Without Lifting A Finger

In my dreams I am again in the desert, plodding through endless space towards an obscure goal. I sigh and wet my lips. “What is that noise?” I ask when the guard brings my food. They are tearing down the houses built against the south wall of the barracks, he tells me: they are going to extend the barracks and build proper cells. “Ah yes,” I say: “time for the black flower of civilization to bloom.” He does not understand. * I cannot save the prisoners, therefore let me save myself. Let it at the very least be said, if it ever comes to be said, if there is ever anyone in some remote future interested to know the way we lived, that in this farthest outpost of the Empire of light there existed one man who in his heart was not a barbarian.  

Not sure why I waited so long to read it. Have it buried somewhere in softcover; now I've got it on Kindle. From Coetzee's late essays I paddled around a bit: Beckett's philosopher, Sebald's poetry, Holderlin's letters, a short story by Wilhelm Raabe. Anyway, I guess I'm ready to tackle the Barbarians. *** “I ask,” I continue, “only because if you get lost it becomes our task here to find you and bring you back to civilization.” We pause, savouring from our different positions the ironies of the word. *    What they have undergone in these five days I do not know. Now herded by their guards they stand in a hopeless little knot in the corner of the yard, nomads and fisherfolk together, sick, famished, damaged, terrified. It would be best if this obscure chapter in the history of the world were terminated at once, if these ugly people were obliterated from the face of the earth and we swore to make a new start, to run an empire in which there wou...