by Arkady
Eddie and I ordered a home-style omelet, shrimp salad, and a bottle of dry wine. They knew Fedya well in the café, and they brought him a plate of grated raw potatoes, carrot tops, and cabbage stumps. Gabby got a plate of stuffed tomatoes, which he had ordered on principle.
Having eaten the salad, I realized that I was insulted and injured, dog-tired, that my tongue refused to function, and that I had no desire to do anything. Besides that, I was jumpy, because in the crowd I could hear the squeaky “I’ll wash your feet and drink the water!” and “the thinker is insade it!” But old Gabby was in fine fettle and was enjoying showing Eddie his philosophical turn of mind, independent opinions, and tendency to universalize.
“What senseless and unpleasant creatures!” he said, looking around the café with a superior air. “Truly, only such clumsy, cud-chewing animals are capable of creating the myth, born out of their inferiority complex, that they are the rulers of the earth. I ask you: How did this myth come about? For instance, we insects consider ourselves the rulers of the earth, and rightly so. We are numerous and ubiquitous, we multiply plentifully but do not waste precious time on senseless worries about posterity. We have sensory organs that you humans can only dream of. We can fall into anabiosis for centuries without any harm to ourselves. The more intelligent representatives of our class are famous as great mathematicians, architects, and sociologists. We have discovered the ideal system of society, we control gigantic territories, and we establish ourselves anywhere we want. Let us put the question this way: What can you humans—by the way, the most highly developed of the mammals—what can you do that we might want to do but can’t? You brag a lot about your ability to create tools and use them. Forgive me, but that is laughable! You’re like cripples who brag about their crutches. You build yourselves dwellings, tortuously, with such expenditures of effort, using unnatural forces like fire and steam, you’ve been building them for thousands of years, and never the same way twice, and still you can’t find a comfortable and rational form of dwelling. Even the pathetic ants, whom I truly despise for their crudeness and glorification of brute strength, solved that simple problem a hundred million years ago—and solved it once and for all. You brag that you are constantly developing, and without limit. We can only laugh. You are searching for something that has been found, patented, and in use since time immemorial, namely: a rational social order and a meaningful existence.”
Eddie was listening with professional attention, and Fedya, chewing on a cabbage stump with his excellent teeth, spoke:
“I’m a weak dialectician, of course, but I was brought up to believe that the human mind is nature’s greatest achievement. We in the mountains are used to fearing human wisdom and bowing down before it, and now that I have been educated to a certain degree, I never cease being amazed by the boldness and cleverness with which man has created and continues to create a second nature. The human mind is…is…” He shook his head and stopped talking.
“Second nature!” the bedbug said sarcastically. “The third element, the fourth kingdom, the fifth estate, the sixth wonder of the world. A wise human could have asked what you need a second nature for. You’ve ruined one, and now you’re trying to replace it with another. I’ve said it before, Fedya: a second nature is a cripple’s crutches. As for reason, it’s not for you to talk or for me to listen. For a hundred centuries these skins stuffed with a nourishing mixture have been mouthing off about reason, and they still can’t agree what it is they’re talking about! They agree only on one point: no one but they themselves has reason. That’s really amazing! If a creature is small, if it’s easy to poison with some chemical or simply to squash with a finger, then they look down at it. Such a creature naturally has nothing more than instinct, a primitive irritability, the lowest form of nervous activity. Typical world view of conceited imbeciles. But, after all, they are rational and they have to establish a foundation for everything, so that they can squash insects without guilt pangs.
