“There’s a lot of competition?”
“You said it, kid. There’s a drought and there aren’t big herds, so the vital matter is scarce, and there are a lot of us. When a two-pound load drops, in the span of ten minutes you’ll find something like five thousand dung beetles—as well as endocopridi, scavatori and rotoletori . . .”
“Endocopridi?”
“Yes, they’re scarabs, too, tiny little bastards who sneak into the balls you’re rolling, and they eat them from the inside out. They can even do it in the larva if you’re not paying attention. Then there are heliocopris—they’re diggers, real bulldozers, great big beasts who weigh almost an ounce.
“If you run into one of them, I’m telling you, son, you’d better do what he says.”
“I’ll remember, Papa.”
“But most of all, you’ve got to keep an eye out for your own kind. Because digging up, rolling and pushing a pear is backbreaking work. It takes thirty minutes, twenty if you’re in really good shape. Dung isn’t all the same. When you make your pear test the moisture content and the consistency. Then you have to find any knobs, pull them off, make it round. Then you have to roll it—you have to prop it up with your head and shove it with your hind legs, and at the same time you have to use your claws like rakes, smearing all the feces you find onto it. These are operations that cost energy. And energy costs shit. So the most efficient strategy for getting a ball is to steal it. When you’re all tired out and the pear is ready, you have to defend it as you would your life, or they’ll carry it off by force. Even your best friends, the ones you grew up with. The material is more powerful than we are, Visko. It eats up your soul.”
“Papa, what are these appendages under the elytra?” I threw it out to change the subject.
“They’re membranous wings. They allow us to fly.”
“Fly! Wow! That’s great news!”
“Pay attention now—flying takes a heap of energy. First you’ve got to speed up your metabolism, increase your body temperature. To do that you have to shiver.”
“Shiver?”
“Yes, shivering charges you with energy, gets you ready for action. But you have to have ingested enough material to be able to do it. These days your energy is barely enough for gathering your material, and the material is barely enough to give you energy. You can allow yourself to fly only to get to the manure in a hurry. In the end it always comes back to that, Visko.”
“To the material?”
“Right. But don’t think that what we do is contemptible or worthless. Just the other way around. We dung beetles are fundamental to the ecosystem. Not only do we remove the manure that otherwise would pile up on the ground and suffocate the plants, but we also aerate and fertilize the soil, as well as hold back the proliferation of parasites and pathogenic agents, not to mention reducing the number of flies that proliferate in the excretions.” My father proclaimed this with as big a sense of pride as his metabolism would allow.
The next day we were up in the air early to make up for the time lost with my birth. I was beginning to feel guilty until at last we caught sight of a herd of elephants at a watering hole. Papa advised me to choose a specialization, and coprophagy of elephant products seemed the most promising. Even though it had been emphasized to me that these animals rarely stepped on their products, it was still hard to imagine that anyone would have the courage to go into the midst of them and carry away that stuff. And yet the first load was barely released when thousands of beetles materialized as if by magic and hurled themselves onto it. My father was among the first. I was to learn, to study his moves, to familiarize myself with the unexpected, but pretty soon the scene had turned into a dark hell of bodies and shit, an unintelligible chaos of hitting, yelling and swearing. I stood there, petrified, overcome by the stench, by the trumpeting of the elephants, by terror. I prayed to God to have pity on us.
It seemed to me a miracle when I saw the antennae of my father emerge from the melee. He was dragging himself along, clutching a good-sized piece of a ball—bigger than him—not so large as to give me a brother but enough calories to allow him to make it to his next battle. He signaled to me with his elytra. He was shaken up and bruised, but his buccal appendages were grinning with happy anticipation. His joy was short-lived, however, because two bad guys came out from under a leaf and began to pound on him. They turned him upside down and took the pear. My father got up and charged. They beat him up again. I ran to help him, but I still hadn’t quite gotten the hang of shivering to accelerate my metabolism. So I ended up with my belly in the air, beaten. When I came to, I saw that all that was left of my father were a few scattered fragments. In the distance I could see his persecutors making off with the loot. With them was my mother, who hadn’t taken long to jump on their band-wagon.
