A decapitated head
My mummy head clicks its jaw in that way that wakes me, sleepless again for all I command.
-I am Napoleon Bonaparte, the ruler of the world. Accept my will or die.
I call him Juan because he has the pinched face of a Spaniard. I threaten him with jackals. I've stopped discouraging their advances. I think the men will kill them.
They've begun the long gaunt march that leads a man to eat whatever he can convince his stomach is worthy of his appetite. Why not jackals?
Let Juan clack his jaw. Why not resist becoming the immortal chewed-up remains of the mummy head of a leper priest? Long suffering. Every man has his limits.
He is an infection. The immortal become symbols, words, sounds, flaws in the fabric that need signifying. Annoyances. Not worth their truths.
What spectre is ever worth its haunt? Every truth distinctly spoken without clue to the character of its arrival. Riddles. Riddles to drive a man from his reason. But too powerful a treasure to leave for the enemy.
Madness! Only a great man could bear it.
The threat of oblivion hovers over. I will leap at the precipice with all the spark of justice just undone to my advantage. Juan knows the ritual that makes a man immortal. I will wait until the end to hear it told.
-The world sings in the key of me already. It seeks my harmony without fail.
Frustration
-Juan. Juan, what day is it?
--The same day. The very same day.
-You're dreaming. Wake up and see those horses on the cliff in the shadow there. Friend or foe?
--They think you sure enough of your fate.
-For us or against?
--For the wind perhaps.
-Enough of you.
It is always like this. Never a lie. Never anything at last. Just a distraction I've fallen prey to.
I'll soon remedy this. I intend to toss him from the cliff's edge to the jackals below come daybreak if I don't get my answers made plain.
-How was it you were made?
--Like many men, I was brought of the womb of Maat.
-Maat. What is that?
--Her wings bear me up.
-She gave you immortal life.
--She had found me worthy, once.
-So she rewarded you? Gave you some advantage?
Here he claps his jaw three times, caught in a seizure. Sometimes it takes him minutes to unlock his jaw, like a fish out of water. I offer no assistance. I'm beyond expecting anything more from him.
Contingencies. In flight from the British, on the trail of the Turks, the Mamelukes in our wake. The fleet sunk to the bottom of the sea. Irretrievable treasures of Malta. Turkish assassins poison the men with plague. These are dire times. The corpses rival the jackals for the least advantage.
The men are plagued by spirits. They fear the mists. The perversions of madness are in every eye. The dead rise. I cling with the swiftly turning thread of reason. I am forced to consult a skull in a sack. Damned disease and despair.
--No more than a Christian.
Juan is always listening. He will listen to anything. Juan gleaned from me the trials of Christianity. Jesus Christ died for men's sins and redeemed the world, rose again. That men are guided by principles gives me leverage.
I will test his stillness, his blindness, his patience. I toe his bag so he rocks at my horse's neck. He clacks his jaw with a yawn-like spasm.
-Wake up, Juan. You promised me answers.
--Anything.
-How was it done? How is the ritual performed?
--Like any other, steps and steps.
-Straight answers, Juan. What is the first step?
--To breathe and not to stop breathing.
-What is the second step?
--On the backs, rising above.
-What is the third step?
--The flail and the crook made flesh.
-What is the fourth step? And the rest of it?
--The sun incarnate.
-Useless.
He is a trial. I'm indignant with myself for enduring him. I shouldn't open my mouth. I should be more patient than the wind. Yet this nagging riddle provides some diversion.
Good or evil?
These questions, each without substance, too mired in detail to be worth anything. I should ask the broadest, most definitive things and know for myself the proper course.
-Is man good or evil? Does his nature favor his own glory or his eminent demise? Is man likely to win this game with the cosmos, or bind fates with ancient things and decay into oblivion? One delegates to the very end, in hopes that one is correct. I am more true than any man. Am I good or evil? Tell me this.
--I had placed my hand in the fire too many times. The flames curled and licked up my fingers. It scratched an itch deep in my flesh, one that was not meant to be scratched.
My hands were too numb. I could not hold the stylus to make the motions that were the magic of each hieroglyph. Each symbol is a god and worthy of devotion. Stacks, great pillars signifying all intention, conveyed in a few twists of the wrist. I beat my fingers with the chisel and only noticed the break when they would not bend. A leper.
