Chapter 1

 

A country’s flag is a helicopter; gasoline is necessary to keep the flag aloft; the flag isn’t made of fabric, but of metal; it waves less out in the wind, facing nature.

 

Let’s move on to geography, we’re still in a place that precedes geography, in the pre-geographic period. After History there is no more geography.

            The country is unfinished, like a sculpture. Look at its geography: it lacks terrain, this unfinished sculpture. The neighboring country invades to complete the sculpture: warrior-sculptors.

 

Massacre as seen from above: sculpture. Bodily remains could be the beginning of other projects.

 

With some effort, a dog was plucked from the soil. Not a small tree, but a dog.

            Animals don’t resist like the botanical world, or like a hat. Hats get blown away by the wind, but dogs don’t and trees never do. But sometimes a commotion comes through and nature shows off one of its splendors: evil. Hats, dogs, and even trees are all blown away.

 

Johana left the funeral home and went into a bar where men were stupidly singing the national anthem because there was an important game on. She lowered her eyes and asked for a glass of wine. We don’t serve wine to women, said the man rudely; Don’t interrupt men when they’re singing the anthem. Johana had a stone in her pocket, a forceful stone; you could tell it was a forceful stone, small but dense; there is energy in things, a violent energy that the eyes can detect; Johana took the stone from her pocket and set it on top of the counter. This isn’t a lamp, she said. If it turns on, it’ll blind you. But she didn’t say that, she thought it. The man understood. He said: If you want wine, I’ll give it to you. He went in search of a glass, filled it with wine.

           

A starving machine. Johana stands up and spits on the machine. You put coins in it to listen to music, you don’t spit. Coins, not spit, you see?

 

Johana goes to pay and argues about the price: It’s too much, she says. It’s a glass of wine, said the man, I’ll just let you have it. Don’t come back here again.

            The man was smoking a cigarette, he was handsome, young. Johana looked at him and left. But she hadn’t managed to leave even after she’d walked a hundred meters from the door, because she was still looking at him.

 

Tanks were entering the city. Military sounds entered the city, and serene music went into hiding throughout the city. Someone out in the street was wildly attempting to sell newspapers. Tanks were coming into the city, the news rushed into the paper.

            But that doesn’t happen; eyes were rushing over the news, people were uneasy; women weren’t dying, but they could hear people dying.

 

Johana wets her pants.

            I wet my pants, she says. Excuse me.

            (The man beside her is not her brother.)

 

An extraordinary woman stares at an ant for a long time. Yes, an ant. A stupid, black thing. A black and holy land that advances along the world of the minuscule, down below our feet even, there are things that are below our feet, don’t you know?

            An ant that will be pierced by a woman’s impartial needle. A magnificent woman. They say she got married by making phrases from the gospel vibrate: all the men heard seductive declarations in those mild words, those sentences that concealed the world’s eroticism.

 

The men who are strongest join the army, the men who are strongest rape the women who are left behind, the wives of their fleeing enemies.

            A soldier with a very red face forcefully lowers his manly pants to the ground. Forcefully his hands remove the dress, as if yanking back curtains to reveal an anatomical oddity: large breasts, quivering. The man’s face is even redder now, and his penis is red as well. Red matter fornicates with a weak woman for a long time. It’s Friday, and there’s still a tree out in the yard, even though tanks are rolling through the streets. Johana isn’t the woman beneath the soldier, but she heard about what happened to the woman beneath the soldier.

 

The noise heard while reading a book was the noise of airplanes in the sky. They don’t bomb during the day, said Klaus.

            Klaus set aside the book and looked directly at the noise. This isn’t the sound of reading, he said. Nor is it the natural sound of the sky.

            The planes had infiltrated nature’s heights and were frightening.

            There aren’t any sailors, the sailors are all gone. They closed the sea.

            There’s a boat anchored in the water. It never leaves its place.

           

When it comes to philosophy, quick solutions should be reduced to a minimum. Careful study comes to you in old age: this sort of slowness is disappearing everywhere. May unending slowness abound.          

 

Children with blank notebooks are content. In childhood, attempts are what matter.

 

A fragment of a news report becomes the starting point for a poem. Johana is quiet and the newspaper in her hands is unquiet. Who was killed today?

            In the morning tanks appear to be unique objects, things that were created for the sake of making the streets hygienic. They clean the plazas, clean up the trash in the plazas. They clean up language in the plazas and cafés, and they clean up language because when the tanks pass by, men speak softly. Have you noticed that? It’s Johana who’s saying this to Klaus.

