Viking_Yearbook_68

I I I I II 1 END OF DISASTER Prologue It was a bad year for four-leaf clovers. Where they had been there was nothing. Ashes. The ashes were everywhere. They continued to sift down from the poisoned sky, and they too, were poisoned. In his mind was a curtain, drawn. It shut out all but ashes. And they continued to fall. Fall. Down into nothing. Into more ashes. And onto him. And he stood there being covered with ashes. And the curtain shut out all thought, all thinking. His mind was as dead as the ashes. There was no light. There was no darkness. It was not cold ... it was not hot. It wasn't anything. I After a long time there was something. A corner of the curtain in his mind lifted -moved back by some infinitely small cosmic exhalation. And ... he perceived nothing. (For the ashes were everywhere, and they were nothing.) And that infinitely small exhalation from some universal thing grew to a great typhoon. (And it stirred nothing. Not even the ashes.) The eternal dust still fell. It fell on the man standing on that end- less waste of a bare stage. And the curtain fell back. And the wind stopped. And the ashes fell. II After a long time the man was gone. The stage was empty again. Sudden booming brightness. A brightness without any noise. A great, omnicient, permeating bright– ness that burned into the ashes. It found the man. And it turned the ashes red, white, black, nothing. It burned at the curtain inside his mind with great, large flames . Away from inside his mind it burned. And it fell in ashes inside hi s mind. And yet he perceived nothing. For he was covered with ashes. (Inhale.) Smoke swirled into his lungs and poi- soned them. He moved . Arms beat at the dust. Hands clawed at the ashes. But the ashes yielded to hi s movements and swirled about him in clouds of gray nothing. He exhaled and cleared out the ashes that were poisoning his lungs. He inhaled and filled his lungs again . .. with ashes. He moved a foot. A step. Step, step. One, two, three. And the stepho les he made filled with ashes as soon as he made them. And he walked . And there was no end to the void . The bare stage was infinite. And the ashes fell. Ill (and he walked on in a sea of dust. of cremated people. of cremated houses. of cremated trees . of cremated dogs and cats. of a cremated rubber doll with its stuHing coming out.) of cremated love and cremated hate ... Here all was extinct. After a long time the man stood no longer in ashes. He stood in a sea which the ashes had turned into gravy. Where fish with white eyes swam on their sides on the surface. And the man turned and walked out of dust into more dust. Out of ashes into ashes. And the ashes fell. IV After a long time it was not gray anymore. The nothingness was gone. There was whiteness in front of him and darkness behind him and toward the whiteness he walked. He came into a warm goldenness. And he stepped on a greenness. And over his head was a blueness. And the ashes stopped falling. v The man walked fo·rward. Through confusing kaleidoscopes of green, blue, gold. And before him the earth bulged. He climbed up the hill with great effort. Hi s effort was of thousands of eons. And he was a primordial being emerg- ing from an ancient ooze. And he stood on the crown of green- ness. He turned to see the ashes. He looked at where he had been . There was a wall of ashes to the left. And there was a wall of ashes to the right. And to the top was a wall of ashes. But where he had left the ashes there was no open ing.