2084

by Sansal Boualem

  Yölah is great and his world is truly complicated.

  Now they just had to find a way to get out of the neighborhood and reach the Ministry of Archives, Sacred Books, and Holy Memories.

  The time had come to take stock. Ati and Koa drew up a list of all the crimes and misdemeanors they had committed recently. It was not a pretty sight: taking into account only the escapade to the ghetto, that infernal burrow of Balis and the Regs, there was enough to send them to the stadium ten times over. They might as well add the rest—the business with the license, the breaking and entering, the falsification of a public document, usurpation of function, trafficking in an organized gang, theft, and other petty related crimes—for good measure. There was no point hoping anyone would show the slightest understanding: the city hall, the Guild, the mockba, the Moral Inspection judges, colleagues, and neighbors would all turn up as fervent accusers; they would hurl accusations of deceit, wrongdoing, abjuration. The crowd at the stadium would go wild, would try to trample their bodies and drag them through the streets until all that remained were a few scraps of flesh on their bones for the dogs to fight over. The reputation of the Volunteer Law-enforcing Believers would be greatly enhanced by this coup, and they would spark a pogrom in the neighborhood that would go down in history.

  And yet at no time did the two friends have any subversive thoughts, let alone heretical ones; they simply wanted to know what sort of world they were living in—not to fight it, no one was up to that, man or god—but to endure it in full knowledge of the facts, and to visit it, if possible. A sorrow that has a name is a bearable sorrow; death itself can be seen as a remedy, if one knows how to name things properly. Yes, it’s true (and it is a bitter heresy), they had toyed with the hope of fleeing their world—a mad, unthinkable thing, their world was so vast that it was lost in infinity; how many lives would it take to leave it behind? But such is the nature of hope; it runs counter to any principles of reality, and so they told each other this truth in the form of a postulate: that there can be no world without limits, because without limits the world would dissolve into nothingness, it would not exist, and if there were a border, then it could be crossed, what’s more, it must be crossed, at all costs, for it is eminently possible that the missing part of life is to be found on the other side. But, God of goodness and truth, how to convince the believers that they must stop importuning life, life that loves and embraces whomsoever it chooses?

  Ati felt guilty for dragging kindhearted Koa into his illusions. Then forgave himself, reasoning that his friend was a born rebel, a first-rate adventurer, who obeyed an essential force. He carried within himself great suffering, the blood that flowed through his veins singed his heart, his grandfather was one of the most dangerous madmen in the entire country, providing millions of young martyrs for the three most recent Great Holy Wars, and whose murderous sermons were taught in the midras and mockbas as if they were poetry, still racking up their quota of volunteers for the slaughter. From earliest childhood Koa had stoked a burning hatred of all the self-satisfied people in the world. He had fled, but it is not enough to flee, sometimes you have to stop, and then they catch up with you, corner you. Ati abhorred the System, and Koa despised the men who served the System; it wasn’t the same trial but, after all, as the two went together, he could conceive that they might use the same rope to hang the lot of them.

  Now that they had come this far, the two friends needed to stop and consider the fact that they had crossed a line, and that to keep on in the same direction would lead them to their death. They must not act blindly. It was already nothing short of a miracle that they had carried their revolt this far without being caught. They were still protected by their status. Ati was a veteran; he had survived tuberculosis and come back from the terrifying sanatorium at Sîn; and Koa bore an illustrious name and was a graduate of the unparalleled SDW, the School of the Divine Word.

  They talked, they debated, they waited for the right moment, improving their camouflage techniques with every passing day; they went back and forth through checkpoints without difficulty; they knew better than anyone how to surpass each other in demonstrations of piety and civic discipline; the neighborhood mockbi and the Moral Inspection judges held them up as examples. The rest of the time they spent looking for channels, tracking information, questioning theories. They understood so many things, they could see how easy it was to find things out, as long as you searched carefully, and how cheating and secrecy developed creativity, or at least reactivity. And they had already found out the following: the ministries and major administrations were all housed in a gigantic complex in the historical center of the city. They had already guessed as much, the way you know a theory, without necessarily believing it. This complex was the Abigov, the heart of Abi’s government, and in the middle of it all the Kïïba had pride of place—a majestic, hieratic pyramid at least one hundred and twenty siccas high, spreading over a base of ten hectares, bedecked in sparkling green granite with red stripes, and on all four sides of its pyramidion was Abi’s eye, watching over the city, continuously probing everything it saw with its telepathic rays. This was the seat of the Just Brotherhood. One hundred thousand bombs could not shake it. The logic behind this grouping was a concern for security, and efficiency too, why not, but the purpose was above all to demonstrate the strength of the System and the impenetrable mystery underpinning it; this was how an absolutist order was built, around a colossal, indecipherable totem, around a leader with supernatural powers—in other words, on the notion that the world and its dismemberments do not exist and only hold together because that world turns around a System and its leaders.