            You’ve never seen a tank at work. This country is still perfect, this street is still perfect; no bomb has ever blown up near you.

            It’s good to have our enemies this close, driving down our streets in tanks; this way we can be sure that we’re not going to be bombed.

            Tanks pass by in the streets. The streets are named for our heroes. They don’t understand our language; they don’t know how to pronounce the names. They stumble on the pronunciation, they can’t put the accents on the right syllables. Tanks don’t have time to learn languages.

 

Klaus left his job, but just today. He works in a typography shop, and what’s more he’s an editor; he wants to publish books that upset the tanks.

            This isn’t a book, it’s a little bomb.

            You want to upset tanks with prose?

 

A snail, though just barely, since it’s so small, passed beside Klaus, right next to his feet.

            Look at how snails just barely move, said Klaus. Johana laughed.

            Klaus suddenly raised his foot and forcefully crushed the snail. The sound was audible.

            Why did you do that?

            Klaus didn’t reply.

            To see nothing is to remain hidden.

           

There’s too much asphalt in this country. Courageous men no longer have enough forest to hide themselves in.

            A third of the men of the city were in hiding. The tanks didn’t like the men that were in hiding. But the victors still displayed a certain ambivalence. They passed by in the streets and sometimes they smiled, while at other times they were cruel.

            Yesterday they threatened to smash Klaus’s glasses. Klaus kneeled; he kissed a man’s boots.

            Klaus recalled his childhood: he felt ashamed whenever he didn’t know how to solve an algebra problem. Red-faced, assigning numbers to the left of a symbol and other numbers to the right of the same symbol. Those who could solve equations were heroes to him at that age. The eras in which we admire mathematicians are good eras.

            Klaus hadn’t felt ashamed when he kissed the right boot of the soldier. Later, yes. Removed from the action. Because when you’re afraid you aren’t ashamed, or the shame occupies less space than the fear, which is enormous. And for that reason it doesn’t exist.

            Only later on did he remember how he used to feel ashamed, standing in front of the chalkboard with an equation on it, the teacher staring at him, and not knowing how to get out of the situation. He had the sensation of being in a labyrinth; each equation was a labyrinth from which he didn’t know how to escape.

            I don’t know how to solve this, said little Klaus. And it was then that he saw the teacher start to smile.

            The teacher didn’t smile much. He never smiled. He only smiled when a student made an error or when a student lowered his arms and said: I don’t know how to solve this.

            The teacher would then give the order for Klaus to lower his pants, and would tell him to bend over the desk, bum in air. He hit Klaus with a thick piece of wood. Hit him three times, hard. And Klaus hated numbers three times as much.

 

Shame doesn’t exist in nature. Animals know the law: strength, strength, strength. The weak ones fall and do what the strong ones want. A flood, a downpour, a mammal that’s heavier and faster than a mammal that’s smaller. Primates, reptiles, big fish and small fish, waterfalls: have you ever seen an animal fall? There isn’t the least hint of compassion between animals and water; ever since the world began the sea has been swallowing up dogs by the thousands. There isn’t the least hint of compassion between water and plants, between crumbling soil and tiny animals that have just been born. Nature goes along with what’s strong and the city goes along with what’s strong: What’s to doubt? What do you want?

            There aren’t any unjust animals, don’t be an idiot. There aren’t unjust floods or evil landslides. Injustice isn’t part of the elements of nature; a dog, yes, and a tree and a body of water, but not injustice. If injustice turned into an organism—a thing that can die—then, yes, it would be a part of nature.

            Man wanted to introduce into nature things invented by the weak; the weak invented injustice, so that they could later invent compassion. But not even the calmest waters can fathom the meaning of injustice. Do you think it’s possible to surpass the benevolence of a chemical substance that can be rendered as simply as H2O? Don’t be an idiot. Look at the tanks: shoot with them or against them. Life during wartime means only one of two things: with them or against them. If you don’t want to die, kiss the boots of the strongest, that’s all there is to it.

 

Meanwhile, the unclean heavenly bodies maintain their gentle harmony.

            Johana looks out the window. Klaus, her lover, hasn’t arrived yet. So long as her lover hasn’t arrived, the woman doesn’t leave the window. Windows exist because lovers exist, and because those lovers aren’t home yet. Windows cease to exist when the people you love return home. Look at the cold, the storm outside.

            Klaus still hasn’t returned. Will Klaus come back with the two arms he left with?

            The world sometimes amputates the arms of men who are on the exterior side of the window. Look at the world, the world’s got a blade.