The Apache-Making Machine
Dear friends, this was my submission to the 2023 Passage Prize for short fiction. On the theme of rewilding, I tried imagining a world where one could literally retvrn to civilizational infancy. It’s a long read, but I hope you enjoy it.
For the first time in his life Matthieu nearly loved the spreadsheet. Today was his last day at the office and freedom from tomorrow’s pressure allowed him to concentrate on the aesthetics attributes of his work he had often overlooked. The grid was so logical, so rational. How quickly it delivered you an answer with the simplest numeric input. It felt like communicating with an unseen entity. ‘I’m already thinking like an indian’ he thought to himself.
At 5 PM he clocked out and knocked on his boss’ door. The older man received him warmly and even served him a glass of Scotch to celebrate his departure. He talked about the future, about acquisitions and growth and real estate and children. Matthieu only listened. His future was an unknown, and this excited him. After 15 minutes they both rose and shared a quick hug. ‘Good luck at the reservation’ the boss said.
He decided to leave without packing his things, as there was nothing he would need anymore. He quickly said goodbye to his co-workers and glanced around the office. Only on the last fiscal year he had been the fourth employee to go native. The empty desks were not filled yet, and with the accelerating indian turnover they probably wouldn’t be so soon. Grim days ahead! Thank God these concerns were behind him now. Matthieu waved goodbye to the surviving colleagues – one of them he knew would soon go native as well, after finishing the transfer of his property titles to his children so he wouldn’t leave them destitute.
YOU DON’T NEED PROPERTY TO BE HAPPY!
He remembered the words on the flyer he once picked coming back from the gym. The black and white portrait of a wise indian chief on the cover caught his attention – his warm but intense gaze, the crackled skin of a chthonic prophet. He leafed through it but couldn’t understand much. It promised a cure to the uneasiness of civilization through the process of indian transmogrification. On the bottom of the flier a surprise was laid out to the reader as the chief on the cover was revealed to be the result of the conversion procedure. On the page’s left corner there was the picture of a forgettable, even awkward-looking white man carrying a weak chin and receding hairline with BEFORE written under its picture, and on the right side the severe Tonto followed by the words AFTER.
One could say that the fad of going native was something akin to a social epidemic. It simmered for a long time, creating Indians by piecemeal, without delivering the results its developers foresaw on their business program. To compound to these existing issues, when the procedure was introduced to the market there was a limited selection of tribes one could choose, and the ethnographic understanding of their traditions was shaky at best. Kinship structures that should belong to Lacandones were imputed on newly produced Mayas, creating a crisis of social anomy and triggering several suicides. Rival tribes were too far away from one another, and the Indians felt very bored with no one to fight, degrading into alcoholism. The raw material for the procedure was similarly unremarkable, with only society’s discontents and aging hippies having any interest in going native. But after these rough edges were smoothed and as new tribes were introduced to the portfolio, the public started to realize that most of those who went to the reservations didn’t return. Media followed the lead and reports leaked that the new indians were happier, healthier and more in touch with themselves than they had ever been in their former lives. This free advertisement was the encouragement that many needed, and when the heiress of a coal-mining fortune became Yanomami the Company was overwhelmed by applications. With cities emptying out in the direction of the reservations, the government ordered any future procedures to be suspended without further notice, but this didn’t stop people from abandoning the civilised lifestyle. Under-the-counter procedures became frequent, with victims of poorly trained Medicine Men perambulating through the streets, abandoned in their delusion that freeways were grassland and minivans were megafauna. Gangs of neither-here-nor-there Indians clashed against each other, scalping their rivals, and spearing innocent bystanders. Under pressure from a desperate public, the authorities allowed for the controlled return of indian conversion procedures under a strict schedule, with a one-year deadline for all who wished to abandon civilization as we know it to do so. From the moment he first grabbed that flier It had taken Matthieu almost 7 months to reach his decision, but a common friend gifted him a book by Carlos Castaneda describing how Yaquis were capable of accessing certain dimensions of self-knowledge forbidden to the white man, and when he finished the book he decided to quit his job and go native.
Back from work his girlfriend waited for him at home with artisanal pizza and wine. She put on some music and they dined on the couch. ‘There’s not gonna be any of that at the rez’ she said. He just smiled. He knew that ever since he told her he was going native she was concealing her disappointment. She had expected to be asked in matrimony soon, but he kept postponing his proposal and now there would be no wedding, with their relationship being severed against her will. He considered the months he had spent misleading her as a symptom of his societal disease which could only be cured by becoming an indian. After dinner they thought of watching a movie but nothing could be meaningful enough for the eve of a life-changing procedure, so they just watched Jeopardy instead. In bed there was no initiative to have sex from any of them, as each half of the couple had unmoored themselves from the relationship and started to drift away.
