The Imaginary Bus: Khalo Who Foresaw His Own Death in a Dream — Volume One
I took my foot off the accelerator.
The woman in red looked at me.
— Why have you stopped?
— Someone’s been left behind.
I checked the mirror. Coco was still there, in the middle of the wet pavement beneath rain that seemed to have been assigned the task of washing London since the beginning of this dream and had not yet managed it.
— Our friend has been running after us all this time. Are we going to leave Coco behind just when it’s time to get on?
I changed gear.
— Are you going to reverse the bus? the woman asked.
— No, I’ll leave the bus here and pull London backwards.
She looked at me.
— Of course I’m going to reverse.
I backed up slowly. The donkey brayed from the last seat.
— Don’t worry. I’ve got a licence.
It brayed again.
— Which life I got it in is another matter.
Coco had realised we had come back for it. It took a few steps towards us, stopped and wagged its tail.
I opened the door.
— Come on, comrade. The Department of Death doesn’t run an animal transport service.
Coco jumped aboard, soaking wet. It shook itself and sprayed half the rain in London across the bus floor.
The woman laughed.
The donkey stretched its head forward and sniffed Coco. Coco looked back. They were both quiet for a few seconds.
— Please leave the historic differences between dogs and donkeys for another time. We have a bigger problem.
— What problem? the woman asked.
I nodded towards the mirror.
The death officer was approaching.
The same long overcoat.
The same hat.
The same walk of a man who imagines the whole world is obliged to wait for him: that absurd air of importance bureaucrats put on while playing with other people’s lives.
— The head of the department has arrived, I said.
— Do you think he wants to get on?
— I hope he has a ticket.
The death officer reached the bus. The door was still open. He put a hand on the rail and one foot on the step.
He looked at me. I looked at him.
— We need to talk.
— Office hours are over.
— This isn’t an administrative matter.
— Come back tomorrow morning, then.
He raised his foot to the next step.
— Mate, one question.
He stopped.
— What?
— Do you need a ticket to board the bus for the dead, or will your staff card do?
The woman turned away, but I could see she was laughing.
— Stop making a fool of yourself, the officer said.
— Me? You’ve followed me through this whole dream, opened a file, declared me dead, cancelled my death and now want to board a bus without a ticket. And I’m the one making a fool of myself?
His other foot was still on the road. I put my hand on the gear lever.
— Wait, he said.
— I’ve heard that all my life. Do you wait for me? No. And another thing!
I drove off.
The whole thing may have taken two seconds.
One of the officer’s feet was on the step.
The other was in the street.
His hand held the rail.
The bus jolted.
He ran a few steps. His hat fell off. His hand slipped from the rail.
And with his long overcoat and all that official dignity, he went sprawling in the middle of a wet London street.
I looked in the mirror.
The donkey brayed.
Coco barked.
The woman in red burst out laughing.
— Please show some respect. He’s an official.
She laughed even harder.
In the mirror I saw the death officer get to his feet. He could not believe that a dead man, as he saw me, had treated him like this.
First he very politely gave us the middle finger. The people watching were astonished by the gesture from this gentleman.
Then he brushed off his overcoat, picked up his hat and said something I could not hear from so far away.
— Can’t hear you, mate! Fill in a complaint form.
— Are you really not afraid of him? the woman asked.
I did not answer at once.
The bus went on. The officer grew smaller in the mirror. The rain drew a curtain between us. Coco had come and sat by my feet. The donkey had quietened down too.
— Of course I am. I’m afraid.
The woman was no longer laughing.
— Then why did you do that?
— Do what?
— That, to Death.
I thought for a moment.
— Perhaps because being afraid and obeying are different things.
She seemed not to have expected that answer.
— Then why did you do it?
I shifted my grip on the steering wheel.
— Because fear isn’t the same as surrender.
She was quiet for a while.
I knew fear. Not from books. I had lived it. I had been terrified too. But…
Fear does not always appear first in your thoughts. Sometimes your body senses danger before you do.
Your heart beats faster.
Your breath shortens.
Your ears search for a sound.
Without being asked, your eyes find doors, windows and escape routes.
For a few moments your body moves ahead of you and says:
“Comrade, I’ve seen a few things that haven’t reached your brain yet.”
— You mean we can’t control our fear? the woman asked.
— Its arrival? Not always.
— And its departure?
