The Olive Trees

Kneeling at the edge of morass I am beside the girl, whose eyes loll like beachballs, below the tree with the hanging man. Scattered aground in the muck are the contents of an artist’s portfolio, and atop a mere fraction of letters which aren’t ruined.

I pick one up, its transcription longhand cursive; on it is written a brief poetic musing and several short stanzas:

A black room. Lifting white noise.

Dark bodies in a pale parade.

-

There is death

budded on

brambles of cold,

rocky shoots.

Fell the heads:

Timorian wretches! Flee

scatter-flea diaspora -

lest thee supplant: inexora.

The great gust -

fie the fire falls

from the sky;

for lands here

and far yonder

wither in dye.

Witness the weep -

tectonic cries.

Alas, witness martyrs,

as I

cast the line,

curse the divine,

succumb to thine.

Feel thy burning heart -

pique eyes!

Life but a

day left to live.

For all have seen

the olive buds,

withered on

the olive trees.

Not without great measure of effort I look away from the flayed human carcass dangling aside in the wind, noosed neck purple, bulbous, manacle-shackled limbs drawn outward like a shining star crucifix, chest cavity cloven, and the eyes that will follow long after disembarkation darker than hell, skin around them grated to reveal underneath blue-veined, red-white physiology, lightning-like electrical circuits encircling all-consuming blackness.

He who once was man made into a scarecrow for undesirables, heinous warning to those who shan’t be permitted to cross to the northside of Mediterranean.

A carrion corpse and mannequin girl. Careful not to startle her I amble around caving-in Earth and light a hand on her soiled shoulder. Head rolls back, eyes working feebly upward like a broken old lift. Crocodile tears swell, begin tumbling down both cheeks, the grey eyes gyrating with the silencing fury biting at her insides. A rage buried too deep now, for words.

Delicately I help her up, almost tripping over on one of the serrated cleats anchoring the big-game chains. ‘It’s alright,’ says me. ‘I’m taking you away from here.’

Lips quivering, face bowed, convulsing, like that she broke. Right then and there, and nobody living could do anything to fix it. While she breaks I pick her up in my arms and start away from the place for the sake of love, life and all which might still be pure and good with it.

Always I’d wonder about how long for she looked back, as we went.

It is late in the evening as I am carrying her through dense woods and ahead in the gunmetal-blue darkness is a modest timber watchman’s post, beside the threshold a lit brazier, and in the air a steady wisp of smoke prevailing from chimney within.

Two bronze-plated shields embossed with graven runes and gemstones are mantled either side the threshold; they depict rearing lions exalting at a golden king of men and a version of the Caduceus often appropriated nowadays for the fascists’ propaganda. Farther from the door are two heavyset windows shuttered in casements and above, atop the post a turret with fraction-sized firing gaps, its entirety composed like a palisade.

In a grove of cypresses and cedars I stand silent beneath the branches - hardly breathing nor shifting gaze, staring only at threshold, shadowy in ruddy light - not daring look away. In my arms the girl’s chest heaves every so often imploding mechanically, as though sensing what awaits before us, breath wheezily wretched like a failing furnace. Her eyelashes bat incessantly in a restless delirium, their whites visible. Stuck in a nightmare she cannot avail.

Great gusts of gale bring the flailing wood to a moan, the sky methamphetamine dark with a hint of cobalt when the storm begins. My eyes start to water in the blistering wind, causing difficulty in discerning smoke plumes obvious only seconds earlier. One does not breathe, conceive, move, stir, think, though inhales within, starting to-fro at the door, brazier, plates where they glisten in fire light, otherwise dull dark under shadows cast from the porch edifice. Seems as though an entire world enshrouded in blackness creeping save the little post, eerie in lonesomeness like a beacon flickering in the heart of a dark planet.

The cool metal of the gun feels distant now like something one adapts to, or as the extremities when one carries something long enough to become familiar such as the broken girl. I tighten my grip around the smooth handle as the trees seesaw in panicky, seasick motions with a noise like the high-pitched blaring of launched mortar before its lurching strike.

Below the base of crenelated turret a gas lantern hangs off the eavestrough, its lurid serpentine light emanating from a fractured piece of rusted rebar, swaying and creaking violently. Having chosen flight I take a step back within the trees, sinewy leaves crunching softly underfoot. Feebly, yet audibly, the girl stirs in mine arms - atop the post a figure lunges forth, lustrous dark orbs lighting dimly in the reddish burn of a long, calculated cigarette drag.

– FEAR ANXIETY PANIC –

Stopped dead in freeze, standing even stiller, quieter than before if possible; remain unmoved, barely breathing, heart thumping, sweat beading, disaffected to the silent anguish of muscles, bones, tendons, any chance for flight foregone … silent statue standing between trees, unflinching, a soon-to-erupt volcano, caught in a pitch of quicksand, still, unmoving … dim glow of a cigarette inhalation again, and the polished glisten of a lustrous rifle’s barrel honing down towards us from up above - next thing a cracklike whip loud as a sudden bellow of thunder, bullet missing wide and whirring through deeper trees, its wake flush upon flesh.

