“Ben Franklin explained it:
‘In vino veritas. Before Noah, men having only water to drink, could not find the truth. Accordingly, they became abominably wicked, and they were justly exterminated by the water they so loved to drink. This good man, Noah, having seen all his contemporaries had perished by this unpleasant drink, took a dislike to it; and God, to relieve his dryness, created the vine and revealed to him the art of making le vin. By the aid of this liquid he unveiled more and more truth; and since this time all the best things, even the gods, have been called divine.’"
Snow chuckled. “Can’t argue with the man. Divine vines. Verisimilous vodka. Put some together with an olive and some vermouth and you’ve got the Holy Trinity.”
“No,” Magda corrected. “It wasn’t really Yahweh who gave divinity to Man. It was Dionysius. Long before. Not vodka, just wine. Zeus, the head god, was content simply ruling over Man. Dionysius wanted to boost him up to godhood. Prometheus gave Man fire, Dionysius gave him booze. You see, while Zeus sired Dionysus, he didn’t much care for being a father and sent him off to live by himself on Mt. Nysa. The plant world showed him altered states of consciousness even the so-called gods didn’t know and Dionysius decided to share it with Man: grapes, cactus, mushrooms, tree leaves, herbs, roots: they all showed Man the way to a higher level of being. Their molecules entered Man’s mind and altered his consciousness, shaping it into places Zeus never intended it to go. It was here that Dionysius discovered that knowledge is not intoxication, but heightened consciousness.
“See, that’s the difference between fermentation and distillation. Fermentation needs yeast, and yeast is really another miniature plant; well, a fungus actually, a cousin to the mushroom, a single-celled mushroom. And that’s where the magic comes from, not from squeezing and forcing the plant to give out more alcohol than it naturally would.
“You read too much,” Snow complained.
“Which only pissed the gods off,” continued Magda. “And the Kings who ruled in their names. What King wants sovereignty over a people who claim sovereignty over themselves? What King wants to rule (or, for that matter, ‘could’ rule) over a people who see divinity in the vine and not the vile? What King could rule, when hoping to raise an army, all he could raise was questions? What King would rule over a people whose only purpose for arms was hugging? Who preferred the anatomical to the atomical?
“It’s no accident that alcohol is the drug of choice for religions like Christianity. Certainly not psychedelics. If you could take a substance and talk to god yourself, why the hell would you need a priest or a church? So the priests and rulers pushed ethanol instead of enlightenment. Then, they went even further, controlling wine’s distribution and doling it out only in return for allegiance to King and Pope. The wine maker and brew master of the Middle Ages held a privileged position, regulating who had access to and those who didn’t. In Wales, at this time, when ale consumption hovered around eight quarts daily, the royal brewer ranked above the court physician in the hierarchy of that Court. At sea, the Captain of the ship was in sole charge of dispensing liquor to the ship hands. The wisdom in plants went from being an aid to knowing one's self, to an instrument of control over others.
“But prohibition and controlled distribution didn’t work. It never does. Even the elephants were finding ways to get the knowledge of the plant world. So Zeus went further and used his power to once again change the God-Man-Plant relationship. He took something wonderful and turned it into pain. Wine is to love, what vodka is to porn.”
“Yep, way too much reading,” Snow repeated. “Makes a person wonder why you need my TV. To watch Pig’s porn channel I guess.”
“In the 38th Century A.D. (After Dionysus -- the 8th Century in our time), God taught an Arab alchemist named Jabir ibn Hayyan the principle of distillation, and ushered in the era of plant subjugation. The helpful, loving properties that plants possessed were no longer freely offered to Man through fermentation, but were forcibly, unwillingly squeezed from them through distillation. The Arabs gave a name to this liquid which preceded oil as the currency of the Middle East. They called it "al-kuhl". We know it as alcohol.
