Three Accounts of Utopia, I
Tem wakes from the dream in darkness and gropes for touch of familiar object to reassure cut hands. There isn’t. Face down on cold floor and the turbulent aspect of the dream was not just of the dream but of the world. Everything tumbling. Now shaking head for clarity he up rises to sitting position. He still cannot see but it is better than the alternative. This is the belly of something not of his world (until now called it the world). So faced with blind risk Tem concludes not-seeing is better.
From behind closed eyelids he seeks to excavate the dream. When it wasn’t formless and empty it was all swirling and he can’t tell what part of it was shuffled memories and what part from nowhere. It is pushing and trying the soft surfaces where it can until his skull feels swollen to cracking. If he gets it into order maybe it will rest and he can. Rest.
The first part of the dream is horizon untouched, wind blowing dust over hill. But even this first is hurt by the future which comes out of it like a great breath and Tem when he tries to recall the hill can no longer see it without — — — standing atop.
The second part (counting fingerless he thinks this is the second) is home, the city and all its people, faces he knew or knew-but-did-not-know. This one goes a little further, the faces become altered strange and beastly, and what was the city becomes a village, shrinking and twisting in on itself until once-features are curiosities and home is a small place in somebody else’s large world.
Before Tem gets any further a big rumbling sounds in the real world if it is the real world and it feels as if the whole structure must come crashing down around him but as far as he can tell it does not. Tem is still in his own head but he senses the change before his eyes open and knows not-seeing is no option. Blinking awake—a blind oval of colourless light has taken the place of the opposite wall.
A silhouette approaches through the new opening. On either side taller shapes. It squats very close to Tem. Its features still obscure in the glow but its breath unmistakable to Tem’s nostrils—smell of death.
‘Boy.’
A man’s voice. Tem has not been boy for some summers. A slap to side of head. Not hard like before—
‘Wake.’
—but not gentle either. Second slap—thigh. Tem is naked.
‘Wake boy. Up-up-up. Come.’
The man is speaking the tongue but he resents the words and they come out sideways.
‘Look!’
Tem has been naked before but never like this. He raises eyes wary. The man is looking down at him cross-legged on the floor. Tem indicates he is awake. The eyes (behind eyeglass) dart forth over the territory of skin in front of them—calculating value—never resting in direct contact all the time the man addresses Tem.
‘You arrive. You give trouble. We expect return.’
This word expect is a higher one than Tem is accustomed to hearing the man employ and the man is wielding it all wrong so that accidental confusions proliferate. Tem tries to ask clarification but it dies in his throat.
‘No-talk. I tell: I am Kristof. You Sam—’
Tem hoarsely tells him ‘Tem.’
‘You Sam. No-question. I tell. Now—we arrive home. You bring since many weeks for to entertain.’
Tem is Tem but the hardness in Kristof’s voice makes him wonder. Rebellious impulse seizes him: push aside pillar of grey interrupting the sky and run directly into that featureless light. He watches Kristof’s mouth awaiting some phrase to solidify things or dissolve them utterly. It is that fragile the situation. He can feel latent truth matter threatening the underside.
‘We back in one-hour, Sam, for to dress you,’ Kristof says and rises.
Tem does not ask. He watches Kristof and the others go back into the light. Free from scrutiny he watches a dimly shimmering skyline begin to take definite shape. There are structures fiercely tall lined in front of the sun. Desperate he seeks any familiar landmark among their number as the eye slowly shuts.
Tem stands in a bright room. He was brought here blindfolded but now isn’t. Some of the walls are featureless peeling. Others are lined with countless items of clothing which they try on him in turn. One nameless man puts each new thing on him. Then he roughly prods and inspects and as roughly yanks it off again to try the next. He makes little tired noises in his throat the whole time. The clothes are nothing like what these foreigners wear but not much like home either. It is all headdresses and skirts of leaves—all too colourful and wrong to the touch. Tem is made to think of the tribesmen said to have lived on the plains before the town.
And then at the same time there is this other man this Kristof in front of him trying urgently to instruct him in—something.
