From: hornpete@uctvax.uct.ac.za (Peter Horn)
Newsgroups: alt.prose
Subject: I didn't apply for this job
Date: 27 Sep 92 17:59:11 +0200
Organization: University of Cape Town

I did not Apply for this Job, Believe me
They offered me the job of God, when the situation deteriorated to such a
degree that nobody wanted that job any more. I didn't either, but the amount of
moral  and, dare I say it, physical pressure applied made me understand that if
I valued my life, I could not refuse that offer. Not that the title means much
these days, when this place has none of the splendour it once used to have. Of
course, I rely on legend here, because nobody, even those who were around then,
can remember those days: they seem like a fairy tale anyway, when you look at
this place now. Most people therefore treat this as a myth, the kind of tales
you find in old books with a gold cut and in old-fashioned Gothic print.
One of the problems of this position is that people expect you to be everywhere
at the same time and to know everything, no mean feat, if you remember the
extension of this refugee camp. On top of it, most of the people when they come
here complain that this is not what they were made to expect: which is not
surprising, because everywhere on earth, and our refugees come from nearly all
of the countries of the world, the old myths are still taken at face value, and
nobody has returned to these places from here for a long time to disabuse them
of this misconception. They stay of course, because while this may not be
everybody's idea of a paradise, far from it, it is at least safe in a way. 
You will understand me better, when you take a look at the sort of people I see
here everyday. Many of them are mere skeletons, and let me tell you, I am not
speaking figuratively: you may have seen TV reports on the famine in Somalia or
Ethiopia. Well that is the way they arrive here, and since we have literally
nothing to feed them, they stay like that, and I walk between them with empty
hands. But at least they do not die on us here. Then there are those that come
with gunshot wounds, their faces smashed or blown away, it makes your stomach
turn. Old ones, young ones, even babies. Some are mere shreds of people,
stitched together again in the crudest way by some unskilled medical doctor on
one of the many battle fields which are the cause of all these people seeking
refuge here. People with AIDS and with cancer, Kwashiorkor, the lot. Epidemics
like cholera and typhus. You name the sickness, we have seen it here. The place
stinks with suppurating wounds and running stomachs. We do not even have a
sewerage system. What for, anyway? The smell of diarrhea, shit and gangrene
pervade the air. But it's safe. And that is the most important thing for them,
after what they have gone through.
So, however much they grumble and talk about having been swindled, they stay.
No one wants to go back to that. Understandably. I mean, wherever I go, of
course, I get these fancy stories about what they had been told this place
would be like: marble palaces and half naked women doing daring dances after
dinner, and of course harmonious music. And nurses in long white flowing
uniforms floating from bed to bed to tend to the wounded, pouring some kind of
heavenly balsam on the gunshot wounds and administering sweet smelling
concoctions to the starving. You really get people with such far-fetched ideas
about this place, and they look at me as if they had been conned, or as if they
had come to the wrong place and there must be some other place which tallies
with their wild imagination. Well, I am sorry, we are not financed by the
United Nations or Rockefeller, and even Rockefeller would be hard put to build
marble palaces for the millions of refugees we are looking after.
So, the reality is very gloomy, and of course, they blame it on me. If only
they knew that I am totally powerless to change it. I mean, I can't just simply
say "abracadabra", and expect some kind of miracle. Not that I believe that
previous incumbents of this post were any better at this kind of hocus-pocus,
but they at least had the financial means to make it appear as if they were
magicians, at least this is what the legend says. On the other hand, the legend
is not very reliable in other matters, so maybe this, too, is a mere myth. When
I last talked with the guardians of the legend, seven very old and somewhat
dotty academics who it is rumoured had to leave their country because they
opposed some kind of early form of communism, they were even unable to show me
the book in which this legend is supposed to have been inscribed. So it may be
that the legend itself is a legend, and I have only the very unreliable memory
of these dotards to rely on. 
And, of course, at that time the problem was nowhere as serious as it is today.
The number of refugees was minute in comparison with what we have to put up
with today. There is a story that at that time there was even a serious fight
for the position of God. It is said that one of my predecessors actually
murdered a rival or at least put him into some kind of slow roasting oven or
maybe a very steamy prison cell, or something like that. Some people even link
this story with the legends about the Underground, although to people like me
who know the Underground, that is patent nonsense. Of course, nobody really
believes that story about people fighting for this position today, when you
have to threaten people with the most horrible tortures to make them accept the
position of God. I can assure you that as soon as I have gathered enough money
and power to do it, I will find somebody else to do this stupid job. Anyway,
behind its mythical embroidery there may be a nucleus of truth in this story.