  Tens of thousands of civil servants worked there seven days a week, day and night, and every day God made, tens of thousands of visitors—civil servants and merchants who had come from the sixty provinces—rushed to the entrances of the various administrations to drop off requests, put their names down on lists, obtain certificates and full discharges. The files were sent somewhere deep within the titanic machine, on a long journey that could take several months or years, and after that they were sent to the basements of the complex where they underwent a specific treatment—no one knew precisely what. Our friends had heard tell that these underground vaults opened onto another truly unfathomable world, that from there a secret tunnel went deep down into the earth, to which only the Great Commander had the key, and that the purpose of this tunnel was, in the event of a popular uprising, to exfiltrate the Honorables to . . . the ghetto! Honestly, people would say anything when they didn’t really know what was going on. The truth was that no one really entertained the eventuality of a revolution, still less the hypothesis that the Honorables would stoop to the vulgar suggestion of going to hide in the ghetto among their hereditary enemies, when they were the masters of the universe, and had helicopters and airplanes to take them anywhere on the planet in no time at all, and constantly probing the skies were their flying fortresses capable of destroying every living thing on earth. Some information is worthless, and dissipates attention. In all likelihood the tunnel was used to reach an airport or Abi’s palace, which, back in the days when the Enemy was all-powerful and was dropping its atomic bombs on Abistan on a daily basis, had served as a refuge for the Honorables and their noble families.

  In an old issue of a magazine of theological science Ati and Koa found a photograph depicting the Honorable Duc, Great Commander of the Just Brotherhood, surrounded by a learned assembly of several Honorables, including the powerful Hoc, director of Protocol, Ceremonies, and Commemorations. All of them were clad in a thick green gold-embroidered burni and on their heads they wore the distinctive red bonnet of their rank; they were inaugurating a new administration, the Bureau of Lunar Ephemeris, which the article described as an inestimable asset for the proper observance of the rites of Siam, the holy week of absolute Abstinence. Then it added, as a sort of veiled threat: “The Great Commander has expressed his conviction that he will soon se
e an end to the never-ending conflict between the Grand Mockbis in the provinces regarding the hours for the beginning and end of the holy week of Siam.” A threat which remained without effect, since the Book of Abi itself was very vague on the topic, and imposed the visual observation of the moon, a method which by its very nature was subject to error, a practice that moreover had fallen to venerable mockbis who were as shortsighted in the light of day as they were deaf to any form of proof. The article did not mean to imply that they were as stubborn as rocks, one must show respect, but simply wished to indicate that rocks could be more reasonable than the mockbis were. In the background the formidable government complex was visible, a hybrid conglomerate that was part ancient military fortress and part devastated modern city, with its towers reaching to the clouds and its wings and outbuildings nestled together in such a way as to suggest Machiavellian intentions. It was easy to imagine all sorts of mysteries and torments concealed in its interior, and what sort of downright immeasurable energy must be expended at the heart of this cyclopean reactor.

  Further back in the picture one could just make out the historic city, with steep, winding alleyways, narrow buildings arched one over the other, dilapidated , peeling walls, and people who seemed to be fixed in the landscape since Antiquity, obvious signs of a ruined life. It was there in that endless labyrinth that the civil servants from various administrations lived. It was called Kassi, the Kasbah of Civil Servants. Like ants devoted to their queen, they belonged to the System body and soul. They went to work through a mass of dimly-lit tunnels which, at the heart of the Abigov, branched onto a network of stairways that was just as complicated, leading them to their assigned floors; thus, of their world they saw only bowels, spine, and cavities. There was something of the automated war factory in it all; it was frightening but also a guarantee of punctuality. Through a colleague from the garbage collection service whose great-uncle was a civil servant at the Ministry of Virtue and Sin (and who, following a poorly implemented reform, had been sent one day to the stadium with one hundred other colleagues, preceded by the Minister and his entire family), Ati and Koa learned that each administration had its own residential zone. The employees of the Ministry of Archives, Holy Books, and Sacred Memories occupied sector M32. So that was where Nas lived.

  They also learned that the Great Mockba, where the Honorables took turns officiating during the Thursday Imploration, was just beyond the Abigov; it could hold up to ten thousand worshippers. Every week one Honorable, chosen by his peers according to a protocol that was too complicated for the common people to understand, led the prayer, and after that commented on a verse from the Gkabul having something to do with current affairs, in particular with the current Great Holy War, or the one that was being prepared in secret. The faithful punctuated his words with powerful, virile cheers: “Yölah is great!” “The Gkabul is the way!” “Abi will win!” “A curse upon Balis!” “Death to the Enemy!” “Death to Regs!” “Death to traitors!” After which, cleansed of their sins, the flock headed joyfully toward the great stadium that could hold as many people as chose to show up.