— Not always that either.
— Then what can we control?
I looked at her.
— Whether we hand it the whole steering wheel when it arrives.
She looked at my hands on the wheel.
— Fear does its work, I said. It points out danger, prepares the body and sometimes makes a mistake and sounds the alarm when there’s no danger at all. The trouble begins when we assume that being afraid means we no longer have a choice.
— Have you always made the choice?
I laughed.
— Hardly. If I’d always chosen well, I’d have had a different life.
Then I joked:
— I wouldn’t be driving an old bus full of a donkey, a dog and a woman in red, with a death officer chasing after it.
She laughed.
— Sometimes I’ve run. Sometimes I’ve frozen. And sometimes I’ve done things that, looking back, I still can’t tell were brave or foolish.
— What’s the difference?
— Usually you find out a few years later.
She smiled, but I did not.
— Courage, to me, isn’t the absence of fear. Someone who never feels afraid may simply not have understood what is happening. Courage might be seeing fear, hearing it too, and refusing to let it decide for you.
She looked back into the mirror. The death officer was barely visible now.
— So you are afraid of Death?
— You mean the death officer?
— Of course.
I paused.
— But while I’m at this wheel, fear will not choose the bus’s route.
A bray came from the back.
— Though apparently someone else has put themselves forward to manage the route.
The woman laughed and the bus carried on.
She watched the street for a while without speaking. Then she asked:
— Is that why you went back for Coco?
— No.
— Then why?
— Because Coco was my friend.
That was all. I had no explanation, no philosophy. You don’t leave a friend standing in the rain, especially when you’re the bus driver.
— Even if you’re in a hurry?
— Where am I going that I need to hurry so much?
— Perhaps to stay alive.
I laughed.
— If staying alive means leaving my friends behind, I’d have to ask what was left of that life first.
She turned her head towards me. She looked longer this time.
— Once, at the height of the repression in 1360, I told a comrade: “You go. If someone has to stay or face the danger, I’ll stay.”
— What do you mean?
— When a comrade is involved and one of us must stay while the other leaves, I say: “Comrade, you go. I’ll stay.”
— Even if it costs you dearly?
— You don’t calculate the cost in that moment.
I paused.
— You can’t cut a danger in half.
She said nothing. I did not go on. Some sentences live when you say them once. Explain them ten times and they die.
We drove through a few more streets. The lights stretched longer and longer across the wet tarmac.
— Do you think life has a meaning? she asked.
— Don’t ask the driver that. I’m responsible for the route, not the meaning of the universe.
She smiled.
— I’m serious.
— So was I.
— Have you never thought that perhaps all this is pointless?
— I have.
— And?
— And what?
— What did you conclude?
I rolled the cigar between my fingers. It had gone out.
— The meeting is still in progress.
— What meeting?
— My meeting with myself.
I smiled.
— It’s been going on for seventy years, and we still haven’t approved the final minutes.
She laughed. Then she grew serious.
— What if it all ends in death?
I looked ahead. The street continued under the rain.
— A bus route ends at a stop too. That’s no reason to get off halfway.
She fell quiet, then asked:
— But what if there’s no meaning behind the journey?
— Who says there must be something behind it?
She looked at me.
— Perhaps this is our mistake. We go looking for someone who left an envelope by our bed before we were born, marked: “Dear Naser, the meaning of your life is inside. Please open before death.”
— And if there’s no envelope?
— We find some paper ourselves.
— And what do we write on it?
It took me a little longer to answer.
Coco had rested its head on my shoe and was making little snuffling sounds in its sleep. The donkey watched from behind the seat. The rain had softened.
— Depends.
— On what?
— Whose hand holds the pen.
— The pen is in yours, she said.
— Then the trouble has begun.
She laughed, then grew serious again.
— What will you write?
I looked at the window. For a moment I saw my reflection in it: a man behind the wheel of an old bus, a dog at his feet, a donkey behind him, a woman in red beside him, a death officer lying in the street a few blocks back, and a city that had no explanation for any of us.
— Perhaps I’ll write that life has never promised to be fair.
She said nothing.
— It hasn’t promised to be long. It hasn’t even promised that we’ll know why we came by the time it ends.
— Where is the hope in that?
— I don’t know.
She waited.
— I really don’t. I’m not one of those people who keep hope in a pocket, pull it out whenever things go badly and say, “Don’t worry, everything will be all right.”