‘Sam. You will being savage,’ he grunts. It is hard to tell whether he intends command or prediction. He is more dishevelled than before. His thin face quivers and sweats.
The second man is doing something to Tem’s clothes again. A third runs back and forth fetching things in response to the second’s barked instructions in their own tongue.
‘You are here for to entertain people-here. We bring you from’ (Kristof stretches his arms out and up in a broad gesture that means many) ‘miles. People-here are not seeing you before. Frighted.’
Why should they have seen Tem before? Why should they be (he accepts the word in its wrongness) frighted? Tem doubts Kristof’s you.
‘But we bring you,’ he goes on, ‘put you at front of them, give them show. Not-danger.’
One of the nameless men is busy yanking off Tem’s headdress now. The other comes nearer with a brush dipped in yellow paint. Tem flinches in surprise as the brush angles towards his cheek. The man laughs as if at frightened child and says something mock soothing in his own language. Kristof turns and spits something impatient to him. The man’s face turns sour and silent.
Kristof says, ‘People want for to see you roar. I tame big fearsome Sam since many weeks.’
Tem can feel splotchy lines being painted onto his cheek yellow on black. He wants to return to the dream.
Kristof says ‘You are rare. Special. People-here see you, people-here is amazed.’
The other man says something then softly lowers Tem’s eyelids with his fingers. He begins to paint over them. The third man is shouting something and the brush stops for a second. Tickling sensation poised on eyelid.
The third part of the dream is—
Kristof says, ‘You understand.’
The third part is a river outside the town where Tem and his friends sometimes go to fish or swim. It is clear blue water this far from the town’s dirt or at least in the dream it is so. The gathering bears the mark of routine but today is different. This time there appear six or seven thin shadows across the water that fright the fish as they pass, and a vessel struggling upriver against the tide. Tem’s party—three—watches apprehensive these grey men in too-heavy clothes and their strange boat. There is a moment of huddled conference for each party, in different tongues, before the middle grey man shouts choked syllables across the water, and the ones either side of him reach into their coats, and the fish scatter for good.
Kristof says, ‘You understand.’
It is a question Tem realizes. Does he understand? What if not why. He considers not-saying but it is no use. ‘Yes.’
Kristof claps his hands. ‘Now roar.’
The cage is small and there is nothing to sit down on because Tem is not meant to sit. He can barely lift his arm without touching bars. These are made not of metal but of some flimsy wood. He grips them lightly so as not to bend and snap them accidental. It would be easy to get out of the cage if that was the point. Even it is not attached to the floor. They made him stand on chalk X and they lifted it over him and now he is to stay there.
The cage stands in a large dim room. People are everywhere bustling ensuring everything Tem included is in its right place for Kristof’s show. For now the space is still musty and uncertain. Tem does not like the air or the prospect. His throat is hoarse with imposition of silence interrupted by expectation of savagery. He spent must have been half an hour roaring at Kristof in obedience turning anger.
This is the next day or the day after that which is the day after or the day after the day after vessel and big darkness. He is never sure when they have allowed-imposed a full night’s rest and when not. They keep him mostly in dark places like this but quieter. He wonders what all portends—what the space is being prepared for. The ritual clearly—the ‘show’—but there is no sympathetic gathering and Tem does not think himself an attraction.
Someone calls out. Lone urgent syllable.
Kristof in bright billowing fabrics magician-like emerges from some dark opening and strides past Tem towards the other side of the room. Peering after him Tem sees a new detail. Kristof touches the wall—which shivers. Tem realizes it is not wall but vast curtain. This is a stage and a bigger one than he knew existed. He is routinely surprised by the scale of this place. Superfluous people begin to vanish until only Tem and the cage and Kristof remain. Kristof throws him a look of strange excitement then lifts the curtain and slips under.
At once a frightening roar. It takes Tem’s ears a moment to process it as the applause of an expectant crowd. Kristof bellows over them. Tem realizes without understanding that there is none of that rough and careless wrong when he speaks his own tongue. Stern censure and anxious broken instruction are gone. Kristof is in his element. The crowd quiets now and Kristof speaks with confidence—about Tem—about Sam. He senses the rising excitement of crowd and ringmaster. The introduction is almost over. Kristof ends his incantation. Cheers. On this signal the curtain shivers and begins to rise. A piercing thin light (phantom of blind oval returns) falls first on Tem’s feet and then rises to reveal his body and surroundings—the painted artifice of trees and sand dunes behind him a mockery of home.
