Dogra Magra

Opening Poem

O foetus
O foetus
Why do you leap?
Have you understood your mother’s heart
And are you afraid?

…………Booo——————mmm——————mmmm………………

As I began dimly to wake, this sound, like the humming of a bee, still lingered distinctly inside my ears, a deep, resilient resonance.

Listening intently to it, I knew instinctively … it must be the middle of the night. A striking clock must be sounding somewhere nearby … and as I thought this, drifting off again, the bee-like humming gradually faded, echo after echo, until everything around me had fallen utterly silent.

My eyes flicked open.

A single bare electric bulb, coated in whitish dust, hung from a fairly high ceiling painted white. On the side of its glowing reddish-yellow glass a large fly sat motionless, as if dead. Directly beneath it, on a hard, cold floor of artificial stone, I seemed to be lying flat on my back with my arms and legs spread wide.

… How odd …………

Still motionless, still sprawled on my back, I opened my eyes as wide as they would go. Moving only the eyeballs, I rolled them up and down and from side to side.

It was a room some twelve feet square, enclosed by blue-black concrete walls.

Three of the walls each had one large, tall frosted-glass window, doubly protected by black iron bars and wire mesh: three windows in all. The room gave an impression of exceedingly tight security.

Against the foot of the windowless wall stood an equally stout iron bed, its pillow towards the entrance. The spotless white bedding lay so neatly spread that apparently no one had ever slept in it.

… Something’s wrong …………

I raised my head a little and looked over my body.

I had been dressed in two new white cotton kimonos, stiff and rough, one over the other, and a short gauze sash was tied high across my chest. My four limbs protruded from them, plump and rounded, their entire surface dark and filthy with grime … how disgusting they were …

… Stranger and stranger …

Timidly I raised my right hand and felt all over my face.

… A pointed nose … sunken eyes … hair in a wild, tangled mass … a thick, straggling beard …

… I sprang upright.

I ran my hand over my face once more.

I looked wildly about me.

… Who is this? … I don’t know anyone like this …

My heart began pounding harder and harder. It beat in a wild tumult, like an alarm bell … and my breathing grew ragged with it. Soon I was gasping as though I might die. … Then, just as suddenly, everything grew quiet again.

… Could anything be so strange? …

… I’ve forgotten myself …

… However hard I think, I can’t remember who I am or where I come from. … Of all my past, the only thing remaining in my memory is that Booo—mmm of the striking clock I heard just now. … That is all …

… And yet my mind is perfectly clear. I can distinctly sense the hushed darkness surrounding this room, extending on and on without end …

… This isn’t a dream … certainly not a dream …………

I leapt to my feet.

… I ran to a window and peered into the flat surface of the frosted glass. I tried to awaken some memory by looking at my reflected face. … But it was useless. On the glass I could see only my own shadowy figure, a demon with tangled hair.

I wheeled round and ran to the door beside the head of the bed. I put my face close to the brass fitting, in which a solitary keyhole gaped. But the surface of the fitting did not show my face. It merely reflected a dim yellow light.

… I searched round the legs of the bed. I turned over the bedding. I even undid my sash and examined the insides of the kimonos I was wearing, but I could discover nothing resembling even an initial, much less my name.

I stood bewildered. I was still an unknown self in an unknown world. A self whose identity even I did not know.