by Andrei Bitov
And drink it, too. We each had a small chacha at Daur’s, where we made a brief stop to change our shirts and take a shower. That was not the purpose, as it turned out. They had turned off the water in Sukhum again, and Daur’s shirt was too tight on me. I rolled up the sleeves a bit higher. He could not refrain from glancing in the mirror, and even I was pleased with myself. I sat HIM down on the can, and while he strained, I chased monkeys. It’s a very beautiful place and a picturesque road, they say … Suppose I’m going there with about six monkey experts; suppose I ask them about monkeys, the way I asked Doctor D. some time ago about birds; suppose they’re of different nationalities: an Abkhaz, a Georgian, an Armenian, a Greek, a Jew, a Russian … I could take the Ainglishman along, too … don’t take the Ukrainian … suppose they’re inhabitants and patriots of this very land … suppose they’re amateur historians, as all of them are, here in the province … suppose they just happen to tell me the history of the region, and also just happen to start arguing: which of them is a real native, who is more native … suppose the argument grows into a quarrel between the Georgian and the Abkhaz, between the Georgian and the Armenian, between … no, I won’t for the world quarrel with the Jew … this is our business … “This is an ancient quarrel of Slavs among themselves”{42} … and, well, in a group like that, the Jew is more of a Slav … but not a Georgian, not an Armenian, and not a Greek, certainly … and besides, is a Russian all that far from a Jew? … the Jews are more Russian than we are … every time, they plan to live here; every time, we don’t want to live … not that again! you’re on your way to see the monkeys … yes, but I haven’t arrived yet! … what do they quarrel about? … oh, that’s easy, we just have to get the details … the Abkhaz, naturally, quarrels about Georgianization, the elimination of Abkhazian schools, the registration of Abkhazians as Georgians … the Georgian, naturally, cannot bear this historical injustice and says didn’t we give you television in 1978, didn’t we give you a university? … you said it! you “gave”—you gave because you’d taken, confiscated, first you confiscated and then you gave … what could we confiscate from you? you didn’t even have literacy … well, but for how many centuries were the Abkhaz the kings of Georgia! … what! the Abkhaz, kings?! in our country!? ha, ha, ha … you Georgians never waged war, the wars were waged by the highlanders—Circassians, Abkhaz, Ossetians—and you were always under somebody … under the Persians, the Mongols, the Russians … but where were you? you were always under us, you’ve always been part of Georgia, you are Georgians … at this point they enter into hand-to-hand combat, it’s the start of a national struggle, what’s it called—Stalin used it for the first Bolshevik newspaper—Borba? Zorba? Cobra? … by the way, where’s the newspaper? … ah, the newspaper … we do have newspaper … that isn’t quite true to life … they’d never say it that directly, or else they’d cut each other’s throats … they say it that way privately, away from each other, to a third person, I mean, of a third nationality … and what does the person of a third nationality tell them … he tells them they’re fighting in vain, because in any case, before either of them existed, there was a Greek colony here (if the person is Greek) … or if the person is Armenian he says that back in Assyrian times this was strictly Armenian land … now everyone will pounce on the Armenian: oh sure, Nefertiti was Armenian, Napoleon was Armenian, Leonardo da Vinci was Armenian … but we have no quarrel here, the Armenian will say; why quarrel, if they were Armenian? … the Russian alone remains modestly silent and makes a mental note, because why quarrel about what happened when, before Russia even existed? before Russia even existed, this land could belong to anyone you please, be my guest, but the minute Russia appeared, then to whom could the land have belonged? … not Turkey? … what