In the chaos I lose clutch of the girl, she tumbles in a loose heap unto the ground as the door swings open, a silhouetted figure bursting out and I feeling everything, nothing, rising, bygone, smouldering brimstone, fanning out and drowned in broiling flames, within-without. Then the rifle is up, demonic footsteps pounding and the girl splayed at the fringe of the clearing. Gaining he hastily shifts rifle into poise, a green monster striding forth and almost upon her, form of what once was a woman.

Where hiding I leap out, striking hard, he trips upon his footing - direct the pistol at him whilst bounding then pull the trigger, but it’s stiff, stuck like an unruly latch - pounce once more and punch it against chest, crashing together as we go down, tumbling like a glass chandelier in the brevity of what feels suspended time: STEADY AIM IN CALMNESS UNTHINKING GRACE UNDER PRESSURE - primal calculus - grip firmly, SQUEEZE.

Before hitting aground I know he is dead, smacking flat as if forced down taut by a rigid mechanism. Immediately the arms and legs go out, no longer demonic, crimped. Gasping I lay atop the vanquished, absinthium soldier. A steady stream of blood spouts from the wound, teeming out onto the folds of his jacket as I see in lurid lamplight gray eyes.

Wits-whirling, in the aftermath I creep away some metres only to collapse back, mind going out for a minute that might be much longer than so. When coming to eventually I assess calamity in the clearing of the wooded army post.

The girl is where she was.

The soldier is where he was.

So I crawl like a babe toward the former in the blinding nightmare darkness. Kneeling I brush off a few strands of hair concealing her pallid face, untangle mangled limbs, set them straight. Lips colourless and fresh cuts painting sallow skin. Eyelids slightly lifted, staring ghastly, ghostly. Two fingers I place against nape of her throat, roll them about, press in.

In tears I see a silver, smudged heart-shaped locket hanging slack; inside it is a picture of the girl and hanging man looking happy and healthy in a clean, vibrant city marketplace.

Before going I cross the girl’s arms and tuck the hood over her face far as it’ll go. Upon disembarking I tell myself that the serpent-green distortion makes all seem worse. Yes I let that I’m not an indicted nor accursed man. And depart. Goodbye. Riddance be good.

Through night walking, grey phantom in black desert. Later at village signpost denotes Hellenic National Boundary in bleeding ink on shabby plywood. Running alongside are streets littered with displaced coils of rope, wires, sledgehammers for anchoring of cleats, stakes.

Past outskirts many longing addicts, dwellers of the Apocalypto hovel in filthy alleys off main, their blackhole eyes agape. Some strum at the remnant strings of busted guitars, lyres. Upon final leg is a road with camions parked upwards, barricades protecting check-in stations with soldiers assembled there - all discipline, austerity, poise - armed with machineguns and carbines.

Each barricade is an intersection you move past like tollbooths before the next. At the first a hard-boiled soldier asks me questions, waving me on realizing I only speak English. At the next a grim, gaunt superior holds out a hand while running cold, distrusting eyes all over me. Knowing better than to make a deadly mistake I keep hush and hand him travel documents and international passport - his acquiescence is to allow me passage. For hours I am then held up at a waiting line with soldiers holding guns guarding a van - transport to the city.

Some time later people began lining up to be filed through, my coming have given them courage to follow suit. All compiled by both booths were too dirty to perceive if faces were of disparate pigments. Sure enough moments on a disruption breaks out at the preliminary between a noticeably dark-coloured man and the soldier handling the booth, among a host of cerberuses heeding master's beck-and-call. A wife stands there as well as the guards begin jostling the husband.

Clutching hard at the grip of the pistol and breath bitter, hot copper scolding my innards. Every second contracted universal syllables, mind already gone, heartbeat slow. It is not long until the volatile debate rages into flames, verbal defense denied and the soldiers shoving the couple into the back of an idled camion. Door slammed and canvased tarpaulin quickly drawn, tied. In the refuge of barricades business carries on without pause, soldiers urging forward mortified persons too terrified to sacrifice their better margins for others. I wished I were braver.

Awakened now the truck lumbers forth sidelong, a burning bull shifting in the direction of the road and speeding off for frontier. Disappearing in the descent of winding roads from the village, screams fading out like purgatorial whispers, haunting in a lasting crescendo - them taken away wrenched forth from fleshes, dragged far below to join brethren of skinless, chthonian crawlers at the bowels of Tartarus.

In mind I see them again, those sent to the houses as they came up to the doors. Always wearing black trench coats, green berets and the slick, oiled black boots, always going away last. Upon their coming before they went taking freely all subjects of charge; feet of the latter, those taken, usually going in an unruly fashion. Most of any taken did not ever return, reamed out of bearing by those at their doors. Some realized resistance futile and went with dignities intact, hope a dire discount, glances cast of warned reproach and final radiations of love through grave, fear-filled eyes, as if to say we love you more than this though this is it, you must be brave that we’ve reached the end, then it was all gone and too broken.

After it is away downhill the boothman, that ferryman Kharon of Acheron and Styx, with all the grim composure of a skeletal corpse hanged in forewarned beware, tallies a clipboard ledger, signals the next participant come forward.

The people awaiting resume in an orderly filing affront the booth, and the soldiers beyond beckon for those who are through to go past the remaining barricades.