The Match

A roof caught fire, and the wind bore an ember far down the street until it landed in a lane right next to an old match that some passerby had thrown away after lighting a cigar. “You look burnt-out,” said the ember. “And you have flown off course,” said the dark match stick. “It’s all right, though. Our purpose has been served.” The ember glowed a little less brightly. “I fear I am running out of time. I wonder if I burned enough.” The match seemed to almost curl, perhaps in a gesture or bow to express something. “To be fire, even just once, is magic.” “Will it be awful when I am extinguished?” “No,” the match said. “The sound of my burning was beautiful. And yet, the silence is also beautiful.” They sat in silence for a bit, the ember losing its heat and glow. Its annihilation was only seconds away. “Don’t worry,” said the match. “One can burn again. In the right circumstances, everything can burn. Everything is fire. A fire waiting to happen.”

The Corpse

Only the skeletal remains of buildings languished in the mist and ash. Scattered fires burned on the street of corpses as the medics walked slowly with a stretcher, searching for survivors. In front of a burned-out tram stop, a corpse sat on the ground with his back to the pole of a streetlamp. Most of his chest had been blown open and charred. As they approached, a sound like phonograph static emerged from the corpse. Its jaws began to move, and it spoke in a voice reminiscent of a recording: “The first conclusion of the argument is that a grapefruit tree is indeed a cinchona tree. The second is that fire is only fire if the conditions are correct. In fact, there is only one main condition–the quality of the person who started the fire. Should this condition not be met, then one cannot conclude that it is fire which one sees burning. The third conclusion, as certain as the first and second, is that…” The sound suddenly stopped as one of the medics checked the wrist of the victim. There was none. “Dead,” said the firstmedic. “Dead for a long time. And not an automaton.” “What is this?” asked the other medic. “Dark magic,” said the other, straightening up. “The worst possible or imaginable kind.” They continued forward, following the railway. A body lying facedown on the rails twitched. They rushed over, lay the stretcher down, and examined the victim. Other than some scratches, the body seemed unharmed. Again, the first medic crouched down to feel the wrist. “Alive!” he shouted, gently turning the body over. The body began to talk in the same phonographic voice: “The first conclusion of the argument is that a grapefruit tree is indeed a cinchona tree. The second is that fire is only fire if the conditions are correct. In fact, there is only one main condition–the quality of the person who started the fire. Should this condition not be met, then one cannot conclude that it is fire which one sees burning…” The body jumped up with great agility and ran off. The medics picked up the stretcher and were about to continue when they heard the voice from the corpse cry out: “Would you like to continue the discussion? Would you like to hear the third conclusion?” The medics ran along the rails away from the tram stop behind them. Several blocks away, they stopped to catch their breath next to a bonfire of broken furniture. “And what is that?” asked the first medic. “Not fire,” said the second, “or fire. Horror.”

The Review

The evening show was exquisite. The script was thoughtful, the pacing of the performance was thoughtful, the actors and actresses were elegant and beautiful. It would be hard to imagine a better production. An adorable redhead played the daughter of the Comtesse, and the young man who played the gaunt Curé with the bicycle had a haunting presence. A real donkey crossed the background at one point—for verisimilitude and symbolism. The way the light shone off the gunmetal bicycle, the simple but measured gesture of the hands—everything was animated with—what shall one call it?—spirit. I shall never forget the addition of old cinematic or phonographic static to the soundtrack—that pure, nostalgic sound of snowflakes falling. All was grace. The curtain closed. It was silent. My applause had been delayed by my ecstatic scribbling of notes, but the silence was paralyzing. I turned around. The lifeless audience just sat there; some were even slumped over. I got up and walked past rows of blanched faces. They were all dead. An actor joined in me checking pulses and listening for heartbeats. They were all dead. Someone mentioned gas, but there was no scent of any such thing. And as the possibility was being pondered a nervous stagehand struck a lighter to light his cigarette. Nothing happened. Large tears flooded the pale blue eyes of the daughter of the Comtesse. The Curé went backstage to telephone the police. And I walked out of the theatre and onto the rainy street of glowing lampposts to light my own cigarette and wait.

