Sacred and Terrible Smell
What was that sacred and terrible, elusive smell in the air this time? My name is Ambrosius Saint-Miro, the locals call me “Ambrosius Pyhä-Mirä” and in Graad they call me “Svjata-Mira”. “Diduska?” they ask, their eyes wide with affection, but I answer them: “No. I am not your diduska.” I am Ambrosius Santa-Mira from Mesque, Ambrosio Hagiamira, I am ambrosia, the holy world. You chose me, authorised me with your life, your thoughts, your mind cabinet. At night, when you went to sleep and tomorrow morning, from the window of public transport. But what I do is no longer a conversation, there are no arguments here, no sides to choose. The time for doubt is over.
I come once in every era. It is a great fortune to live when I am in the world. I am innocent and now you are too. If you decided, then it was either right or wrong. If I decide, my decision is what is. When God still seemed like an interesting idea to you, I was Pius Pericarnassus; I was Ernö Pasternak – you wanted to be betrayed and slaughtered. I made you sing Pasternakian songs. That’s how fierce I am and my unnecessary war. You wanted to hate me then. I was Franconegro, you were nationalists, you wanted international, black coloured banknotes and militarism. Wanted to work in the factory, serve God. And medieval-industrial architecture, wanted to live under a concrete arch. I was a woman, Dolores Dei when it seemed to you: I want a mother, a perfect mother. I had beautiful breasts, I was young and so were you, you wanted to fall in love and I let you. Humanism, and Renaissance, care for each other. I sent you to school and taught you languages. You got tired of me, and I died. You wanted a world where I didn’t exist. Then I was your innocent Sola, an indifferent girl, sitting with folded hands and watching you make coups. “Oh, do it yourself, make mistakes, don’t learn anything,” I thought.
I was a citizen. I went from country to country, from one insel to another, and introduced you to my thoughts. Everywhere I went, I infected you with my cynicism and nihilism. On the radio, I talked about how everything is wrong, how everything is equal, and pohhui, who cares? Presidents, kings, princes, and sheikhs – everyone was afraid of me, no one wanted to let me into their suzerainty. They didn’t want me in their publishing houses, on the big screen, or on their talk shows. But then, when I signed books in the bookstore, they saw! You broke down. And when I spoke on the radio, ratings went up. I was brilliantly popular. Thank you, you made me happy. They let me into their talk shows and there I showed what human thoughts are capable of. You may be right too. And how witty you are, you kept listening and laughing. You called your whole family to gather around the radio and together you listened, realising how special you actually are: “I could have a supermodel girlfriend too,” I said, “but I have chosen solitude. That would be bourgeois. Dear supermodel, of course, I could spend the night with you. We would have fun, you would be as high as a kite on cocaine, and I would stick a pipette full of milk up your ass and watch it squirt out. Of course, I have thought about it. But that wouldn’t be me anymore. That would be against everything I believe in.”
But that’s a show. That’s not why you chose me. I was the only one who asked: what was that sacred and terrible smell in the air this time? I don’t have such weakness and arrogance that I would tell you what it is. I don’t pretend to know what a terrible beauty is for you. In your heart’s secret. The end of the story – I’ll show you. I want to tear the world apart layer by layer. And this time it’s not a deception, a figure of speech, it’s realpolitik. I attack. First Revachol, then Graad, and then further. It never ends. I open one front after another. Then, when everyone who isn’t with me is dead and the Pale sweeps over the whole world, then, please! Here are terminals where you can fall dead by yourself. Go of your own free will, it doesn’t mean anything. I’m evacuating the world. We’ll go live in the past. In front of the polyclinic, on a park bench, you come back! You’re all under the parade, the rain is pouring down, and you’re talking. Your friends come across the square, in a snowy city, their collars raised. Only the memory remains of this world, an entroponetic catastrophe.
You could never quite say exactly what it is. Even when your eyes were turned inside out and staring straight into your head, you couldn’t say. The ghost, slipped through all the lost places, irrevocability. I give it to you to take, it smells in the palm of your hands, the sacred and terrible smell, rub your face against it now. The Pale is ripe with colours, it seeps from the slimy cracks, I open the rib curtains, intermediate frequencies, and all the terrible lost colours of the past come out. Everything is new again.
This is where nihilism leads. This is no longer what could be or what might not be. This is it.
The whole world is in the immediate zone of an entroponetic catastrophe.
Sayfa 60 - Unofficial English TranslationKitabı okudu
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