  Koa knew of these places, but had no memory of them. As the grandson of a prestigious mockbi who was rector of the Great Mockba, and as the son of a brilliant questor of a sacerdotal loge belonging to the Honorable Hoc, he had lived in the enclave of Honorables. There one has the eyes of a master, one does not see ordinary people, or hear them, one does not know the world. At the School of the Divine Word, adjacent to the Kïïba, in such close quarters with God and the saints, Koa had come to forget that he was living on earth—and in truth he had never known, no one had ever told him that people were human beings. But one day more miraculous than all others it came to pass that he opened his eyes and saw these poor folk at his feet writhing in pain. Since that moment the fever of rebellion had not left him.

  After many hours of discussion our friends concluded that there was a chance that something that had worked once might work a second time. So they manufactured a summons enabling them to go to the Abigov on a special mission. And now they were ready to run through the streets like good honest laborers, only too happy to kill themselves at the job.

  It was a time for the unexpected. Just when their bundles were ready, and the road was more or less clear, Koa was summoned to the district tribunal. The messenger’s eyes were shining and his nose was running because it was an important matter: Koa had been summoned by none other than His Serene Excellency the Head Bailiff. Once he got there, an imperial old fox with a white beard and a well-polished burni informed him that the ABBN, the Assembly of the Best Believers in the Neighborhood, had unanimously and in the name of Yölah and Abi nominated him, Koa, for the position of Destroyer in the trial of a slattern accused of third-degree blasphemy, and the nomination had already been ratified in high places. Whereupon he had Koa sign his confirmation and handed him a copy of the file. This was a significant event: the last witch trial had been long ago, it had not even occurred to anyone that they might be conducting such an investigation any time soon; but religion weakens and loses some of its virulence if nothing comes along to give it a rough time. Religion draws its vitality as much from the stadium and battlefield as from quiet study at the mockba. During a quarrel between two women, neighbors, the accused, a shameless young woman of fifteen, dared to say, as she slammed the door, that Yölah the just had failed miserably by giving her such nasty neighbors. It was as if there were a sudden clap of thunder in the sky. Every shrew in the neighborhood testified against her with one accord, and the Civics came running in wholehearted support. There could be no doubt about the matter, it would take only five minutes to reach a verdict, the issue would be debated merely for the pleasure of watching the bitch pass out and piss herself. While they were at it, they’d picked up the husband and their five children; they would be heard at a later time by the Committee for Moral Health; they would also have to testify and deliver a self-criticism statement before submission of their case, if necessary, to the Council of Reformation. A doomsayer with a substantial halo was required for a trial like this, the best to be found, and Koa was a perfect fit. His name—and that of his grandfather, above all—was like a beacon, lighting him from afar. It would be a signal honor for a tribunal in a peripheral neighborhood to officiate under such an emblem. The courtroom would be full, the matter would go down in history, justice would triumph as never before, and faith would be strengthened a millionfold, visible all the way from the Kïïba. The blaspheming slut would bring fortune in her wake; there would be a flurry of promotions in the ranks of justice.

  “What to do?”—that was the question. The two friends discussed it for hours. Koa refused to be associated with what amounted to a human sacrifice foretold. Ati was fully behind him. He was of the opinion that Koa should go and hide in the ghetto or in one of the devastated suburbs where he used to enjoy hanging out, long ago. Koa hesitated, however: he thought it might still be possible to get out of the summons from the tribunal, that somewhere a decree from the Just Brotherhood stipulated that the Destroyer had to be a man of a venerable age, who had served for at least five years in an accredited assembly of emeritus believers, or had taken part in a Holy War, or had a career behind him of enviable positions such as mockbi, response-giver, psalmodist or incantator, conditions that Koa did not meet: he was barely thirty years of age, had no glorious feats to his name, had never taught religion, been part of any corps of sectators, or borne arms against anyone, friend or enemy. The problem was that if he were to put forward this argument, it would indicate he refused to assist the law, and that he approved of sacrilege, and he would end up at the stadium with the condemned woman. “What to do?” was indeed the right question. Ati suggested they try to make the most of their upcoming appointment with Nas to ask him to intercede in Koa’s favor. As the discoverer of the most famous shrine in all of Abistan, he must surely have the grateful ear of his minister, and on his order Koa could be hired at the ministry, and
at such a stratospheric level one is exempt of chores, and unaware of the world far below. Koa was skeptical. Nas might have the ear of the minister, but there was nothing to prove that the minister would listen; he might even hear quite the opposite.

  Koa shuddered and said, “They want me? All right, I’ll show them, I’ll destroy where it hurts.”

  Ati gave a shiver. Koa’s heart was full of rage.

  The Destroyer was a key participant in the witch trials. He was not in court to plead someone’s cause—that of the accused, or society’s, or the plaintiff’s; he was there to proclaim loud and clear the wrath of Yölah and Abi. Who, if not the offspring of the late Grand Mockbi of Qodsabad and former pupil of the splendiferous School of the Divine Word, would have the eloquence and intonation to express the fury of the Most High and his Delegate?