“Jabir ibn Hayyan destroyed the Magic in plants, for Magic must be offered freely, it cannot be taken. He turned alcohol from elixir to effluvium. It became (shudder) domesticated. Totalitarianism replaced titillation. Do you know the Chinese word for beer is ‘liquid bread?’ ’Cause it’s full of vitamins. Doctors prescribe Guinness to pregnant women. What’s in gin? In vodka? You know what vodka really is? Rotten potatoes.
“It became a depressant, not an illuminant. Today, we do not use its gift to expand and explore. We use it to constrict and obscure. Today we become badgered, bashed, banjaxed, battered, besotted, bibulous, bladdered, bent, blasted, bloated, bombed, blitzed, blottoed, buggered, befuddled, buckled, bevvied, boozed, buzzed and brained. Today, we become crocked, crapulous, cabbaged, clobbered, cockeyed, cunted, canned, corked, crashed, decimated dipsy, drenched, etched, fecked, fucked, foxed, flushed, fuddled, gatted, goosed, gassed, guttered, giddy, groggy, glazed, glassy eyed, goosed, hammered, hanging, hooped, howling, jugged, juiced, lumga, looped, lit, loaded, mangled, mortal, Magoogled, manky, mashed, mottled, muddled, paralytic, pickled, pie-eyed, plastered, poleaxed, poisoned, pissed, plastered, plowed, plotzed , polluted, potted, pixilated and primed. We become rat-arsed, rat-legged, ratted, ravaged, ripped, razzled, reeking, rendered, rubbered, ruined, sauced, scuppered, shattered, shit faced, stinko, scattered, stewed, snockered, slaughtered, stewed, stiff, sloshed, smashed, snockered, soused, sodden, sozzled, tight, tanked, totaled, tipsy, trashed, taut, toasted, wankered, warped, wasted, wobbly, wrecked, weltered, whacked, wonked and wazooed.
“Oh, yes, I forgot ‘Yeltsined.’
“The only thing we don't get is enlightened.
“That is why I don’t drink. To excess. Because elephants don’t. Even they know better.”
“Oh, okay,” Snow said in reply. “Thank God I asked. You AA guys stay sober one day at a time. I get drunk one day at a time. Can I have my TV back now?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“How would you be able to watch it if you’re always over here?”
“Why would I always be over here?”
“Shut up and eat your mushrooms. There’s an old Russian proverb: It is better to trust a woman and be disappointed than to eat your borscht alone. What I’m saying is that it’s pointless to try and sweep the spiders out of your hair with vodka. So stop trying.”
“Your English has sure improved in the past four days since you broke into my trailer,” Snow observed, pulling out a tube of Chap Stick and applying it to his lips.
“It has, hasn’t it?” Magda agreed, with a hint of a smile. “You must be a good teacher.
“Give me that,” she demanded and put the lip balm on her own lips. Immediately, she could feel the menthol soothing her skin. Spearmint, she thought, licking the flavouring off of her lips and putting on a new layer. Like the kind that grew wild in the Baikal region. Without asking, she slipped the tube into her pocket.
“Do you realize that for the next few days our shit is going to be the same colour?" Magda commented.
“What do you mean?”
“The beets. They make your crap red. I thought I’d better tell you. Just in case you thought I poisoned you and you were bleeding to death.”
“Why would you poison me?” Magda had fried the mushrooms with onions in butter, then added cream and poured the mixture over black bread. Snow cut the slice into quarters and swallowed it down. He hadn’t even realized he was hungry.
“You’re rich,” she said. “A foreigner. There are people in Russia who would kill you just for your boots. But don’t worry. I’ve seen your room. It’s more likely you would be robbing me.”
“What about the mushrooms?” He forked down another quarter slice of the mushrooms on toast.
“What about them?”
“What
do they do? Turn my pee green?”
“No, your thoughts wild.”
“Pardon?” He thought perhaps she was having trouble with her English again.
“We’ll have the same thoughts for the next hour or two. They’re hallucinogenic. The mushrooms. I pick them in the forest.”
"It's a drug?" He pushed the plate away. "I don't need it."
