The Wrath of the Dead
(La Colère des Morts)

The dead came to visit the living regularly. When they found them they would ask why they had been killed.

The streets of the town were filled with wandering spirits, whirling around in the stifling air. They stayed close alongside the people, climbing on their backs, walking with them, dancing around them, following them through the overcrowded alleyways.

The dead would have liked to speak but no one heard them. They would have liked to say all that they did not have time to say, to utter every word they had been robbed of, that had been cut from their tongue and torn from their mouth.

They were present in every part of town. You could feel them as they hurriedly passed people.

The spirits were anxious to go home and visit everyone they had known, in places they had loved, places that were still theirs.

And even when the only things left were houses in ruins, a single stone was enough for them to recapture the bygone days.

They were floating among the living who were going about their daily existence, their memory beginning to surrender. The wounds were burrowed deep inside their flesh but closing slowly over the nightmares.
 

In the face of oblivion and broken promises, the wrath of the deceased was to be expected. For already, life was pulling the living in every direction and they no longer knew which way to turn. Life was snatching them up and the everyday routine of petty details was becoming a threat to their revolt. They were losing their desire to rebel and to refuse anything resembling the heinous past. They caught themselves rediscovering the pleasure of going about their business.

And when they were angry, the dead gathered in the middle of empty lots and  wreckage—in those places that had swallowed up their blood and suffering—and let out the last cries of their mortal coil one more time. The wind conveyed their rage and pierced the eardrums of the survivors. Anguish cast a shadow over people’s conscience, rendering their days and nights unbearable.
 

Some of the dead were so furious they refused to go back when the moment to leave the earth had come. There was one in particular, whose head had been severed and who was taking it out on everyone. A torrential rain was his ally.
 

The rain was coming down violently. An angry rain howling its refusal to open the doors to the other world. It was hammering the ground with heavy blows to say:  “No!”  To say that this dead man did not want to leave, that he still had many things to do, that he had loved life too much to depart like that.

“No!”

And the rain came beating down tempestuously, rebelling, insisting that the spirit stay right where he was.

The dead one moaned:

“Why so soon?  Why this way?

Who will utter my words, become my eyes?

Who will go on with what I began?”

He darted off in all directions. He went from house to house, from courtyard to courtyard while the rain kept on falling harder and harder and people stayed locked inside their dwellings. Everything had come to a halt.

The dead one was debating, arguing, negotiating his stay on earth. But no one answered him because they were all immured inside their grief, deafened by their sobs and their remorse.

The dead man knocked on doors and windows but nobody would open. He cried: “Why are you deserting me?  I am a corpse now and you don’t recognize me anymore. Don’t you feel my presence in your midst?”

They sent for a diviner who lived far off in the hills.

When he arrived, the venerable man—a great initiate in the secrets of time—he greeted the rain, turned toward the wind, and started listening to the irate spirit. He heard the story of his murder, of the humiliations and tortures to which he had been subjected before his head was cut off.

When the spirit fell silent the diviner offered many words of appeasement. Then he added: “Even as I weep, I know that my anguish will never come close to anything that you have suffered, you who were mowed down by cruelty. I humbly ask that you and all those who are dead receive me into the house of silence and mourning on this night when memories are being rent like wounds. I stand here before all of you who have died by the thousands to let you settle your burning gaze on my unveiled nakedness. Before you, I am vulnerable, all too human.

Who am I to dare cross the threshold of your sorrow?  Who am I to interfere with the course of your wrath?

I am the beggar in quest of some morsels of truth. I am the man lost in the chasm of our violence. I am the one who has come to plead for your willingness to give the living another chance.”

There the diviner stopped.

He sent for a chicken with very white feathers and opened its belly with one swift, sharp cut. He took out the entrails and sat down on the ground to examine them and decipher the hidden signs. For a long time he studied them in deep concentration. When he thought he had found what he was looking for, he made a few ritual offerings and sputtered into the wind some words that no one could grasp.

Suddenly the rain began to slow down and all that could be heard was the steady murmuring of its lamentations, the refrain of its despair.

Soon the first sounds of everyday life came through: shouting, calling, objects being moved, the humming of engines, mechanical tools somewhere down the street, music from a radio. The inhabitants came out of their homes and ventured gingerly onto the muddy paths. The thunderclaps now only came from a very far distance. Nature seemed appeased at last.

Then the dead one knew his rebellion should come to an end. He prepared himself for the journey that was to take him to the other side of existence. When the last drop of water had fallen from the sky he was gone.
 