As I said, that was long before my time. Why should I worry about nonsense like
this today? Things have changed drastically since then (if there ever was a
then).
One of the things I had to swear in the ritual when they installed me as God,
was that I would reinstate the old legendary regime, marble palaces, floating
nurses, nude women, cabaret, pop-music, and all. When I took on the job, I had
assumed that everybody would know that neither I nor anybody else would be able
to fulfil that promise. That that phrase was a mere phrase in a ritual. Like
prime ministers in democratic states promising to reduce taxes. No sane person
ever takes statements like that seriously. I had not counted with the fervent
belief of thousands and thousands of refugees. They really believe that if only
I want to I could bring it all back. There is a rumour that I don't do it,
because I am cross with them. Nothing could be further from the truth. I really
wish I could. Bring back the old glory, that is. Because the reality of this
place is not what one wants to contemplate for any length of time.
Today this haven for the refugees is one enormous plane stretching far beyond
the horizon. As far as the eye can see, no tree, the place feels like a desert,
although there are no sand dunes. Not one grain of sand, to be exact. Only this
black lava, polished by many feet over the many years that this camp has
existed. One shiny black mirror. That is maybe the only really beautiful thing
about this place. Built on this mirror are hundreds of thousands of shacks made
of black plastic, rusting tin, broken pieces of wood. Inside there is usually
not more than a very rough mattress or some straw thrown into a corner, no
bed-sheets, no blankets, even when it gets cold in the desert nights. No
pictures, no paint, no colour. The place is incredibly dreary. Whatever little
treasures people have, they definitely do not display them. They even hide them
from family members, and take them out from their holes only in the deep of
night, not to look at them, but just to feel them.
When I took on the job, I was promised a car to get me to the farthest
outreaches of this place and to allow me to tend to everybody. Needless to say,
I never got one. I did not expect to. What would I have done with it anyway?
There are no roads between the shacks, and no car would be able to penetrate
the dense jungle of these shacks. So they gave me a donkey. On that donkey I
slowly make my way through the narrow paths which separate shack from shack,
accompanied by The Brain, also on a donkey, - he is rumoured to be able to fly,
at least at night, but that is another of these untenable legends which
multiply in this place like lice. The Brain is surrounded by the Revolutionary
Council, seven very old women in long white flowing robes, who look like Arabs
from the Sahara. They have to walk, because we only have two donkeys.
Because of the slowness of my progress there are still thousands in this
refugee camp who have never seen me. For them I myself am some kind of legend.
God will come to us one day, they say. And they wait. When I do come, of
course, they are disappointed. I know I am not a very imposing person. I don't
conform to the image which people have picked up in the few copies of the
various legends about me which one occasionally finds in some dusty corner of
one of the shacks. Instead of the long, flowing beard and hair of the legend, I
wear just stubble close-cropped around my bald, shiny  head. The heavy
horn-rimmed glasses, which my optometrist got me from some pharmaceutical
supplies shipped in from a non-government agency in Mexico, cover half of my
balloonlike, and generally expressionless face. The lenses are so strong that
my eyes seem to bulge and completely dominate my face.
As I made my way through Lotus River one day - these names are really very
silly: there is no river anywhere in this desert camp, but people have this
nostalgic attachment to the legends - we met this very hairy guy, practically
naked except for a very skimpy loin cloth standing on a rickety, empty oil
drum, preaching to a small crowd of about fifteen people. 
I am not the one, he shouted. But I am the one who builds the road for him who
will restore this place to its former glory. This road will be built on dead
bodies and over torn down shanties. We will clean up this place. We will tear
down the shacks which cover this beautiful place like festering boils. We will
find the elect who will inherit this paradise. I tell you, the rabble who have
taken possession of this place unlawfully will be sent back to where they come
from. The foreigners will be expelled. We will unearth the marble and unlock
the harmony from the throats of the singers. We will create peace on earth. We
will make this hell a veritable paradise. We are waiting for the saviour of the
people to come, but when he comes he will return to us what is ours.