“I just wish you would become something more civilised. You could’ve become Greek.’ She said.
He laughed at the thought of a Greek-making machine but at further consideration it perhaps wouldn’t be such a bad idea. He could open a reservation by the shore, reclaim a few square kilometres of sea to build a simulation of the Cyclades, develop a procedure to help men go Homeric. If you think about it, the tribal principles of archaic Greek civilizations were not in their essence so different from Native-Americans’, only a few tweaks might be necessary to transfer the existing technology from purely tribal cultures into one applicable to emerging complex civilizations. Matthieu caught himself calculating how much venture capital would be needed to develop this project, how many work-hours for its planning phase, who could the potential investors be. He tried to stop his train of thought – how could he explain to his girlfriend that this constant planning was exactly what he was trying to get away from? His desire was a millstone around his neck.
‘Babe, you know I will support you no matter what, right? It scares me, but if this makes you happy you should go native. There’s still time. Perhaps I might go native as well.’
She laid her head on his chest. Her hair smelled like baby goat.
‘We can marry there. I know you can’t bring anything, but you can still get married there, right?’
‘Sure babe’ he answered. Matthieu would not explain to her that in the reservation a man can have as many wives as he wants, so long he acquired them there, either in battle or through seduction. Nothing from your past life was transferrable, even families were separated - ostensibly so that were no conflicts in case a man wanted to become Cree when his wife chose the Mapuche, but in reality most applicants craved this divorce and asked for it at the procedure table, unaware that their wish would be conferred regardless of what they said. His friend Baudoin explained all that and more when he visited the site.
On the previous Saturday morning Matthieu drove 40 minutes out of the city until he reached the Ancestral Homeland of the Góshé-Kádshee People™. His handler waited for him on the parking lot, they shook hands and went through his paperwork. She explained his scheduled visit was mandatory Company policy, so the client could not complain afterwards that he had been promised something undeliverable. ‘How many complaints did you have?’ Matthieu asked. “In this reservation, so far only one” she candidly replied. “And in that particular case the client admitted he expected a more Savannah-like experience. We suggested him to wait for future updates.” They moved on to an interview with a certified anthropologist to determine what tribe would better fit Matthieu’s conversion, although the final decision was ultimately in his hand.
‘Would you say you are an environmentally conscious person?’
‘Do you value the opinion of those long dead?’
‘Can a river be a person?’
‘When a man enters the territory of the jaguar, does he become the jaguar?’
‘Do you think that there is something like a woman’s place in society?’ (For this one Matthieu’s handler, a 30-something businesswoman, made a small pantomime pretending she was covering her ears so she couldn’t hear what he answered).
After the interview the anthropologist excused himself to calculate the results and the handler asked Matthieu to follow her for a tour of the site. They left the building and started following a dirt track leading from behind the Company’s parking lot. The track dipped down a ravine, and they followed through a canyon much like in American movies, pinkish in hue as Himalayan salt, bearded lizards scuttering through clefts in its walls. The handler’s low-heels shoes thunked against the rocks, but she didn’t seem to lose her balance, marching ahead with Matthieu’s papers closely gripped to her chest. They arrived at a gap in the canyon, where the handler rose her hand and ululated profusely. Three men rose from behind the rocks, dressed in buckskin aprons and pointing arrows at the two visitors. They muttered between themselves, put down the bow and gestured them in. ‘We keep security inside to avoid liability.” She explained “But mostly for visitors and tourists. Otherwise we allow the reservation to manage its own legal system. I should tell you now that after signing our contract you waiver any claim under national civil, tax or criminal regulation and submits yourself to the traditional legal costumes of your chosen tribe’’. She didn’t wait for his response and continued walking ahead. The canyon opened to a large plain, dotted by saguaro cacti and Joshua trees and burro bushes, new names Matthieu learned as the handler pointed each species of flora and explained how they planted and conserved them cross-seasons. A wide river split the landscape in half, its froth raising above the soil and glittering on the midday-sun. ‘You can fish here all year round. There’s Pacific salmon, and trout, and you can scavenge for oysters too.” Near the water there were several scattered villages, each in a circular design with their own tepees and firepits at their centre. A herd of bison roaming far away nearly moved them both to tears.
“You mentioned you had a friend here during our first interview. We looked him up and found out he’s a member of the Apache tribe now. We told him a Paleface might want to speak to him, and he said it was OK. We think its always positive to engage in these kinds of cross-cultural dynamics, so our clients have a holistic understanding of traditional living, or even if they choose to pull out of the procedure, that they can return to modern society with a positive imprint they can apply to their daily routine.”