Then the diviner addressed the living in these words:

“Now you must bury the dead according to the rites, bury their desiccated bodies, their bones shrinking in the open air, so that all you will have left is their memory heightened by respect. Memory is like the sword dipped in steel, like the rain in the belly of drought. A diadem placed on the head of a weeping princess, a mantel on the shoulders of the mother wounded with sorrow, a coat of light to grace the man broken by the enormity of absence.

We must bury the dead so that they may come back to see us in peace, hide their decay and their blinding nakedness so that they may not curse us. We must restore the images of life so that they may impose themselves again, so that these dust-and-violence-covered bones will not be encumbered by the hatred that put them in their shrouds.

We must ask them to give us the secrets of life that once again prevails since only the living can resuscitate the dead. Without us they are no longer anything. Without them we sink into nothingness.”

The diviner stopped speaking for a while to make sure everyone had grasped his words and to gather a little more energy as well.

Then he continued:

“It is the dead themselves who ask us to go on living, to make the gestures again, to speak the words that they can no longer utter.

How could they come back if we obstruct their passage with our despair and our tears?

We must open the door to them, let them get settled, show them how we are living with our memory turned toward them in love, friendship, and duty.

Their eternity is a strange universe. It is the gods’ tribunal that judges souls and receives them with their wounds and mutilations. What rituals do we use to cleanse these bodies, these abandoned corpses, eaten by dogs and crows?  Go before their saddened souls and take their hands to guide them toward the path of liberty: the searing light, the stairs of fire, the original purity of all creation, the dawn of the early morning sun, the dew on the carpet of grass.

For time does not grow old. Three hundred and sixty-six days or a one-second lightning flash are merely one and the same. Past and future have the same distance, always bringing us back to the already consummated moment.”

The diviner’s tone changed suddenly as he began to speak with a certain serenity, which very quickly spread:

“The dead will be reborn in every spark of life no matter how small, in every word spoken, in every gaze, in every gesture no matter how simple. They will be reborn in the dust, in the dancing water, in laughing children as they play and clap their hands, and in every seed hidden in the dark soil.

And the spirits will depart for a place they will have chosen, no longer as souls in agony but as flashes of lightning.

We must throw on the ground all the evil that was done down so that the deceased can sleep in peace and that life can unburden itself from the weight of our guilt.

We shall quiet the sound of our voices, which are too loud, so that we may hear the murmurs from beneath the earth.

They will tell us how to purify our passions, clear away the dust, and throw away the stones that obstruct life.

We implore the dead not to increase the misery in which the country pines, not to come and torment the living even if we do not deserve their forgiveness.

We ask them to recognize our humanity even if we are weak and cruel.

We have sullied the earth and devastated the sun. We have trampled on hope.

Still, we beg the dead not to take revenge. Not to mistreat us by sending a swarm of demons upon our heads. Not to send for a hideous drought that will destroy our fields. Not to eat our entrails, not to tear out our eyes or swallow up what we are to become. We ask them not to let our hearts burn in the fire of our existence.

We will seek the language to appease them, the prayers to move them, the words needed for them not to abandon us in the midst of our actions, so that our life does not become a never-ending torment.

May their spirits rise to the sky so they can find the kingdom that is theirs and to which we must have no access. May they continue to be stars in our firmament, the ones we see in the dark of night, the ones that will shine forth for generations and generations to come. May they, in their cold splendor, inhabit our dreams.

No one among us has ever come back from that kingdom to tell us how they are, whether they have found peace at last or are still searching for shelter. No one has told us whether they still carry within them the memory of the wounds and mutilations of our fratricidal hatred. No one can tell us how they will receive us when the time comes for us to join them. Our fear is infinite, for we are afraid to be exiled for eternity, to be exiled into torment by their tribunal.”

Then the diviner’s voice turned hard and dry:

“Men, women, watch out for any desire of vengeance and the perpetual cycle of violence and retaliation. The dead are not at peace because your hearts are still pierced with hate. The cinders of war have not been extinguished.

The signs are of a bad omen. We must not delude ourselves, the present is not acceptable. Too many injustices remain implanted in the belly of the land. The young are paying for the errors of their elders. Hordes of adolescents, their memory blazing, are crisscrossing the country. Hope is scarce. Very few have faith in the birth of a different kind of future.

Will there ever be any reconciliation?

You live together but you are looking in opposite directions. You are together to survive but no one wants to take the first step.

The signs are there: the nation is in mourning. Sorrow comes in waves. But when the waves try to engulf you, remember that you are the masters of your emotions.”

Having spoken, the diviner turned on his heels and vanished in the hills, the thousand hills of this land.