There are dozens of guys like this all over the vast expanse of this plain.
They are not really dangerous: there is not much they can do to the vast, if
poverty-striken empire which I control. They usually have a small audience
which eventually melts away when they begin to understand  that this is just
talk, and nothing will ever come of it. But despite the many disappointments
there are always people prepared to listen to this kind of nonsense. After all,
people have nothing else to do in this refugee camp.
The Brain and the Revolutionary Council assured me that so-called prophets like
this one are just a minor irritation, and I should not worry about them. And I
didn't. Until one day, as we made our way through the maze, in one of the most
decrepit sections of the refugee camp ironically known as the Heavenly
Jerusalem, we met this guy who claimed to be my son. This is, of course,
entirely preposterous: me, having a son. I have been impotent for such a long
time that I cannot remember when I ever had sex. Even before that I have led a
completely celibate life, not because I was aspiring to some kind of saintly
status, but simply because sex is a dirty, slimy pastime that has never given
me any pleasure.
When I explained that to him, he came up with a weird and totally confused
story, claiming, yes, it was actually the Brain who had raped his mother, but
he claimed that the Brain was merely his physical father, while I, as he
expressed himself, was his father in heaven. The Brain was livid, when he heard
this bullshit.
When have I ever had to resort to rape, he exclaimed. Women swoon all over the
place whenever I pass by. I can pick and choose. Rape, indeed. Arrest the
little upstart! Arrest him now and here! This is insufferable.
The Brain while generally regarded as some kind of Einstein is incredibly vain,
and without much provocation goes into uncontrollable rages. So I gave a sign
to two of the Revolutionary Tribunal, Gaby and Raffia, to take this madman out
of our sight, and tried to soothe the Brain by assuring him that we all admired
him, and that nobody had any doubt about his sexual attraction, and that he
must not take this guy seriously, he was just trying to make himself appear
important. It took me half an hour to soothe his rage sufficiently to allow us
to proceed on our endless rounds through the refugee camp. Apart from these
rages he is gentle like a dove, and as I said, very, very clever.
We didn't arrest the guy who claimed to be my son. There are so many people in
this place who having been exposed to the most incredible cruelties in the
countries they come from, have developed all kinds of delusions and fantasies,
that if we were to arrest them all, we would not know where to put them and how
to guard them. As it is, our security officers are totally overworked, and the
stream of new refugees arriving everyday from far over the horizon makes any
really effective control of this enormous rabbit warren a practical
impossibility. We just sent him away, and for a long time I heard nothing more
about him.
A few years later, however, while we were approaching the Western rim of the
camp for the first time in my Godhood, there came a runner from the Central
Security Services and brought me a piece of paper torn from a dirty notebook
with the message: "Please return urgently and in haste to Heavenly Jerusalem to
quell a rebellion by a madman who claims to be your son. Feirefitz, Chief
Security Officer." At first I was puzzled, but then I remembered the scraggy
figure with he red beard and the mysterious black eyes whom I met at that place
such a long time ago.
That night I had a dream, seeing this my son opening his jeans and stripping
for me - I never liked naked bodies - and showing me the deep wound in his
abdomen, where, he claims he was tortured by the Israeli, or was it the
Italians, - he was so confused, this supposed son of mine - before he was sent
to this place. I actually died, he murmured. I can't understand, how you could
let me die, father. As I shouted angrily, I am not your bloody father, I woke
up, sweating and feeling a wet sticky substance between my legs. I was furious.
This guy was now even disturbing my sleep and giving me unpleasant wet dreams.
Returning "in haste" was easily written by a distraught officer. Riding on a
donkey through an uncharted and dense thicket of shacks was quite another. In
the end I gave up counting the days and the weeks and the months it took us to
reach the Heavenly Jerusalem.
As we finally neared our destination, we were held up by enormous processions
of dancing and shouting youths waving colourful banners proclaiming the holy
revolution was in progress. Some of the youths took up threatening poses when
we neared the processions, but then someone cried: This is the Father. Let him
pass. The Son is expecting him. After that we were respectfully allowed to pass
through the procession. The Brain was furious, because, as he expressed it, we
were no longer in control. This, of course, was another of his exaggerations,
because, for one, we had never been in control of this place - I don't think
anyone is or could be - and, secondly, there had been these so called revival
processions before, and usually, when people understood that walking around
waving coloured pieces of cloth will not change this place, they sort of go
back to their hovels and lie on their matresses and meditate for another
hundred years or so.
