CAPITULO IV IV) RESULTADOS
IV. 1.9) Muestreo de julio de 1997
The Beggar Soldiers
A gate. To the right of it crouches a BEGGAR, a great ragged fellow with a white forehead. He has a small barrel organ which he keeps concealed under his rags. It is early morning. A cannon shot is heard. The EMPEROR arrives, escorted by SOLDIERS; he has long reddish hair, uncovered. He wears a purple woollen garment. Bells are ringing.
EMPEROR: At the very moment that I go to celebrate my victory over my worst enemy and the country blends my name with black incense a beggar sits in front of my gate, stinking of misery. But between these great events it seems fitting for me to converse with nothingness.
(The SOLDIERS step back.)
Do you know why the bells are ringing, man?
BEGGAR: Yes. My dog has died.
EMPEROR: Was that a piece of insolence?
BEGGAR: No. It was old age. He struggled on to the end. I wondered, why do his legs tremble so? He had laid his front legs over my chest.
Like that we lay all night, even when it turned cold. But by the morning he had been dead a long time, and I pushed him off me.
Now I can’t go home because he’s beginning to putrify, and stinks.
EMPEROR: Why don’t you throw him out?
BEGGAR: That’s none of your business. Now you have a hollow in your chest, like a hole in a drain; because you’ve asked a stupid question. Everyone asks stupid questions. Just to ask questions is stupid.
EMPEROR: And yet I shall ask another: Who looks after you? Because if no one looks after you, you’ll have to remove yourself. This is a place where no carrion may rot and no outcry may rend the air.
BEGGAR: Am I crying out?
EMPEROR: Now it’s you that is asking, though there is mockery in your question, and I do not understand the mockery.
BEGGAR: Well, I don’t know about that, and I’m the person involved.
EMPEROR: I take no account of what you say. But who looks after you?
BEGGAR: Sometimes it’s a boy whom his mother got from an angel while she was digging potatoes.
EMPEROR: Do you have no sons?
BEGGAR: They’ve gone.
EMPEROR: Like the Emperor Ta Li’s army, buried by the desert sand?
BEGGAR: He marched through the desert, and his people said: It’s too far.
Turn back, Ta Li. To that he replied every time: This territory must be conquered. They marched on each day, till their shoe leather was worn away, then their skin began to tear, and they used their knees to move on. Once the whirlwind caught a camel on the flank. That camel died in front of their eyes. Once they came to an oasis and said: That’s what our homes are like. Then the Emperor’s little son fell into a cistern and drowned. They mourned for seven days, feeling an infinite grief. Once they saw their horses die. Once their women could go no farther. Once came the wind and the sand that buried them, and then it was all over and quiet again, and the territory belonged to them, and I forgot its name.
EMPEROR: How do you know all that? Not a word of it is true. It was quite different.
BEGGAR: When he got so strong that I was like his child, I crawled away, for I allow no one to dominate me.
EMPEROR: What you are talking about?
BEGGAR: Clouds drifted. Towards midnight, stars broke through. Then there was silence.
EMPEROR: Do clouds make a noise?
BEGGAR: Many, it’s true, died in those filthy hovels by the river that flooded its banks last week, but they didn’t get through.
EMPEROR: Since you know that much—do you never sleep?
BEGGAR: When I lie back on the stones the child that was born cries. And then a new wind rises.
EMPEROR: Last night the stars were out, nobody died by the river, no child was born, there was no wind here.
BEGGAR: In that case you must be blind, deaf and ignorant. Or else it’s malice on your part.
(Pause.)
EMPEROR: What do you do all the time? I’ve never seen you before. Out of what egg did you creep?
BEGGAR: Today I noticed that the maize is poor this year, because the rain hasn’t come. There’s such a dark warm wind blowing in from the fields.
EMPEROR: That’s correct. The maize is poor.
BEGGAR: That’s what it was like thirty-eight years ago. The maize perished in the sun, and before it was done for the rain came down so thick that rats sprang up and devastated all the other fields. Then they came into the villages and took bites out of people. That food was the death of them.
EMPEROR: I know nothing of that. It must be a fabrication like the rest. There’s nothing about it in history.
BEGGAR: There’s no such thing as history.
EMPEROR: And what about Alexander? And Caesar? And
Napoleon?
BEGGAR: Stories! Fairy tales! What Napoleon are you talking about?
EMPEROR: The one who conquered half the world and was undone because he overreached himself.
BEGGAR: Only two can believe that: He and the world. It is wrong. In reality Napoleon was a man who rowed in a galley and had such a fat head that everybody said:
We can’t row, because we haven’t enough elbow room. When the ship went down, because they didn’t row, he pumped his head full of air and kept alive, he alone, and because he was fettered he had to row on—
he couldn’t see where to from down there, and all had drowned. So he shook his head over the world, and since it was too heavy, it fell off.
EMPEROR: That’s the silliest thing I have ever heard. You have greatly disappointed me by telling me that yarn. The others were at least well told. But what do you think of the Emperor?
BEGGAR: There is no such person as the Emperor. Only the nation thinks there is such a person, and one individual thinks that he is the one. Later, when too many military vehicles are being made and the drummers are well rehearsed, there is war and an opponent is looked for.
EMPEROR: But now the Emperor has defeated his opponent.
BEGGAR: He has killed him, not defeated him. One idiot has killed another.
EMPEROR, with an effort: He was a strong opponent, believe me.
