Waiting for the Barbarians Read online

  I speak. “No one would dare to say those things to my face. Who is responsible for the first deposition?”

  He waves a hand and settles back. “Never mind. You will have your chance to reply.”

  So we contemplate each other in the stillness of the morning, till it is time for him to clap his hands for the guard to remove me.

  I think about him a great deal in the solitude of my cell, trying to understand his animosity, trying to see myself as he sees me. I think of the care he has spent on my office. He does not simply hurl my papers in a corner and prop his boots on my desk, but instead takes the trouble to display to me his notion of good taste. Why? A man with the waist of a boy and the muscular arms of a streetfighter crammed into the lilac-blue uniform that the Bureau has created for itself. Vain, hungry for praise, I am sure. A devourer of women, unsatisfied, unsatisfying. Who has been told that one can reach the top only by climbing a pyramid of bodies. Who dreams that one of these days he will put his foot on my throat and press. And I? I find it hard to hate him in return. The road to the top must be hard for young men without money, without patronage, with the barest of schooling, men who might as easily go into lives of crime as into the service of the Empire (but what better branch of service could they choose than the Bureau!).

  Nevertheless, I am not taking easily to the humiliations of imprisonment. Sometimes, sitting on my mat staring at three specks on the wall and feeling myself drift for the thousandth time towards the questions, Why are they in a row? Who put them there? Do they stand for anything?, or finding as I pace the room that I am counting one-two-three-four-five-six-one-two-three . . . , or brushing my hand mindlessly over my face, I realize how tiny I have allowed them to make my world, how I daily become more like a beast or a simple machine, a child’s spinning-wheel, for example, with eight little figures presenting themselves on the rim: father, lover, horseman, thief . . . Then I respond with movements of vertiginous terror in which I rush around the cell jerking my arms about, pulling my beard, stamping my feet, doing anything to surprise myself, to remind myself of a world beyond that is various and rich.

  There are other humiliations too. My requests for clean clothes are ignored. I have nothing to wear but what I brought with me. Each exercise day, under the eye of the guard, I wash one item, a shirt or a pair of drawers, with ash and cold water, and take it back to my cell to dry (the shirt I left to dry in the yard was gone two days later). In my nostrils there is always the mouldy smell of clothing that does not see the sun.

  And worse. Under the monotonous regimen of soup and porridge and tea, it has become an agony for me to move my bowels. I hesitate for days feeling stiff and bloated before I can bring myself to squat over the pail and endure the stabs of pain, the tearing of tissues that accompany these evacuations.

  No one beats me, no one starves me, no one spits on me. How can I regard myself as a victim of persecution when my sufferings are so petty? Yet they are all the more degrading for their pettiness. I remember smiling when the door first closed behind me and the key turned in the lock. It seemed no great infliction to move from the solitariness of everyday existence to the solitude of a cell when I could bring with me a world of thoughts and memories. But now I begin to comprehend how rudimentary freedom is. What freedom has been left to me? The freedom to eat or go hungry; to keep my silence or gabble to myself or beat on the door or scream. If I was the object of an injustice, a minor injustice, when they locked me in here, I am now no more than a pile of blood, bone and meat that is unhappy.

  My evening meal is brought by the cook’s little grandson. I am sure it puzzles him that the old Magistrate has been shut up all alone in a dark room, but he asks no questions. He enters very erect and proud, bearing the tray, while the guard holds the door open. “Thank you,” I say, “I’m so glad you have come, I was getting so hungry . . .” I rest my hand on his shoulder, filling the space between us with human words, while he waits gravely for me to taste and approve. “And how is your granny today?”

  “She is well, sir.”

  “And the dog? Has the dog come back yet?” (From across the yard comes his grandmother’s call.)

  “No, sir.”

  “It is spring, you know, it is the mating season: dogs go visiting, they stay away for days, then they come back without telling you where they have been. You mustn’t be worried, he will come back.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I taste the soup, as he wants me to do, and smack my lips. “Say to your grandmother, thank you for the supper, it is delicious.”