From that day on, shivering wasn’t a problem. I was one against all. In that godless world, only one value survived: the Substance. In It I put my faith. I began to measure the meaning of life in grams.
I gathered a band of young toughs who raided and beat up the young and the old. I took part in all kinds of crime. I told myself that I wasn’t the one who invented the law of the strongest. But two pears stolen from a family bug couldn’t begin to satisfy my unlimited desire to own. So I decided to look for wealth at the very point of origin. I fastened myself onto the coat of the producing animals and let them carry me. That way I saved energy, and when they dumped a load I was always the first one there. If the wind carried the scent over a dead zone—a pond, for example—it could take as much as a half hour for the crowd to show up. It was hard work but well paid, and soon I had enough capital to set myself up on my own. I hired a staff and surrounded myself with a private militia. In a little while I found myself at the head of an organization that controlled acres of the savanna and had exclusive contracts with many herds. Moreover, we controlled the currency exchange, the futures markets and the fluctuation of savings rates. In the course of one season I had amassed a patrimony that was calculated in tons of substance, a good part of it in liquid assets.
I became the preeminent insect, the one to be admired and envied, the one who received a respect and adulation equal to that paid only to the thing itself. I thought that was all the happiness a beetle could hope for. But I was forced to change my mind.
I saw her on the corolla of an orchid. Her exoskeleton was red as the dawn, her corslet a whirlwind of golden reflections, a little sun caught among the petals. How to describe her? Her beauty was simultaneously adelphagous and polyphagous. Every part of her body, emimeron or episternum, prothorax, mesothorax or metathorax, ureters, stigma or scutellum was for my ocelli both joy and torment. She was the queen of scarabaeids, and I couldn’t live without her. At last love had a face and a name: Ljuba.
I thought of delivering a bouquet of the precious currency, but it dawned on me that it was contraindicated. It wasn’t with riches that I wished to storm the castle of her heart. She had just arrived with the monsoons and knew nothing about me. She liked talking about flowers, trees, resins, fruits, an unusual tendency in a beetle. She could chatter for hours without ever mentioning the brown substance. Ah, how refreshing it was to be with her! She was fascinated by everything that was sweet, perfumed, colored, and this passion of hers was so contagious that for the first time my life seemed an adventure full of wonder and mystery and the world a perfect place in which to celebrate the harmony between insects and creation.
I told her I loved her.
“And I like you, Visko. I’d like to be your mate.”
“Do you mean you like me as I am, as an insect? That you have no interest in knowing how much I own?”
“Of course, what importance does that have?”
I felt myself melt. Was this real or a dream? Even beetles had hearts? We made the preparations for our nuptial flight and never—I say never—did she ask me for a present or even simply to be fed. At last, fully convinced of her sincerity, I decided to bestow on her the prize she deserve
d, and I took her to one of my properties, a bath of manure ten yards square, surrounded by my militia.
“It’s all mine,” I announced. “And this is only one of my holdings—an empire that reaches from here to Lake Victoria.”
“You’re joking.”
“Not in the least. Look.” I plunged in headfirst. “Come on! It’s yours now, too!”
Ljuba couldn’t believe her ocelli. “You’re asking me to go in . . . to go into that?” she stammered.
“Absolutely. I understand your modesty, dear, but after all, we’re dung beetles.”
“If this is a joke, it’s in truly bad taste, Visko. I am a purebred malolontha, a May beetle! No one has ever called me a dung beetle.”
“May beetle? I don’t understand the difference.”
“I see that you don’t. Dung beetles are crude creatures with dark carapaces who eat unmentionable filth. We May beetles, on the other hand, have dazzling colors and feed on pollen, aromatic resins and other sweet things. We can fly for hours, and we love poetry, the dance, good company and, above all, cleanliness, Visko. I can assure you that until today I have never seen a great big May beetle like you soaking in shit. Now I have to go away because this place stinks and you disgust me.”
She had shivered enough to fly across the ocean. I would probably never see her again.
