Anarchistbanjo's World

The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel

The way was not too long. I looked once more with the
old eyes that had seen so much during my existence, and
enjoyed the colorful multiplicity of the images that showed
themselves to me. I saw the butcher with a steaming, scalded
pig in a wooden trough, and the brass basins of a barber, which
rattled in the wind and rain and hung full of little drops. I took
the pitying look of two dark, beautiful girl’s eyes under a blue
and white bonnet, noticed a black dog that reminded me of
poor Diana, and smelled the strong, sour-tart smell of fresh tan,
coming from a tanner’s workshop. A steel blue fly with little
glass wings sat down on my knees and thus traveled quite a
distance without effort of its own. A bunch of funny screaming
spiders, uninvolved in humanity threw themselves like a brown
cloud over the smoking mountain of horse manure, which came
from one of the front wagons, and an ancient sycamore tree, all
hung with water beads, morosely and indifferently let us pass
by.
And then, with a jerk, all the wagons stopped.
We had arrived at the ugly square, where not long ago I
had spoken with the young officer about the French nation, and
my gaze fell on the gaunt reddish-brown scaffold that towered
high above our heads, with ghastly simplicity.
At that moment the wall of fog broke, and a pale ray of
sunlight fell with dull glint on the slanting knife high up under
the crossbeam.
“How soon all this will be over!” I thought, and
remembered so many moments of impatience and not being
able to wait, which lay far behind me in the old days.
We had to descend, and we were helped to do so. The
people did not shout. There was only that quiet murmur of a
thousand voices that betrayed the excitement of a great crowd.
No one shouted swear words at us, and many eyes looked
sympathetically. I had the feeling that with such a general
mood, the great killings would soon subside and finally stop
altogether. My knees were stiff from sitting and from the
morning chill. The distress of the body cramps set in once
again, and the right hip was very painful when walking.
I saw people appear on the platform, appearing to move.
The knife fell with a dull clang and was raised again. It was red.
Something struck the boards of the bloody scaffold.
The fear of the body almost gained the upper hand. A
thought pushed forward, gained space: To do something to save
myself, to scream, to beg, to break through the crowd, to break
the cords…
That’s when I saw him…
Huddled like a bat. Fangerle. He was sitting on a lantern
of the gallows, grimly distorting his wide mouth, the evil
yellow eyes directed at me, a red, Phrygian cap on his skull
instead of a big hat. His eyes were like two wasps that lived
and crawled around in the cavities of his head.
I closed my eyes. My will kept the upper hand.
“Return to the depths!” I said to myself.
When I looked again with all my strength, the apparition
had disappeared, the pole was empty.
A soldier grasped me almost timidly by the arm and
pushed me forward with gentle force. I saw how clotted, thick
blood flowed sluggishly down the boards of the scaffolding.
Before me the Marquis de Carmignac climbed the slippery
little stairs. Two men with naked arms grabbed him, strapped
him to the board, and tipped it over. The upper part of the wood,
which enclosed the neck, lowered. Whoosh…
A whistling sound came from his headless neck. The feet
with the buckled shoes, manly still in death, softly tapped the
ground, his body moved in the straps, as if he wanted to make
himself more comfortable. They loosened the damp leather,
rolled him aside; the golden pear rolled over the boards, a little
lid opened, brown snuff dusted out. Quickly a hand reached for
the shiny thing.
I was next, climbing the stairs.
A hand supported me kindly, saved me from a fall in a
moment of slipping. I looked into a serious, well-cut face. It
was Samson. He made a polite inviting hand gesture. Behind
him stood the red-bristled monster.
Images circled in my brain in a flash. The arm with the
executioner’s sword in the witch’s room of Krottenriede, the
box with the singing little bird, burning candles in a black room,
the glitter of Aglaja’s crown of death, the little dead man with
the hourglass and the scythe, as it tilted out of the old clock, the
Bavarian Haymon as an Amicist —Firm hands grabbed me by
the arm. Faces slid past me. I stood at the board. The warm
smell of blood rose to my nostrils, tickling and irritating in the
nose. Thin straps snaked around my upper body, my legs. I fell
forward — it creaked softly around me, – pain- my larynx hit a
semicircle.
I thought: Now the knife will cut through my throat,
sawdust will fill my eyes, my mouth —.
Wet wood descended on the back of my neck.