Given over to the priests for some cure or some consolation, I learned the rites of immortality. I carved them in the rock of the pharaoh's tomb. I knew them perfectly, and yet I could not complete the act of writing them. The smooth stone taunted me.
I was to be the detritus of monsters.
I am here for my punishment. Immortal head of disease. Canker. Boil. Tiresome, tiresome old man. While the trodden course unearths me, I am the same for always. While the sands belch and the stone sings. Nothing, no one, forever.
Yet I must endure such a question: am I good or evil?
Such questions don't apply to servants. I am unworthy of infections of either sort. Without cause, I serve. I am the mirror of destiny. Without body. Without action. I am a severed head. I have been so since I was 15. Severed from whatever manhood promised. I do not. I do not. I am slowly turning to dust. I am sifted into the sand and still I do not.
Whatever immortal dust of oblivion remains will feed this place into a sacred spot. Plant me in a tomb and bid them come into my presence. I will offer my words until the end of time.
-You make me think of the Japanese. As you would have me believe there is no thought of betrayal in your head, so they would have me believe in dragons that haunt the airy heights of mountains, in deep forgotten valleys of solitude.
You consider I might do something wise myself. I am a brave man. I am the bravest man that ever was. I do not offer my enemy advantage in any way. I seek only my own gain and that of those allied with me as I steer a great train of success to the doors of Russia; as I do the impossible and conquer the world. I have other plans than to satisfy your vanity.
I think we are beyond such bargains. So the jackals say: all is vanity. What I want is the truth as I can squeeze from you and then I will toss you away in the midden heap or the country estate, dependent on my own fortune as much as yours. You decide whether I am worth serving.
You, without your body, you may ride in my hat through such a journey as man has always dreamt. Advise me in matters that arise. Give me yes and no in the heat of battle, in pre-dawn stratagems. Mark time with me. Be my ally.
--You may always ask of me.
-I know this. But your answers are tiresome. Focus your attention on the present time. Pay all mind to this moment now. Steer us free of certain death. I will toss you to the jackals within the hour and you can advise them.
--I understand.
-Are you with me.
--I am.
At last.
The purse
Juan's head is some foreign exotic to hang at my waist. A purse. Like the Indians of America, sometimes the bloodthirsty men wear severed things on their bodies. To have the blood on them, always ready for fresh battle.
-Artillery. With cannons, all is trigonometry, ballistics, science. I harrowed the British ships at sail with red hot cannonballs from the rock outcroppings.
I brought blast furnaces to the cannoneers. I taught them the science of the forge, taught them what makes a cannon strong, what hot metal does in the air as it arcs through the wind to some far target and how it acts shearing wood and canvas, how hot it must be to blast red coal into the bilge and scald men alive as it vents through the planks, how all this works to our favor.
Teach men to favor the wind and you've made them soldiers. Teach them to pluck the red plumes from the deck and scatter the rest in disarray. Teach them disorder. Teach them hunger and fatigue. Let them know a groaning belly is its own reward. Be happy for life at least but be ready to offer it again to the great debate.
Be driven by the wealth of intention above that surfaces into great men. Like pharaohs arrayed in long dynasties to build pinnacles of light in honor of glory. Glory alone. Favors of a supernatural sort abound for such men, gifts the scientists will explain. We need only faith in reason to light the tinder, to see the powder flare with such vigor and throw our wills across the sky. Glorious. Just the idea of it.
The great game: the exchange of engagements, the long trouble of moving an army over desert, moving cannon and shot over hard scrabble. We must carry on for our own defense. A troop moving fast over land, burning everything in its wake, is an impossible target. We can only be harried at great expense.
The Turks are out of ideas and as soon done with us. They are defeated and flee us on their fast horses into the few oases. I am afforded time to make new plans. If these men would just know that all depends on me, everything, the future of the world is on my shoulders and under such duress.
I am made as severe and unforgiving as the next. I have made my men brutal. I have picked up unnerving itches that come to rashes. I have killed many men with just my dagger. I wear a mummy head on my hip.