did you want with Turkish rule? … you’re Christians: fear God … that’s what the Russian will never say while they quarrel on their way to the monkeys, having forgotten all about them … the Russian is admiring the landscapes, winning them inch by inch from the infidel for his own little book, what will it be called? Monkey Sapiens … not bad … Homo Bilegus … what’s “leg’ in Latin? oh, come on! oh, the ones who make shoes for invalids? orthopedists, that’s it! so which is it, ortho- or ped-? ortho-dox, peda-gogue, pedi-atrician, pederast … Homo Pedis, that’s funny … no, pedi is children … something’s wrong … coming, coming! I’m ready, I’ll be right out …
This is what happened. While I was preparing for my talk. Daur had been mainlining at the home of his neighbor, a Greek who was remarkable for the fact that as soon as he and Daur got their apartments in this new building, Daur did nothing, because he had no money for repairs and because he labored in the arts (sapiens sapiens), but the Greek, because he was a truck driver at a furniture combine, a workingman, a man with a skill (sapiens habilis), immediately undertook to finish everything in oak with his own hands—everything—the parquet, the walls, the ceiling, the bath—it went on for four years, and when everything was done he took an ax and hacked it all back to smithereens, after which he became pensive and solitary (I had never seen him this way) and could associate only with Daur. I, of course, didn’t immediately guess why Daur had withdrawn to his neighbor the Greek’s, perhaps because I occupied his can for so long, but I realized it when we stood before the audience, which consisted mainly of female research associates under thirty, some of them even pretty (three out of seven), and there were exactly three of us (HE calculated it for me, then and there): Dragamashchenka, Daur, and I … Dragamashchenka introduced Daur, a man known to everyone in the city, and Daur was supposed to introduce me, a man known to all though unknown in the city, and to tell the story, as it were, of my literary career. Daur boldly stepped forward and said that they saw before them a man who was interesting primarily for the fact that he was … Here I froze in anticipation, on the threshold of sincere delight and counterfeit embarrassment, for I have rarely met such a gift of eloquence as Daur’s. As a tamada, or toastmaster, he surpasses all, leaves them in the dust. He’s especially eloquent and witty in the presence of ladies, so that I had often actually envied him—he so far surpassed me in such situations that I merely exploited my advantage as his elder and adopted the pose of a teacher, admiring my pupil and approving his every word … Daur inhaled with his whole chest and did not exhale again. Or so it seemed, at least. He stood there, chest thrown out, eyes and mouth round, and we benevolently awaited his exact word. The girl on whom his eye was fixed began to blush uncontrollably, the sweat streamed down Daur’s face, but his next word was never born. Dragamashchenka began to applaud, Daur exhaled at last and sat down, and I stood up.
A man is a man, that is, very weak. I couldn’t help blooming like an emphatically luxuriant flower against the background of the preceding orator. If they were biologists, then of course what did they know about biology? And of course, I was the very man to teach them to understand their own subject. I talked to them about …
My nocturnal inspiration was still boiling in me. When I finished, last night, I simply hadn’t said everything. As always, the things for whose sake you write it all, the two or three thoughts that troubled you so much that they actually sat you down at your desk to express them—these are the two that prove not to have been expressed. Neither Pavel Petrovich nor I, much as we drank, had ever finished thinking them out; I had simply shot through the text and emerged with the two of them in my hands, finding no place for them anywhere along the way. Even Pavel Petrovich hadn’t had time to explain them to me.