  “Yes, sir.” Again the call: he picks up this morning’s mug and plate and prepares to go.

  “And tell me: have the soldiers come back yet?” I ask quickly.

  “No, sir.”

  I hold the door open and stand for a moment in the doorway listening to the last twitterings of the birds in the trees under the great violet sky while the child crosses the yard with his tray. I have nothing to give him, not even a button; I have not even time to show him how to make his knuckles go click or how to catch his nose in his fist.

  I am forgetting the girl. Drifting towards sleep, it comes to me with cold clarity that a whole day has passed in which I have not thought of her. Worse, I cannot remember certainly what she looks like. From her empty eyes there always seemed to be a haze spreading, a blankness that overtook all of her. I stare into the darkness waiting for an image to form; but the only memory on which I can absolutely rest is of my oiled hands sliding over her knees, her calves, her ankles. I try to recall our few intimacies but confuse them with memories of all the other warm flesh in which I have sheathed myself in the course of a lifetime. I am forgetting her, and forgetting her, I know, deliberately. Not from the moment when I stopped before her at the barracks gate and elected her have I known the root of my need for her; and now I am steadily engaged in burying her in oblivion. Cold hands, cold heart: I remember the proverb, touch my palms to my cheek, sigh in the dark.

  In the dream there is someone kneeling in the shelter of the wall. The square is quite empty; the wind drives the dust in clouds; she huddles behind the collar of her coat, pulls her cap down to cover her face.

  I stand over her. “Where does it hurt?” I say. I feel the words form in my mouth, then hear them emerge thin, bodiless, like words spoken by someone else.

  She brings her legs forward awkwardly and touches her ankles. She is so small that she is almost lost in the man’s coat she wears. I kneel, unlace the capacious woollen socks, unwrap the bandages. The feet lie before me in the dust, disembodied, monstrous, two stranded fish, two huge potatoes.

  I lift one on to my lap and begin to chafe it. Tears well from behind her eyelids and run down her cheeks. “It is sore!” she wails in a tiny voice. “Ssh,” I say, “I will keep you warm.” I lift the other foot and hug the two together. The wind pours dust on us; there is grit on my teeth. I wake up with aching gums and blood in my mouth. The night is still, the moon is dark. I lie for a while looking up into blackness, then slide back into the dream.

  I enter the barracks gateway and face a yard as endless as the desert. There is no hope of reaching the other side, but I plod on, carrying the girl, the only key I have to the labyrinth, her head nodding against my shoulder, her dead feet drooping on the other side.

  There are other dreams in which the figure that I call the girl changes shape, sex, size. In one dream there are two shapes that arouse horror in me: massive and blank, they grow and grow till they fill all the space in which I sleep. I wake up choked, shouting, my throat full.

  The texture of the days, on the other hand, is as dull as porridge. Never before has my nose been so rubbed in the quotidian. The flow of events in the outside world, the moral dimension of my plight, if that is what it is, a plight, even the prospect of defending myself in court, have lost all interest under the pressure of appetite and physical functions and the boredom of living one ho
ur after another. I have caught a cold; my whole being is preoccupied in sniffing and sneezing, in the misery of being simply a body that feels itself sick and wants to be well.

  * *

  One afternoon the faint irregular scrape and chink of the bricklayers’ trowels on the other side of the wall suddenly ceases. Lying on my mat, I prick my ears: there is a faraway hum in the air, a faint electric quality to the still afternoon that fails to resolve itself into distinguishable sounds but leaves me tense and restless. A storm? Though I press my ear to the door I can make out nothing. The barracks yard is empty.

  Later the trowels resume their chink-chink.

  Towards evening the door opens and my little friend enters with my supper. I can see that he is bursting to tell me something; but the guard has come in with him and stands with a hand on his shoulder. So only his eyes speak to me: glowing with excitement, I can swear they say that the soldiers have returned. In which case why not bugles and cheering, why not horses trotting across the great square, why not the noise of preparations for a feast? Why does the guard grip the boy so tightly and whip him away before I can give him a kiss on his shaven skull? The obvious answer is that the soldiers have returned, but not in triumph. If so, I must beware.

