by Joshua Sobol
You ask why you went into that dangerous mine?
Yes, he says, I hoped that you would solve the riddle for me, but up to now you haven’t solved anything for me.
All the way to Florida I thought about it, she says, and it seems to me that I’ve found the answer.
Let’s hear it, he says.
You’re a leg-man, she says.
What’s a ‘leg-man’? he asks.
There are four human types who are permitted to enter the labyrinths of Venus, which are carved into the bowels of the copper mountains. Let’s start with the brainy type, she suggests. The brain-man seeks to solve every problem by means of logical thought. He will never give way to spontaneous impulses. He’ll always try to obtain all the information on any given subject before he makes a decision. He’ll also try to predict the probable consequences of the next step before he takes it. This type is the ideal chess player. Before he sets out he always draws himself as accurate as possible a map of the surest route to his goal, and calculates the precise length of every part of the road, and the time needed to cross it.
What’s all this got to do with the labyrinth of Venus? he asks, even though he hasn’t got the faintest idea of what this labyrinth may be—he allows himself to flow with the words.
The connection is simple, she explains. The minute the brainy type enters the labyrinth—the spirit of the labyrinth gets who he is and programs the labyrinth to react to his brainy characteristics.
The spirit of the labyrinth? he stops the stream of her words, what’s that?
Have you ever driven a car with a smart gearbox, that in the first seconds of the journey gets the driving style of the driver and behaves accordingly?
Yes, he says, holding the wheel of the dark green Citroen MX, making its way through a dense oak wood on a mountain road winding along the ancient Limes Germanicus, somewhere in the state of Hessen—
How did it behave?
Like a woman in love, he answers. She loved every crazy thing I did.
You asshole, she scolds him and jolts him out of that distant summer evening, I asked you how the car behaved, and not some woman you’re dreaming about now.
I was talking about the car, he laughs, why did you think I was talking about a woman?
So how did the car respond to you?
Like a sport, he says.
So why are you surprised that a labyrinth of tunnels in an abandoned copper mine is able to recognize the type of person who enters the belly of the mountain?
Go on, says Shakespeare and notes to himself that this conversation is so silly that it has to lead somewhere. He learnt long ago from personal experience that clever, logical conversations put the imagination to sleep and fail to produce interesting ideas, whereas idle talk, ostensibly banal and pointless, in the end awakens the imagination from its slumbers. Therefore he relinquishes responsibility and abandons himself to the vicissitudes of the strange conversation, ready to flow in whatever direction it takes him. And as if she reads his thoughts she says:
The brainy type will stop at every junction in the tunnels and seek information that will help him to decide which way to go.
Who can he get such information from? asks Shakespeare.
He will appeal to the brainy types who preceded him on the journey.
And how will the spirit of the labyrinth respond to him?
It will give him a very strict timetable, every deviation from which will lead immediately to the closing of the gates, and then the savior will turn into another captive in the belly of the mountain, and he himself will be in need of a savior to come and rescue him.
The second type is the man of feeling? he guesses, and thinks of Jonas, and a wave of painful longing for his dead friend suddenly overcomes him.
Yes, she confirms, this type is the heart-man. He is very open and sensitive to others. He feels the other, he is moved by him, he feels with him, and he operates according to the commands of his heart. He inflames the feelings of his mate too and leads her to behave according to her feelings, and the two of them release a lot of energy, and he expresses himself poetically.
Like Shaninas de los Rugashivas, he suggests.
Who’s that? she asks.
A Brazilian poet, he hears Shakespeare beginning to develop a character. During the day he worked as a gray clerk in the electric corporation, and at night he would put on a green suit and a fedora hat, and go out to enjoy himself in the bars of Copa-Roja, he invents the name of a quarter. He wrote amazing erotic poetry. I saw fat women melting like butter in the sun when they longingly recited his poems.
What do you say, she says, I’ll look for his poems.
