Excerpt

Last Thing

LAST THING

(Extract)

 

            For a moment it seemed that Melius was breathing with difficulty and that he was striving against some weaknes. But when the man with the moustache moved he shouted,

            „Pick up the saw, because it doesn’t bother me. You know what I think. If Joco is dead I don’t see why I should have pity on you. Besides you’re revolting; I’ve had a hundred impulses to blow a hole in your stomach from the moment I saw your moustache the first time. But it doesn’t mater, we aren’t parted yet. Stop messing about and take hold of this was.“

            To add emphasis to his words he placed the automatic across his in half.“

            „You weren’t at that school when I was studying there,“ whispered Melius quietly with increased the man with the moustache’s anxiety and he placed the  saw carefully with its sharp teeth on Joco’c back above his hips.

            Joco was cold from the frost and stiff from a death which had happened four hours before. Melius measured out what should be half of Joco’s length.

            „What are you measuring?“ the man with the moustache jeered.

            „A half.“

            „A half,“ the man with the moustache touched his head, „If it’s a lump of cheese or sausage you can talk about a half. But a man, do you hear, subaltern, a man is not sausage. There’s no such thing as half of a man.“

            „I was thinking of half of the weight,“ Melius said by way of excuse.

            „The best thing would be if you cut off his arms also and put one with each half.

            Or perhaps you prefer to saw him along his length?“

            „You swine,“ Melius snapped at him not really knowing why,  „Take hold of the saw with both hands. He’s hard as bone.“

            Then he pulled himself together, swallowed the tears which had flowed down thinking that he might vomit them as his stomach was queasy. As soon as he began to saw he felt the resistance of the vertebrae in the backbone.

            „You,“ Melius was startled and bewildered as a child and he reassured himself, „it can’t be painful for him, I think, with this saw.“

            „You don’t know,“ ventured the man with the moustache trying to gather hope for the last time.

            „Of course I don’t know,“ Melius lowered his head, „Those who do know say that the dead can’t feel pain.“

            „From those who say so, none of them was a dead half,“ said the man with the moustache sharply and for a moment felt he had the advantage.

            „You want to tell me that what we are doing here is hurting Joco?“

            „One thing I know for sure is that he can’t express his pain as he’s dead. More I don’t know. And neither do you.“

            „Then everyone should feel pain who is buried deep in the earth in a grave and in spite of that burying has been done from time out of mind.“

            „You don’t know if all of them don’t in fact feel pain,“ objected the man with the moustache and was pleased with the direction of the discussion.

            Melius was seized by a fear he had never experienced and when after a short while he had recovered he said, „So I don’t know. It’s better that Joco suffer pain from me than from those who would have to plough over him.“

            When he settled over the saw again the man with the moustache shouted at him, „It is criminal what we are doing! It’s almost like a crime. There’s a law which protects the dead. You can’t even touch their graves otherwise you’re up to your neck in it immediately. And worse when cut the dead into pieces. You go to gaol for sure.“

            Melius wasn’t persuaded. He was under a compulsion he couldn’t resist. The compulsion came from so deep within him that it seemed strange.

            „We’re cutting up nothing,“ he said, „And nothing is punishable. In a dark room there is still a crucified blackness. Take hold of the saw with both hands.“

            So they sawed in silence. At the beginning the saw jumped twice then it bit into the body and plunged into it, at first slowly then more powerfully and finally it unexpectedly pierced somewhere and the man with the moustache turned his head aside so that he wouldn’t see. Melius forced himself to think about everything different in the world to free himself from the saw which held him and tore him, Lord save him, it was an absolute swine, as he gazed at it and the blood in Joco which had somehow vanished and turned into a little glittering dust which didn’t flow. From the bowels something steamed out. Melius desperately searched for an idea which would rid him of the present moment. He learnt to fly and left these mountains. He left everything that had happened and had done so a long time ago. So he didn’t know why he had been so afraid. From the sky it wasn’t visible that there were mountains. He was in a world where there were only plains. But that endlessness was worse because there was nowhere to hide when the shooting started and it would have to start sometime. Or better to imagine a time in the future when as many centuries had passed as had from the Glacial period and the scaly lizard Joco had described. Nobody would remain who could remember, there would be no continents and the sea would cover everything, what had happened, molehills and cathedrals and the whole globe uninhabited for a long time. There would only be the circulation of the ocean with the moon reflected in it and the fixed stars and many other worlds. But even this image could not console Melius. Any way he tried to disengage himself with carried the price that anyone else who didn’t succumb to destruction would carry the memory o fit permanently in his mind. This could not be God or the angels but it had to be a human being, an exclusively human subject to decay and through that be able to desire consolation. Because if there were one immortal to offer calm, if he had no notion of what it meant to decay he would albeit unknowingly return under this uprooted tree where the saw had fallen from his hand, where he expected the man with the moustache to say something to him which might bring consolation.

            But he was sweating and pointing in shock at Joco’s head.

            “His hair’s standing on end,“ he said and Melius looked closer.

            „The hair of the dead doesn’t stand on end,“ he spun away heavily from him. „It must have been standing on end before.“

            „A moment ago when his cap fell off it was smooth. Now it’s standing on end.:

            „You’re right,“ said Melius, „It is standing on end. I’ll carry Joco’s head.“

            The man with the moustache was afraid.

            „I mean the half with the head,“ Melius corrected himself and stood up to help the man with the moustache load the lower part on to his shoulders. Thus they carried him with Melius walking in front. It threatened to tip him over here and there but he kept on his feet. When they were deep in the mountains somehow Joco’s hand got in front of his face and he wanted to turn so the man with the moustache could help him. Then he noticed that far behind him the man with the moustache  was ridding himself  of his burden and started to run. There wasn’t much point in calling him to stay. So Melius put his part of Joco carefully on the ground and emptied the whole magazine of his gun after the fleeing man. One of the shots forced the man with the moustache to sit down where he was. He did so deliberately and with concentration. From a pocket he produced a cigarette. He didn’t have time to put it into his mouth. A spasm of cramp crushed it to nothing and he gave up the ghost.

            Melius brought his half of Joco up to the other half which was lying not far from the man with the moustache. He lay down on the frozen earth and leaned on an elbow waiting for what would happen. To start walking with one or other of the two halves was impossible for him. Hell, the man with the moustache was right, he thought. There isn’t a half of a man even when he is cut into two or whatever.

            It seemed that people were coming or it was only a hallucination. He pulled himself to the tree, took hold o fit carefully and, leaning against it, pulled himself to his knees again. He looked at where Joco was lying and though he didn’t know why he was sure that it was for the last time. Joco looked as though he was whole but his face was turned to the ground and both the soles of his feet were turned to the sky, turned inwards somewhat indecisively as those of the living sometimes are.

                                                                Translated by Viera and James Sutherland-Smith