  Later in the evening there is a burst of noise from the yard and a hubbub of voices. Doors are opened and slammed, feet tramp back and forth. Some of what is said I can hear clearly: talk not of strategies or barbarian armies but of aching feet and exhaustion, an argument about sick men who must have beds. Within an hour all is quiet again. The yard is empty. Therefore there are no prisoners. That at least is cause for joy.

  * *

  It is mid-morning and I have had no breakfast. I pace my room, my stomach rumbling like a hungry cow’s. At the thought of salty porridge and black tea my saliva runs, I cannot help it.

  Nor is there any sign that I will be let out, though this is an exercise day. The bricklayers are at work again; from the yard come sounds of everyday activity; I even hear the cook calling to her grandson. I beat on the door but no one pays any attention.

  Then in mid-afternoon the key scrapes in the lock and the door opens. “What do you want?” says my warder. “Why have you been banging on the door?” How he must detest me! To spend days of one’s life keeping watch on a closed door and attending to the animal needs of another man! He has been robbed of his freedom too, and thinks of me as the robber.

  “Are you not letting me out today? I haven’t had anything to eat.”

  “Is that what you called me for? You’ll get your food. Learn some patience. You’re too fat anyway.”

  “Wait. I have to empty my bucket. It stinks in here. I want to wash the floor. I want to wash my clothes too. I can’t appear in front of the Colonel in clothes that smell like this. It will only bring disgrace on my warders. I need hot water and soap and a rag. Let me quickly empty my bucket and fetch hot water from the kitchen.”

  My guess about the Colonel must be right, for he does not contradict me. He opens the door wider and stands aside. “Hurry up!” he says.

  There is only a scullery maid in the kitchen. She gives a start when the two of us walk in, in fact even seems about to run away. What stories have people been telling about me?

  “Give him some hot water,” the guard orders. She ducks her head and turns to the stove where there is always a great cauldron of steaming water.

  Over my shoulder I say to the guard, “A bucket—I will fetch a bucket for the water.” In a few strides I am across the kitchen to the dim recess where, along with sacks of flour and salt and crushed millet and dried peas and beans, the mops and brooms are kept. On a nail at head-height is the key to the cellar where the sides of mutton are hung. In an instant I have pocketed it. When I turn I have a wooden bucket in my hand. I hold it up while the girl ladles boiling water in. “How are you?” I say. Her hand trembles so much that I have to take the ladle from her. “Can I have a little soap and an old rag, please?”

  Back in my cell I strip and wash in the luxuriously warm water. I wash my one spare pair of drawers, which smells like rotten onions, wring it out, hang it on the nail behind the door, and empty the bucket on the paved floor. Then I lie down to wait for nightfall.

  * *

  The key turns smoothly in the lock. How many people besides myself know that the cellar key unlocks the door to my prison-room as well as the large cupboard in the main barracks-hall, that the key to the suite of rooms over the kitchen duplicates the key to the armoury door, that the key to the north-west tower stairway also opens the north-east tower stairway, the smaller cupboard in the hall, and the hatch over the waterpipe in the courtyard? One does not spend thirty years immersed in the minutiae of the life of a tiny settlement for nothing.

  The stars twinkle out of a clear black sky. Through the bars of the yard gate comes the gleam of a fire on the square beyond. Beside the gate, if I strain my eyes, I can make out a dark shape, a man sitting against the wall or curled up in sleep. Does he see me in the doorway of my cell? For minutes I stand alert. He does not stir. Then I begin to edge along the wall, my bare feet making whispering noises on the patches of gravel.

  I turn the corner and pass the kitchen door. The next door leads to my old apartment upstairs. It is locked. The third and last door stands open. It is the door of the little room sometimes used as a sickbay, sometimes simply to quarter men in. At a crouch, feeling with my hand before me, I creep towards the dim blue square of the barred window, fearful of stumbling over the bodies whose breathing I hear all about me.