The Quick and the Dead

The law was strict in the town, from the ordering of the old, tall houses lining the streets to the timing of the clocks in the bell towers. The dark gray statues of the ancestors were always dusted or polished, the churchyards were mowed, the names of old were spoken with reverence. It was impossible to speak ill of the dead; gallows humour was outlawed; doctors who joked during a surgery were heavily fined. The morgue, crematorium, and mausoleum displayed the grandest and most elegant architecture of all the buildings, out of great reverence for the departed. One could not murder, commit suicide, have an abortion, or euthanize anyone, either—again, out of grave respect for the dead. The law was as unbreakable and immoveable as the encircling mountains, as frozen and hard as the glaciers, as clear and pure as the lake sparkling at the end of the main thoroughfare. It was with great shock, therefore, that the town greeted the sudden appearance of Citizen W on the street that runs in front of the library and courthouse. Not only was Citizen W dead, as reported by the priest, coroner, and lawyer the night before, but Citizen W had not even been transported to the morgue yet. The hearse had broken down, and the carriage-maker was none other than the dead Citizen W, who was now passing the hours staring at the topiaries between the library and courthouse. The scandal was unimaginable. At six o’clock in the morning, Citizen W had simply come out. And there he was, for all to see, dead and quite pleased with himself, munching on a rotten pear that a squirrel had dropped. To think that some had ridden in his carriages before! To think that some had greeted him with a slight bow or a tip of the hat. Within a short time, scandals accumulated. Citizen Y escaped from the morgue wearing next to nothing, and was wandering the streets with her hair down, gazing into the windows of the great, old houses, riding trams, talking to birds and cats, and distracting the youths who were not sufficiently offended by her presence in public, in her state of attire. Time wore on, and the dead came out. In droves, in flocks, in murders, in prides, in troupes, they came out. What had started out as scandal would have become routine—the town scientists and chess grandmasters did not seem to care—except for the fact that the dead now wanted to be noticed. This was one great headache. A corpse would try to blend in for as long as possible, all the while hinting that he or she might have a secret to confess, suggesting certain dates or times when a party could be gathered. And then, in a lull between the blaring of trombones, the corpse would exclaim, “I am dead!” And one by one, the scandalized and the exultant would rush to embrace the dead person. The morning edition was sure to carry a front page article. There were less celebrated cases, to be sure. One would be walking a husky or samoyed along the trimmed hedges when suddenly a corpse would appear on the steps leading up to his house. Normally, one could just walk by, pretending not to notice. It was different, however, when Citizen H came out of his pale blue townhouse and was ignored by the candlestick-maker and the butcher, who were involved in a fairly serious argument about political economy. Citizen H yelled at them until they disappeared around the next corner, but they never seemed to have heard. Moments later, the notary was passing. Hearing and seeing Citizen H swearing and threatening from the top of his steps, the notary agreed to report the matter to the law. Perhaps the notary meant well. It was, after all, almost the dinner hour when citizens wished to dine in peace, and it would be good to calm and quiet Citizen H. And thus he drew up and lodged the complaint. On hearing that the dead had been insulted, the judge could only rule in accordance with the law. The butcher and candlestick-maker were arrested and heavily fined. They were forced to close and sell their businesses the next day to pay the expenses. Meanwhile, rumours swirled around regarding the corruptive influence of Citizen Y on the youth, some of whom she had debauched in the stacks of the public library—most notably in the broom closets and in the sections on magic, pyrotechnics, poetry and anarchist philosophy. The youth who hung out in the grammar, physics, mathematics and economics sections were generally considered safe. One youth, after being seduced by Citizen Y, decided to join her in eternity, and committed suicide in the library. Outraged, his father attempted to bring charges against Y. Outraged at his outrage, Citizen H dispatched the ever affable notary to bring charges against the father. The bailiff, meanwhile, went to arrest the son for committing suicide. The result was a legal nightmare. The judge ruled that neither Citizen Y nor her protege, the suicide, could be charged because they were dead. Though suicide was still a crime on the books, and this was the surely the first time that a suicide had been arrested for said crime, prosecution would violate other statutes protecting the sanctity of the dead. Moreover, the judge instructed the court reporter to strike the bulk of the proceedings from the record and the newspaper reporter to refrain from printing the majority of what had transpired—the very typing and note-taking may have been illegal and punishable. One lawyer objected and threatened to appeal. And this is where the judge made a terrible mistake by