Despite everything, my hands still quake with rage and force of will. The dust alone will infect my system and make me whole again. The rash abates if I rub the mummy like a swab over my irritated skin. Yet he clicks his jaw at me when I'm in deep meditation. My memento mori.
-What good do you think speaking will do? Nothing comes of it but argument. To each his time.
--You do not say that I may not speak. There is no clause in our arrangement regarding what I may or may not do physically. I am free to speak as I please and will do so until it pleases me stop. Or else, you suffer alone with your rashes.
-I can as easily have you ground into powder to resolve my irritations.
--But lose all benefit of my grave council.
-We stand at each other's mercy then.
Ravings
+Do you think he's gone mad?
+He's raving to himself in there.
+Only a madman could be Napoleon.
+They say he plays chess with Horatio Nelson.
+Spies pass moves between them.
The battle sleeps
The night is still. I hate this quiet while the battle sleeps. There is only room for treachery and strategy while the many messengers race among the troops spreading rumor.
One must outlast them. Take less for yourself if you are to demand more. Learn to be weak and on the verge of collapse. Fracture your mind in the cause. Be guaranteed of nothing. Lose everything at every moment. Examine all criterion. The ultimate gamble. Only that distinguishes a great man. My generals are tested and fail as often as not.
-I walk in the footsteps of Alexander. My name will live a thousand years and more.
Juan, for you I will find a golden sarcophagus with a golden face and great locks cascading down so all you see is your own radiance. A braided beard like a real man and holes in the earlobes for your perpetual adornment. A thing to house dust and fragments for all eternity.
I once stood in the field as the first snow fell and set out to collect all of it for myself, before lesser boots marred the frozen flat. I worked late into the night and through the next day and into the next, building fortresses of snow to play out the fantasies of my own destiny with snow-encrusted rock for heavy shot and a tower for me to direct, bringing the rank student body on capade till all were rallied to the call of war.
Men leapt from thirty foot heights into the snow banks below and still more snow came down for all our glory. I commanded an army of laughter against itself in pitched battles for an entire week. It was a general strike. None could resist my will.
--I am not Egyptian by birth. My family were slaves taken in battle. Hyksos, they called us. The enemy of creation. Hyksos had ruled Egypt a hundred years. But Egypt was too strong to slumber. Osiris rises eternally.
I was a scribe in the temple of Osiris at Thebes. I carved glyphs in stone while I still had feeling.
I can feel even still the rattle of my bones when I beat the chisel. The hard squint from the dust has closed my eyes forever. I think of the great and terrible pharaoh of the upper and lower Nile, Thutmose III, a man much like yourself. He studied the world in search of advantage. He took what served his purpose.
I carved great secrets in the walls of Karnak: the secret of eternal life retrieved from Asia.
For this I am made Napoleon's purse.
Mythology
--When all the pieces of Osiris had been reassembled from Seth's rage, Isis made the clay phallus grow hard in her kiln. Anubis whispered the secret ritual into her ear and she brought him back to life. This is how Osiris came to rule the night world.
Once, Horus was savaged by jackals and poisoned by scorpions and left at the mercy of the desert. His mother healed him with a magic spell Thoth had given her. He who could discern all things.
The gods are not personages, but characteristics of the all. A god is a moment in the great story.
It is always Thoth, the discerning one, who reads the scales of a man. The ibis head cries the flood of new life, the infinite mercy of eternity, or stays silent so the beast of the world might repurpose fate.
Be good, live long, die of your sins, be judged. Weighed down with promises never fulfilled, worries, guilts, debts to the ether, you are of the ten thousand things and lose your form. Unsignified.
If the feather is heavier, then Osiris gives the breath of life to your memory and you enter the night world.
There is a pillar called the Djed-pillar. A sign of the risen Osiris erected by Horus and Isis. In the drought, the ibis is wrecked around the pillar, its head torn free to unleash the flood. The applause of baboons and the sun disc's sting over the falcon's head and the still and blessed forms of the goddesses signify the presence, point out and acknowledge the royal personage of the pillar. The reign of symbol.
The knife is the first thing brought to life, made animate by the blood. The healing pain that carves the self from its confinement, like a snail from its shell. All things must signify if they would live. You must be the dung beetle at work in the mud. You must slay the serpent, however many heads it has.
