Mystere

French literature and art have always been dear to us. In the French tongue there is a word—Mystere. It means an astonishing occurrence, an inexplicable event, something beyond reason, something the eyes can hardly bear to see. An elephant flies in the sky. A horse gallops across the sea. And yet—it happened. The neon bulbs of the street all turned red. The Prime Minister’s car flew so high over the lampposts that the people standing below could not hear the sound of its siren.
 
“What nonsense you speak, brother! Will you drown the world in the lantern of lies?” a rickshaw puller said, with the wisdom of a philosopher.
 
But it was true—astonishing. Last night, in my own bed, what a leap my wife made! One moment she collapsed flat upon the mattress, the next she bounded up, touched the ceiling, and fell again. In this strange land, what stranger miracles should one not expect?
 
Our imagination is white, blanched, stripped bare, carrying the stamp of widowhood. Reality, on the other hand, is gaudy, seductive, full of colors. Everything that happens in reality here becomes truth. And the most astonishing truth is this: the absence of dreams has become the greatest disease of civilization.
 
Look closely: the sons of millionaires, with their happy faces, are dying of unknown illnesses, while the wretched paupers thrive, living endless lives upon the pavements. What a murderous land, my friend, where only the rich receive the sentence of hanging, while the poor have never heard the name of the gallows. Only those tormented by hunger are safe here. Small wonder they call it a democracy of the poor!
 
The whole world has become a school of morality. At every street corner—clinics for dogs. Above them hang government posters, public slogans declaring, Take care of the dogs.
 
In such a health-conscious neighborhood lived Mr. and Mrs. Chowdhury. On Mr. Chowdhury’s back there had long been a boil, and one astrologer had prophesied that the boy with the boil would one day be a millionaire. Hearing this, the father of Miss Chowdhury committed a bold act: he married his daughter off to the boil-boy. But Mr. Chowdhury obstinately refused to die, and so Mrs. Chowdhury concluded that her husband would never be a millionaire. Consequently, as fate would dictate, she herself grew more and more monstrous in size and spirit.
 
This was a city full of doctors, guardians of health. Among them Dr. Sengupta was renowned, beloved in the circles of female dogs. He had made a sensation in the learned world by discovering the missing link between man and dog. His assistant, Dr. Bhadra, was a specialist in canine venereal diseases. Sengupta himself was a psychologist, a healer of canine neuroses. Since the body’s disease must be treated before the mind’s, Sengupta dispatched his assistant to the Chowdhury home.
 
The door opened. Out stepped a fat, fair woman.
 
“You must be Mrs. Chowdhury?” the short, ugly doctor asked, like a football inflating speech.
 
“Yes. What do you want?” she answered, her eyes glinting like a sly jackal’s. Her nose, slightly flattened, made her squashed face appear even uglier.
 
“Dr. Sengupta has sent me. I hear your dog is unwell. I have come to examine him thoroughly.” The misshapen man spoke with a nasal growl.
 
The woman smiled at last. “Thank you, thank you! Please come in. You see, dogs nowadays have no character. They prefer lives of adultery, no morals, only instinct. Weak tolerance. They collapse so easily. With such a reckless life, what else can you expect? Surely it is debauchery that has brought him this disease.”
The doctor entered.
 
“This dog has disturbed me mentally,” the woman continued. “It has accustomed me to its own style of life. And now my suffering knows no end.”
 
The doctor, middle-aged, noted how talkative she was, one of those women whose endless mouths ensure that the loneliness of men survives.
 
He laid his hand upon the dog’s belly, feeling for heat. The prognosis was grim: severe infection of the genitals. The animal lay upon a black divan, staring into the future, as though reckoning the account of its reckless sexual life.
 
The woman sat on the opposite sofa, her enormous thighs overlapped like arched beams. She leaned forward, her sari slipping slightly, her gaze eager upon the doctor. Her cleavage was so deep that no ordinary man would dare risk getting lost in it.
 
Swaying her heavy breasts slowly, she said, “The dog is very dear, you understand. My companion in loneliness. I love it more than life itself. Even my husband is jealous. You will cure him, Doctor?”
 
The doctor shook his head cautiously, keeping safe distance. Then he placed his hand on the dog’s back. At once, the dog stood, lifted its front paws toward its mistress, sighed long, and whimpered softly.
 
“Astonishing! At your touch it rose. For three days it had not moved. Doctor, you know magic!”
 
“No, madam, not magic. I cannot explain it either.”
 
“Doctor Bhadra, it is improper to call him an animal. Civilization itself rests upon them. Without dog-ness, what remains of man? Is not this very age being written as the Age of the Dog?”
 
“Forgive me. Old feudal habits die slowly. I was born in the Age of Information. Sometimes mistakes slip out.”
 
The woman grew emotional. “I do not recall seeing you at Sengupta’s chamber. Are you new? A physician for wild animals perhaps?”
 