“And look, Fedya, at their rationalization. Let’s say that a digger wasp lays her eggs in her nest burrow and goes off to look for food for her future young. What do those bandits do? The barbarians steal the eggs and then, reveling in idiotic pleasure, they watch the wretched mother cement up the empty hole. Therefore, the mother is stupid, does not see what she is doing, and therefore she only has instincts, blind instinct, you understand, and not reason—and if necessary, she can be squashed. Do you see how this is vile juggling with terminology? The a priori assumption is that the wasp’s main goal in life is to reproduce and protect her young, and therefore if she is incapable of fulfilling her major goal, then what is she worth? They, humans, they have the cosmos-shmosmos and photosynthesis-shmynthesis and the pathetic wasp has nothing but reproduction, and that only on a primitive instinctual level. Those mammals can’t even imagine that the wasp has a rich spiritual life, that in the short span of her life she wants to succeed in science and in art, those warm-blooded beasts can’t see that she simply doesn’t have the time or the desire to look back at her young, particularly since they are only senseless eggs.
“Of course, wasps have their laws, their behavioral norms, their morals. Since wasps are rather thoughtless by nature when it comes to propagating their kind, the law, of course, stipulates certain punishments for not fulfilling parental obligations. Every decent wasp must follow a prescribed sequence of behavior. She must dig a pit, lay her eggs, bring back a number of paralyzed caterpillars, and block off the hole. This is inspected by silent observers, and a wasp must always assume that an inspector may be lurking behind the nearest rock. Of course, the wasp sees that the eggs have been stolen or that her food stores have been depleted. But she can’t lay the eggs over again and she has no desire to waste time gathering more food. Fully realizing the incongruity of her actions, she makes believe that she has noticed nothing and finishes the program to the very end, because the last thing she wants to do is make the rounds of the nine departments of the Committee for the Preservation of Appearances.
“Fedya, picture a highway, smooth and flat from horizon to horizon. Some experimenter sets up a roadblock with a detour sign. Visibility is fine, and the driver sees that there is nothing threatening him on the other side of the roadblock. He even suspects that it’s a foolish practical joke, but he follows the rules and regulations like a decent driver, he turns off onto the disgusting side road, and gets shaken and jolted, splashed with mud, and wastes a lot of time and energy to get back on the same highway two hundred yards down the road. Why? For the same reasons: he’s law-abiding, and he doesn’t want to be hauled to traffic court, all the more because like the wasp, he has reason to suspect that it’s a trap and that behind those bushes there is a cop on a motorcycle. And now let us suppose that the invisible experimenter sets up the experiment to gauge man’s intellect and that the experimenter is a conceited fool like the one who destroyed the nest. Ha, ha, ha! What conclusion do you think he would come to?” Gabby slapped the table in ecstasy with all his legs.
“No,” said Fedya. “Somehow you oversimplify things, Gabby. Of course, a man can’t shine intellectually when he’s driving.”
“No more so than a wasp laying eggs,” the crafty bedbug interrupted. “You know, that’s no time for intellect.”
“Wait a minute, Gabby, you keep interrupting me. I want to say… Now, see, I forgot what I was about to say. Oh yes! In order to enjoy the grandeur of human reason you have to peruse all the edifices of that reason, all the achievements of science, all the achievements of literature and art. You scoffed at the cosmos, yet the sputniks and rockets are a great step forward—they’re amazing, and you must agree that not a single arthropod is capable of doing it.”
The flea wiggled his antennae in disgust.
“I could argue by saying that arthropods have no need for the cosmos,” he said. “But people don’t need it either, and therefore we will not discuss it. You don’t understand the simplest things, Fedya. Every species has its own dream, hist
orically formed and passed down from generation to generation. The realization of such a dream is what is usually termed a great achievement. Humans have had two such dreams: one was to fly, arising from their envy of insects, and the other to travel to the sun, arising from their ignorance of the distance to the sun. But it cannot be expected that different species, not to mention different classes and phyla, should have the same Great Idea. It would be absurd to imagine that flies dream from generation to generation of free flight, that octopuses dream of the ocean depths, and that we bedbugs—Cimex lectularius—dream of the sun, which we cannot tolerate. Everyone dreams of an unattainable goal that promises pleasure. The hereditary dream of the octopus, as everyone knows, is to travel freely on dry land. And the octopuses spend a lot of time thinking about it in their briny homes. The hereditary and evil dream of viruses is absolute control of the world, and even though their methods are deplorable, you must give them credit for perseverance, inventiveness, and the capability of self-sacrifice for a greater goal.