They tied my arms to the pillar and brought the living knife down through me. At Edfou, the great temple. I watched the dust pile up and choke the world from view.
Certain mechanics
--I can still smell some. I can taste and chew though it be only dust. I must take things moist because I've no spit. I am very dry.
I think I miss legs. I miss mobility. Having once had it, it's a hard dream to resist. To walk again wherever I choose. To dance, perhaps in the temple, alone at night, just my bare feet and the echo of their slaps.
I can feel the slow healing of my many abrasions. My neck glows. My body has been a dwindling phantom for thousands of years. Even still I forget and nearly feel my fingers on my lips where I blew the heat of blood off a new wound.
Handed a body now, I wouldn't know what to do with it. Just sit in it I suppose, for a very long while. Reacquaint myself with the functions of a liver. Piss and shit again. Fuck.
As it is, my concerns are more philosophical. One time a year, I bite my lip to taste the burning sap still moving there. To recall: yet I live.
If I thought you could kill me, I would have begged you long ago. I know, like the charms of noon on the dune back, nothing in life can lay hand to me.
I was beheaded under unique circumstances, in the hands of far greater magic than yours.
Concerto for mourning doves
-The soft murmur of the mourning doves as they sleep and slowly wake with the dew descending: coming in, not quite awake yet, to signal each other their slowly more livid cries: "Awake! Awake! To arms!"
How the noise of it grows into a din along the tree line, just that moment when the first bark becomes the first fizz and nothing stands as important as the next sound and all other songs are silenced.
Just that very murmur decides the day. That first innocent trill of awakening. For us or against us. With deep and subtle texture, the voice of the oracle: for us or against us. That bower of gladness, our ruiner, our bounty: for us or against us. And all the world resigned.
The man who stays these last vespers can taste at least his fate. The rest runs according to plan. One strategy against another until time plays it out. It makes no difference.
We are soldiers at dawn, we die of our wounds after awhile.
Napoleon
--Napoleon! Your name will be known among the greats! You will nearly have everything! But lose it again. Your name is yours.
I am no one. A head of some immortal fool who stole eternal life.
-We are men of the same caliber. The bore of our cannons throw ball equal distances against the troops massed in the hills.
--I have no enemy. Want no enemy but myself.
Napoleon! You would have every man your enemy. Napoleon! You would have them all bow to you.
I want none of this. I am a moldering head strapped to your hip. I am horror.
-We are at stalemate then. The night is done. The morning comes again. Hold your tongue a while as the sun rises.
Adornment
--Where human intention greets the intention of the divine, everything becomes systems of adornment. Arrange things, anything, everything, and patterns of purpose arise to guide Pharaoh's foot.
Let there be no boundary between what is and what is becoming. Breathe the great Ka of the river. This magic is river magic. Hear the birds cry out for it. Hear the trees take in the deep waters. Hear the stone go smooth. Hear the world blossom over the sand.
How many nights and days of darkness I have listened to the dust settle. I am in another space than you: blind, pale, deserving nothing, outside of all, speaking only with the great breath you blow into me.
I have been hungry all this time, adorned in my casket, sealed for my great journey to Osiris, whose message I still carry: Rise up Osiris, bring bounties of the thousand-fold returned to you. And so, I offer you, Napoleon.
You have awoken me as you awaken all enchantments. I believe again that I can speak. I believe you are a great man and I have seen great men. I know you rebel against all things. You are a prophet of a future breaking the past like a bud cutting free of its hard shell. I am a germ more ancient than your history. Here, in this congress, we make the world.
Of prophecy, I can adorn you. In my jar, I stood in the shadow of Horus's son and mysteries were exchanged. He told me how the world was organized and I am full up with the way of all things:
The first man you meet will join you. And the second man will join you. And the third man met will join you. And all will rally to rebellion against all things. You will be sacrificed in your own honor, made true and terrible for all time.
The eye will grow muddy and the past will cover you in dust. We will molder together in that far time, lost in the same mind imagining us. I am bound to you in the eternal story.
In my calculations
-I hear a whisper in the day's difficult napping. I know you talk to me while I sleep. Infect me with your ideas. I am impervious to you. I am Napoleon and follow my own promise. Talk on, you pharaoh's junk. It matters not a wink.