Isa Bektschi! Isa Bektschi!
With all my might I thought of the Ewli. I forced him to
me.
Close to mine I saw his face – his mouth, as if he wanted
to kiss me – kind, dark eyes, like two black suns. His gaze
enclosed me with infinite love and promise.
I thought nothing more. I saw only him – drank his looks,
absorbed his essence into me. Then dazzling, golden rays shot
out from his eyes, piercing me, consuming me in fiery embers –
in golden fire.
But still I saw that face, clearly, sharply, saw it growing
smaller and smaller – small as a dot and yet recognizable -.
I opened my mouth, felt woody, dry splinters, moist
chunks—.
Then night — hissing — sound — a painful tearing – a
thread cut in two —
I found myself outside my body. My body lay in its
brown, rumpled suit, without coat, with blood-soaked shirt
edge on the board of the guillotine. Despite the tight straps, my
upper body reared up a few times violently. Fountains of blood
rushed out of the two large neck veins.
The head lay pale, with wide-open eyes in the basket. Its
face smiled. All the people who were standing around the
scaffold looked on in silence. The board became empty. The
man who had called Astaroth and the fiery dragons was
dragged up the steps. He struggled with all his might, kicking
with his feet, snapping his teeth.
He did not want to – – All this was so indifferent for me. I
rose and floated away over the many heads, glided effortlessly,
and without finding any resistance, through the house walls and
window panes, driven by a force.
I had no eyes and saw everything. I heard. But I felt
nothing. I thought nothing either. I was consciousness itself.
Everything came to me, was immediately recognized.
Vibrations of many kinds trembled through me, without me
feeling pleasure or suffering. It was coldness, warmth, a sound,
light, phenomena for which there are no words in human
language, sensations when encountering beings, that remain
invisible and unknown to people.
I was of a shape, if this is possible to say, like those
glassy-transparent bodies that glide past human eyes when they
look for a long time into the distant pure blue heavens.
Nevertheless I was not a body. I was also not nothing. I was a
soul, like many of those who floated in the world space. But I
had consciousness, I was mindful of my ego and I had a goal.
I was looking for a new house with those instruments of
the senses, which received from outside and could reflect from
the inner back to the outer: Could express thoughts as words. I
was looking for a human body. Inside me I carried the tiny
image of a noble, godlike face, the reflection of which I had
taken with me into infinity when I left the destroyed body.
From this image my consciousness extended along with the
ability to remember.
The will for re-embodiment was the only drive that
dominated me. According to inscrutable laws born of the
eternity of becoming and passing, I strove towards my goal,
devoid of all those feelings that can be called impatience,
expectation or hope. There was no time; there was no distance
and no obstacles.
Forces to which I surrendered of my own accord
willingly lifted me up, made me sink down, and made me to
fade away, to wander and to rest.
I was unmoved in my consciousness.
Everything was offered to me, nothing was hidden from
me, and nothing was veiled, neither in depths nor in heights.
The wind blew through me, the rain fell through me. I had
nothing of the properties that things in space possess. I was big
and small, inside and outside, far and near.
I saw sunsets in ocean wastelands, mountain hikers
crashed in crevasses of ice, blue flowers that slowly withered,
ghosts in waterfalls, beings that lived in crystals, red and
yellow sandstorms, and fermenting garbage, out of which new
creatures of the strangest kind sprang, dwarfs, who would have
appeared as stones to human eyes, winged creatures that rode
and roared, sleeping in beds, seeded with tiny goblins as with
vermin, people, from whom evil flowed like a poisonous breath.
I passed by all this.
There were animals in herds on vast steppes, animals in
the air, in holes in the ground, in the water. Small, crawling,
flying, running animals, animals of all kinds, covered with hair,
feathers, scales, bristles and plates, living animals. They
attracted me because they were alive. They begat young,
hatched them, reproduced thousands of times.
They attracted me strongly, because they had living
bodies, warm bodies. But I carried in me a human face and did
not follow those souls, that lurked waiting to enter into the egg
cell at the moment of conception.
I was only attracted to people. I was attracted to them by
a tremendous force.
It was good to be with people. I attached myself to them,
was with them, in them, slid through them and was a guest with
others. I lived with them. I saw them as one sees a region that
resembles the abandoned homeland. I have to use such
comparisons, although the truth is quite different.