12 THE BEGGAR OR THE DEAD DOG 107
BEGGAR: There is a man who puts stones into my rice. That man is my enemy. He bragged, because he has a strong hand. But he died of cancer, and when they closed the coffin they caught his hand under the lid and didn’t notice it when they carried the coffin away, so that the hand hung out of it, limp, helpless and empty.
EMPEROR: Don’t you ever get bored then, with lying about like this?
BEGGAR: In the past clouds used to drift down, along the sky, endlessly. I look at those. There is no end to them.
EMPEROR: Now there are no clouds moving in the sky. So your talk makes no sense. That’s as clear as the sun.
BEGGAR: There is no such thing as the sun.
EMPEROR: Perhaps you are even dangerous, a paranoiac, a raving madman.
BEGGAR: He was a good dog, not just an ordinary one. He deserves a good deal of praise. He even brought me meat, and at night he slept in my rags. Once there was a great uproar in town, they all had something against me because I don’t give anyone anything worth talking about, and even soldiers were brought in. But the dog drove them off.
EMPEROR: Why do you tell me that?
BEGGAR: Because I consider you stupid.
EMPEROR: What else do you think of me?
BEGGAR: You have a feeble voice, therefore you are timid; you ask too many questions, therefore you’re a flunkey;
you try to set traps for me, therefore you’re not sure of anything, even the surest thing; you don’t believe me but listen to me all the same, therefore you’re a weak man, and finally you believe that the whole world revolves around you, when there are people far more important, myself for instance. Beside, you are blind, deaf and ignorant. As for your other vices, I don’t know them yet.
EMPEROR: That doesn’t look good. Don’t you see any virtues in me?
BEGGAR: You speak softly, therefore you are humble; you ask many questions, therefore you seek knowledge; you weigh up everything, therefore you are sceptical; you listen to what you believe to be lies, therefore you are tolerant; you believe that everything revolves around
yourself, therefore you are no worse than other men and believe nothing more stupid than they do. Besides, you are not confused by too much seeing, don’t bother with things that don’t concern you, are not made inactive by knowledge. As for your other virtues, you know them better than I do, or anyone else.
EMPEROR: You are witty.
BEGGAR: Every bit of flattery is worthy of its reward. But I am not going to pay you now for paying me.
EMPEROR: I reward all services done me.
BEGGAR: That goes without saying. That you expect approval reveals your vulgar soul.
EMPEROR: I hold nothing against you. Is that vulgar too?
BEGGAR: Yes. For there is nothing you can do to me.
EMPEROR: I can have you thrown into a dungeon.
BEGGAR: Is it cool down there?
EMPEROR: The sun doesn’t penetrate there.
BEGGAR: The sun? There’s no such thing. You must have a bad memory.
EMPEROR: And I could have you killed.
BEGGAR: Then the rain will no longer fall on my head, the vermin will disperse, my stomach will no longer grumble, and there will be the greatest quiet that I’ve ever enjoyed.
(A MESSENGER comes and speaks softly to the EMPEROR.)
EMPEROR: Tell them I shan’t be long. (Exit MESSENGER.) I shall do none of those things to you. I am considering what I shall do.
BEGGAR: You shouldn’t tell anyone that. Or he will draw conclusions when he sees what your actions are.
EMPEROR: I do not find that I am despised.
BEGGAR: Everyone bows to me. But it means nothing to me. Only important people trouble me with their chatter and questions.
EMPEROR: Am I troubling you?
BEGGAR: That’s the stupidest question you have asked today. You’re an impudent man! You do not respect a human being’s essential privacy. You do not know solitude, therefore you want the approval of a stranger like myself. You are dependent on every man’s respect.
EMPEROR: I rule men. Hence the respect.
BEGGAR: The bridle too thinks that it rules the horse, the swallow’s beak thinks that it steers the swallow, and the palm tree’s topmost spike thinks that it pulls the tree after it up to heaven!
12 THE BEGGAR OR THE DEAD DOG 109
EMPEROR: You are a malicious man. I should have you destroyed if I wouldn’t then have to believe that it was out of injured vanity.
(BEGGAR takes out the barrel organ and plays. A MAN passes quickly and bows.) BEGGAR puts away the barrel organ: This man has a wife who steals from him. At
night she bends over him to take money from him. At times he wakes up and sees her above him. Then he thinks that she loves him so much that she can no longer resist the impulse to gaze at him at night. For that reason he forgives her the little deceptions which he detects.
EMPEROR: Are you at it again? Not a word of it is true.
BEGGAR: You can go now. You’re becoming coarse.
EMPEROR: That’s unheard of—incredible!
(BEGGAR plays on the barrel organ.)
EMPEROR: Is the audience over now?
BEGGAR: Once again now they all see the sky beautified and the earth more fruitful because of this bit of music, and prolong their lives and forgive themselves and their neighbours, because of this bit of sound.
EMPEROR: Well, at least tell me why you simply cannot bear me and have yet told me so much?
BEGGAR, nonchalantly: Because you were not too proud to listen to my chit-chat, which I only used to forget my dead dog.
EMPEROR: Now I am going. You have spoilt the best day of my life.
I should never have stopped here. Pity is no good. The only thing in your favour is the courage to speak to me as you have done. And for that I’ve kept everyone waiting for me! (He leaves, escorted by the SOLDIERS.
The bell rings again.)
BEGGAR: One sees that he is blind: Now he’s gone. It must be before noon, the air is so warm. The boy won’t be coming today. There’s a celebration in town. That idiot just now is going there too. Now I have to think again of my dog.