Trafika Europe 5 - Slovenian Interlude

reports on the Tudara tribe. The savages evidently created a unique form of coexistence with the East Siberian brown bear, otherwise hostile towards men. Both were gatherers, loners and highly unapproachable. The Tudara did not know language use, basic communication was established through an incomprehensible code of signs with no apparent structure or consistency. Their incomprehensible thinking, at least in Humboldt’s view ( Undenken , notes Humboldt), acquired the outline of logic and sense only in a peculiar dialogue with bears. They responded to the occasional bear roar with a distinctive kind of muffled singing, which recalled, more than anything else, the buzzing hive of wild bees. It’s always possible to interpret the real as the exorcist of pain from words. Unresponsive, with the calloused skin of invented meanings, but only apparently. Oh, just whip them, break them, put them on the rack, roll them through solitary confinement. Everything is merely deception. No shot into the temple of a revolutionary, no rusty nail deep in the palms of a martyr will do. They must be concealed with a trick, comprehended by the unthinkable, tolerated fearfully like plankton. What has happened will happen time and again, but as if in a broken mirror. Inside it a rock lies motionless for 36 years. But that’s enough for a new body to grow from the green stains.

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