"A drug?" she snorted. "No. Just a simple food. Plants, luschke. God's very own plants."
"They sound like drugs."
"Viagra is a drug. Thalidomide is a drug. These are just fungi. Mushrooms. They pop out of the animal shit in the woods.”
“I don't need them," Snow insisted, pushing the plate away.
"Maybe not." She pushed the plate back. "Maybe they need you. Maybe you need each other.”
“How do you mean?”
“Cowshit and mushrooms are symbiotic. You know how it works. Cows trample the forest, leaving grass, cows graze and shit, mushrooms grow on the shit. The humans come down from the trees and feed on the mushrooms. It transforms them from monkeys into something else. They start using fire to beat back the forest. More grass grows, more mushrooms, and humanity flourishes. Mushrooms need cowshit and grassland to grow. Sound familiar? Just like you. Anyway, it’s too late. How do you say in your country? That's the way the cabbage rolls. You’ve already eaten more than enough.”
“I’m in your hands.”
“No, you’re in your own hands.”
“Why do you do this? Take mushrooms?”
“Why do you drink?”
“To feel better.”
“You mean to feel less. Alcohol is a depressant. It doesn’t make you feel better.”
“Okay,” granted Snow. “To feel less. You haven’t answered my question.”
“Alcohol destroys your dreams. Mushrooms feed them.”
“To answer your question ….” Magda began.
“What question?” Snow interrupted.
“The one you want to ask me. Why I’m here. Where I’m from. Why I’m not ‘normal.’”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean.” Magda held out her hand. “‘What were you?’” you want to ask me.
“My God! Your fingers! What happened to them?” They were all flattened, black, crushed, without nails.
“These are not mine. My own were quite different.”
A hacking cough shook Magda’s ample frame as she twisted the loose ends of a papirosi together -- coarse cardboard tubes filled with loose tobacco -- managing to spill only a few of the coarse grains on the cracked table top. It was makhorka, some kind of awful black shag that only faintly resembled tobacco. The walls of the place were varnished by nicotine.
"What are you reading?" Snow asked, forgetting she’d already answered that question. The mushrooms were making their way through his cranium. “Did you know that in the Inuit language, the words for ‘to breathe’ and ‘to make a poem’ are the same? That they have fifty two words for the concept of snow?”
“Yeah?” said Magda. “Did you know Sanskrit has forty words to describe altered states of consciousness? That in their language the verb ‘to be’ is the same as the verb ‘to grow’?”
“No, I didn’t. I didn’t know that.”
"Mandelstam."
“Huh?”
“You asked who I’m reading. I’m reading Mandelstam,” Magda said, as if she hadn’t already answered differently before. “The Inuit are the only culture in the world with no native intoxicants. That’s because they live in a world with no plants.”
"He's good? Mandelstam?" Snow never noticed the change.
"Good? Osip was one of immortals, famous for claiming that the people needed poetry as much as they needed bread. And he was right. They do."
"Was?" Snow asked. "He's dead?"
"Dead," confirmed Magda. "The life sucked out of him in one of the camps for a fourteen line poem that mocked Stalin as 'the Kremlin mountaineer,' a murderer with 'cockroach whiskers leer' and 'fingers fat as grubs.' There's no killing the soul of a poet, though. There are probably as many Russians that remember Mandelstam as there are that remember Stalin. Here, let me tell you how good he was. Nadezhda, his wife's name was, but he never called her that. He had a dozen pet names for her. One day it would be Nadik. The next it was Nadya or Nadka. Another day it would be Nadenka, Nadyusha, Nanusha, Nadyushik, Nanochka, Nadenysh, or Niakushka. Twelve names in all. That's a poet."
"It's important to you? Poetry?”
She didn't answer. To a Russian, the answer was self-evident. If the masses numbed themselves in vodka, intellectuals drowned themselves in books. In a country without philosophers, talk show hosts, folk singers, legitimate psychologists or priests, poets were can openers in the bare supermarket of Soviet life.