I am in my calculations. I am borne through each struggle by a vast geometry. There are places on a well drawn map that show themselves to me. I must take them and to the next. I must hold their strategic value.
Against a retreating army, the fortresses reverse themselves and we occupy the backsides of them. When we leave, all falls in ruins. Our cannons blast true at my signal and I am already planning the fifth battle of the last gold light of dusk while we slog through the dawn's chorus of grapeshot.
I will not bow, though the enemy knocks at the door of my chest and begs my heart to stop its advance. I will never bow. So whisper on to my advantage. I have nothing to lose. If it is against my purposes, then it has met its match.
Grovel
--In darkness, the beast grovels, hungry for the weight of you, slavering to taste the flesh that haunts your bones.
It is best to be the feather of Ka that hides within the spine. It is best to preserve the four hearts of the humors. The rest is just the form of what has been, the reactions to accumulated time. Whatever fails must go. Just the strength and character of will survive to meet Osiris.
The mind and its experiences no longer serve. There is only the role the form takes. Fresh vessel for Osiris. New actor.
There were hands barring the door at École that first Autumn. Boy's hands and faces laughing. Always they were laughing even as they blocked the way, laughing as if everything must be tied into a single joke, every ribbing must be dealt till no fodder remains, no taunt not played colorless. Only then could a thing stand.
Back then, all my zeal raced at whatever opposed my honor. Even the small successes of disarming a villain or punishing a fool leant character to my endeavors. I had a reputation for great things, but could have as easily become a rash madman.
Hands barred the door. How helpless I felt to see all those hands at once against me. I became a small hard knot against them. I became Napoleon when I saw those hands bar the door and knew the extent of my shame. I knew then what mattered:
To peel them back. To shape all that restless will to new possibilities.
I am not a madman.
-Within the realm of my understanding, I can explain with scientific clarity just where the moon will rise off the horizon, and through a causal chain, infer the day's weather.
Argument
--All that exists are certainties. What is uncertain is untrue.
-I make things certain with the charge of my will. My will is a thrust.
--What is, merely is. A form on a mirror, awakened with a breath. A map of fingers and lips unveiling shapes in their true aspects, without artifice.
-I am the breath then, blowing across cold knuckles in the night.
--And the certainties are knives of starlight that make all the forms of true things.
-Enough. I've work to do.
Curse
--Gesture, gesture, wanton spirit. Cast accolade aside. Abandon vengeance if you would be happy. Abandon pride if you would be content. Be Napoleon if you must.
Impossible shape: half crocodile, half lion.
Six forty three am
-At 6:43 am, the sun will first crest the dune and the Turks will descend on their horses, kicking clouds of sand to cover them in shadow. They'll sweep down in a cloak of darkness. It is all they are good at.
Their horses are trained to scrabble down dunes and bring them to close quarters. Hollow squares are the key. Everything in Egypt is hollow squares. The great pyramids and ancient granaries, with their hidden treasures deep in boxes in the deep centers, breaking symmetries.
Calculations. Exceedingly sure and precise calculations are key.
Better instruments.
-Traps, heartless and cruel. Nests of cobras covered in gold. Made hungry in the thousands stuffed thousands of years ago into darkness to feed on each other forever till only giant, lumberous beasts remain. Legends to scandalize children.
All my men in hollow squares with snakes inside and orders to take down the horses first. Topple the Mamelukes into our feeble supplies and stab them with bayonets as they fall.
At 6:30 the battle began with our preparations. Steely men wait ready and silent in the dark shadow. They will stand firm, despite their blindness, until something rushes past. They will turn on it and stab for the ribs and spill great gobs of blood over everything.
A few will be injured from the horses but an excellent bet over all. Those that bear the sight of gutted arabs on their tents, those that must sleep with entrails unfurled above them, become bloodthirsty men who'll need pillage to sooth them. There will be no sleep among the vultures and the jackals called out by such banners of war.
Your Anubis, he that knows the secret of eternal life, walks among them doesn't he? The jackals feast on corruption. They are our weapon as well. We must conserve ammunition if we are to make for the sea. We must use all the land to our favor.