“And how about the inspired dream of the spiders? Many millions of years ago they rashly climbed out of the sea, and since then they have been struggling to get back into their native element. You should hear their songs and ballads about the sea! Your heart would bleed with pity and compassion. By comparison the heroic myth of Daedalus and Icarus is a joke. And what of it? They’ve made some headway, and in very clever ways, I might add, since arthropods in general are given to ingenious solutions. They’re getting what they want by creating new species. First they created water spiders, then diving spiders, and now they’re going full speed ahead on a water-breathing spider.
“I’m not even talking about us bedbugs. We achieved our dream long ago—back when these skins with nourishing mixture in the veins first appeared. Do you follow me, Fedya? Each species has its own dream. Don’t brag about your achievements before your planetary neighbors. You risk seeming foolish. Those to whom your dreams are foreign will think you stupid, and those who have realized their dreams will think you pathetic boasters.”
“I cannot answer you, Gabby,” Fedya said, “but I must admit that I don’t enjoy listening to you. First of all I don’t like it when crafty casuistry is used to disprove self-evident facts, and secondly, I too am human.”
“You are an abominable snowman. You are the missing link, and that’s all. If you must know, you’re even inedible. But why do I get no argument from Homo sapiens? Why don’t they step in to defend their species, their genus, their class? I will explain; it’s because they have no refutation.”
Attentive Eddie let this challenge slip by. I had an argument, that windbag was irritating me beyond reason, but 1 controlled myself because I knew that Fedor Simeonovich was watching in his magic crystal and could see it all.
“No, no, allow me,” said Fedya. “Yes, I am a snowman. Yes, everyone insults us, even humans, who are our closest relatives and our hope, the symbol of our faith in the future. No, no, Eddie, let me speak my piece. We are insulted by the ignoramuses and lowest strata of human society who call us by the dastardly name Yeti, which, as you know, sounds like the Swiftian Yahoo, and by the name golub yavan which means either huge ape or abominable snowman. We are insulted by the most progressive representatives of humanity as well, who call us missing links, humanoid apes, and other scientific-sounding but derogatory names. Perhaps we are worthy of a certain disdain. We think slowly, we are not ambitious, our striving for something better is very weak, and our reason is still slumbering. But I believe, I know, that it is a human reason, which finds the greatest pleasure in transforming nature—first the environment, and then itself.”
Fedya looked at the bedbug sternly. “You, Gabby, are just a parasite. Forgive me, but I’m using the term in the scientific sense. I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but you are a parasite, and you don’t understand what a great pleasure it is to transform nature. And what a future the pleasure has! After all, nature is infinite, and it can be transformed infinitely. That’s why man is called the ruler of nature. Because he not only studies nature, and not only finds a lofty but passive pleasure in communing with it, but because he transforms nature, sculpts it according to his wishes.”
Gabby immediately counterattacked. “Yes! And meanwhile, man takes a certain Fedya by his hairy shoulders and brings him on stage and asks this Fedya to demonstrate the process of an ape’s humanization for a crowd of seed-cracking hicks. Attention, step right up!” the bedbug shouted. “Tonight the club presents a lecture on Darwinism Versus Religion by Candidate of Sciences Vyalobuev-Frankenstein with a live demonstration of the humanization of an ape! Act One—Ape. Fedya sits under the lecturer’s table, scratching his underarms and gazing nostalgically around the room. Act Two—Ape-Man. Fedya, clutching a broom handle, wanders around the stage, looking for something to hit. Act Three—Man-Ape. Fedya, under the watchful eye of a fireman, starts a small fire on a metal grid and acts out simultaneous terror and joy. Act Four—Man Creates Labor. Fedya, using a broken hammer, plays a prehistoric smithy. Act Five—Apotheosis. Fedya sits at the piano and plays the Turkish March. Lecture begins at six p.m. and after the lecture a new foreign film, On the Last Shores, and a dance!”
