This charlatan-magician-mystifier is called Man. What, then, is Man? Man is Terminus M, the middle term in the syllogism of death. I am the Subject, my Predicate is the boiling cauldron, my flesh, the cannibals’ teeth, and, under a banana tree, a freshly hatched, still steaming banana. That is my Nirvana, Oh Gautama!
He felt his body in his stomach with a Puritan wish to vomit. Autophagy: quite a good word, he thought, you can enjoy it cooked or raw.
Who wants to go on living here? Everyone. Everyone who tonight would suck up their own blubber, gnaw off their own flesh, swallow up all that is bodily and phenomenal about their persons, leaving only the pure being an sich, mouthless and gulletless (they will have eaten up their own selves beforehand), an elusive, inedible, conscious Monad provided with Arielian powers of revenge: all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful. All this, of course, only for the duration, until the danger passes. Whereupon kindly restore my body, my mouth and gullet and bowels and all the rest of things bowelly, bowel-conduitly and bowel-pleasing; kindly restore all the blisses, all the treasures and pleasures of Myself the Phenomenon. That was the deal. Oh yes, that was how it stood! Here, I just thought of something — how about being reincarnated as a reptile, a crocodile, eh? Yum-yum, eating cannibals on the phenomenal level, your mind an sich living in ideas all the while? What a samsara!
Now to extend the circle of pleasures to include snoring. The old seaman is releasing what you might call historical fatigue. Sucking in strength from the tropical night, sleep, peace, charging his batteries for the morrow. Who knows what tomorrow may bring?
“Give him a nudge, Doctor, wake him up!” comes the captain’s imperious voice.
“First of all, why me?” hisses the Asclepian through a malicious snicker.
“Secondly, why wake up someone who may be enjoying a peaceful night’s sleep for the first time in his life? And thirdly, the bridge went down with the good ship Menelaus. We are but different dishes on the local menu depending on which way our hosts’ tastes run and that is all the difference between us.”
“Don’t forget you’re still under my command. In a time of war, I might add. This means I have additional authority. You know the penalty for insubordination in wartime, do you not?”
“In wartime? Whom are we at war with?”
“Out here, we are a part of our country under wartime mobilization. We have been captured by the enemy and have POW status.”
“Out here we are a part of nature in nature, sir — if I can still call you sir. What enemy do you have in mind? These are the Friendly Islands and we are the food for our friends, Mr. Morsel. We are the provisions.”
The first mate laughed mordantly in his part of the dark. The agent and the chief engineer fell to lashing at the doctor with unrestrained hatred. Your very skin shows you’re not one of us, God Himself has excluded you, marked you with your bedbug stench, they spoke into the darkness to the doctor and only regretted being unable to see his face. But it was just as well for them not to have seen it. His face was awash with satisfaction: keep talking, keep talking, you chosen lot, you clean lot, you beautiful lot! You tasty, fragrant, aromatic gourmet meals. You tasty treats! Blessed be thou, my primordial Stench! To me art thou like to the turtle’s armor, the hedgehog’s spine, the snail’s shell, the hare’s speed, the bear’s paw, the buffalo’s horn, the lion’s strength, the snake’s venom, the fox’s cunning, the bird’s wing, the cuttlefish’s ink, the salamander’s hid-eousness. There are anteaters, fly-eating swallows, chameleons, spiders, all kinds of insectivores, but there are no eaters of bedbugs. I am a bedbug among humans! A foul bedbug, the nocturnal prowler of your vigils, the vampire of your fevers, the tormentor of your insomnias. I crawl all over your pretty dreams and suck your pure, wholesome, sweet blood. Oh you archbishops of beauty, the hour of revenge is upon us!
“Wake him!” bellows the captain in the end, for the old seaman’s snoring is nearly furious.
“How on earth can you sleep like that, man?” the chief engineer reproaches him gently after giving him a good shake.
“What else am I to do, sir? It’s night …” the seaman says innocently.
“Yes, but you are snoring!” yells the captain.
“Oh really? Sorry, skipper, I wasn’t aware,” the seaman apologizes in earnest. “I must be keeping you up. People do tell me I make an unholy ruckus. Never heard it myself, but the boys in the crew, they often told me I roared. I’ve been stuck with it since my youth. Even had my nose operated on, they cut out half a pound of flesh, broadened the nostrils and all — well, it was for naught, I went on roaring like before. I always snore, gentlemen, when I sleep on my back. There’s nothing for it. All you can do is turn me on my side.”
“That’s not the point, blast it!” flares the captain. “What I mean is, how can you snore like that, do you understand me, as if you haven’t a care in the world?”
“I don’t rightly know, sir. I expect it comes to me natural. At any rate, it’s not on purpose, I swear on my …”
“Oh, the blessed fool,” sighs the captain.
“Could be, sir,” the seaman sighs, too, sincerely. “As for my snoring, you just flip me on my side, if you don’t mind, and it’ll stop right there. If I could hear it I’d stop it myself. Thing is, you can’t hear yourself. Funny, isn’t it? Everyone can hear it, everybody gets woken up — except your man. Funny.” And the old fellow laughs artlessly at his discovery. “Everyone but the damned snore artist,” he repeats to himself, finding it amusing. And he drops off to sleep again. With a chuckle.
“God, he’s laughing again!” rages the captain. “Can’t you get it through your thick skull, idiot, that those blacks are going to boil you and devour you just as the devils boil and devour sinners in Hell? That it may well happen tomorrow? And you are chuckling away instead of giving it a thought!”
“What’s the use of my thinking, sir? I know I’m a great sinner, so if these devils over here eat me up, at least those devils down there won’t. Shame about the head cook though. He was a good man. He would’ve gone to heaven if these fellows here hadn’t eaten him. No, honestly — it was bloody unfair, eating such a man. Such a nice man. Many’s the time — I’ll say it now — many’s the time he let me have leftovers from the officers’ mess. Have a nibble, old-timer, tasty stuff. Very tasty indeed, sir, very tasty indeed, thank you very much, sir, for being so kind. Not to mention where he was quite the joker, sir, our Mr. Head Cook! One day I was standing at …”
“Look at him — wants to tell anecdotes to pass the time,” mutters the captain.
The old seaman sees that nobody is listening, turns over on his side, and falls contentedly asleep in an instant.
The next day a feeble hope is timidly born inside the castaways that things might take a proverbial turn for the better. No cannibal lunch is in the offing. What was the cook’s stake the day before is now covered with smoking green branches — to repel poisonous insects, thinks the Asclepian, a wise measure. If only the cook remembered to make a religious speech in front of the cauldron, he would be proclaimed a saint, or at least a martyr in a hundred years’ time; his name would be mentioned in all the cathedrals in Christendom. As it turns out, all that is left behind him are the swollen bellies from the Menelaus earnestly cursing him for having so painstakingly fattened them with death. No preparations for anything like a feast are under way in the village. The natives dawdle idly around the huts, stepping out of the way of naked women who slap them jokingly on their shiny black behinds. Mothers suckle their young with dull indifference, some of them catering to two at a time, one at each breast. The bigger children enviously watch the feeding of the tiny sucklings and divert milk drops with a finger from the greedy little mugs, licking their sticky sweetened fingers with gusto. A monkey whom a boy has singed with a flaming twig screams piteously in the forest. Presently his entire tribe joins him in a screeching show of solidarity, protesting in an angry chorus. Then the whole forest puts up a horrible howl. The offended monkey folk. The cannibals scoff at the impotent simian rage, hurling provocative counterhowls back. At this the monkeys’ screeching turns into a kind of general weeping in recognition of their impotence and defeat. And once again peace reigns in the jungle.