Such a sweet din from the far oasis. Today will be our day. Tomorrow we leave for Jaffa.
Folly bray
--All for folly you bray your great plans, as if one bit of it swayed. History does not go forward or backward. It accumulates, uplifted on winds of intention. Bray on and fill the sails, it is in the interest of things to support you.
Bray, bray on. Mad donkey of a madman, how history controls your every motion. It is the ship and you are the wind. Mad braying donkey, bray on all your glorious labor to exhaustion. Be time's master if it seems so. Look no further for your glory.
God of time, Napoleon Bonaparte, master of fate, champion of a final and perfect revenge against all things, a true revolutionary. A god of war who bids the lepers rise and clear the way.
Folly, all for folly, bray on.
Fly whisk
--The Nile washes out the underworld every Spring. It speaks then with the fragments of disinterred lives. It is the bowel of the beast and we are the beetles on the dung heaps.
Flies rise from the waves. The waters boil with their birth. Pharaoh carries the fly whisk. He must be kept free of corruption. He must be held inside the mouth of the beast and carried by Thoth before Osiris.
I am a part of the desert where no life moves and all is the dream of the wind. I leave a trail of dust behind, each grain a seed for some future desert. I am like the snail creeping inside the shell of Napoleon.
The river washes the underworld every Spring and the sands swallow the sphinx once again.
I am the man with no legs traveling the world. I am all of motion, spreading desert and famine and pestilence in my wake.
To be or not to be
Am I good or evil? If I spring from pure intention all my own, if I am the master of my own destiny, then I am the only good.
If I am merely servant to some smaller state, be it Corsica or France, then I serve no better master than this purse at my hip, this satchel of gold that would barter my soul. I am Napoleon. There can be no doubts.
-Though I eat only slightly and sleep less, my fatigue and my hunger strengthen me to crystal clarity.
I sever all ties. I cannot be seduced. There are marvels abounding in front of me and yet I plod on here, outrunning jackals on a scrub plain.
The plague victims rise up and I make a show of blessing them like a new Christ roaring out of Egypt. Napoleon has come at last to bring revolution against Turkish tyranny. We are liberators and so we pass. It makes no difference to them.
More men fall ill and more shots in the night. My uniform is rank with sweat and days in the saddle, yet the dignity of my station is foremost. Discipline must always be preserved. Though I wear away, gushing into my cravat, I will go on.
But am I good or evil? Could something foul be washed from me? If any of this is for some unknown intent, if there is any flaw, any hint of corruption, then all is lost.
The seige
-Acre will fall. I tell the men dig deeper, but the sand collapses in on them. We shoot the British balls back at the Turks. We've broken through the wall too high for ladders. I've sent men to blast the tower. Should it fall, then we have won and can return to Egypt.
If only the sand could be shored. If only the wind would stop blowing. Inside I know is plague and hunger. The fortress gives off a fetid air of death and disease.
-We are hardly safe on the open ground. Artillery comes but too slow. The heavy irons are swallowed by the shifting dunes. Nothing works properly. Nothing can be counted on.
Dig deeper, I say, undercut the tower and plant mines. But the whim of the wind unravels our zigzag trenches. Dig deeper though the men are picked off by sharpshooters when they raise their shovels. I heave a great river of men to sink like water into the sand.
-Yet Acre will fall.
Cicero
-Cicero was a coward, but he taught me the power of speech. A coward's power. Yet everything must be used to advantage. Every voice, every signal fire must instruct.
In war, we lead the enemy over open ground so we can scout his numbers. We march into the trees if we can, or into the dust. Our discomforts are a small price to keep our counts unsounded.
Mutiny is the only way to fail and I am the spirit of rebellion. The only way out is to follow me. We are cut off in a foreign desert. The plague rages in the winds. Any day a man may be called to finish his brother and burn his body and still they follow me.
-Words are everything.
The ibis cry
--Before the Spring floods, we hear the ibis cry. Men carry the strange rhythms into the streets, blowing reeds that cluster all the people around.
The priests erect the pillars. Osiris is risen.
In the five days of the five rings of the pillar, there is dancing and sacrifice from the winter stores.