brandishing a pistol. He shot the lawyer and then shot himself. Legally speaking, he should have just shot himself, but passion can obscure and obstruct reason. The lawyer was now as untouchable as the judge. Within seconds of the intial blood spatter and smoke, the bailiff, sergeant and court reporter quit, boarding the first express train departing for another country. Not long after, many civil servants and industrialists came out of their houses and stood on their front steps, as dead as Citizens Y, H and W, as dead as the cadavers still buried in the graveyards. The pastor of a local church arranged for a trombone concert to celebrate these new additions to the community and then ordered some renovations. First, a wooden park bench and a little lending library, not much bigger than a birdhouse, were installed on the lawn by the sidewalk, should the walking dead want to stop, rest, and read a book. Also, a wooden signboard was nailed above the entryway to welcome the marginalized who had once departed but had now returned. Most thought this to be a brilliant new exegesis of an old parable, but others wondered why so much attention was being given to the corpses who shopped, strolled through parks and operated heavy machinery with impunity and even accolades. Was this not a belated attempt at winning influence and gaining attention for herself? Should she not have been an advocate of the dead from the very beginning? Around this time Citizen X, the lawyer shot by the judge, tried to pass a bylaw limiting the casual emergence of the dead as well as their proselytizing. In a paper that was widely debated, he proposed that the increased numbers of the dead would result in a deflation of their value and uniqueness. Citizen H almost agreed in an editorial responding to the paper—what was required, however, was a thorough investigation from the perspective of law and natural philosophy regarding the definition of death and the relative degrees of morbidity. Otherwise, it was impossible to address the growing problem and properly apply etiquette and law. The morning editions may be regarded as the first artifacts of this exchange; they straightaway abandoned the habit of publishing obituaries from other towns, laying the groundwork for a topographical category of at least one degree of morbidity. The obituaries of other towns could not properly be called obituaries, their dead not even acknowledged as dead, until the law and the academy resolved the open question. Not long after, Citizen Y reignited the passions of the city when she embarked on a rampage of defacing or destroying the elegant and ancient statuary of the town. The monuments were not living–that was clear; and yet, they represented the dead. The question was–were they dead? And when were they more dead–when they were left alone to adorn the squares and streets or when they were defaced or toppled? The matter was not really settled when Citizen W stepped out of a long catatonia, threw away the bone-dry remnants of his pear core and assaulted the notary by biting him so fiercely in the neck and sucking his blood that he died of exsanguination. The body was left on the street. And apparently, it preferred to lay there and not get up again. That night, numerous citizens perished from such attacks, but the reports never reached the morning editions. Some nights later, a living shepherd came down into town to announce to the constabulary that the mountains were full of drumbeats. Assessing that it was not the season for outdoor concerts, the constable locked the shepherd up for the night on the charge of being inebriated and for crying wolf. The second night, however, the drumbeats could be heard throughout the town. What might it be? they asked the historian. The historian said it reminded him of night marchers. Citizen H demanded an immediate retraction—night marchers only lived in the southern islands. This was a slight against the inhabitants of the southern islands and an offense against their deceased ancestors. The historian attempted to explain that many lands had tales of such ghosts, the ancient dead armies of exterminated or forgotten citizens who returned at inconvenient times to strike terror and reclaim their lost heritage. Citizen H declaimed that this was the perverted bias of the living; the very concept of history was an offensive discipline meant to malign and subjugate the dead. It was an obsession based on jealousy, fear and a desire to exterminate the dead. The historian walked away, heading for the station, where he boarded the night train for a distant country. When the train left the station and the lights of the town, he sighed with relief and gazed into the dark indigo landscape. It was then that he saw the lines of magma flowing down the sides of the mountains. It was not magma, however. It was the light of torches–thousands and thousands of torches held by the skeletal hands of night marchers heading toward the town. The historian laughed quietly to himself and decided to get a drink in the dining car. Sitting in the southwest corner, he sipped his cognac and looked over at the adjacent table, where a dark gray statue divided his time between petting his pigeon, reading a book and contemplating the midnight landscape. The historian looked around. At the far end of the car sat the bodacious Citizen Y, naked and blonde, also gazing through the window into the midnight landscape with her angelic blue eyes full of mystery and hunger.

