Chapter
One; Earth Jolts
The earth jolted, violently – all of a sudden –
while most inhabitants still slept. In a matter of seconds, the
world turned upside down. The ground split open, trees fell, walls
shifted and collapsed, stones rolled around, torrents of dust darkened
the new morning.
The ground trembled, furiously. The earth revolted.
Everything appeared to sink into an immense abyss. Sleepers awakened
into the middle of a nightmare. Roofs crumbled down on their shoulders;
wailing destroyed their throats; panic seized their entire being...
Then the world’s belly burst open. An atrocious heat bore down.
Death knocked and the sky remained merciless.
From everywhere, those who survived got out from
the ruins screaming out of fright and running in every direction.
Mothers fled with their newborn babies; old people staggered; children
crawled around; men shouted out commands.
Dogs barked incessantly. Livestock escaped from
their pens. Horses went crazy. No one knew where to go. Fear, and
it was a disfiguring fear, sculpted faces.
In a lightning flash, the empire had collapsed.
They found themselves hurled into the same fear, the same fate.
Moaning stabbed the atmosphere. People died by
the thousands, crushed under ruins, lost in crevices, drowned in
the river’s muddy waters that flowed, flooded and swept across the
land with thunderous sounds. Beings and things floundered in the
water, fell and disappeared beneath the surge.
Within seconds, glory was destroyed; the past disemboweled;
riches annihilated.
But what followed was worse. When the earth stopped
jolting, finally, and the inhabitants were left facing each other,
fear became unbearable. The terror of destruction took hold and
paralyzed them, totally.
Horror asphyxiated them. Awareness of the end of
the world froze their consciousness. They ranted and raved. They
muttered unintelligible words.
And then – all of a sudden – the slaves began the
work of digging out. They were the only ones who still had strength
to react. With their bare hands, they dug through the debris and
handed over the bodies: entombed children; vanished mothers; injured
fathers. They called out the names. They waited. They dug. Like
prehistoric people, they were at nature’s mercy.
Gradually, the others awakened from their heavy
inertia. The memory of what had once made up their lives, pushed
them to move. They gazed at each other, went down on all fours,
and dug. When they were able to get someone out, they felt like
they had conquered death.
Clouds of loneliness and despair colored the days
– the tears – the distress. How many more days? Time stood still.
They looked only to survive – to eat and sleep – tightly holding
on to each other, hoping that the new day would come for them, once
again.
No longer were there any chiefs, no aristocracy
either. No longer were there slaves. People had lost their vanity,
their hierarchies, their injustice.
Death had taught them a lesson in humility. Death
had shown them her unrivaled might by swallowing whomever she wanted.
No more stratification. No more empire. Simply
men and women such as they were at the beginning of time.
This is when, coming from the other side of the
mountains, the BlindPeople arrived.
The survivors saw them approaching in a solid mass.
Their army was sparkling. Dazzling rays of light streamed from their
missiles and firearms. Their power was unmatched; their superiority
invincible.
Within a short while, they invaded the empire and
installed their kingdom.
Chapter Two; The King's Palace
Built on a gigantic hill, the palace spreads its
wings over the city like a monstrous bat.
The huge room with a hundred mirrors where the
king held court formed the body of the beast and its wings were
the raised ballrooms where banquets and meetings were held; the
king’s chambers and those of his daughter were located in the head
of the creature. They jutted out and were decorated with fine fabrics
and gold encrusted ceilings. At the top of this structure, surveillance
radars scanned the kingdom and picked up every sound-wave that moved
across the realm.
A bat was carved on the throne and the royal scepter
because the bat inhabits the night and masters the sky despite blind
eyes. Because the bat with its mysterious cries is the possessor
of infinite powers. Because darkness is the bat’s force.
Bats lived freely in the gardens of the palace.
City-dwellers heard them from afar especially at the king’s consecrated
feeding time. He stood up straight among them and followed the rustling
of their beating wings. He knew, exactly, the special way they sounded
if they liked the mixture of ripe fruit, fresh vegetables and insects
he threw to them.
These creatures multiplied at an uncontrollable
rate. In this way, they colonized all the trees in the city and
drove away the sparrows which fled, gradually, towards the North.
They attacked the children, getting entangled in their hair. They
scratched and emitted piercing cries like needles on eardrums.
Every morning servants washed down the palace’s
steps and facade. They had to rub, scrape and scrub to get rid of
the excrement that these flying mammals left everywhere.
The atmosphere was invaded by a stifling stench
and the gardens resembled garbage dumps. Green and blue flies buzzed
up around the ears of His Majesty Ato IV.
While feeding his bats one particular day the king
was pensive. In the evening he was to host a huge marriage banquet
with the entire court in attendance. Normally, this should have
put him in a good mood yet he was very unhappy because he would
have preferred to spend all this money in honor of his own daughter.
His only child. But she categorically refused to get married so
instead he had to celebrate the wedding festivities of a young cousin.
He was thinking:
“Ahh, how I would have loved to marry off Akissi!”
Ato IV was thinking as he returned to his chambers. I would have
had made for her a silk dress pearled with the world’s largest diamonds
and I would have placed on her head a crown of rubies and emeralds.
I do not understand my child, my own daughter.
She hides her lovers. I should have been able to persuade her to
accept a man of my choosing, but to what good? This would have been
pain wasted. If she is the king’s daughter, it is by way of her
seething blood. If I impose someone on her, she will cloister herself
inside her chambers never to leave again.”
Ato IV mounted the central staircase, slowly, reproaching
himself for not having brought up his daughter as it should have
been done. The governesses had not known how to be firm. Not one
of them had managed to take charge of her.
“She is just like her mother – (Pssth, he sucked
his teeth) this woman from the Great North, this woman with unparalleled
intelligence. She had to go. Never ever would I share power! It
is passed along bloodlines, and Akissi is my only heir. Flesh of
my flesh. Blood of my blood.”
The king sighed, trying to calm himself:
“In any case, this is of no importance, or rather:
I should have had a son as tradition demands. With a son, I would
have conquered the entire world! But why did life decide otherwise?
The women who stretched out in my bed – all of them – had wombs
as empty as a gourd with holes! Dry, ungrateful wombs, carriers
of still-born babies. The people had started to gossip.”
Entering his chambers, he exclaimed:
“The slum-dwellers must be kept in awe by the splendor
and luxuriousness of the festivities. The cortege will move across
the city with all the fanfare. Gold and silver will dazzle their
eyes. I want people to be talking still, in one hundred years, about
this wedding party! And what’s more, in the most remote regions.
One must proclaim to the world and to the slum-dwellers that the
kingdom has never before been this prosperous! I am going to show
them, I, Ato IV, what power is! And one day, it will be my daughter’s
turn. Then, I will make the entire world tremble with envy! The
ceremony feast will be so grandiose that the power of my name will
surpass the borders of the Universe! And everyone will know that
my reign is limitless and that my throne is cast in solid gold !
Because I am the one who created this country. I, who built it with
my own hands, shaped it according to my own will. I am the one who
made from its mire and chaos this grandiose site! I am the one who
gave it prosperity, strength and eternal life.
Without me, there would be nothing here.
Without me, everyone would have starved.
I am the rock on which the kingdom is built.
I am the king of steel whose power generates the future.
I am the one whose voice makes the mountains tremble.
The one who stops time.
The one who governs.
By day as well as by
Night!”
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