Nevertheless such times of revival are very taxing on everybody, since usually
the people in the processions start to tear down shacks, burn them, and clear
huge open spaces for them to assemble and listen to their prophets. When the
whole thing is over, they have to go back, try to find some building material,
which is not easy at all, and rebuild their shacks. It is also nerve-wrecking
because at times the followers of these prophets get a bit out of hand, they
start to whip all those who do not join the processions or who seem to be not
enthusiastic enough, and there have even been incidents of people being hacked
to pieces (we had quite a job, sewing them together again, given the lack of
hospitals and qualified doctors in this place) or even roasted over an open
fire.
So in these time there is usually a quick turnover of security officers: most
of them crack under the strain of these events, and ask to be relieved of their
duties, or to be sent to some other, less strenuous part of the camp. I was
therefore not very surprised when we finally reached my central residence,
known as Number Seven among the refugees, to hear the Feirefitz had resigned
and retired to the Eastern outskirts of the encampment. The new Chief Security
officer was a young career officer with the name of Pill, generally known as
Anus, because he was rumoured to be a bit of an arse creeper. He greeted me in
measured tones, but his face was constantly wracked by wild spasms.
We have arrested this guy who calls himself your son, he said to me, after we
had inspected the guard of honour. 
Oh, I said. Where do you keep him?
Over there, in the crate, he pointed to a strong oak box which must have been a
shipping crate before, about two meters high and less than a meter square. The
Son could not really turn in it, let alone sleep in it, so narrow was it. I
released him, sat on an apple crate, motioned him to sit on the ground opposite
me, and said: This court is in session. Case of God versus the Son. By the way,
what is your name, son?
I am called the Son by everybody. Before I came here, people just called me
Jazz.
Right, Jazz, so what is it with you? Why do you give us this trouble?
Father, he cried, I have come here to this aborted paradise from the
Underground. I have seen the Underground with my own eyes. Ah, and how we are
deceived. The legends say that the Underground is a place of horror and
gnashing of teeth. Well, let me disabuse you all. The legends lie.
Jazz, I said, stop this nonsense about me being your father. And stop talking
nonsense about the Underground. This is a camp of true believers. Nobody will
tolerate this blasphemy. Take care what you say here.
Of course, I, the Brain, and the Revolutionary Council have access to the
Underground from nearly every place where we may be. This is one of the few
privileges which makes being God, if not worthwhile, then at least bearable.
This is also the one thing which is treated with the utmost secrecy, and none
of the legends about this place gives you even a hint what the Underworld is
really like. Instead my predecessors have spread a whole lot of propaganda and
lies about it. This is the one place we want to keep the refugees out. It would
really be a pity, if this rabble were to invade the Underground. I mean, there
has to be a place, where a man can retire to after a hard weeks work in this
dump. So the legends say that this place is full of fire, or, for those who are
more afraid of the cold, that it is icy, and everyone is frozen to death there.
And we created a special kind of gangster police force to make people afraid.
Mind you, the police force is real, that is not a legend, but they do not
torture the legitimate members of the club, they are there to keep the others
out, in case they accidentally discover the secret entrances to the
Underground.
So this kid had discovered the entrance and had even outwitted our very
efficient police officers. This could be dangerous.
Turning to the Revolutionary Council I said: This young man needs urgent
treatment. Take him there. You know where. I will talk to him later.
When later that evening I told the story to the Brain, he mused for a while,
and then said: look if this guy really found the secret entrance and fooled the
police down there, then he must be quite a brain. He laughed: perhaps he is a
son of mine. Though that story about me raping his mother is bullshit. I never
raped anybody.
Maybe the story is just the revenge of a son who felt he was abandonned by his
father.
Yeah, maybe, he said. Look, we need to find out. And as soon as possible. I
think this whole business is more dangerous than I thought.
The mental hospital, as it was known, was one of the few stone buildings on the
plain. It was built of massive blocks of black lava hewn out of the mirror by
the labour of previous inmates of the mental hospital. All its walls were so
thick that no scream or noise from inside ever reached the outside, or any
shout from the outside could ever reach the inside. What is more, in its
innermost court yard was the chamber of interrogations separated from the rest
of the building by a high wall which completely shielded it from any sound or
sight of the outside world.
