Bardo or Not Bardo. Antoine Volodine

       I. LAST STAND BEFORE THE BARDO

      The hens were chattering peacefully behind the wire fence, as usual, when the first gunshot rang out. Some of them shook their crests, others paused their graceless march, freezing a grayish leg off the ground, unable to make up their mind about stepping in grain and excrement, others still continued clucking blithely. Pistols were of no concern to them. Knives, yes, maybe, but Makarovs and Brownings, no. Then a second detonation rattled the quiet of the afternoon. Someone came running and collapsed against the henhouse’s fence, whose structure was poorly suited to such a trial and so quickly deformed. The posts bent, a row of perches fell apart, and, this time, the whole brood of poultry was overcome with hysteria. The disorderly hens—mostly reds and whites, but two or three black ones as well—dispersed loudly. The injured man was clinging to the wire web. He wanted both to move forward and remain vertical, but that wasn’t quite happening. He hobbled slantwise, indifferent to the cackling, primarily preoccupied with what sounded like approaching steps. His pursuer was catching up to him, a fast-walking man, preceded en route by a zigzagging hen, all helter-skelter, wing stumps akimbo. The killer reached the wounded man and wordlessly stared at him for an instant, as if he was wondering what he was doing there with a target that was already hit—quite hit, even—then he shot him a third time, barely even aiming, before setting off again and disappearing.

      The target’s name was Kominform.

      Now, among the decreasingly agitated birds, there Kominform was, triply pierced and about to die. He was bleeding. He had been a revolutionary communist, he had demolished the henhouse when he fell, and, next to its bent-over door, he was bleeding.

      No one had witnessed the execution, though it had taken place in an ordinarily rather lively locale, behind the library of a vast Lamaist monastery, where a century before, monks still practiced martial arts, and which today was dedicated to vegetable growing and farming. But, that afternoon, everyone was gathered elsewhere. Novices, lamas, and guests were currently sitting on the poorly-cleaned and not-very-comfortable cushions in the large prayer room situated in the north-western wing, opposite the vegetable garden, to participate in one of the year’s most important ceremonies: the blessing of the Five Precious Perfumed Oils. A small summer breeze conveyed the calls of conches and the rings of gongs. There were also the echoes of collective prayers. At that distance, it was impossible to tell the sincere professions of faith from the routine.

      The day was splendid.

      For several seconds, the situation remained unchanged, then an old monk closed a door behind him somewhere in a corridor, came out through the back of the library, crossed through a patch of beans, and hurried toward the scene of the crime.

      He was a hoary religious man, in a faded indigo robe. His body was wizened in its twilight years. He jogged toward the henhouse, as quick as his breath and his skinny nonagenarian legs would let him. Confined to the lavatory due to intestinal troubles, he wasn’t able to make it to the ceremony. He had heard the detonations, and foreseeing some mishap hastily wiped and dressed himself, and now he was running.

      As he often did, he was talking aloud, to both himself and hypothetical coreligionists.

      “Hey!” he shouted. “There’s bandits behind the library! Armed thugs! Come quick! They’re shooting everywhere! They’ve hit someone!”

      He went past the rows of beans, peas. Beyond that, the henhouse showed all the signs of irreversible disarray. The perches were knocked down. The sagging fence had given up the ghost. There were rents pointing toward the sky, half-pieces of slats, the top of the door. Everything swayed and creaked at the slightest movement. He had to get past a square meter of metal lace to see who was lying on the ground.

      “Holy doggone!” the old man swore. “I know him! Kominform! They shot Kominform!”

      He knelt down. Kominform’s body was moaning in the scrapheap’s grating noises. He let himself be manipulated, scrutinized. While he examined the wounds, the old monk gritted his remaining teeth. He kept his prognosis to himself.

      His name was Drumbog.

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