“The pig … ” Pavel Petrovich was saying to the young ladies. “Can you give me any reason why we traditionally hold such a contemptuous, ungrateful, and churlish (see there, even I almost said ‘swinish’) attitude toward this astounding animal?” Pavel Petrovich had apparently decided to pursue his idea of the Creator as an artist who had revealed himself through the creation of water. “Not only is the pig clean and intelligent, it is also the most perfect creature in the natural system of the peasant farmyard. The problem of pollution
-free production, which cannot be solved under the conditions of late-twentieth-century technical progress, was solved at the dawn of mankind’s development by the invention—I emphasize, the invention—of the Pig! Nothing in the history of human civilization has so perfectly emulated and replicated Creation as the peasant farmyard. It is a painting of Creation, framed by the fence. The fenced vegetable patch—this is an invention equal to the wheel. This too, primordially, was round. Only partition, the presence of a neighbor, gave it rectangularity … ”
The total unexpectedness of the word “rectangularity” jolted the orator. He glanced all around and chose for himself a little blonde, who didn’t appeal to me personally (I had my eye on another one), but both of us (in one person) were picking up signals from a third, a little typist at a publishing house I knew. Her shy invitation embarrassed me: this was someone who should be avoided but not offended … “Rectangularity,” having escaped his lips, inspired him, and he easily went on to discover a connection among the following words: Russia, kolkhoz, nomads, neutron bomb, “without a single nail,” fire, “with dung in their hands,” raft and church, “eighteen wars with Turkey—and no Dardanelles,” Vikings, Teutons, Swedes, Tatars, Lithuanians, Turks, Poles, Ermak, “nach Osten,”{43} swamp, cut a window, Siberia, geographic range, Europe, tundra, horses, hides, women, cattle slaughtering, primitive tribes, moonshine, the freeze-over, dumplings, palms, California … “Too bad about Alaska!” … Khrushchev …
Good God! What nonsense was this! He was performing for that little blonde—roughly outlining, not his own questionable ideas (he’d never had one in all his born days), or even mine, but those of our old friend Doctor D., which the latter had confessed to me just once and retracted the next day …
But never mind, talking about Khrushchev is all right now. This is even encouraged, talking about Khrushchev. Let him blab on.
“Khrushchev was always a broad-minded man. Dates didn’t count for so much during his regime as they do now. A year or ‘one day,’ he didn’t care … ” (No, better not talk about Solzhenitsyn.) “The two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of St. Petersburg or the tercentenary of Peter the Great or the centennial of serfdom … Alaska or Cuba … corn … ”
“Allow me to disagree with you about Ermak Timofeev,” Dragamashchenka put in, rescuingly. “An original but somewhat schematic conception. Granted, we can still make a raft from a log cabin. But a sleigh from the raft!” An obsequious chuckle was heard in the audience. “We’re not such nomads—”
“Not nomads!” I flared. “What about all these mass relocations—Virgin Soil, Young Communist construction sites, the Baikal—Amur Railway? Who but nomads would consent to that?”
“And another thing I didn’t understand,” Dragamashchenka said, recognizing that it was dangerous to object or correct at this point. “Why exactly is the pig the king of the beasts?”
“Because it crowns the pyramid of the peasant’s farmyard. It’s the lock. What, above all, testifies to the presence of the farmer? The padlock with which he chains the gates of his farm. The farm is his. The padlock closes the chain. The pig closes the circuit of the farmyard, lending it the perfection of nature and revealing the Creator in the farmer. Because the design reveals the Creator. A design, in principle, is incapable of embodiment. It’s never seamless, there will always be loose ends. They can only be tied in a knot. The design always sticks out. You can’t hide it. You can try. All right, then explain to me, why oil? Why is it that oil, before man existed, was evenly accumulated all over the earth in these outhouses of living nature? As though they’d been planned for future man. Not one of the hypotheses on the origin of coal and oil has so far convinced anybody, you know. But once the earth permitted on her surface the development of life and the chain reaction of evolution, wouldn’t she be buried under the waste matter of life and the products of decay and decomposition, if it weren’t for these tidy little sacks of oil? Doesn’t the peasant farmyard resemble a balanced ecological system, precisely because of the pig? Hasn’t oil played the role of an invented pig for all nature? All right, then, tell me, why virginity for the human species? in what other animal species does it occur? and does your mother monkey have it? What kind of membrane is this, rated for a single use?”
With this he terminally embarrassed the young women and seized the undivided attention of all of them at once. The one I liked was genuinely frightened, however, and seemed to be on the point of leaving, though she was still irresolute. But the intellectual typist was gazing with frank adoration, which was exactly what I didn’t want.
“Apart from the explanations you consider mythological—Adam and Eve, the Tree of Knowledge, and the Fall, which dictate the laws of human experience for us even today and define the history of humankind through original sin and the immaculate conception of the Virgin—I’m afraid we will find no sound explanations. And we don’t need to. What we need is … ”
And I stopped, like Daur, unable to recall what I had just said.
