The Snail on the Slope Page 14

  Everyone knows everything at the biological station . . . My God, in the evenings, they turn on the lights in the clubhouse, they turn on the stereo, they drink buttermilk—they drink ridiculous quantities of buttermilk—and at night, by the light of the moon, they toss the bottles into lakes, to see who can throw the farthest. They dance, they play truth or dare and spin the bottle, they play cards and they shoot pool, they swap women, and during the day they toil in their laboratories, they pour the forest from one test tube to another, they examine the forest under a microscope, and they count the forest on their arithmometers. Meanwhile, the forest surrounds them, hangs over them, sends shoots through their bedrooms, and in the stuffy hours before a thunderstorm, it appears at their windows, taking the form of hordes of roaming trees, and it probably also can’t understand what they are and why they are here and what they are for . . .

  It’s a good thing I’m leaving, he thought. I’ve been here, I didn’t understand a thing, I didn’t find any of the things I wanted to find, but now I know for sure that I will never understand anything and I will never find anything, that things have to happen in their own time. I have nothing in common with the forest; I’m no closer to the forest than I am to the Administration. But at least I won’t be disgracing myself here. I’ll leave, I’ll do my work, and I’ll wait. And I’ll hope that the time comes . . .

  The courtyard of the biological research station was empty. There was neither a truck nor a line at the pay office window. There was only Peretz’s suitcase, which was standing on the porch and blocking the way, and Peretz’s coat, which was draped over the railings. Peretz climbed out of the ATV and looked around in bewilderment. He could smell the food and hear the clinking dishes in the cafeteria, and he saw that Randy and Quentin were already walking toward it, arm in arm. Stoyan said, “Let’s go have dinner, Perry,” and went off to park the ATV in the garage. Peretz suddenly realized, horrified, what all this meant: the wailing stereo, the meaningless chatter, the buttermilk, buttermilk, and more buttermilk, and how about another round? And the same thing every night, many, many nights in a row . . .

  The pay office window banged and the angry pay clerk leaned out and shouted, “Come on, Peretz! How long am I supposed to wait for you? Come over here and sign this.”

  Peretz approached the window on unbending legs.

  “Write the amount in words right here,” said the pay clerk. “No, not over there—right here. Why are your hands shaking? Here you go . . .” He began to count out the bills.

  “Where are the others?” asked Peretz.

  “Be patient . . . The others are here, in this envelope.”

  “No, I mean—”

  “Nobody cares what you mean. I can’t change established protocol for you. Here you go. Tell me, did you get paid?”

  “I wanted to know—”

  “I asked whether you got paid. Yes or no?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank God. Here’s your bonus. Did you get your bonus?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s all. Allow me to shake your hand—I’m in a hurry. I need to be in the Administration before seven.”

  “I just wanted to ask,” Peretz said hastily, “where the other people are . . . Kim, the truck . . . They promised to drive me, you see . . . To the Mainland.”

  “I can’t drive you to the Mainland, I’m needed in the Administration. Excuse me, I’m closing the window.”

  “I won’t take up much room,” Peretz said.

  “It doesn’t matter. You’re a grown man, you have to understand. I’m a pay clerk. I am in charge of employee records. What if something happened to them? Please remove your elbow.”

  Peretz removed his elbow and the window slammed shut. Through the blurry, fingerprint-smudged window, Peretz watched as the pay clerk gathered the employee records, crumpled them haphazardly, and stuffed them into his briefcase; then a door in the pay office opened and two enormous security guards came in, tied the pay clerk’s hands, and threw a noose around his neck. One security guard started pulling the pay clerk along, using the rope as a leash, while the other one picked up the briefcase, scanned the room, and suddenly noticed Peretz. For a while, they stared at each other through the dirty glass, then the security guard very slowly and carefully placed the briefcase on a chair, as if afraid of scaring someone off, and, without taking his eyes off Peretz, began to reach for the rifle leaning against the wall, his motions just as slow and careful as before. Peretz waited, cold shivers running down his spine, unable to believe it, while the guard grabbed his rifle and, walking backward, went outside, closing the door behind him. The light went off.

  Then Peretz sprang back from the window, ran to his suitcase on tiptoe, grabbed it, and ran away as fast as he could. Hiding behind the garage, he watched as the security guard went out onto the porch, his rifle at the ready, and looked right, then left, then under his feet. Then he took Peretz’s coat off the railings, held it in his hand as if to gauge its weight, went through its pockets, looked around once, and went inside. Peretz sat down on his suitcase.