There I was with my palps open, trying to make sense of it. Me, a May beetle? And Papa and Mama? So that was why they didn’t look like me. My real parents must have forgotten where they left my egg. Maybe Papa and Mama were tired of being alone. My God! Was it possible that . . . I was completely confused. Who was I? What was I doing soaking in this stuff? I should pull myself out of it, go after Ljuba, explain my situation and build a clean life with her. I said to myself, “Come on, Visko, do it!” But I wasn’t able to feel enough disgust to shudder, and without shuddering I couldn’t charge my metabolism enough to fly. There was too much pleasure in that odiferous bath, the fragrance of that bog, in the satisfaction of seeing the rabble—not only Coleoptera but also Trichoptera, Thysanoptera and Aphaniptera—pressing up against the barricade to look at me and dream. For an instant I thought I caught a glimpse of the integument of my old father and saw him tremble. Trembling with pride that his son had made it, that he was in it, in it up to his neck.
WHAT A PIG YOU ARE, VISKOVITZ
Pigs are born pigs, and we Viskovitzes have been pigs for millions of years. But it wasn’t always easy to keep this in mind. We were in a village of Hmong nomads in southern China, where everyone lived under one roof—men, women and pigs. It isn’t for nothing that the ideogram jia (a pig under a roof) means “family.” We were so prized by these people that if there wasn’t an available sow, it was the women who suckled the piglets.
This created a certain confusion in the minds of us pigs.
It was to make sure everything was crystal clear that my mother’s last words before she was butchered were “Always remember what you are, son—a pig. Always eat pig slop, behave and think swinishly. Make sure you live in a pigsty and wallow like that great hog, your father.”
“Yes, Mama, I promise,” I grunted as I sobbed. And then I stuck my snout in the trough so I wouldn’t hear the noise of her being slaughtered.
The loss of my mother (blessings on that sow!) left an overwhelming void in me and marked, alas, the beginning of that lamentable chain of events which led to my ruin.
The celebration of the chun jie, the Chinese New Year, had begun. The Year of the Dragon gave way to the Year of the Snake. These were festive days for humans, mournful days for pigs. But there were still some happy occasions for us, opportunities for socializing and revelry. The inhabitants of the neighboring villages gathered for the New Year’s dances, for the rites of planting and trade, and it was then that courtships took place and marriages were arranged. And we pigs were necessary for the wedding feasts.
And indeed a young woman from our hut was getting married to a boy from the next village, and this fellow presented himself with a marriage portion of two suckling pigs and a sow. It may not seem like much of a gift—but only to someone who didn’t see the sow. She was the only thing I looked at during the whole ceremony. She was a Venus with plenty of lard and ham, with clear pig skin and a prognathous snout. An extra little whiff of babirusa (that wild pig of the Indies) and a little curled tail spoke sweetly to the most piggish parts of my heart.
She came forward, swaying with dignity. I saw right away that she considered herself the queen of porkers.
“I am Lju-ba,” she oinked, “which in our dialect means ‘pearl before swine.’ ”
Mother in heaven, what a dame!
“And I am Viskovitz,” I grunted.
“Which means?”
“Nothing. That I’m a filthy pig named Viskovitz, madam. Come here . . . Do you know you have a really beautiful snout?”
“Snout? You mean to say . . . a beautiful appearance.”
“Right, right.” Grunting and drooling I grabbed hold of her back. “Oh, what beautiful hams—I mean limbs, Countess.”
She spun around and whacked my head with a tusk so hard that I saw all ten tien gan of the lunar year.
“Who do you take me for? One of your pig sluts?”
“Hey. I don’t see any other males in this pigpen.”
“I belong to no one. Only to my own spirit, lu wu, which has been nourished by the teachings of the Eight Immortals, Ba Xian, and of the Five Hundred Saints, Luo Han, and by my mind, fu, which I have cultivated by the practice of the Qui Gong in accordance with the Five Canons, Wu Jing, and by my worthiness, kun, and by my life, lin, which is in the service of goodness and the Greater Swineness.”
I was rendered speechless, salt pork. What do you say to a sow who talks to you about Swineness?!
She pointed at the humans with her hoof, at the bride and groom who were dancing. “Look at how considerately men treat their women. Am I any less than they?”
“Certainly not.”
“I have gone through the ceremony of grooming, shan tou, I have gone through the casting of my auspicious horoscope, ba zi, but on this day of my jie hun, I would like to dance at least one dance.”