Now go on, he requests.
What were we talking about? she asks.
The heart-man.
The heart-man, yes, she remembers, the heart-man activates the soul of the labyrinth, but the labyrinths of Venus have two souls, one good one, creative and friendly, and one evil, destructive and dangerous. While the good soul will love the heart-man and try to help him with singing and music to accompany him on his way through the abandoned mine, the evil soul will try to seduce him with its sweetness and lead him astray in the tunnels, so that he will never reach the prisoner sitting and waiting to be saved. He will be lost in one of the dark chasms.
We’ve spoken of the brain-man and the heart-man, he sums up. Who’s the third type?
The guts-man, she pronounces confidently. He is activated by dark drives, animal instincts and gut-feelings.
I have a friend like that, he says to her and thinks of Yadanuga. Tell me about him. Maybe I’ll understand at last why he did what he did to me.
Here goes, she says. The guts-man doesn’t believe in words, he is almost deaf to verbal messages. Nor does he believe in poetic outbursts or emotional outpourings. On the other hand he responds to signs, omens, smells and colors. He believes only in his gut feelings, and he is alert to every tiny movement to which the brainy and emotional types are oblivious. When he enters the labyrinth, the labyrinth immediately adapts itself to him and speaks to him in the language of smells, shapes, murmurs and whispers. This man is sure that he is closer to the true reality than the men of brains and emotions, but this confidence often leads him to make bad decisions and to enter places where the brain-man and the heart-man would not risk setting foot.
Interesting, he says, all this is very interesting. But let’s hear now about the characteristics of the leg-man, he urges her.
The leg-man, or the homopod, she informs him, is a man who has lost his faith in what the brain, heart and guts can tell him.
So what remains for him?
Only legs remain for him, she says. Long and thin like mine, or short and sturdy like yours. He doesn’t trust anything except for his legs.
And his shoes, he says.
Shoes? she repeats in surprise
Have you ever heard of a language called Yiddish? he replies with a question.
The language of the Hasids in Queens, she says.
That’s what’s left of it, he corrects her.
What’s it got to do with the legs-man? she asks.
It was his language, he says, and sees his father. Some people think that Yiddish was the language of the heart and the guts, but this is a superficial view of this language, he pronounces. The people who lived in this language believed only in their legs, and their shoes. His motto was: Ich un meine shich, which means—
Me and my shoes, she guesses.
You understand what it means?
Sure, she says. As long as my shoes are okay, everything’s okay.
Not everything, he says, but the main thing. The ability to move wherever your legs can take you, when the earth begins to burn. But what did you want to tell me about the leg-man, or what did you call him?
The homopod proceeds only along the difficult path of trial and error, she says. Even if somebody tells him that a certain tunnel leads to a dead end, he won’t believe it until he discovers it for himself. H
e has to do the wrong thing in order to discover that it’s wrong. Only by making mistakes and erasing them will he arrive at the right results, but then he will know the truth in a way that cannot be denied.
If I understand you correctly, the leg-man doesn’t believe in signs, words, or the experience of others, he is astonished to discover and formulate for the first time with complete clarity his own attitude towards the world.
Right, she confirms, he has to walk on his own legs to the places that he wants to know.
And that means taking risks, he reflects out loud.
Risks and great difficulties, she agrees, and he is also ready to suffer the difficult or unpleasant consequences of his mistakes.
He isn’t afraid or deterred by failure, he suggests.
On the contrary, she reinforces him, failure for him is a necessary condition of success.
And how does this affect the spirit of the labyrinth? he asks.
The labyrinth won’t volunteer any information about what awaits him, not in signs, not in words and not in clues of any other kind, but at the same time the labyrinth will allow him to retrace his steps whenever he realizes his mistake, on condition that he doesn’t make the same mistake twice.
A road you learn with your feet you don’t forget easily, he says.
And therefore repeating a mistake is something the homopod cannot forgive, she says.