  One strand begins to separate from the skein: the sleeper at my feet breathes fast, at each exhalation giving a little moan. Is he dreaming? I pause while a few inches from me, like a machine, he continues to pant and moan in the dark. Then I creep past.

  I stand at the window and look out across the town square, half expecting campfires, lines of tethered horses and stacked arms, rows of tents. But there is almost nothing to see: the embers of a single dying fire, and perhaps the gleam of two white tents far away under the trees. So the expeditionary force is not back! Or is it possible that these few souls here are all that is left of it? My heart stops at the thought. But that is not possible! These men have not been to war: at worst they have been roaming the up-river country, hunting down unarmed sheep-herders, raping their women, pillaging their homes, scattering their flocks; at best they have met no one at all—certainly not the gathered barbarian clans from whose fury the Third Bureau is engaged in protecting us.

  Fingers as light as a butterfly’s wing touch my ankle. I drop to my knees. “I am thirsty,” confides a voice. It is the man who was panting. So he was not asleep.

  “Quietly, my son,” I whisper. Staring, I can make out the whites of his upturned eyeballs. I touch his forehead: he is feverish. His hand comes up and grips mine. “I have been so thirsty!” he says.

  “I will bring you water,” I whisper in his ear, “but then you must promise to be quiet. There are sick men here, they must sleep.”

  The shadow beside the gate has not moved. Perhaps there is nothing there, perhaps only an old sack or a stack of firewood. I tiptoe across the gravel to the trough where the soldiers wash. The water is not clean but I cannot afford to unstop the pipe. A battered pot hangs at the side of the trough. I scoop it full and tiptoe back.

  The boy tries to sit up but is too weak. I support him while he drinks.

  “What happened?” I whisper. One of the other sleepers stirs. “Are you hurt or are you sick?”

  “I’m so hot!” he groans. He wants to throw his blanket aside but I restrain him. “You must sweat the fever out,” I whisper. He shakes his head slowly from side to side. I hold his wrist till he sinks back into sleep.

  There are three bars set in a wooden frame: all the downstairs windows of the barracks block are barred. I brace my foot against the frame, grip the middle bar, and heave. I sweat and s
train, there is a stab of pain in my back, but the bar does not budge. Then all of a sudden the frame cracks and I have to cling to prevent myself from falling backwards. The boy begins moaning again, another sleeper clears his throat. I almost shout with surprise at the pain that comes when I put my weight on my right leg.

  The window itself is open. Forcing the bars to one side, I push my head and shoulders through the gap, work my way out, and tumble to earth at last behind the row of cropped bushes that runs along the north wall of the barracks. All I can think of is the pain, all that I desire is to be left to lie in the easiest position I can find, on my side with my knees raised toward my chin. For an hour at least, while I could be pursuing my escape, I lie there, hearing through the open window the sighs of the sleepers, the voice of the boy mumbling to himself. The last embers of the fire on the square die. Man and beast are asleep. It is the hour before dawn, the coldest hour. I feel the chill of the earth enter my bones. If I lie here longer I will freeze and be trundled back to my cell in the morning in a barrow. Like a wounded snail I begin to creep along the wall towards the dark mouth of the first street leading off the square.

  The gate to the little area behind the inn lies back rotten on its hinges. The area itself smells of decay. Peelings, bones, slops, ash are hurled out here from the kitchen to be forked into the ground; but the earth has grown tired, the fork that buries this week’s refuse turns up last week’s. During the day the air is alive with flies; at dusk the blackbeetle and cockroach wake.

  Beneath the wooden stairway that leads up to the balcony and servants’ quarters is a recess where wood is stored and where the cats retire when it rains. I crawl in and curl up on an old bag. It smells of urine, it is certainly full of fleas, I am so cold that my teeth chatter; but at this moment all that occupies me is the palliation of the pain in my back.