“I have been transferred here. A specialist in canine venereal fevers. Government has appointed twenty such doctors for this region, as diseases spread among dogs in alarming fashion. My specialty is sexual fever—I can cool hot bodies in an instant. That is why I was sent. And yes, your dog is burning with heat.”
 
The woman nodded gravely. “Lately I had seen the signs. But such should not have happened, for its sexual life has been filled with… discrimination. I too have taken many precautions on its behalf.”
 
“You look careful indeed. Yet in these days, trust no dog too blindly. How can you be sure it has not deceived you?”
 
The woman’s eyes filled with tears. Her body trembled. “Doctor, do not wound me so. Faithless…? That disease you name, it is contagious?”
 
“Perhaps. Or perhaps a poisoned syringe. The science is not clear. We do not yet know if the illness began in man and spread to dogs, or the reverse. Research is underway. Perhaps in ten, twenty years the disease will be eradicated.”
 
“What of death? Tell me plainly.”
 
“Death strikes less than the disfigurement of the soul. Even if cured, your dog will not be normal. Either it will regress into the primitive world, or become monstrously distorted.”
 
Somehow reassured, the woman clasped the dog to her bosom, kissing its head, her giant body rocking with affection. The dog licked her face and then ran about happily. Soon both mistress and pet grew weary, collapsed into sleep, drifting into strange dreams.
 
Outside, the world reeled with its own madness. Airships sailing in the sky, airplanes diving into rivers, philosophers proclaiming that poverty alone would deliver mankind in the next millennium. Few believed it, but the lotus-eaters stared dumbly at the future.
 
By evening, the ugly doctor stepped out from the ugly woman’s house, sniffing at the stench of dustbins floating in the air. The municipal vats were flying above the city, scattering their perfume.
 
Behind him, Mrs. Chowdhury shut her door, satisfied. To cure a dog’s venereal disease with a single medicine—what could be more miraculous! The doctor, too, bore a pleased face. Operation successful. Only his nose wrinkled at the smell of garbage in the dusk.
 
And suddenly a serene wellness seemed to descend upon the neighborhood, like fog. In this city, strange things were always happening. For how else could men carry puppies in their bellies?
 
A light flickered in the sky, as if heralding the arrival of a great prophet. But all else remained darkness, mist, enigma.
 
What an astonishing world—where everything is mystery, everything is surreal.
Mystere
 
French literature and art have always been dear to us. In the French tongue there is a word—Mystere. It means an astonishing occurrence, an inexplicable event, something beyond reason, something the eyes can hardly bear to see. An elephant flies in the sky. A horse gallops across the sea. And yet—it happened. The neon bulbs of the street all turned red. The Prime Minister’s car flew so high over the lampposts that the people standing below could not hear the sound of its siren.
 
“What nonsense you speak, brother! Will you drown the world in the lantern of lies?” a rickshaw puller said, with the wisdom of a philosopher.
 
But it was true—astonishing. Last night, in my own bed, what a leap my wife made! One moment she collapsed flat upon the mattress, the next she bounded up, touched the ceiling, and fell again. In this strange land, what stranger miracles should one not expect?
 
Our imagination is white, blanched, stripped bare, carrying the stamp of widowhood. Reality, on the other hand, is gaudy, seductive, full of colors. Everything that happens in reality here becomes truth. And the most astonishing truth is this: the absence of dreams has become the greatest disease of civilization.
 
Look closely: the sons of millionaires, with their happy faces, are dying of unknown illnesses, while the wretched paupers thrive, living endless lives upon the pavements. What a murderous land, my friend, where only the rich receive the sentence of hanging, while the poor have never heard the name of the gallows. Only those tormented by hunger are safe here. Small wonder they call it a democracy of the poor!
 
The whole world has become a school of morality. At every street corner—clinics for dogs. Above them hang government posters, public slogans declaring, Take care of the dogs.
 
In such a health-conscious neighborhood lived Mr. and Mrs. Chowdhury. On Mr. Chowdhury’s back there had long been a boil, and one astrologer had prophesied that the boy with the boil would one day be a millionaire. Hearing this, the father of Miss Chowdhury committed a bold act: he married his daughter off to the boil-boy. But Mr. Chowdhury obstinately refused to die, and so Mrs. Chowdhury concluded that her husband would never be a millionaire. Consequently, as fate would dictate, she herself grew more and more monstrous in size and spirit.
 
This was a city full of doctors, guardians of health. Among them Dr. Sengupta was renowned, beloved in the circles of female dogs. He had made a sensation in the learned world by discovering the missing link between man and dog. His assistant, Dr. Bhadra, was a specialist in canine venereal diseases. Sengupta himself was a psychologist, a healer of canine neuroses. Since the body’s disease must be treated before the mind’s, Sengupta dispatched his assistant to the Chowdhury home.
 