I had Jazz brought to the chamber of interrogation and asked the Brain and the
Revolutionary Council to leave us alone.
Look, I said, this story of the Underground, who else, besides you, knows?
I told everybody, he said.
What exactly did you tell them.
About the bankers and the rich men, about the brothels and the theatres, about
the bars and the music halls, about everything I saw there. And that there is
no fire and no ice and no torture. I told them all that.
He was musing silently for a moment, then he said: You know, it is really a
great farce. The Underground with its splendour and sparkle, its very luxurious
and comfortable living conditions is precisely what this place is supposed to
be. So, why are all the legends so horribly wrong about it. Why pretend that
the Underground is like a sort of hell, when it is all but.
Well, would you have come here, if they told you what the place is really like?
I didn't have much choice, he said, did I?
How did you get in there, I asked him.
Well, it was after they killed me. Somebody must have made a mistake, so they
took me down there to the hospital. A really top class hospital, and there they
patched me up. Not like the people here, who are not attended to whatever their
wounds or illnesses. After my recovery I spent a week down there until somebody
did a check-up on my credit worthiness. Then they threw me out. 
Stupid of them, I said. Once you make a mistake like that, you do not change
your mind afterwards. I will speak to the bank manager about it. Somebody
bungled this badly.
But why do you lie to everybody?
I do not. This goes way back. I don#t think there is anybody who remembers the
origin of these legends. But anyhow, if the legends did not exist, we would
have to invent them: or do you want the Underground to become a refugee camp
like this here?
He was silent.
Well, I said, there is then no other way, you will have to take over from me,
become God, and then repair the damage done. It will be quite a job, with all
these mobs rampaging through the camp.
He looked at me in horror.
But nobody believed me, he pleaded after a lengthy pause. They all thought I
was telling them one of my parables. They all thought this was some kind of
allegory. Actually I got quite desperate, because nobody seemed to be
understanding what I had said. They all looked at me with these eyes of
unshakable belief, and yet they understood nothing.
No matter, I said. The damage is done. Even the slightest doubt about the
legends throws into jeopardy the foundation of this society. Anyway, somebody
has to lead these processions. Only you can. So, one way or the other, whether
you want to or not, you have to take over.
He started to cry, at first softly, then his body shook in uncontrollable
spasms.
I felt sorry for him. But I really wanted to retire to the Underworld. I had
had enough of this job.
Before I left, I patted him on his shoulder and said: Look, don't worry, there
is always another one who will sooner or later make a mistake so that you can
blackmail him. You just have to keep your eyes open. And don't try to fob us
off with a dud. The Brain is very, very clever, and he would see through this
in no time. In the meantime, they will give you a Mercedes so that you can
perform your duties in greater luxury than I could. They were also going to
build a palace here, so you can point to it and say that that is the beginning
of the reconstruction. Of course, we will never have enough money to build
palaces for everybody.
I had to soften the blow for him somehow. 
When I stepped outside, I was grinning.
The Brain immediately understood what I had done. He is not stupid, after all.
You swine, he said, you rotten swine.
Well, I said, you will work well together, after all, you are the Father.

Peter Horn
-- 
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Peter Horn 
German Department, UCT 
43 Trevor Road, Lansdowne 7764, Cape, Republic of  South Africa . 
Phone Home ZA-(021)696-1983		e-Mail: HORNPETE@UCTVAX.UCT.AC.ZA 
      Work ZA-(021)650-2936		Fax ZA-(021) 650-3726 
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Peter Horn, Walking through our sleep (Poems), Ravan Press 1974
Peter Horn, Poems 1964-1989, Ravan Press 1991
Peter Horn, An Axe in the Ice (Poems), COSAW Publishing House 
forthcoming September/October 1992
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Ravan Press, P.O.Box 31134, Braamfontein 2017, Republic of South Africa
COSAW Publishing House, P.O.Box 421007, Fordsburg 2033, Republic of 
South Africa.
USA: Ohio University Press Fax (614) 593-4536
Britain: Central Books, Fax (71) 378-1811
Australia: New Era Books, Fax (02) 596-0045
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