In five days, the water rises and floods the plain. The crocodile feasts on the phoenix. Strange beasts float about: the underworld's denizens on holiday. The falcon guides the sun along the Nile. All blessings are renewed.
With the mud come the flies: eating the food from our children's faces, darkening our love making, disturbing our sleep, bringing disease and decay, festering wounds on the cattle.
The gods now walk the land, freed from their tasks in the underworld. They stride in storms of flies and winds of sand that pepper every surface. They drink down all the water, make quicksand of the bogs, hide the crocodiles, bury the statues and temples.
It is to the sand that we declaim our gods. It is their strength we are bound to.
Doubts
-Doubts.
Needless doubts would cloud the mind of a lesser man. I have starved longer, I have fought with great abandon. I have thrown myself into battle with grenadiers. Only small men need ask: what is glory?
My duty is plain. To win, despite all costs. For glory. To have it done. Great men wear the mantle of radiance. They cry out to the future to be made pure symbol. A name alone to signify terror and delight. All to purpose:
-The promise of a man set sail for the edge of the world. Just to challenge the serpents.
Glory, the glory of orphans reaching, reaching always out of the dire.
Of the sand
--I am of the sand forever, swallowed by the shroud in the casket in the tomb in the temple, swallowed by the sand forever:
To hear only its soft whisper in the darkness. To hear only its urging for room, all its shuffling and shoving to get inside things, to get out of the way of things. The sand is like a great sea of peasants wanting peace always, wanting quiet and security out of reach of the winds:
Full of the scarab's industry, making ale and bread, hanging beef carcasses in a cloud of flies, salted from the ancient seas. For the cobra to sting and the famine to starve. Food for the crocodile:
Codified in symbols of supplication, kilts tucked up to stay dry of the blood. All surplus to the gods. All bounty sent back to them so they won't roam far from the underworld:
Seth renders Osiris in pieces. Isis goes out in mourning to collect him. This is the story of the Nile for all time. A last treasure hidden in the last hollow square, equal parts ambush and destiny:
I am of the sand forever.
That longing way
--Of the sand; immortal in that longing way; enduring like the sand forever in a heap; prey to violent winds and storms.
I am caught up in your wake, you whirlwind Napoleon. You tore me from secrecy and hung me at your belt as if your mind had come unbalanced in the storm of your calculations.
Perhaps I am just a grain of sand from that immortal personage you seek. That infinitesimal unit of glory you seek to bury yourself in. You are a sphinx.
Perhaps I am drawn to speak to you murmurings of destiny out of respect for your madness.
Madness? I do only what is necessary, with the efficacies of a poor man.
I need swift calculations for a line of sight, a shrewd knowledge of the moisture percentages of the powder and we'll beat the rain to one last volley while the enemy scrabbles on the hillside.
-Madness? What difference does that make in pursuit of victory? Valor is madness if you like. Call me mad and valorous in equal parts. But shrewd and swift as well, brazen and efficient.
For the taking
France is for the taking, so I'll take it in time.
-My stature, my accent, my color, my Corsican temper, all of these have been mocked. Now no man mocks Napoleon. Only those who think themselves of greater force of will dare stand in my way. And tell me, who are they?
In this land there is only rabble. Nothing strong anywhere but the desert itself.
We engage small bands who might at times be caravans. We are no better than bandits. No better than Turks. They are surprised I suppose we don't join them in their raids. Perhaps this is where everything lands: at loose ends in a desert, fighting for your lives against demons astride clouds of sand and flies. We are huns, sweeping down with god-wrenching cruelty.
-We yell in German which carries further than French. Infernal tongue. The men sound out the hours to each other to keep pace. The men sometimes break rank to chase rabbits. The formation entraps game and we manage to eat now and again.
But usually such men don't return.
-We picked up our march to leave behind a swarm of biting flies that has unnerved some men to fire their muskets at random in the air.
My troops are always arrayed to best advantage. There is no question of good or evil. There is only victory and glory.
Let history dictate the rest.
Parade
-Men like planks of wood to build into anything.
Men like cord wood to heave into battle.
-Brave men and fiery of spirit.
Born to burn on the field. Target of trajectories, civil pursuits, crimes against nature, bestiality. Without wars there would be only crime.