I looked at the dancers. The rhythm didn’t seem all that difficult, a rather monotonous 4/4.
“I’d give anything to dance with them, Viskovitz. Anything . . .”
And so it was, Mom, that even though I was driven by the most swinish intentions, I committed the first big mistake of my life. In dance time I strutted toward the scene of my damnation. Ljuba and I made a way for ourselves through the dancers, to the consternation of pigs and non-pigs alike. Balancing on our hind legs, we swayed, letting ourselves be carried away by the swing of the music. Intoxicated by the sound and by the opium fumes, I was moved to improvise more daring steps. Soon Ljuba and I were stealing the show. We were being applauded. We did spins, step-ball-changes, pirouettes, then twirled back into dancing cheek to cheek. When I realized how ridiculous I was, it was much too late. At these gatherings there were always dealers in jade and opium who were eager to acquire anything that could turn a profit. One of them saw how he could make money out of us.
We were sold to a circus in Shanghai. And so began the long via crucis of my mortification. My love for Ljuba became the theme for a clown act. It grew into a whole supershow performed by twelve pigs. There was a pig-tamer act, pigs on the flying trapeze and on bicycles. But above all there was the big dance finale with a dazzling dance number of pigs in white tutus, at the end of which I in a blue leotard and Ljuba in a pink tutu danced to a Strauss sonata.
All of us males were castrated.
At that point, Mom, it was hard for me to feel like a real swine. I tried desperately to wallow in mud, to grunt the most swinish obscenities, but it just wasn’t the same. Every evening when I embraced Ljuba under the spotlights, I wasn’t looking so much for the touch of skin on skin as for the communion of our souls. But in her eyes I saw only loathing for a fat castrated clo
wn. And then the public applauded my tears and the solemn tragic essence of my rhythmic movement. The moment when I bowed to accept the tribute of the audience became more and more important to me. But as I was celebrating these new vain pleasures, I was also celebrating the totality of my downfall.
But my humiliation wasn’t complete. One day, while we were touring Japan, an elderly Texas businesswoman came to my dressing room. She congratulated me and took the liberty of petting me. She went even further by buying me, paying, as I learned later, one hundred and twenty thousand dollars. I believe this figure is the highest that has ever been paid for a pig.
I flew with her to Dallas and from there in a private helicopter to her country house near Amarillo. The free and easy behavior of the old woman had at first led me to believe that she wanted to satisfy some extravagant erotic fancy. But it wasn’t that. Nor was it that my owner was a member of some association for the benefit of pigs in general. No. The old woman had a sister who had recently kicked the bucket, leaving a will that said more or less this: “I bequeath all my worldly goods to that swine Adrian J. Stinson, the only guy who ever amused me and who could dance a fox-trot so that it felt like a tango.”
Since poor old Mr. Stinson had already died in an old-age home, the old lady’s lawyers arranged things so “that swine Adrian J. Stinson” ended up meaning me. I was the sole heir, so the money went into the pockets of the old lady. It was a dirty trick, a truly piggish thing to do. So I went along with the charade wholeheartedly. It wasn’t hard for me to assume the role of “that swine,” even if it wasn’t altogether easy to dance a paso doble to the tune of that mazurka. The lawyers’ skill and the power of the old lady did the rest. (“Lawyers these days can turn a case any which way they want, piggy.”)
So that is how I found myself swimming in money, one of the largest fortunes in America. At that point there were no longer any limits to my degradation. I took to drowning my sorrows in champagne, chewing on Cuban cigars and hanging out with vacuous movie starlets and corrupt politicians. Until one day, during a reception in my honor, as I was staring at a plate of rolled ham slices, I decided to end it all. I tried to hang myself from a chandelier with my tie—ineffectively. Then I found a way to get to a window and jump out. But as luck would have it I bounced off an awning and landed on a pile of watermelons. I broke my bones but didn’t put an end to my woes. The incident only increased my popularity, and here I am now going from network to network, launching a new line of merchandise, posing for magazine covers. The old lady says I’ll be the first animal to become president of the United States, and as a matter of fact there’s plenty of money for the campaign . . . What suffering, Mom. And you warned me.
You're an Animal, Viskovitz Page 4
