Mafarka the Futurist by Filippo-Tommaso Marinetti

Author:Filippo-Tommaso Marinetti
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Middlesex University Press
Published: 1998-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

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* Apart from the pufferfish (family Tetradontidae), the Aquarium at London Zoo could provide no information about the other fish. mentioned in this chapter, which Marinetti therefore presumably invented. (Trans.)

Chapter Six

* * *

Ouarabelli-Charchar and Magamal

* * *

As they emerged from the covered way, Mafarka paused to catch his breath; then, as if stung by a venomous idea, he shouted at the messenger:

‘I don’t really understand! Repeat the words you heard.’

He had seized him by the throat and was shaking him like a sackful of reptiles as he rattled out his words.

‘Oh, master!…You’re choking me! I’m innocent!’

Mafarka released the slave, who grovelled on the ground.

‘I know…I know that you’re innocent! But the truth, it’s the truth that I want!…You’re hiding the truth away from me!’

‘No, master…haven’t hidden anything!’

And the sobbing slave repeated his tale:

‘The courtyard was crowded with people…It was dark because they’d forgotten to light the lamps. All the women were howling like she-wolves…I went up and down, asking what had happened. Nobody answered. All of a sudden, Fatima came up to me and said: “Run to the fortress of Gazr-el-Housan and tell Mafarka to come at once, because his brother Magamal is very ill”’

‘Ill! What does that meant Is that all she said? Ill!…It’s impossible! He was feeling so well yesterday!’

With a fever of anxiety gnawing at his heart, Mafarka stamped with anger and bullied the slave:

‘Why are you standing there with your mouth wide open?…Don’t you have a horse? I must have a horse…a horse…a horse, or I won’t reach there till tomorrow!…It’s So far off! The other end of the town!…So raise your voice, you too! Knock on those doors and demand a horse for the king!’

But the houses did not answer. They stood as dumb as tombs divested of their dead, beneath the stars which were dying in the moon’s expanding glare.

Mafarka shook his fist at them in rage, and saw to his horror that the lighthouse was aping his gesture, looming up like a huge arm with its fistful of brilliants.

But it was just a dream, and he rubbed his eyes furiously to drive away the shadows that were darkening his mind.

‘Quickly!’ he shouted. ‘Come on! We’ll have to run!’

King and slave were now racing through the fishermen’s quarter. In the maze of alleys that twisted and turned at a venture, the slippery paving forced them to slow down. From time to time, the slave would knock at a door, but no one replied. All the men were out at sea, fishing.

Their weary black ships came into view, riding the waves amid the darting lightning flashes that raced with all the speed of their bright bare legs, their galabiehs thrown back, through the black ruins of the waves.

‘Stormy nights, full nets,’ said the slave.

‘Shipwreck take them all!’ cried Mafarka, who could feel his heart alternately hardening like a wooden knot and flooding his chest with tears.

The searing pain was dissolving his willpower, and this made him angry.

‘Have I been rotten since birth, then,

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