  It was chilly and getting dark. Peretz sat there, vacantly watching the brightly lit windows, which were covered halfway up with chalk. Shadows were moving on the other side of the glass; the mesh radar antenna on the roof was spinning silently. Dishes were clanging; night animals were screeching in the forest. Then a searchlight went on somewhere and started to swivel around, and a dump truck came around the corner, rolled into the searchlight beam, clattered loudly as it bounced over a pothole, and headed toward the gate, followed by the light. The security guard with the rifle was sitting in the back of the truck. He was lighting a cigarette, hiding from the wind, and you could see the thick, fuzzy rope wrapped around his wrist disappearing into the half-open cab window.

  The dump truck left and the searchlight went off. The other security guard crossed the courtyard like a dark shadow, shuffling his booted feet, holding his rifle under his arm. From time to time he bent down and felt around on the ground—he was probably looking for footprints. Peretz pressed his sweaty back against the wall and followed the security guard with his eyes, keeping very still.

  Something in the forest was letting out protracted, bone-chilling screams. Doors were slamming. On the second floor, a light went on, and a loud voice said, “Is it ever stuffy in here.” Some round, shiny object fell into the grass and rolled up to Peretz’s feet. He froze again, but then he realized that it was an empty buttermilk bottle. I should walk back to the Administration, thought Peretz. I have to walk back. Through twelve miles of forest. It’s too bad it’s through the forest. Now the forest will get the chance to see a pitiful, trembling man, sweating in fear and exhaustion, perishing beneath his suitcase but for some reason not abandoning it. I’ll be dragging myself along and the forest will be hooting and screaming at me from both sides . . .

  The security guard reappeared in the courtyard. He wasn’t alone; he was accompanied by somebody, a panting and snorting somebody who seemed to be on all fours. They stopped in the middle of the courtyard, and Peretz heard the guard muttering, “Take it, take it . . . Don’t eat it, stupid, smell it . . . That’s not food, that’s a coat, you have to smell it . . . Well? Come on, go cherchez . . .” The somebody on all fours was yelping and whimpering. “Damn it!” said the security guard in vexation. “Fleas, that’s all you know how to find . . . Beat it!” They melted into the darkness. He heard the guard’s boots pounding on the porch and the door slamming. Then something cold and wet nudged Peretz in the cheek. He started and almost fell over. It was a huge wolfhound. It yelped softly, gave a deep sigh, and put its heavy head onto Peretz’s knees. Peretz scratched it behind the ear. The wolfhound yawned and began to make itself comfortable. It had almost settled in when a stereo began to blare from the second floor. The wolfhound silently recoiled and galloped away.

  The stereo was going wild; for many miles around, the world contained nothing but the stereo. And then, just like in a thriller, the gates
were suddenly silently bathed in blue light and swung open, letting in a huge truck that sailed into the courtyard like a colossal ship, decked out in whole constellations of flashing lights. The truck stopped and turned off its headlights, which slowly dimmed to darkness, as if a forest monster were drawing its last breath. Truck driver Waldemar leaned out of the cab and started yelling something, opening his mouth wide—he yelled for a long time, growing hoarse and becoming enraged before Peretz’s eyes, then he gave up and disappeared back into the cab. He leaned out again and wrote an upside-down “Peretz!!!” on the door with chalk. Then Peretz realized that the truck had come for him, grabbed his suitcase, and dashed across the yard, afraid to look back, afraid that he’d hear shots behind him. He barely managed to clamber up the two sets of steps leading up to the cab, which was as spacious as a bedroom; as he was finding a place for his suitcase, as he was sitting down and looking for his cigarettes, Waldemar kept talking, growing hoarse, gesturing and shoving Peretz in the shoulder with an open palm, but only when the stereo suddenly went silent did Peretz finally hear his voice: Waldemar wasn’t saying anything important, he was simply swearing up a blue streak.

  The truck hadn’t even made it through the gates when Peretz fell asleep, as if someone had pressed a chloroform-soaked rag to his face.

  7.

  CANDIDE

  It was a very strange village. When they had come out of the forest and seen it in the basin below, they had been struck by the silence. It was so silent that they weren’t even glad to see it. The village was shaped like a triangle, and the big clearing in which it was situated was also triangular—a spacious clay meadow without a single bush, without a single blade of grass, as if everything on it had been burned away then trampled down. It was completely in the shade: the fused crowns of the mighty trees entirely obscured the sky.

  “I have a bad feeling about this village,” Nava declared. “They probably won’t even give us food. How could they have any food, when they don’t even have a field, only bare clay? They are probably hunters, they probably catch animals and eat them, it makes me sick just to think about it, it does . . .”

  “Maybe we’re in the kook village?” asked Candide. “And this is the Clay Meadow?”

  “This is no kook village. The kook village, it’s a normal sort of village, it’s just like our village, except it’s full of kooks . . . And this place, it’s different—look how quiet it is, and there’s no one around, not even kids, although maybe the kids are already in bed . . . Why is there no one around, Silent Man? Let’s not go to this village, I have a really bad feeling about it . . .”