The leg-man isn’t too clever before the event, he smiles sadly.
No, she agrees, but on the other hand, the leg-man, who perhaps we should call the ‘journey-man’, crosses greater distances than all the other types together, and nobody knows all the wrong roads like he does. Those feet have crossed countries and continents, and I’d like to hear the story they told the earth, she says and strokes his legs cast in steel. But it’s beginning to get cold outside. Why don’t we go up to the room?
They get up, shake the sand from the big towels they took from the hotel room. She drapes her skinny body in the white towel, and he drapes her shoulders in his towel too.
What about you, she asks him, aren’t you cold?
I’m never cold, he laughs at himself, I have the coat of a seal.
Of a walrus, she laughs and strokes his hairy back, let me get the sand off your fur.
32
Should we play a game? he suggests as they stand under the hot water in the shower.
What game?
I’ll ask questions and you answer quickly, without thinking.
Go ahead, she says, fire away.
Why do I enter the belly of the mountain?
To rescue a friend.
Which friend?
You’re a team.
What kind of a team?
An action team, she answers.
How many of us are there in the team?
Four? She throws out a guess.
And what happened to the friend?
They abducted him.
Who abducted him?
The enemy.
Why?
He’s being held as a hostage? She guesses again.
Do I enter the belly of the mountain alone?
Yes.
Where are the other two? He asks in excitement.
Standing guard outside, she states with growing confidence.
Who decides that I’m going in?
You volunteer.
I announce that I’m volunteering?
No, she says. You say to them: You keep guard outside, I’m going in.
Do they argue with me?
No, she states confidently. You’re the foxhound of the team.
Am I afraid?
No, you don’t feel anything.
How’s that possible?
You’re a leg-man. The brain and heart are neutralized. Only the legs work.
And the hostage?
What about him?
He knows I’m coming?
He’s waiting for you, she says.
What makes him wait for me precisely?
He’s a guts-man, she says as they emerge from the shower, and she rubs his body with a fresh soft towel.
That’s right, he says and takes the big towel from her and starts to dry her body.
Oh, she sighs at the touch of his hands, your hands are so good.
How do you know that he’s a guts-man? he demands an explanation.
He’s the closest to you in the team, she states with absolute confidence again.
How do you know?! This is driving him crazy.
That’s why you volunteered. And the others didn’t argue with you.
Go on! he prompts her.
He prays to you.
I’m on my way.
In the dark.
I have an eye that sees.
The infrared?
Aha.
He doesn’t see you.
No.
But he feels the heat.
So I’m close.
You’re close.
Should I go on?
Yes.
Or rest for a minute?
Go on!
How does that feel?
Hot!
And now?
Hotter!
Am I getting close?
Yes!
Hey!
What?
Slowly! She shouts in a whisper and clings to him, trembling all over.
33
Suddenly, beyond the bend, the tunnel opens up like a funnel into a large alcove, and all at once he finds himself face to face with a man sitting on a rock. A pair of eyes glittering opposite him in the greenish light of the infrared binoculars attached to his eyes. The man stands up, presumably feeling the heat of the glow directed onto his face, and he raises a submachine gun, with a large flashlight mounted under its barrel. His thumb gropes for the switch of the flashlight above the magazine housing. Time almost stands still. Tenths of a second last as long as minutes. The brain is paralyzed. The heart is empty. The guts are silent. Only the legs act. The left leg, which is his springing leg, bends and pushes off powerfully from the ground, his body rises and describes an arc in the air, and his right leg bends backwards and flies forward in a kick that hits the barrel of the submachine gun. A burst of bullets sprays the roof of the tunnel, and he goes on walking on air—like in the dreams when he leaps into the air and moves his legs and floats above the houses of the village and the orchards and the cypress trees and pine forests of the Judean hills—and his left leg completes the move and hits the man in the stomach with all its power, accompanied by a roar that empties the air from his lungs:
34
The scream of an animal in the jungle bursts from her depths.