With curtain raised cheers turn to gasps. Tem shields his eyes from the too-bright sun direct opposite and squints to make out more than a writhing mass beyond the stage. Again he hears ‘Sam’. Kristof is pointing urgently at the cage and playing interpreter-narrator. Tem’s squinting and covering his eyes is being transformed beyond him into an alien aggression he can only imagine. What is he here? The crowd’s hundreds answer him. Their faces wear apprehension and wonder. A child on parent’s shoulders wrestles delight and fear. Sam (word creeps into head slimy and unwelcome) is a sensation. He lowers arm to side and tries to assume a relaxed pose. The mass has solidified into real images and become more frightening. The crowd stands in a vast square and spills upwards-outwards onto the stairs marking its edges. Above all rise ominous structures Tem does not want to consider. He did not think there could be so many or so much. The sky is pink with sunset.
The fourth part of the dream is blood pooling and trickling into the water by the reeds.
Kristof is still gesturing towards the cage, and now he is cautious stepping towards it. Why? Tem is no threat but Sam he supposes is. The ritual has conjured unreal danger. Kristof is bent double, his long fingers at the end of his long arms outstretched towards Tem who almost expects fire. Tem shrinks back—the crowd reads in this some intent and shrinks back opposite—until he is against the back wall of the cage. This he almost collapses with mere touch and steadies back to rightness with slipping-through-palm-sweat. He thinks he hears buried screams in the crowd. Kristof is coming still with a manic glint in his eyes and shouting might-be incantations.
He throws some phrase out to the crowd and then his gaze snaps back to the cage and he speaks real words. Quieter with urgency. But loud enough to let the crowd hear he is speaking.
‘You do good. People-here excited,’ he begins and the crowd gazes after in blind anticipation—the words are lost on them and they on the words. ‘They frighted.’
Tem wonders how his head—Kristof’s—can hold all this and less. Which knows harmless and yet says harm and halfway-to-believes it. Where does he sit in between truths Tem wonders. Tem whose Sam whose head is frighted into incoherence by the forceful wrong of it and loses all its sentences and names in the sky carried upwards by Kristof’s whirlwind which is all part of the show.
Who says, ‘Kristof,’ spitting it through the bars and then says also ‘I am frighted—afraid.’
Which delights Kristof no measure who says, ‘Yes Sam—they are frighted, they are affrayed! You do good.’
Kristof who is not listening and not capable of listening. Tem loses something.
‘Now,’ says Kristof, ‘we give them fright. You roar.’
It is not a question but Tem-Sam who is absent lost between shades answers anyway. He does not roar.
‘I am Tem,’ he says, ‘I was born between people you do not know in a city you do not know in a vanished world that was at the time real but now it is all a mirage and’—people having gone quiet staring uncomprehending—‘I do not know you or this Kristof’—he is not looking at Kristof or the crowd but perhaps the pink sinking sky—‘I thought earlier that this stage was the largest I had seen I said it to myself a bigger one than I knew existed but now the old country will not sit straight in my head function of concussion and I think perhaps the stage is not impressive perhaps it is only that I find myself here without warning or explanation perhaps only on this account does it’—he runs short of words here and it seems as if he will stop but he does not—‘tower does it tower over me that is to say I must get my bearings I must know where is the way home which way do I take home’—the crowd is unheard muttering discontent and seeking translation from Kristof who stares and listens equalling them in incomprehension—‘is there a boat back down the river and over the sea over the sea and back down the river over the river and back down the sea back to my town which is called’—a ringing starts in his ears and he speaks louder—‘which is called’—but shattered places and names sink beneath it—‘which is called.’
