And Rimbow turned his back on the carnival and left, because the Earth hurt his feet. No, he told his mom, no, he told the kulchur sections, no, he told the city, an when Satyr called from the slammer: May I kiss you again before I kick the bucket? Rimbow said no an killed the phone.
Sharp bones jutted out all over the Earth, lacerating him. So he decided to split. My heart dribbles tobacco off the stern, he said, and hired himself out. Deserting to Ceylon, he made his way through the rain forests and up into the mountains so he could get firm rock underfoot instead of a mass grave.
He knew the important dreams were the ones that hit hard on hard earth, not on soft, which is … you know what by now. Being a seer was all that saved him from the gorilla raids and macaque attacks. He was maestus et errabundus, and knew it didn’t make any difference whether he survived the climb to the summit. He was a seer and knew that up there, especially in Ceylon, there were freedom-loving ants, and it was enough for him to meet one that could pass the news on to his partners … so the things he wrote would remain puzzles and snares for those that came after him … one single proud, freedom-loving ant was all it would take, because all lives’re interconnected, that was obvious to him. He was a VOYANT, a seer, he was a clear-sighted eagle, and in his important dream he saw Mussolini offer him his daughter and half the republic if he would bow down to him, but he also saw the Abyssinians and their ruler, King Menelik, counting out flints for spears.
He felt the gusts of icy wind as the wheel turned round, and looking ahead he could sense what awaited the Abyssinians, the pit opening to swallow them up …
So he blew off his stupid poems, left them in Ceylon, and rushed off to Abyssinia … took to the byznys path, buying Kalashnikovs from Ukraine and lifting them in to the Abyssinians … didn’t get much cash out of it, he never was good with numbers, but he knew what his reasons were … he needed something concrete to keep from going totally insane … and thanks to Rimbow the Abyssinians were able to hold off the stalingos’ tanks for a while … and thanks to the fact that they slaughtered a lot of them, the Abyssinians were preserved and their name has not been forgotten. And the circle of tribes remained intact, and apart from the letter G there’s still the whole alphabet and the Abyssinians’ tongue, and G is just one of a number of letters.
Then they cut off his leg and he died.
Yep, colleagues, Sharky smiled at us, that’s how it was with the Individual that didn’t have any tribe … I simplified it a little … an it might seem hard to believe, but even without a tribe there’s things you can do … an that’s why I sprang this character on you … without a tribe, I say, cause that’s what awaits you, you Subeuropeans, you Czechs an other carpetbaggers … it’s gonna be tough because, my apologies, free horsemen and masons, but you didn’t have any good, free animals around your more or less smelly cradles back in those cold ratty tenements, the donkeys and cows had gone to pasture for reeducation, not to mention Chief Joseph was long gone by then, just remember, you rejects and sinful vessels, who stood at your cradles, none other than Adolf himself an Uncle Joe, come on, you remember … Mowgli roared at the wolves … an they sank their claws into your craven little hearts, so cover yourselves with protective tattoos, you’re the last of the old time an you’re gonna need em … and remember! Remember how it began here, remember who it was that unified the tribes … Sámo, a Frank, a traitor to his own people, it began with betrayal … he got so messed up from those tall tales his old Czech nanny Slava told him that he turned against his own tribe, your grandfather, the father of miscegenation … remember the days when the Christians rendered unto Caesar not just a lousy penny or two but took their children outta the rec rooms an school-sponsored factories an gave him them too, an that was you … an I’ll tell you right now, straight up an full force: entirely unintentionally it led to the creation of a subeuropean bastard megarace, rising up like Venus from the foam, or like Baba Yaga from the muck, whatever you feel, I’m not givin any orders here, heh. An those two that stood at your cradles were regime installation artists, they knew what an efficient killer the state is, they knew how to let the G-arrow fly … you dear listeners, future possible defensive snipers an potential humanist ethnic cleansers … Sharky lectured us … you know that part of my bastard Prague constitution derives from the People of the Book … an that they tiptoed out of G-night through the holes between the hinges was nothing short of a miracle … but these People of the Book have an old and amazing alphabet, an they wrote down, wrote out, an compiled what happened, an that’s why it exists today, that’s why it’s real an isn’t forgotten.
But there’s yet another people here, trained in the art of survival, an this one doesn’t write, its only chronicles are scars, occasionally on other peoples’ skins … an no one knows the names of its dead, it’s like they never existed … they’re not written on the walls of any bloodstained house of prayer either, cause on G-nights this people’s blood gushed without anywhere to pray … this people lives in rough coexistence with the state, an for them the state’s always been a killer, they’re the People of the Pack, who tend to the family an don’t mind a bit that it’s crawling with lice from time to time … an no one from this tribe was ever so fatuous as to invent a mobile wheel so no one could escape from anyone anymore … or electric-powered torches so people could scrape away at the lie of progress absolutely nonstop … or the unnatural telephone, which shortens life as well as distances … on the contrary, this people cleverly tears down ads to use for occasional fires … an wages its miniature war with pockets an shivs, an what is that next to genocide … a very unusual people they are, never marched into the field or destroyed another tribe, cause they’ve got no talent for organization … never dug a pit for another tribe, cause shovels an picks don’t interest em much … quicklime only gives em the hiccups an makes em fling up their arms … this people knows very well how important it is to daydream and slack off, that it’s true art when a dream and a color fill in the spots where once the menacing lions of the subconscious roared … and Goliath said: Who is not with us is against us and will be killed or reeducated … and David said: Live and let live … gimme a break aready, why doncha! And let his slingshot fly. You know, you illustrious rec room dwellers … let live … and keep a close watch on the colorful boisterous throngs of criminal Romanies … because their tribe keeps the pack and the family alive, and will be the last that knows what a pack is … and that there’s more than just the rules of the state with its markets and its ads’ duper-super cookie-cutter freaks of the near-distant homogenized future … and Rs don’t look like ads, not even from far away … and even the newfangled dragon pseudopit of the Meediya won’t swallow the Rs but just spits them up … they’re drunk and noisy too much of the time, and don’t look good on the Grainy … put the beast behind bars with the rest of the beasts … but the earth must never again be a pit for another tribe … it wouldn’t be able to take it, you know what comes next … and that it’s starting again, literally every day, like everything else … every G-day was yesterday and goes on smoldering … but there’s various things here, various possibilities, all sorts of paths, dear brothers’ sisters and dear sisters’ brothers, and it’s not a pretty sight. The earth is entirely overburDénéd, it seems, but there’s still one more possibility, said the mythomaniac Sharky … and then Dolphin the brujo storyteller darted off into the dark and heavy tide, plowing through the surf and surfacing near the sandy beach, he fixed us with his sparkling emerald eyes and said … you know … there’s possibilities here, and one of them is hope.