Fedya, extremely flattered, smiled shyly.
“Well, of course, Gabby,” he said, touched. “I knew that we had no basic disagreement. Of course, that’s exactly how reason creates its beneficial miracles, slow and easy, promising future Archimedes, Newtons, and Einsteins. But you shouldn’t exaggerate my role in this cultural undertaking. Though I understand, you’re just trying to be nice.”
The bedbug looked at us, flabbergasted, and I snickered maliciously. Fedya was worried.
“Did I say something wrong?”
“You’re just fine,” I said. “You put him in his place so well it’ll take him days to recover. Look, he’s even eating the stuffed tomatoes.”
“Yes, Gabby, I’m listening to you with great interest,” Eddie said. “I have no intention of arguing with you, of course, because I hope we’ll have many arguments ahead of us on much more important topics. I would like to say, however, that unfortunately I find too much of the human in your thinking and too little of the original, the unique psychology of Cimex lectularius.”
“All right, all right,” the bedbug yelled in exasperation. “All well and good. But, perhaps, at least one representative of Homo sapiens would deign to give a straight answer to the questions I was permitted to raise here? Or, I repeat, has he nothing to say? Or does rational man have as little to do with reason as a glass snake has to do with a drinking glass? Or does he have no arguments that would be accessible to the understanding of a creature who has only primitive instincts?”
That’s where I lost my patience. I had an argument accessible to his understanding and I used it with pleasure. I showed Gabby my index finger and then made a motion like wiping a drop from the table top.
“Very witty,” said the bedbug, blanching. “Now that’s really on the level of higher reasoning.”
Fedya timidly asked us to explain the meaning of the pantomime, but Gabby announced that it was all nonsense.
“I’m tired of this place,” he said in an exaggeratedly loud voice, looking around in a lordly manner. “Let’s get out of here.”
I paid up, and we went out into the street, where we stopped, trying to figure out where to go next. Eddie suggested going to a hotel and reserving a room, but Fedya said hotels were no problem in Tmuskorpion. The only residents of the hotel were the members of the Troika, and the rest of the rooms were empty. I looked at the subdued bedbug and felt the pangs of conscience, so I suggested a moonlight walk along the banks of the Skorpionka River. Fedya supported me, but Gabby protested. He was tired, he was bored by endless conversation, and, finally, he was hungry, and he’d better be off to the movies. We felt so sorry for him—he was so shaken and shocked by my gesture, which had been tactless—that we decided to go to the movies with him.
Suddenly old man Edelweiss cam
e barreling out of a beer hall. He held a beer mug in one hand and his contraption in the other. With a liquor-thickened tongue he swore allegiance to science and to me personally and demanded a per diem, high-altitude pay, and expenses for equipment. I gave him a ruble, and he headed straight back into the bar.
On the way to the movies, the bedbug could not settle down. He boasted, picked on passers-by, sparkled with aphorisms and bon mots, but we could tell that he still was not himself. To keep him quiet, Eddie told him what great contributions to the Theory of Linear Happiness they expected from him and transparently hinted at world fame and the inevitability of lengthy trips abroad, including some exotic countries. His emotional balance obviously restored, Gabby cheered up, and as soon as the theater lights went out he went crawling around looking for victims to bite. Eddie and I got no pleasure from being at the movies. Eddie was afraid that someone would squash Gabby, and I was afraid there would be a row. It was stuffy in the theater, the movie was sickening, and we heaved a sigh of relief when it was over.
The moon was shining and there was a cool breeze from the Skorpionka. Fedya told us with embarrassment that he had a schedule and it was his bedtime. We decided to walk him to the Colony. We went along the river. Below the steep banks, the ancient Skorpionka carried poisonous sewage in its crystal currents. On the other shore, meadows spread out in the moonlight. Uneven crowns of a distant forest dotted the horizon. A small flying saucer was circling some dank, decrepit towers marked with warning lights.