The Railway

The carriages would travel quickly thanks to the steam engines, but the railway was long, stretching indefinitely through forest and steppe. Dining and kitchen carriages provided banquets at all hours of the day. Cafe carriages and lounge carriages provided quiet jazz from phonographs, carafes of dark coffee, smoked vanilla ice cream, rum and vodka and the printed weather reports to read. The sleepers were elegant, the linen immaculate; the showers offered fresh bars of lavander soap and boiling hot water. In the cinema carriages, one could watch black and white films wherein rifle-bearing villains hiding in the shadows of cypresses and colonnades gasped as pale beauties disarmed them. One could not complain. Many could remember the old days of train travel–of lining up to get tickets, of arguing with conductors and other passengers, of huddling around the only cast-iron stove per three carriages, of rusted hinges and tools, of gazing through cracked and frosted glass windows at landscapes of snow and cold stars, of reading bone-white pages of crime novels, history monographs and slender volumes of poetry by flickering kerosene lamps, of sneaking into the dining cars after hours to kiss or forage for matchbooks and cigarettes. Now, the fragrance of cigars, expensive soaps, good upholstery, alcohol, perfume, and ironed clothes followed one from car to car. It was the fragrance of cleanliness, progress and good times. The only curious rule of the new train was that only one side of every carriage had windows. The other side, the same side in every carriage, had been soldered shut with iron sheets–for the safety and comfort of the passengers. The connectors between the carriages had no windows at all. Conductors thankfully never appeared and one could just sink into the luxurious softness of the chairs in deep comfort, enjoying the quiet of the engines, the smoothness of the rails, even the soporific tone of the meteorologists in the railway newspapers. One evening, a magenta and crimson glow filled the twilight of the carriages as signal lamps glowed beyond the open windows. The train slowed to a halt. There was no station in sight–just some leafless trees and the snowbound earth. Disembarking, the passengers were surprised by the sight of hundreds of soldiers in gray coats directing them toward a barbed wire barricade with a checkpoint lit up by intermittent, meteor-red flares and the dull iodine glow of a signal light pointed at those waiting to pass through. Fireworks exploded overhead in celebration of the finished journey. An old margrave asked what lay beyond the gate. The firing squad, a soldier laughed. Through a sudden break in the crowd, the margrave saw a line of passengers fall as blood speckled the snow. Then, turning to a fellow passenger who was a thief, the old margrave asked why some of their traveling companions were not in the line. The other shrugged and shoved his hands into his pockets. The only thing the thief could remember was that he had seen some of the missing passengers tampering with the blocked up windows one night, when he had stolen into an almost empty dining carriage to search for matchbooks and cigarettes.

The Four Riders

One of the four horsemen had been seen on distant highways. An astronomer ascertained with his spyglass that it was pest this time. The king summoned a priest and a natural philosopher to his court to hear their counsel. The natural philosopher recommended that the barons retreat to their castles where they had granaries, medicine cabinets, wells, walled game parks, and knights who could be sent out to forage. The peasants should burn and salt their fields and retreat to their cellars. The king ordered that these recommendations be implemented at once. When his heralds had departed, he turned to the priest and asked his opinion of the matter. It is a royal decree, said the priest, a very noble one. The king, furious, demanded to know what he meant. The priest looked him in the eyes and coldly replied, The king is very generous and has not deterred one rider but invited all four!

The Heretic

The way of pain wound from the city through the boulders and barrows towards the hill with the stake. Crowds had gathered by the road to hurl stones and offal at the heretic as he passed. In the morning, when the sergeants had come for him, the heretic had been watching sparrows hop from branch to branch in the prison courtyard. Only peace reigned in his heart. Now, as dust rose from the way with the shouts of his accusers, the stumbling, chained heretic began to feel strange and disconcerted. It was not the false accusations, not the miscarriage of justice, nor the grim gazes of the cardinals, priests and friars. Nor had death and its fear crept into his heart. From time to time, the grip of the sergeant’s hand on his arm almost felt comforting. When the boulders fell away and the path straightened out to ascend the bald hill, screams of anger, horror, or madness filled the air. Stones struck his face and legs, which were already filthy. Once, the sergeant stopped and shot a bystander with his crossbow, but the crowd seemed not to notice. The heretic wanted to vomit now as he looked into the contorted faces. The faces of those who knew nothing of his trial or his heart, who themselves hid crimes and heresies, who should have burned alongside him, if burning had any justice to it. At the base of the hill, the heretic fell down, coughing and vomitting bile and blood. Once again, the kindly grip of the sergeant lifted him to his feet. Other sergeants and soldiers formed a ring around the hill and shot several more bystanders as the fury grew into one droning, yearning scream. Then silence fell as they led him to the stake. Firewood and old blankets soaked in pitch surrounded him. The sergeant approached with a torch, and gazed calmly into the bewildered eyes of the condemned man, saying: “The second heresy is worse than the first. That is why they scream.” The heretic looked up to heaven and asked, “What is the second heresy?” The sergeant tossed the torch onto the pitch-stained logs and blankets. “Escape. Peace.” The fire exploded with billowing clouds of black smoke. The sparrows fled into the distant hills.