Daur was avenged. Or had I saved Daur? If a thing isn’t written in time, it begins to come true. Oh, these embraces of the life that once happened to you! A sort of Toilers of the Sea,{44} not a text. You are embraced by an octopus, you writhe in the futile convulsions of the struggle, choke in thick layers of existence.
My unwritten novel Gambling Fever was happening to me. Omitted descriptions flashed through my mind.
Where is the horse? Who has been forgotten there under the fence, “in his fine red shirt, such a bonny lad … ”{45} And what is Million Tomatoes?
Million Tomatoes can lift a hundred and twenty kilos with one hand. He has learned Cortazar by heart. He has a beard … My God! What contortions! What an ugly face a word can make on the page! It’s not right anywhere, doesn’t fit anywhere, doesn’t belong, and if you’ll just listen closely, it doesn’t even have any meaning. Repeat any word ten times for practice: what “table,” what “chair,” why “door”?
Million Tomatoes has had his own dealings with fame. Including those of a great cardplayer. Back in his childhood he lost a million all at once. And since he didn’t have a million, but the card debt was unquestionably a debt of honor, he had to lose not a million rubles but a million tomatoes. The winner graciously allowed him to pay the debt in installments. For about ten years, Million Tomatoes carried five or ten kilos at a time. He grew up and became strong, like Crito of Miletus, as he approached the Olympic Games of 1976, 1980, but now in 1984—no Los Angeles. He was too late with his weights, like me with my words …
I was wrong about the pig, that was the whole trouble. The pig may indeed be the lock. It may indeed follow us around, ungrateful though we are, to pick up our shit. But the pig’s own shit—there’s no place to put it. No place to put that final shit. It’s no good!
This kind of thing does happen—all at once and for no earthly reason you fall silent. You stare pop-eyed and say nothing, and it’s not the connection between the words, it’s not the words you lack—even the letter is insurmountable. You lack speech itself. You are silent for a month, a second month, you begin to be silent for a third. You hear applause, shake hands, reap prizes. Grateful listeners have long been waiting for you to have a drink with them. And two, three, four more people—Adgur-Raul-Rauf in one person, and Million Tomatoes, it turns out—have long been standing behind you like two guardian angels, they have long been impatient for you to finish your talk, to take you and Daur to a certain place where people are waiting just for me.
Daur and I each received the skull of a female monkey as an honorarium. The date of her death had been scrawled in soft pencil on her forehead. One could now date the narrative with greater precision. This was in autumn, and she had died that summer; the year was 1983. I think it said July 17. “July” was written with the Roman numeral VII. The pencil wrote especially well on the bone surface, as if on some very heavy and expensive Chinese paper, so porous, the color of ivory. But the pencil rubbed off. For some reason the date was er
ased in reverse order, first the year (but I remember the year), then the month, and then for a long time the day was left, suspended in timelessness. Lest I erase it completely, I kept turning the skull different ways—whereby I kept erasing it. Her birth date, however, had not been recorded with the same precision. Dragamashchenka examined her teeth and said that she was no more than two years old. One tooth in the left lower jaw was loose, probably the canine. She was a girl. Her name was Lucy. Or Margarita, I don’t remember. Of course, Lucy. Not Margarita. Margarita was the name of the other one. Not the other one they gave to Daur—I didn’t even take any interest in the name of that one—but the one in the audience, whose address HE had time to get, while I stood silent, disgraced by my own silence, and tenderly stroked my monkey on her bald head. HE had time for everything, as Million Tomatoes and I dragged him toward the exit: time to grab a test tube of alcohol from the light buffet that the girls had arranged in my honor, to eat a Greetings cracker with it, and to get the phone number of the one he liked, the one I liked, and the old acquaintance whose eternally inviting gaze, so languid with shyness as to be indecent, I should not answer under any circumstances: she was staying at a resort hotel not far from here with her son, who was in kindergarten.