Matthieu had not seen Baudoin for at least one month and the thought of meeting his friend thrilled him. They approached a nearby village where multi-racial Apaches went with their daily lives, each enthralled by their own task. The visitor was caught admiring the good disposition of the new Apaches, each promising a vitality beyond the limits of their own bodies – the older men were serene in their stillness, as if they were part of the landscape themselves. The young bucks sported strong features, dangerous and sensual. The matrons were warm, the women were sweet, the children had great teeth. None seemed to mind the newcomer and his businesswoman handler, they were just too busy perceiving reality as it is.
Matthieu spotted Baudoin by the edge of the firepit. The friend was sitting cross-legged, puffing on a peace-pipe. His face was half-covered by red ochre paint, highlighting his blue eyes, and his war bonnet allowed for locks of blonde hair to hang down on his forehead. He barely looked Matthieu in the eyes, only raising and open palm and announcing: ‘How”.
“Hello Crow-Wet-in-the-Sun” – Matthieu said, addressing him by his Apache name.
“Hello visitor.”
They both were silent for a few seconds.
‘Forgive me if I offend you when I speak, but I am uneducated in the way of the Apache’
‘I won’t hold your ignorance against you, Paleface’
‘May I sit?’
Formerly-Baudoin consented, and Matthieu sat on the ground in front of him.
“How is life?’ Matthieu was trying to make conversation.
‘Same as it was many moons ago’. He puffed on his pipe and let out a ring of smoke.
They were silent again. This time it was Baudoin who started talking.
‘There is something Paleface wants to ask Crow-wet-in-the Sun, but instead of doing so he walks around in circles. Man’s spirit escapes through the mouth, so we should keep it closed as much as possible.’ He grunted “What do you want from the Apache?’
“I don’t know. There’s nothing wrong. I just keep thinking something else should be happening in my life, something bigger and more interesting than what I have now. This goes for everything. In reality, there’s nothing I cannot really do. I could return home and propose to my wife right now. I could quit my job and wrestle alligators in Florida for money. I could walk in a straight line from my front door and never stop walking until I collapsed of exhaustion. There are all these possibilities but behind each of them I always think there’s something better only waiting to materialize, something that will spring into existence and reveal itself only after I made a final decision, and then it will wither and die as I remain locked to the choice I made.’
‘White man never knows what he wants. Like the crane it scavenges the mud ignoring the fruits overhead. Apache satisfied – he knows its place in the world. There is land for Apache, land for cougar, land for fish, but where is land of Paleface? Without land you are you know what? Nothing! No land, no thing.’ He poked Matthieu with the pipe ‘Tell me, how many children Paleface has?’
“None yet’
The Apache spat. “And you call yourself a man? You know how Apache calls childless male? ‘He-who-gather-the-berries’. Crow-wet-in-the-sun has 3 children and 2 wives already. They will sing my name for generations after I gallop to the other steppe in the sky. Come, come children, say hello to Paleface!’
Two children in coonskin caps came to greet him. White and with ginger hair, they were around 5 and 7, and the oldest one carried a tomahawk. Matthieu thought about the Baudoin he knew before, the pudgy software developed from a medium-sized enterprise. He liked going out to company happy hours but always returned home before 1 AM, he had no strong opinion on politics besides subsidies for sustainable energy, on the weekends he usually ate fusion food and watched Netflix with his wife. She had asked for a divorce when he announced his desire to go native. At the time it was only supposed to be a conversation between the two, but her decision to terminate the marriage pushed him inexorably towards the reservation. Matthieu’s thoughts wandered to his own partner, who he would abandon and perhaps never see again. If she came to visit him, she would only find a wise indian talking about the spirits of the wind, and she would not understand what he had to say.
Formerly-Baudoin misunderstood his silence for shame about his infertility. ‘Crow-wet-in-the-sun does not mean to hurt Paleface. But as our people say ‘The dog burnedby the cinder keeps its distance from the fire’.’
‘It’s Ok. Harsh truths’
‘When we started this conversation you said how White Man is ignorant of Apache ways. I willtell you a story. Listen:
There once was a coyote who could trick the moon.
He said to the moon ‘Aren’t you thirsty, Mother-in-Law? You’re always so close to the Sun”
The moon answered ‘This is true, Cousin Coyote. It never rains up here in the stars’
The coyote said ‘Come down and drink from this lake, Mother-in-Law’
‘I can’t, Cousin Coyote, when I approach the water I bounce right back up again’
‘I will hold you, Mother-in-Law. I will grab you with my teeth.’
So the moon came down and the coyote bit her.
But instead of taking her to the water, he hid the moon on his burrow.
The coyote wanted never to be night again. And thus, it was daylight for 1000 years.’
The Apache stopped to smoke again. Matthieu waited for the rest of the story.