—and he slumps forward sudden deadweight against the front wall of the cage. A bar snaps and the whole thing is knocked to the ground where it rolls off and he remains. The crowd erupts into gasps and exclamations. Kristof is surprised but not lost. On all fours Tem closes his eyes and waits for the convulsions—
The fifth part is dragged amidships and the sudden darkness coming over frightful quick and the men approaching formless in the dark and it goes that far just that far before the bad thing happens and black.
—which do not come.
Enter SAM, a young, intimidating savage in war-paint and traditional garb. He appears catatonic, on all fours in the grips of his vision. The sun is almost set. Exotic space, backdrops painted to resemble sand dunes and palm trees. Centre-stage, a cylindrical wooden cage with a round top and no bottom, toppled over. Standing left front is KRISTOF, a flamboyant ringmaster dressed in luxurious fabrics. He stares at SAM with a gleaming eye, poised like a snake ready to strike. The toppled cage is between them, rolling a little before coming to a complete stop. Brief tableau.
Nondescript ATTENDANTS carrying torches come onstage from left and right, and begin to light the bracketed torches in the walls with their own. SAM begins to stir from his paralysis, appearing disoriented. KRISTOF steps around the toppled cage to crouch down by SAM and speak to him directly.
KRISTOF speaks briefly to SAM in the language of the savages.
KRISTOF rises and turns to the crowd with a flourish, his coattails dancing in the air with the motion. SAM watches impassively.
KRISTOF. [pointing towards SAM] Do you see this? [He gestures to the crowd for quiet as they respond.] The savage’s anger! His people do not understand what we have here. He has never seen anything like this! Now, [pause; he begins to pace back and forth from left to right, right to left] ladies and gentlemen, witness the savagery of the creature brought before you. What he spoke just now may have been mere babble to most of us, but to an anthropologist like myself—well, I’ll tell you, his words were an incantation, a curse upon the very substance of our civilization. [Uproar. KRISTOF gestures for calm again. During the speech, SAM slowly works himself into a kneeling position, and rests his palms facing outwards on his knees.] Never fear! There is no such thing as magic, ladies and gentlemen, and my attendants, if need be, can handle young Sam. But [raising a finger, as if appealing for the audience’s patience. They hang on his every word] let me speak to the savage again.
SAM, comprehending nothing, seems nevertheless to sense a climax approaching by sheer rhythm. KRISTOF turns back towards him, approaches and stretches out a hand. He does not have to say anything. As his hand touches his specimen’s shoulder, SAM is already roaring. The curtain falls.
which is all part of the
Tem thinks: home is nebulous. It is however much later it is in whatever place this is—these things too are nebulous—and he and Sam have been standing still for a long time. The people passing are families with young children. They stop to look at Sam. The parents point at his clothes or his face paint (he has been dressed again) and look to their children’s faces expectant of awe. They think Sam statuary or taxidermy. Tem is unsure himself.
Kristof comes by more and more rarely. When he does he speaks only to Sam who moves only a very little now. Kristof tells Sam to be more aggressive and so Sam bares his teeth. Everything is at a great distance and Tem struggles to believe it has anything to do with him. Sometimes he thinks it has nothing to do with anyone and it is all just visions out of the head of — — — and it becomes difficult at these times for him to ground himself.
Sometimes he remembers the luxury of small things. That his language was the language his city the city and his world the world before it was all reduced to specific rubble. This he thinks and then looks from his place in the immaterial to Sam who is there all discipline perfect still so much even that he needn’t breathe any longer. He stands stoic and proud in the false light of the hall holding the false spear and moving not an inch when strange children point and tug at the sleeves of their parents’ shirts and shriek words he cannot understand. This Sam being a manifest object in the world as he can no longer be—this for Tem is what usually quiets the buzzing for a time.
The sixth part he Tem can see it now is running through gold-green fields under a beating sun free free free amid the detritus of elder days and hushed memories in the vanished country cleaner and purer than it ever appeared before and rivers flowing backwards into the sky and a great formless joy o’ertaking and spring air and words that you have never before heard spiralling upwards from stomach to tongue and the boat sliding upriver with the current and the fish un-scattering and even the city all crumbling to dust until it is all just grasséd plateaux and you halt to catch your breath and find you don’t have any.
