I was becoming alarmed by their numbers and by their silence, which seemed to have a sinister quality to it. Those hungry, unhealthy features might have belonged to cannibals. They made me feel sick. Black or white, there seemed little difference to me. They pressed around us in their torn, patched rags, with thin ungainly limbs, rolling, vacant eyes, red mouths, stinking of sweat. I could feel my hysteria building. I longed for some cocaine to steady my nerves but that was still in my luggage. Major Sinclair seemed unperturbed. I said nothing of my fears, yet I became convinced these people would never allow us to leave the ground, that they would jump us at any second, strip us of all we owned, tear the very flesh from our bones, and feast off it. I sensed a tremor in my legs as more and more of those ill-fed bodies touched mine. Sinclair was smiling. He was joking with them. Could he not see what I saw? This was Carthage indeed! The degenerate dregs of humanity greedy for everything I had worked for; the ignorant, hopeless, unconscious enemies of civilisation, as unable to imagine or create a better world as the wretches I had left behind in Kiev, as the Jews I escaped in Alexandrovskaya villages or the subhuman tribespeople of the Anatolian hinterland. Only by a massive effort of will could I make myself move forward. My mouth grew dry, my knees weak; my heart beat at terrifying speed. Sinclair would have thought me utterly irrational; this poverty did not for a moment threaten him. But I knew if we did not reach the ship as soon as possible we could be submerged by this mob. It wanted what we carried in our ship. It hated us for what the ship represented. It was jealous because I had managed to make something of myself. It loathed all that was different. Innovation threatened change, threatened the hideous familiarity of their lives. They would protect this familiarity at all costs. The metal shifted in my stomach. I was dizzy. I could not run. Desidero un antisettico! They stank of disease. The mass swelled, the pressure increased. I could not breathe. They were skeletons with huge, yearning eyes, reaching out their ragged claws for something they could not even name. I refused to join them in the camps, though they said I was a brother. That is how they recruit you. I never became a Mussulman. Seductive Carthage was resisted. I fought against her with wits and courage. I know her tricks. I know her ingratiating whine, her beggar’s pretence at poverty, her pleading attempts to win sympathy, her cajoling murmur. They would do anything to drag me back. They call you the same, but you are not. An accident with a knife and they say you are one of them! A misguided decision of my father and I am denied my fame. My future is stolen, together with my true place in the world. Carthage crowds in like poison gas. Brodmann leered out of the cloud. My stomach churned. I could hardly climb the ladder into the cockpit. I stared down at those awful eyes. The blacks yelled wordless exclamations and began to caper. Some of the children tittered. Others wept. Major Sinclair was speaking to me as he slid his body into the forward compartment but I could not hear him. My breathing was erratic. They could still drag us down into that yellow mud. I put my goggles over my eyes so they should not see my tears. Major Sinclair waved. He was confident and relaxed. The wretches had our ropes and were towing us across the field. The whole crowd had begun to run. They cried out: strange, bestial ululations. Major Sinclair was shouting at me. ‘Winch in the mooring line, man!’ I needed water. I could not reply. Still shaking, I obeyed. I could see those voracious mouths twisting to display rotting teeth, those greedy hands clutching at my very substance. I owe nothing to Carthage. I am a true Slav. I was not of their blood. I had no debt of pity or charity or brotherhood. Poverty stank on their breath. They were my enemies. It reeked in their rags, in the food they ate, in their huts and their fields. I screamed down at them to release me, to let go of the rope. They were running like a single wave escaped from a dam; a flood of human flotsam. Scarecrow boys still swung on the mooring line, refusing to relinquish it. Their shrieking voices filled my head.
I had not sought any of this. I had been ill-prepared for it. They are the wretched servants of despair, the enemies of optimism, the willing slaves of Bolshevism. Carthage rose again, not merely in Arkansas, or Missouri, or Louisiana, but in every part of the United States, like the warning signs of cancer. In Europe, too. In the East it already conquered the entire organism. Everywhere was ignorance, hunger, fatalism, corrupted blood, blind hunger. It had been dormant in the shtetls until the great drums began to beat and the brazen trumpets rang, when Carthage shook herself from sleep and reached with a red grin for her spear and shield. She licked her thick lips and looked with confident envy upon the fruits of our labours: our harvest of civilisation. Her hot black eyes glared and there was a deep growl in her throat as she stretched and tested her limbs, her heart filling with anger against those who had sought to destroy her, who had, through their superior morality and courage, meanwhile enriched themselves. And her swarthy hands curled in anticipation. Her hungry, stinking breath is heard in the alleys of the city, the shadows and shacks and shelters, the tents and camps of the countryside, until the sound threatens to drown all others. It drowns the hymns and prayers of true Christians. Our beautiful songs and our poetry, our pure-voiced little girls, our sacrament is extinguished by the roar. Carthage stands laughing on the ruins of our just dreams; our blood runs down her chin; our monuments are ashes beneath her sandalled feet. The beast has conquered! The mindless mob rules on Earth. Chaos becomes the sole condition of Man. This I predicted. And we who were given signs (like the sign God sent when He brought the airship to rest) took heed. It became our duty to warn anyone who will listen. The fight is not completely over, though we have lost so many battles. They never made me a Mussulman. I do not stumble. I keep my back straight. I will not be seduced by the comforts of the trance. I will survive even the most terrible mistakes. Gehorsam nicht folgn. Ich bin baamter! Bafeln! A mol, ich bin andersh. Can’t they see? I do not know their language. Podol is nothing. One must work where one can.
They were laughing their mockery as they finally let go of the rope and our ship flew free. They had been playing with us, showing off their power. Arms, white and black, waved like sickly reeds. I fought to recover my self-control. Major Sinclair had still not realised how close I had been to losing consciousness. We were still climbing into a silvery sky. I was so glad to leave Carthage behind. Little Rock lay clear ahead. I could imagine no experience before us as terrifying as that which we had already escaped.
They put me in Springfield when the roses were in bloom. Oh, Esmé, my sister, you never came to see me. They removed me from your memory. I know now how they work. They told you I did not exist. They desired you for themselves. Carthage descended upon us and carried you away. They destroyed my mother. Mother, did they turn you into ash? Did your bones smoke in their hideous pits where starving soldiers floundered through smouldering human flesh, while machine guns chattered night and day and the voices of the damned echoed in the gorge where I and Esmé used to play? Were you with her, Esmé, or were you already dead, churned to fertiliser by the Steel Tsar’s implacable machines? Or had you sought the consolation of the Mussulman in a Carthaginian prison camp? I did not see you in Springfield, but Springfield is a dozen different places. The maps change and the locations move. My flying cities will know where to go. They tell me at the police station there is nothing they can do about the blacks. They sympathise, but their hands are tied. We are all afraid to speak our minds. The great movements have been suppressed; our heroes are dying in chains or already murdered. Only grey people are allowed to survive. They are the shadows left by Carthage to deceive us into believing our world still exists. But I am not deceived. I have not been dragged down. They shall not confine me in their camps, nor to their ghettoes, their nigger towns and stateless barbed wire pens. I shall not wear their pe’os. I am not the same as them. I deserve better. What right have they to call me mishling? Halbjuden? I was betrayed before I was born. Das Blutt gerinnt. Das Blutt gerinnt.