The Magistrate

The magistrate, who had spent his life in conspiracy, corruption, debauchery, forging chronicles and destroying evidence, left the city with some strong wooden poles, nails, and ropes, and climbed a hill close by. The city applauded this seeming act of repentance. The road workers, carters and pilgrims watched him erect the large crucifix silhouetted against the twilight sky. The magistrate camped there and would not leave, clinging night and day to the empty cross, eating poor meals of lollium bread and skewered doves roasted on the campfire. In the beginning, nobody dared to ascend the sacred hill. Many years passed. Reverent and humble, one pilgrim finally climbed the hill to thank the magistrate and to pray. What faith! exclaimed the pilgrim, but his joy was soon turned to sorrow. I have no faith, said the magistrate. Why then your vigil by this beautiful cross? queried the pilgrim. I am waiting, laughed the magistrate, just in case he returns. I will be ready for him. The pilgrim burst into tears and said, When he comes again, you will behold the glory of love and perfection! The magistrate nodded thoughtfully. My resolve is made stronger by your words, he said. The pilgrim descended the unholy hill, afraid to look back at its cross and its sentry. 

The Martyr

In the intricate and ornate chronicles of long ago, a halberdier was dispatched to summon a man who had been hiding in the royal library, awaiting a revelation of his calling. Come, said the halberdier. Come and bear witness. And the man followed him into the streets of twilight. Behold, the lamps of the city! The man watched as the lamplighters extinguished one lamppost after another until not a single lamppost burned. And behold, the city was dark and how vast was the darkness. Come, said the halberdier. Come and bear witness! And they walked in the garden of walled orchards where the glorious pear trees stood, arrayed in golden fruit and golden leaves. Behold the glory of the pear trees! the halberdier cried. And one by one the trees shed their pears and their leaves until not a single leaf adorned the naked black branches clawing at the sky. Come and bear witness! the halberdier cried. The man followed him to the edge of the land, to the great pit beyond the cypresses, where the gravediggers bore coffins and shrouded corpses on stretchers and wheelbarrows, emptying their burdens into the quiet pit. One by one princes and peasants fell into that deathly quiet. The halberdier cried out: Behold, the apostates! And the quiet was intolerable. The man ran away. Vespers and matins, matins and vespers, passed and passed and all the sacred hours in between. The halberdier found the man by the shore, weeping under a willow tree, holding en empty, yellow tobacco box and staring into a small crackling fire of birch logs. It was beginning to snow. Come, my friend, said the halberdier. The man would not rise. I want to depart, he wept. To where? asked the halberdier. To be burned, said the man, in the flames of the lampposts and the golden pears, in the light of those beautiful faces that are no more. The man rose and left his fire and his burning tree, the snowfall and the coal-black sea. Alone, the halberdier sat down by the fire and stared into the mystery of its light. 

The Revenant

They found the revenant by the side of the road, sleeping on a bed of pine needles, oblivious to the rain. After wrapping him in a raincoat, they drove him to the ruins of a small, stone warehouse on the side of a mountain, where they had made a makeshift camp. A good fire burned in a cast iron stove, and the fragrance of fresh coffee wafted through the den. They fed him pancakes and roasted chestnuts and gave him some cigarettes. Though he did not sob or speak much, thin rivulets of tears ran down his pale cheekbones. When he had eaten, they smoked in silence, giving him time. Their ravenous eyes were met by his calm, sorrowful gaze that never blinked. The revenant knew well what they wanted, and began to speak before they could ask any questions. Not long after I was buried, I woke up, and I saw myself at a distance. And I was much younger. It was that time of life when everything is on the edge. And I expected to see the harvest of all the rotten seeds I had sown, but there was no such thing. The man I saw was a good man, almost perfect. And she was perfect. I saw them looking after the garden, chopping firewood, rowing out onto the silver lake at dusk, whispering and laughing. Her eyes were often thoughtful, but never hurt, never sad. For ages, I watched, almost blinded by the radiance of their beauty that only burned and corroded me more from the inside out. And then I was sleeping on pine needles, and it was raining. I wonder if they’ll hang me again. The others exchanged glances. The world is not quite the same, they whispered. There hasn’t been a hanging in a hundred years. The revenant sighed. The fire crackled and the rain began again, making a strange orchestra of the sheet metal, stones, tarpaulin, the glittering boughs, the old army truck, the gravel, and his old white skeleton.