— Then what?
— Some things do not come right.
Her smile faded.
— Some people don’t come back. Some wounds don’t heal. Some defeats cannot be turned into pretty sentences.
— Then why do you carry on? she asked quietly.
— Because I see life as a book with many pages still blank.
— And hope?
— To me, hope is those blank pages: nothing has been written on them yet, and the pen is still in our hands.
She looked at me.
— Perhaps life doesn’t come with a ready-made meaning. Perhaps no one will arrive to explain why we were born. But that need not be a bad thing.
— Why?
— Because if the page is blank, we can write on it ourselves: with our choices, the people we love, our friendships, our struggles, even our mistakes.
— You mean we give life its meaning ourselves?
— That’s how I see it. Life gives us the paper; the pen is ours.
The donkey brayed behind us.
I glanced in the mirror.
— Though some people insist on interfering with the writing from the very start.
She laughed.
— The trouble is, I still don’t know whether this one is a co-author or a literary critic.
Coco raised its head too.
— Don’t you start. One critic is quite enough for a first edition.
I looked at Coco, then at the donkey in the mirror, then at the woman.
— Perhaps hope, to me, doesn’t mean believing tomorrow is certain to be better.
— What is it, then?
— That tomorrow has not come yet.
She said nothing.
— That’s enough for me not to close the door on it.
We were quiet for a few moments. Then the donkey brayed again.
— Of course, our friend here has a different opinion.
The woman laughed.
— Perhaps the meaning of life is grass, according to the donkey.
— At least that theory is more realistic than quite a few I’ve read.
Coco lifted its head.
— Stay out of the discussion. The meeting is out of control already.
Coco turned, gave the woman a sideways glance, made a small snuffling sound and fell silent.
She rested her head against the window.
— You’re strange.
— I’ve heard that before. Some people said it more kindly.
— No. I mean you talk about meaninglessness, but you don’t behave like someone without hope.
— Perhaps because, even if meaninglessness is true, it isn’t a reason to surrender.
— Why not?
— Because if the universe hasn’t decided for me what my meaning must be, that could be good news too.
She raised her head.
— Freedom, you mean?
— Perhaps.
— And if you choose wrongly?
— I probably will.
— Then?
— We choose again.
She smiled.
— As simple as that?
— As hard as that.
The bus reached a crossroads. The light turned red and I stopped. The rain had almost ended.
— What if the death officer appears again?
I looked in the mirror. The street behind was empty.
— He will, sooner or later.
— And on that day?
I put the unlit cigar in the corner of my mouth.
— On that day, it will depend whose hands are on the bus.
She laughed.
The light turned green. I put the bus in gear. Coco curled up beside my feet. The donkey gave a short bray. The bus moved off again.
The woman in red looked ahead.
— Where are we going?
— I don’t know.
— Why did you set off, then?
I looked at her.
— You don’t always need to know the destination in order to move.
— Where are we going?
— Forward.
She laughed.
— That’s not an address.
— It’s a fair start.
— You really don’t know the destination?
I looked at her.
— Why should not knowing where this road ends mean I don’t know where I am now?
She said nothing.
— I’m living today: this street, this rain, this bus, these comrades beside me. Tomorrow can have its turn when it arrives.
— So you have no plans for the future?
— I do. In fact, I have plenty. I just won’t sacrifice today to a tomorrow that hasn’t arrived.
I paused.
— I don’t forget the future. I simply won’t let it turn up and evict me from today.
She smiled.
— And if the future isn’t what you wanted?
I changed gear.
— I’ll change course.
— Just like that?
— With all the difficulty that involves.
The donkey brayed behind us. I glanced in the mirror.
— Naturally, the final decision must be approved by the board.
She laughed. Coco raised its head and the donkey brayed again.
— Two votes in favour. Unless you object, shall we go?
The light had turned green. The bus moved on gently.
This time the woman in red did not ask where we were going. I felt no need to explain.
I knew where I was.
I was living today.
And the future, whatever it held, had not been forgotten. Its turn simply had not come yet.
There will certainly be more.
Naser Kamali
Rainy London, around midnight; my small and pleasant room, with my beloved solitude
Undated
Translator's notes
- 1360 is a year in the Iranian solar calendar, spanning 1981–82 in the Gregorian calendar.
دیدگاهتان را بنویسید