They must die for France's glory and for my own. While they hold their nerve, they do what seems right to them. I ask only that they serve me and I let them have every privilege for the rest.
-It's in the nature of soldiers to rapine, but it shows a bald lack of discipline which I can not approve.
The line of musicians is more a garnish than a main dish, a food of the character that caviar is a part of: something that looks exquisite while it is being eaten.
-They beat their drums so rousingly. The men march with great pride in their steps. Those flutes are a civilizing force. They reset a man to things French, the dignity of his citizenship.
Men are great fools for music. They will walk into hell if someone only call the tune.
The old patrol has not yet recovered. They are strong men. The skies seem to fall on them and yet they keep fighting. Bound by shallow allegiances, they keep running ahead to save the drowning calf and die cut down by Turkish sabers.
A bad year for the pharoah
--It was a bad year for Pharaoh. Offerings were made to Seth that he might stay his anger at his brother and let Isis breathe life into him. We priests are like cannons for drawing the attention of gods.
I was strapped to a pillar; leper priest, after all, of Osiris. When the blade loosed my head I could hear the sands collecting.
I could hear the wind's hollow like a voice coming to give me succor. I felt the sand pepper the wound and drink down the last of my blood. I felt it work into my veins and soak my last humors like a revolution.
Itchy
--My neck pulses all its many messages to nowhere, scatters signals like an abrasive. I spend a great deal of my time concerned with this. It has driven me mad many times all these years, days, centuries.
Another itch piled on itch into the millions, each a grain of sand making its way into my flesh, each a new madness giving route to some old. I am an old timer, dissolute in every gesture.
My neck itches. Itches to inflate that aggravation into hands so I might scratch, so I might dig fresh blood from the dunes.
Final arguments
--You are like a camel, always lunging about. Have mercy.
-Shake loose the sand, Juan. We are on the Turks by daybreak. We'll run them into the sea.
--And catch a ship perhaps?
-The fleet is in collapse, there is no ship-
--But to hire one, enough for you and your staff. Leave others in charge, go back to your destiny.
-But the men are too much arreared, they would mutiny.
--No soldier of Napoleon would mutiny. Leave some unworthy in command and order he surrender once your ship is away.
Find the British. There is no mercy among the Turks.
--This is a doomed mission. Be off to Paris. You are whoring yourself here to no purpose. These rabble are not worth your time.
These rabble are not worth my time.
--Take my advice and let's be off. We must take the great centers of civilization. The east will come later. For now: take Rome, take Moscow.
Where there is order, there is influence. Where ancient kings hold sway, wars are run by cowards. I'll sweep the continent. Who cares to hold a desert until attrition brings us low. Have the men surrender and let the British return them in time. Let it be excuse perhaps to take London.
--All will be yours in time.
-It will be mine. You have no sway, foul rag. I have command of my senses still.
--What have you. I am at your service as always.
-And yet a dun purse is risqué fashion in Paris. Grand dames might think me no better than a soldier.
--Your ingenuity knows no bounds.
-I'm afraid I have not yet decided your fate. The jackals still call at night from among the dead. The surf is full of dead men. They have your scent again I'm afraid.
Perhaps I'll shake off the madness of the desert. Cure myself of sweat and flies. Be rid of certain stenches at last. Would you not say I smell more of horse than man?
--Yes.
-So there. There is much to be rid of on the Mediterranean shore. Salt breezes to soothe the brow. There are deep waters off the coast that gape into oblivion.
Down there among the wreckage of my fleet, with all the Maltese gold the Knights were hoarding, down there for eternity.
--Yes.
-Or I could hold up my finger to the wind and test my fortune.
--Yes.
-So which is it? O wise Juan, what comes next for you and next for me?
--It is as you promised.
-I promised? I promised not to leave you for the enemy to find to possible advantage and this I've done quite exceedingly. I promised to endure but one question more with you before the jackals and I have honored that with great generosity of spirit. What more do I owe you?
Here, Juan clicks his jaw three times and falls silent.
-You must always be to my advantage.
Abysmal soul
-Abysmal soul, your radiant scars are cast in the deep ocean pit. Take my name to the depths with you. And when the seas one day belch you up again, speak my name and so the world will always know the story of Napoleon.
--Napoleon.