The door opened. Out stepped a fat, fair woman.
 
“You must be Mrs. Chowdhury?” the short, ugly doctor asked, like a football inflating speech.
 
“Yes. What do you want?” she answered, her eyes glinting like a sly jackal’s. Her nose, slightly flattened, made her squashed face appear even uglier.
 
“Dr. Sengupta has sent me. I hear your dog is unwell. I have come to examine him thoroughly.” The misshapen man spoke with a nasal growl.
 
The woman smiled at last. “Thank you, thank you! Please come in. You see, dogs nowadays have no character. They prefer lives of adultery, no morals, only instinct. Weak tolerance. They collapse so easily. With such a reckless life, what else can you expect? Surely it is debauchery that has brought him this disease.”
The doctor entered.
 
“This dog has disturbed me mentally,” the woman continued. “It has accustomed me to its own style of life. And now my suffering knows no end.”
 
The doctor, middle-aged, noted how talkative she was, one of those women whose endless mouths ensure that the loneliness of men survives.
 
He laid his hand upon the dog’s belly, feeling for heat. The prognosis was grim: severe infection of the genitals. The animal lay upon a black divan, staring into the future, as though reckoning the account of its reckless sexual life.
 
The woman sat on the opposite sofa, her enormous thighs overlapped like arched beams. She leaned forward, her sari slipping slightly, her gaze eager upon the doctor. Her cleavage was so deep that no ordinary man would dare risk getting lost in it.
 
Swaying her heavy breasts slowly, she said, “The dog is very dear, you understand. My companion in loneliness. I love it more than life itself. Even my husband is jealous. You will cure him, Doctor?”
 
The doctor shook his head cautiously, keeping safe distance. Then he placed his hand on the dog’s back. At once, the dog stood, lifted its front paws toward its mistress, sighed long, and whimpered softly.
 
“Astonishing! At your touch it rose. For three days it had not moved. Doctor, you know magic!”
 
“No, madam, not magic. I cannot explain it either.”
 
“Doctor Bhadra, it is improper to call him an animal. Civilization itself rests upon them. Without dog-ness, what remains of man? Is not this very age being written as the Age of the Dog?”
 
“Forgive me. Old feudal habits die slowly. I was born in the Age of Information. Sometimes mistakes slip out.”
 
The woman grew emotional. “I do not recall seeing you at Sengupta’s chamber. Are you new? A physician for wild animals perhaps?”
 
“I have been transferred here. A specialist in canine venereal fevers. Government has appointed twenty such doctors for this region, as diseases spread among dogs in alarming fashion. My specialty is sexual fever—I can cool hot bodies in an instant. That is why I was sent. And yes, your dog is burning with heat.”
 
The woman nodded gravely. “Lately I had seen the signs. But such should not have happened, for its sexual life has been filled with… discrimination. I too have taken many precautions on its behalf.”
 
“You look careful indeed. Yet in these days, trust no dog too blindly. How can you be sure it has not deceived you?”
 
The woman’s eyes filled with tears. Her body trembled. “Doctor, do not wound me so. Faithless…? That disease you name, it is contagious?”
 
“Perhaps. Or perhaps a poisoned syringe. The science is not clear. We do not yet know if the illness began in man and spread to dogs, or the reverse. Research is underway. Perhaps in ten, twenty years the disease will be eradicated.”
 
“What of death? Tell me plainly.”
 
“Death strikes less than the disfigurement of the soul. Even if cured, your dog will not be normal. Either it will regress into the primitive world, or become monstrously distorted.”
 
Somehow reassured, the woman clasped the dog to her bosom, kissing its head, her giant body rocking with affection. The dog licked her face and then ran about happily. Soon both mistress and pet grew weary, collapsed into sleep, drifting into strange dreams.
 
Outside, the world reeled with its own madness. Airships sailing in the sky, airplanes diving into rivers, philosophers proclaiming that poverty alone would deliver mankind in the next millennium. Few believed it, but the lotus-eaters stared dumbly at the future.
 
By evening, the ugly doctor stepped out from the ugly woman’s house, sniffing at the stench of dustbins floating in the air. The municipal vats were flying above the city, scattering their perfume.
 
Behind him, Mrs. Chowdhury shut her door, satisfied. To cure a dog’s venereal disease with a single medicine—what could be more miraculous! The doctor, too, bore a pleased face. Operation successful. Only his nose wrinkled at the smell of garbage in the dusk.
 
And suddenly a serene wellness seemed to descend upon the neighborhood, like fog. In this city, strange things were always happening. For how else could men carry puppies in their bellies?
 
A light flickered in the sky, as if heralding the arrival of a great prophet. But all else remained darkness, mist, enigma.
 
What an astonishing world—where everything is mystery, everything is surreal.