Melissa! He holds her and shakes her violently.
Melissa! He grips her shoulders and raises her to him.
And another cry. He cups her head gently in his hands, and she hangs onto his shoulders like a drowning woman, digs into the flesh with her nails, trembling all over, her foot stamping the air in search of a grip, and he reaches back with his left hand and seizes hold of her foot, and her toes spread out and curl round the five fingers of his hand, which twine between them, and she pushes her foot hard against his hand and whispers, don’t move, don’t move, it’s so good, I want it to last forever, and they remain clasped in their embrace until evening falls, crossing together the unbearable moment when the body can no longer contain the soul—
35
I knew you were a killer, she says to him when her soul returns from the void. I knew the minute you came through the glass door from the street and I turned round and read you.
How did you know? he asks her and strokes her head which is resting on his chest.
I saw the eye in the middle of your forehead.
Where exactly? he asks.
She turns her head, peers at him through her weeping slits, which are now shooting sparks like cat’s eyes lit up in the dark, and touches her finger to the center of his forehead, just above the bridge of his nose.
Here, she says, can you
feel that you have an eye over here?
Yes, he laughs, of course I can.
I’m not joking, she says, I’m deadly serious.
She begins talking obsessively, like a person who has just been confronted by death. He lets her get it off her chest without interrupting the stream of words.
The great majority of people look at the world through two eyes located on the two sides of their faces, she says, leading to a lax, diffuse view of the world. This gaze, which I call ‘the human gaze’ because I haven’t yet found a more accurate name for it, is a gaze which skims over things and doesn’t penetrate them. It can be compared to diffuse lighting. The first time I noticed this characteristic of the human gaze was when I went to work as a sales assistant at a big branch of H & M. I liked to stand to one side and observe the customers coming in to survey the clothes. You can see the women, yes, mainly the women, taking in the whole store with one superficial glance, and then going through the hangers, flipping through them with their fingers and skimming over them with their eyes in a half-interested half-bored gaze, not seeing what they’re seeing. I would watch them at the moment when they lost interest and went out into the street again, and went on seeing the street too with the same vague, unfocused gaze with which they looked at the clothes in the shop. And then I discovered that in the subway too, and even in the cinema and the theatre, people don’t really look at what they are apparently seeing. Afterwards I worked for a while as a waitress in a big restaurant selling Asian food, and I checked to see if my discovery was valid there too, and I have to say that the same thing happened in restaurants too. People don’t really see what they’re eating. They order their dishes, and as soon as they identify in a general way that they have received their noodles with seafood, or whatever, they don’t really look at the food in front of them. And then I saw that they don’t actually look at their companions either, or at least they don’t actually see them. Otherwise how can you explain the fact that so many women are prepared to spend their lives with creatures as lacking in charm as the vast majority of men in the world. And vice versa. I remember that couples would come into the restaurant, sit down, and I would bring them the menu, and in the first tenth of a second that I encountered their eyes or their faces, I would say to myself: What a revolting mug, how come she doesn’t see what I see, how come she doesn’t get up and run for her life at this very minute. Or those women who are incapable of seeing beauty in anything, because they look at the world with a gaze that is disgusted by the very materiality of all material, beginning with the paper that the menu is printed on, and the fork that they pick up with loathing as if it was a toilet brush, and ending with the delicious dish of fresh shrimps and calamari, glistening in their delicate coating of melted butter and garlic, and bringing a look of such disgust to their faces that it seems as if they are about to throw up on the table, and they pick up the toilet brush with lame fingers and touch the horrible thing floating on the plate in front of them with horror, and the man sitting opposite this woman looks at her with a lifeless look that doesn’t see anything. Because if that man had a third eye in the middle of his forehead he would stab her with his steak knife and get up and get out of there. But there are very few executioners in this world, and you are one of them, she concludes.