“And then what?” He asked.
“White man much like the Moon’ He said.
“Very true’ Matthieu answered and wiped a tear from his eye.
The two men talked a bit further about how things worked at the reservation, its logistics and the daily grind. As the sun went down, formerly-Baudoin announced it was time for the Paleface to leave, and they parted ways without touching one another. The handler was waiting for him back at the track, and they both walked together to the Company building. There was very little to discuss after that in term of policy, and he signed his liability papers and the terms of reference to the procedure. That had been one week ago.
On the day of the procedure Matthieu woke up early and kissed his girlfriend goodbye. She cried for a while, he held her and promised she could visit him whenever she wished to do so. He got on his car and drove to the Góshé-Kádshee Homeland™ and while he was there Matthieu decided to impound his car for extra money, as he wouldn’t need it anymore. ‘What I am going to do with this money?’ he asked himself, but by that time it was too late, and he was already inside the main lobby.
At the front desk a chubby secretary typed on a laptop, smiling at nothing in particular. Matthieu approached her and made his presence known.
‘Have you chosen what tribe you want to belong to?’
‘Yeah. A Navajo, I think’
‘Not an Apache like your friend?’
‘No, nothing too violent.”
‘If you include an extra instalment to your indian conversion procedure we can add a horse to your plan’
‘I don’t know how to mount’
‘Don’t worry about that, you will’
Matthieu shrugged and gave her his credit card details.
‘You can sit there if you wish, Dr. Viswakanand will be with you in a moment”
Matthieu did what he was told and flipped through a couple NatGeo magazines to pass the time. Not a few moments later the doctor arrived and called him by surname. He had the bearings of a physician who finds himself too good to do routine procedures - Going native, the medical community discovered, was as easy as a simple endoscopy. Doctor and patient went down the corridor to a small office, devoid of anything besides an operating table and a sink. On a tray there was a single tool, a thin cylindrical object much similar to a penny whistle, whose point of introduction in the human body was undetermined.
‘Is that it?’ Matthieu asked.
‘Do you mean the machine? Yes, why, Is there anything wrong?’
‘I imagined it to be…more impactful, I guess?’
The doctor looked confused “Most people are happy that the procedure is so unintrusive’
Matthieu had nothing to say about that. He felt an impulse to defend himself, but decided against it.
“Okay Mr. Chokier, let me explain what we are going to do. We will knock you down and then we will use this instrument to make you into an indian. Then we will take you to the reservation and when the drugs run out you will wake up in your tepee as a Navajo. You might feel a bit dizzy when you do, but you won’t remember that I told you this. You won’t remember anything, except your parents, but in your memories they will be indians as well. Otherwise, your head will be fully indian. You have always been an indian. Do you get that?”
Matthieu said yes.
“Good. Then just relax and go to sleep. The sun is supposed to shine tomorrow. It will be a beautiful day for a hunt.”
Matthieu obeyed, and the doctor strapped the bevel of a tube to the roof of his mouth. As the anaesthesia kicked in, Matthieu was gripped by fear. He didn’t want to go native anymore. He wanted to rip the endotracheal tube from his throat and cancel the procedure. He wanted to return to his office and communicate again with the entity in his computer, Samuel’s spirit being exhumed from his grave to answer trivial equations. He wanted to drive home and tell his girlfriend it was all a prank and that there is no such thing as an indian-conversion surgery and that they could get married by the end of the year if that’s what she absolutely wanted but he preferred to wait a bit more and perhaps try new hobbies or visit places they hadn’t been before settling down. The corners of his sight were eaten away by the black mold of unconsciousness and his body felt numb. He remembered that this was what the procedure was for, to silence his chronic uncertainty. The indian knows that there is a time for poetry and a time for torture. After becoming indian he would know when to do the rain dance and the war dance and the ghost dance and when not to dance at all. Nature would discard her veil, plainly present herself to him, and his path in life would be determined by her constraints, with no room for ambiguity. The excision of choice, the corrective procedure of what he thought was the tumour of civilization, was what he wanted all along. His members relaxed and his head dangled to the left, to where he could see a window with a view to the reservation. A black mass was perched on the line of the horizon, covered by the sun’s shadow. It started to approach the building and Matthieucould see it was an animal. He wondered if it was an individual roaming too far from his habitat, but it didn’t resemble anything he remembered seeing on his last visit. Perhaps it was his spirit animal, ready to guide him on his journey as he entered a different level of consciousness. If so, the tendrils of the new indian must’ve already been deep in his brain. In his last seconds in the waking world Matthieu saw as the unknown figure left its cover of darkness and approached the window, and before he lost all knowledge of himself forever he saw standing before him an enormous prehistoric Emu.