Excerpts from
Fishing in the River of Life
By Merete Pryds Helle
The O-voice
Petrus started the computer
and the 3 D scanner; slowly the jar began to rotate on the sheet of rubber, the
laser beam striking its ridged surface.
Sceptical but expectant, Peter, Martha and Petrus leaned towards the two
loudspeakers.
The voice came thundering. The water trickling, gurgling. The fat squelching of
wet clay, the slapping of hands, the singing pressure of the fingers into the
wet mass turning on the potter’s wheel, whose irregular creaking blended with
the mighty power of the voice, an O-voice, deep, dipped in blue, with the
resonance of a clay bell. Enksilub’s nasal, heavenward voice over the shaping, slippery-with-water-and-clay
hands.
Peter’s nail dug themselves into the flesh of his palms. Here it was. He
plunged through the layers of earth he had dug in so many times; first the
uppermost, absurdly modern Roman ones, his shoulders boring through the
time-field down to the layer where his soul imagined it could find itself
remainderless. The voice, O-shaped, powerful over the rhythmical working
sounds. Could he distinguish the individual sounds of the song? Understand what
was being sung? Guttural sounds glided up and down, spiralshaped, between few,
restrained vowels. Peter tried to enlarge the listening surface of his ear, so
that each voice-carrying arrow had a separate field where it could strike and
be retained.
No matter what, he had to pick up the sounds; for there sat Petrus on the edge
of his chair, his hands behind him clasping the seat, goggle-eyed, his mouth red-blistered
and glistening with spittle. It was impossible that the two of them could leave
the flat together, go out into the sun-coated streets of Naples, in triumphant,
elated mood and discuss how the miracle was to be presented to the public. How
Petrus was to present it.
Martha sat between Peter and Petrus. Enksilub’s voice above the busy background
of the pottery filled the room as a smaller square, with a substance more
viscous than air. She was disheartened by Petrus’ childishly open mouth and fanatic
though surprised look. But even more by her father’s sharp, could stupefaction.
She saw the two vertical furrows above the root of Peter’s nose – he was angry
when those two furrows appeared. There was no escaping it; Petrus had plugged
in the apparatus – he had had the idea. For a second time, the red laser beam
ran down from the rim of the jar; the voice roared, the water seethed, swiftly
whispering, the hands produced a deep grating sound under the voice’s
heavenward O-song.
‘It ought to have been me,’ Martha pondered. ‘Me who had started that machine.’
The image of the ziggurat sailed in front of her inner gaze, rose up heavy,
scalable. Each step was the height of her leg and there were a thousand such
steps – if she were able to lift her body so high, what great effort, what
physical strength would be necessary to reach the blue-gleaming, wind-caressed
top with the seat of the god? The step in front of her was of sandstone, the
colour of desert. She tried to lift her leg high, to surmount the obstacle.
‘No,’ she reasoned. ‘Not by force can we do it, push Petrus off the top,
inventive sandstone step where he is already exulting. I am too slight, my
hands nervous. Something else Is needed, something simply contrived. Think –
that’s what I can do.’
Translated by John Irons
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