ANARCHISTALES

Amidst the ruins, I see the bloody mouths of scavengers tearing apart the frozen corpses of humans and animals, listening to their snarls and howls. Although I do not know when my turn will come, I know for certain that one day it will. I am finally about to reach Edgin, wearing bear-fur-lined boots on my feet, my old clothes now falling to pieces off my body, and my military backpack. My fingertips, my nose, my ears are completely purple… It has been days since I last looked at my toes… For this purpose, I had found the lost Ulgolagac Bathhouse—searched for over centuries—and the ghost who could not abandon her musalla mentioned in the ancient inscriptions, and I had received her permission. Now, in this endless plain of ice stretching before me, perhaps days or perhaps months away, that mountain rising to the clouds… The Igadnasah Volcano…

***

A long time ago…

With her right leg bent at the knee and drawn up, her shapely body, barely discernible beneath the dense steam, lies motionless on the central marble slab. The beads of sweat pooling at the roots of her hair—which spreads across the veined white marble like the pitch-black rays of a dark sun—and on her forehead glisten in the snow-white moonlight seeping through the ventilation holes in the dome. While the slender fingers of her right hand trace circles around the brown of her bare nipple, stimulated by the water, her other hand moves vaguely up and down over the triangle of her groin.

Were it not for those faint movements in her fingers, I had every reason to mistake her for a woman who had died right on time, a successfully carved piece of wood, or an ancient goddess long ceased to be believed in. The first human I had seen in months.

I think she will stir when she notices my presence, turn to me, or at least ask who I am. None of these happen. Not because she doesn’t notice my presence, but because my perceptible existence lacks the power to interrupt anything or draw any attention to itself.

“I didn’t mean to intrude, I didn’t see anyone at the entrance; I just…” I said in a futile effort. A hot flush came over me as I made a fool of myself trying to explain. With heavy steps, I sat beside one of the marble basins where the water was flowing fiercely, and began peeling off the layers of clothing I wore to protect myself from the minus thirty-six degree cold outside, stripping them from my body that hadn’t touched water in two months, and stuffing them into my backpack.

The existence of such a place is the first improbability; the presence of a woman inside it is the second. Improbability upon improbability… Yet, I am in no condition to question reality. I need to heal; I need to keep going. I was going to wash the deep wounds on my back, neck, chest, and right leg so they wouldn’t get infected, and tear up some of my clothes to make bandages.

Dried blood clots soften with the hot water, washing away and leaving crimson trails behind. The exhaustion caused by my continuous, long ice trek, combined with the lethargy brought on by the water, places a weight on my eyelids that no power could ever lift.

***

I do not know how long I slept to the sound of the water breaking from the tap, filling the basin beneath and overflowing, but the song spilling from the woman’s metallic, sorrowful, and shrill voice enters my ear and is etched into my brain, syllable by syllable, note by note; after every line, my eyelids struggle to open.

*

Like an old record stuck, the hidden needle on your tongue can never get past the same scratch

Rebellion must be heard as much as it is seen

Do not get lost in the labyrinths of silence

Turn and look at our worlds we destroyed with politeness

I am a ghost who cannot abandon her musalla, see me

*

Now another planet

A completely different universe

What a dark space

The day to be awaited for centuries so it may dawn slowly

The ice dangling from your breath

Lodged in my vein

Draw our voices right between existence and nothingness

*

I sit up in the steam and approach the central slab; the woman is still exactly as she was when I first saw her. With a hesitant rush, I look to my left and right to check if there is anyone else who could have sung the song I heard while sleeping. There is no one. If the song wasn’t sung in my dream, the woman must have sung it.

“The song just now…” I say, and fall silent. Her eyes have been staring at the same spot since I arrived; there is not the slightest twitch on her face.

“Do you mind if I ask how long I’ve been sleeping?” I ask. Perhaps my intention is nothing more than to prove my own existence to myself. Aside from that, I genuinely wondered how long I had slept.

“You have been sleeping since 12:07, the time is now 12:10, the sun has risen ninety-two times. Would you like to make love to me, Oahc?” Her voice sounded as if it were coming from a crackling radio, from a toy robot.

I try to smile out of a shame-filled obligation, having no idea what I should say or do. “It would be incredibly rude not to accept such an offer, but…” I say, and then within fractions of a second, I decide what the right thing is. Furthermore, since I cannot say that her knowing my name creeps me out, a clumsy answer simply falls out of me: “I don’t know you, but thank you anyway, maybe some other time.”

“Your wounds and the writing on your body,” she said, “they are changing places.”

I looked at my body. My tattoos were in a state of frantic motion; the wound on my right leg was crawling up toward my stomach, the one on my neck was descending toward my shoulder, and consequently, the places that ached and hurt were shifting.

“I am aware; my past changes after every decision I make. And right now, because I chose not to make love to you, my past is being rearranged. If I had chosen to, it would have changed again.”

“Yet you are still here.”

“Only the reasons for my coming here have changed. I had entered here to take shelter, treat my wounds, and rest. Now I remember that I set out on that journey to find you. Once this causality settles into place in my memory, I will remember new things with the very first decision I make.”

“I am Nitsirk,” she said in her eerie metallic voice; even though she was quite beautiful, I was afraid of her. Why I needed to find her hadn’t yet taken shape in my mind. “Go toward Edgin; a group of people lives around the Igadnasah Volcano. They are able to farm there because the soil is heated.”

“What will I find there?”

“Autrom the Postman… Find him, become his passenger. On this journey, you will be with a woman whom you will see in your dreams for a long time.”

“I do not see anyone in my dreams, and furthermore, it feels as though I have no intention of meeting anyone, Ms. Nitsirk.”

“I am telling you not of your intentions, but of your inescapable fate. It is up to you whether you reach it by resisting or by surrendering,” said the ghost who could not abandon her musalla.

***

Finally leaving the ice plain behind, in that dark, run-down bar in Edgin where I had gone in to rest, a pale, gaunt man in a silk top hat and a frock coat came from the left, parting the exhausted crowd, walking toward me with heavy and reluctant steps as if he were attending a funeral. Meanwhile, further inside, the eyes of a woman—who was scratching the lace of the mantilla on her head with a bitten-down nail, distressed by the corset squeezing her waist tight—were also fixed upon me. I could swear that this young woman, who seemed to be expecting something and sat at a wooden table trying not to draw anyone’s attention, was trying to kill me with just her gaze—me, a wretched remnant of a human who had just walked in. I know the woman. She is the woman from the prophecy who occupied my dreams under every stone I slept beneath until I arrived here, who invaded my mind at every step of my long journey. None other.

*

*Musalla: A raised, table-like stone on which a coffin is placed for funeral prayers.

Yazan: Chaotica

Çeviri: Umberto