At least they used to be. These days they broadcast porn on CCTV channels and encouraged sixteen-year-old girls to pump their breasts up with saline or silicone.
Snow didn't like the cigarette smoke, she could see that. "I'm sorry,” she apologized. “I'd like to quit, but I can't kick the habit. I picked it up in Magadan. It cut the hunger."
“I’m afraid my Russian geography is almost as bad as my knowledge of Russian literature. Where’s Magadan?”
“It’s in Kolyma oblast.”
"A place with a name that ugly doesn't sound like much fun. If it’s that hard to pronounce it must be a very small town.”
“It's a very large prison," spat Magda. "And no, it wasn't much fun”
"The gulag? I thought they went out long ago?"
"Ask Sharansky when they went out. Ask the millions who don't even have names anymore. They took even them, everything.
“Ask my father,” she said so quietly Snow didn’t catch it.
“Your fingers,” he said, the truth dawning. “They did that to you in prison. You were in the camps.”
“Of course I was in the camps,” she declared with equal parts pride, resentment and regret. “How else could I turn out like this?”
He sat silently, watching the smoke curl off the twisted end of the papirosi, not knowing what to say. He had trouble picturing her as one of the lost souls; she was more alive than anyone he knew.
“I didn’t know,” was all he could manage in the end.
“No,” Magda answered. “How could you? How could anyone know what another person is going through? Every man’s hell is a private club. Every woman’s, too.”
“What are you reading?” Snow asked yet again, the mushrooms taking control now, the omni-present books pushing past everything else; past, present and future no longer existing.
“Minds,” answered Magda. “Tonight, I am reading minds.”
“Magadan,” Snow prompted. “The gulag.”
She turned away and busied herself with a potted plant on the window sill, butting the papirosi into the damp soil. "It's not something I talk about a lot."
"But you're telling me now."
"You're asking."
For the first time since they’d met Snow looked at Magda, really looked at her, seeing her differently, the lightning-flavoured molecules in the mushrooms shifting his point of view to a new angle, perhaps more equivalent to a few molecules out of kilter than stepping a few feet to the left. She was dressed in a Chukchi kerker, a knee-length coverall made from reindeer skin and trimmed with wolverine fur that fit her about as well as the English language fit her thoughts. Typical of all Russian women out of adolescence, she had more of anything than she once had, but nothing was out of proportion. She was sufficiently Siberian to have an Oriental sharpness to her face, sufficiently Slavic to have a padding of voluptuousness to her frame
For the first time in a long time, he noticed a woman’s breasts. He could feel them pressing into him from four feet across the room. Suddenly, he was afraid. She harboured too much cynicism, which wasn’t good because he needed to be the cynical one. Despite all her wisdom, she was like all the rest of her kind: needy and sexy and emotio
nal and loving and possessed of the knowledge of how to hurt him. She was starting to make him care. And that gave her to power to hurt.
“Hey, you wanna go put on your pajamas or something?”
“No, I’m good,” said Magda. What she never said was that she went to bed buck naked every night, no matter the temperature and the clothing available. After years of going to bed prepared to be awakened in the dead of night by cold men in dark uniforms, she’d decided to hell with it. She was going to get on with her life.
“I want to be an elephant,” Snow said spontaneously, unbidden by thought.
“You can only be what you are meant to be,” Magda said. “What you already are.”
“Why does Pig hate you?” Snow asked.
“Because of what I did in the camps. What I did to survive.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“Guilt don’t tell time.”
“He didn’t put you there. Why should he feel guilty?”
“Because his kind did.”
“Is that why you hate him?”
“I don’t hate him.”
“It sure looks that way.”
“I wouldn’t give him kind of power.”
“What do you mean?”
“‘The mind is everything,’” quoted Magda. “‘What you think you become.’”
“Lenin?” asked Snow.
“Siddhartha Gautama,” answered Magda. “The Buddha.”
Pig: A Thriller Page 8
