through the atomic flames, through death or black space.
—Ah, Kronauer said.
The Gramma Udgul began to take her smoking materials out of an apron pocket, and she made herself comfortable while packing bits of tobacco into her pipe. Silence had settled between the two of them and throughout the whole warehouse. Kronauer was more or less at attention in front of her, and every so often he ran his hand over his shaved head, more for something to do than to straighten the half-millimeter of hair that dotted his skin and which would, by all appearances, fall out and not grow back until his death.
As the silence stretched out, Kronauer went to look at the phonograph more closely.
It was a device like the ones they had started making again, based on the old models, when they had believed that the enemy had weapons able to remotely destroy the mechanisms of electronic devices. This unfounded rumor had set off a panic in the industry and in the population, and it had kick-started a pilot plant for reinventing engines that ran on springs or other forces that didn’t require power. The rumor was quickly stamped out, but the first non-electronic models had already come off the production lines, demonstrating the ability of our engineers to adapt and the superiority of our technology, let us say our survival technology, in the race to the bottom we’ve had with imperialism. These prototypes weren’t produced in large numbers, but they were distributed through the network of cooperatives so that the working-class population would stay in touch with our culture and enrich it with local contributions. And so here and there working phonographs could be found, as well as blank cylinders without which these objects would have lost nearly all their significance. Kronauer handled the copper horn, caressed the diaphragm’s membrane, examined the needle; then he looked at the box full of cylinders and took out one to look more closely.
He could feel the Gramma Udgul’s hostility on his back and he turned toward her. She took the pipe out of her mouth.
—Didn’t you see what’s written on the cylinder? she asked icily.
Kronauer rotated the cylinder, which at first glance seemed not to have any information on it; then he saw an inscription in gray letters on the end. He had to hold it up to the light to read it. Like traces of graphite on slate.
—Well, there are a few letters, he said. F T T L T T D A T T D.
—It’s an abbreviation, the Gramma Udgul said unhelpfully.
—I don’t know how to decode that.
The Gramma Udgul blew a cloud of smoke at Kronauer. Her face was frowning and unfriendly.
—You really aren’t smart, soldier, she said.
—No.
—It means “Forbidden to the Living, to the Dead, and to the Dogs.”
She spoke these words with an ominous aggression, as if he was undeniably guilty of something, but refused to admit it. Kronauer decided to be as straightforward as possible.
—I’m not any of those, he said.
—Sure, you say that, the Gramma Udgul grumbled.
They watched each other without talking for several seconds.
—Ow! Kronauer suddenly yelled.
—What happened? the Gramma Udgul jumped up.
—Nothing, Kronauer said. I just pricked myself on the diaphragm needle. I wanted to put the cylinder in the spindle to see how it worked, and I pricked myself.
• Kronauer has pricked his finger on the phonograph needle.
A small drop of blood grows on the end of his index finger.
A sting, and then everything changes.
Sleeping Beauty pricked herself on her spindle and that cost her a hundred years of sleep and immobility.
Kronauer doesn’t fall down, doesn’t fall asleep. He doesn’t dream for a second of making any comparison between this fairy-tale princess and himself, between the old spinster and the Gramma Udgul, between the spindle’s point and the phonograph’s needle. He has nothing in his head resembling children’s stories, and he simply looks at the drop of blood swelling on his finger. He looks at it, then he brings it to his lips and he licks it.
The taste of blood on his tongue. And there, as in the shower, an aftertaste of cesium and iodide.
Kronauer has drawn blood on an object belonging to Solovyei, which is an integral part of Solovyei’s memories, which is used to broadcast Solovyei’s voice, a magic machine that speaks Solovyei’s poems out loud, his memories, Solovyei’s emphatic howls, Solovyei’s terrible admonitions and dreams.
A miniscule wound, and then everything changes.
Kronauer feels a light numbness in the pad of his finger, a barely noticeable pain. A new droplet of blood appears on his fingertip, he lets it tremble before licking it up, but already everything has changed.
Kronauer doesn’t know about this change, he is silent as he faces the Gramma Udgul, who watches him unkindly, herself also silent.
He thinks of the living, of the dogs, and of the dead, and, oddly, he wonders which category he belongs to, and no less oddly, he is unable to answer.
In any case, he has to say, this warning on the cylinder doesn’t affect me at all.
He is wrong. Even in admitting he isn’t living, or dead, or dog, he has bled on Solovyei’s phonograph and fallen into the world of Solovyei’s dreams.
A prick was enough, a few microliters of blood have become the gateway from one world to the other. Here everything is the same, and Kronauer doesn’t notice.
Everything is the same, but he has changed.
• He has just entered a parallel reality, a bardic reality, a magical and stammering death, a stutter of reality, of magic malevolence, a tumor of the present, a trap by Solovyei, an inordinately elongated terminal phase, a fragment of sub-reality that threatens to last at least a thousand seven hundred and nine years or thereabouts, if not twice that, he has entered an unspeakable theater, a vivid coma, an endless end, the false continuation of his existence, an artificial reality, an unlikely death, a swampy reality, the ashes of his own memories, the ashes of his own present, an insane loop, resounding images where he cannot be actor or audience, a luminous nightmare, a shadowy nightmare, lands forbidden to the dogs, to the living, and to the dead. His walk has begun and now, no matter what, it will not end.
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