rich and powerful gorging themselves at their bacchanalias, their feasts of twenty-one slaughtered cows, their sweat reeking of vintage champagne, seven bands playing for their perfumed guests and weaving their patron’s names in fulsome songs, while the food spilled on the polished floors and the guests trod on them, while the choice delicacies changed into the writhing savoury intestines of the dying children and women, which were gobbled up in celebrations without end.
I saw soldiers in armoured trucks rolling into the city, I saw coup after coup, till our history became an endless rosary necklace of them, each new bead an assassinated head of state, or the secret numbers of failed coup-plotters, executed at dawn.
I saw history as a madman with a machine gun, a madman eating up the twisting flesh of the innocent and the silent.
I saw the blind old man administering potions for warding off evil projections directed at the master politicians.
I saw the blind old man changing, and I knew his secret identity to be that of a master transformer, who could turn into a bat and spy on his enemies.
The old man took me through the insurrectional afternoons, the boiling nights, through days and years merged together, with great events and ordinary happenings taking place
‘What on earth are you doing in my dream?’
6
T HE B LIND O LD M AN’S D REAM: A P ROPHECY
I OPENED MY mouth, and the hot wind blew in. No sound came out. My insides burned. I screamed, and the blind old man hit me on the head. I was about to hit him back when I saw that he had feathers about his neck, and quills and glow-worms on his face. His arms had bony wings, as if he had been trapped midway in transformation from a skeleton into a bird.
‘Answer me,’ he shouted. ‘What are you doing in my dreams?’
He had the eyes of a bull and the feet of a dog. He kept beating his bony wings, with an expression of tormented ecstasy on his bristling face. I was trying to wrench myself from his calcified grip, when something unpleasant happened to my eyes. I found I was no longer in the forest. I started to scream again, but I heard my own sound somewhere else. The old man laughed. He had the tongue of a cat. He waved his wings over my face and an excruciating pain shot through the back of my eyes and when I looked I saw fierce soldiers behind him. Everything had changed. It was a burning day, and the soldiers were clubbing men and women in a crowd. They hit the women till they became a mass of writhing worms. The pain went through me again and the scene transformed and I saw men bound to stakes, the great ocean behind them, soldiers with guns in front of them.
‘Fire!’ the blind old man commanded.
And the soldiers shot the men for what seemed like three generations. Then things began to change horribly. I felt myself flying at terrific speed, the wind almost snapping my neck. The blind old man flapped his monstrous wings in the heated air. And I became absolutely terrified because I realised for the first time that I had accidentally hurled myself into the blind old man’s dreams.
I flew into a world of violence, of famine, of pullulating hunger, with beggars swarming the city centre, with maggots devouring the inhabitants, with flies eating the eyeballs of the children who were half-dead with starvation, with traffic jams everywhere, and people dying of hypertension at their steering wheels; with gases burning in the air, multiplying the ferocious heat of the sun; with housing projects built by corrupt businessmen collapsing and crushing to death their inhabitants all over the country; with soldiers going mad and shooting at people, emptying their guns at students, butchering their mothers, while riots quivered all over the landscapes; with the prisons overcrowded and exuding an unbearable stench of excrement and blood; with children poisoned by their mother’s milk, the mothers having been poisoned by just about everything; with the rich and powerful gorging themselves at their bacchanalias, their feasts of twenty-one slaughtered cows, their sweat reeking of vintage champagne, seven bands playing for their perfumed guests and weaving their patron’s names in fulsome songs, while the food spilled on the polished floors and the guests trod on them, while the choice delicacies changed into the writhing savoury intestines of the dying children and women, which were gobbled up in celebrations without end.
I saw soldiers in armoured trucks rolling into the city, I saw coup after coup, till our history became an endless rosary necklace of them, each new bead an assassinated head of state, or the secret numbers of failed coup-plotters, executed at dawn.
I saw history as a madman with a machine gun, a madman eating up the twisting flesh of the innocent and the silent.
I saw the blind old man administering potions for warding off evil projections directed at the master politicians.
I saw the blind old man changing, and I knew his secret identity to be that of a master transformer, who could turn into a bat and spy on his enemies.
The old man took me through the insurrectional afternoons, the boiling nights, through days and years merged together, with great events and ordinary happenings taking place
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