  The sun was setting, and the village below was sinking into the twilight. It seemed very empty—not neglected, not abandoned and left behind, but empty, as if it weren’t a village but a stage set. No, thought Candide, we probably shouldn’t go there, but my feet hurt and I want a roof over my head. And I’m hungry. And night is coming . . . My goodness, we’ve been wandering through the forest all day; even Nava’s tired, clinging to my arm and not letting go.

  “All right,” he said hesitantly. “Let’s not go there.”

  “Let’s not go there, let’s not go there,” mimicked Nava. “What if I’m hungry? How long are we supposed to go without eating? I haven’t eaten a thing since morning . . . And those thieves of yours . . . Do you have any idea how hungry they make you? No, how about we go down there, have some food, and if we don’t like it there, we’ll just leave. It’s going to be a warm night, it’s not going to rain . . . Come on, what are you waiting for?”

  They were hailed as soon as they got to the periphery of the village. A gray, almost fully naked man was sitting on the gray ground by the first house. It was hard to see him in the half light; he almost blended into the ground, and Candide could only make out his silhouette against the white backdrop of the wall.

  “Where are you going?” the man said weakly.

  “We need a place to spend the night,” said Candide. “We’re going to the Settlement in the morning. We’ve lost our way. We ran away from the thieves and lost our way.”

  “So you’re alone, then?” the man said limply. “Good for you . . . I’m glad you’ve come . . . Come in, come in, there’s a lot of work to do, and for some reason, there’s almost nobody left to do it . . .” He was barely managing to get the words out, as if he was falling asleep. “And we need to work. We really need to work . . .”

  “You don’t have any food?” Candide asked.

  “Nowadays, there’s . . .” The man said a few words, and Candide thought they sounded familiar, even though he knew that he’d never heard them before. “I’m glad you brought the boy, because boys . . .” And he again started speaking in a strange, incomprehensible tongue.

  Nava tried to pull Candide away, but Candide jerked his hand back in irritation. “I can’t understand you,” he said to the man, trying to at least get a better look at him. “Tell me, do you have anything to eat?”

  “Now if there were three of you . . .” the man said.

  Nava dragged Candide away with all her strength, and they stepped off to the side.

  “Is he’s sick or something?” Candide said angrily. “Did you understand what he was muttering?”

  “Why are you talking to him?” whispered Nava. “He doesn’t have a face! How can you talk to a man without a face?”

  “What do you mean, he doesn’t have a face?” Candide said, startled, and looked over his shoulder. He couldn’t see the man; either he’d gone away, or he’d dissolved into the twilight.

  “Just that,” said Nava. “He has eyes and a mouth, but he doesn’t have a face.” She suddenly pressed against him. “He’s like a deadling,” she said. “He’s not really a deadling, he has a smell, but all of him is like a deadling . . . Let’s go to some other house, but we won’t get food in this village, don’t get your hopes up.”

  She dragged him to the next house, and they peered into it. Everything inside it looked strange—there were no beds, there were no domestic smells, and it was empty, dark, and unpleasant. Nava sniffed the air.

  “There was never any food here,” she said with disgust. “This is one silly village you’ve brought me to, Silent Man. What are we going to do here? I’ve never seen a village like this in my life. What kind of village has no kids shouting outside, and no one out on the street?”

  They kept going. There was fine, cool dust beneath their feet, they couldn’t even hear their own footsteps, and unlike most evenings, no hooting or gurgling sounds came from the forest.

  “He spoke a strange language,” said Candide. “I’m thinking back now, and it’s like I’ve heard it before . . . But I can’t remember when or where . . .”

  “I can’t remember either,” Nava said after a pause. “But you’re right, Silent Man, I’ve heard words like that before myself—maybe in a dream, or maybe in our village, not the one where we live now but in the other village, where I was born, but that must mean that it was a very long time ago, because I was very little then, I’ve forgotten everything from that time, and now it’s like I’m remembering it, but I can’t really remember it.”

  In the next house, they saw a man lying on the floor by the threshold, fast asleep. Candide bent over him and shook his shoulder, but the man didn’t wake up. His skin was damp and cool like an amphibian’s, he was fat and soft and had almost no muscle left, and his lips looked black and oily in the half light.

  “He’s sleeping,” Candide said, turning toward Nava.

  “How could he be sleeping,” said Nava, “when he’s watching us?”

  Candide bent over the man again, and he thought that he saw the man watching them from beneath barely lifted eyelids. But he only thought so. “No, he’s sleeping,” said Candide. “Let’s go.”

  Uncharacteristically, Nava didn’t say anything.

  They walked to the center of the village, peering into each house, seeing sleepers in almost every single one. The sleepers were all fat, sweaty men; there w
asn’t a single woman or child. Nava became completely quiet, and Candide also felt uneasy. The sleepers’ stomachs were rumbling and they never woke up, but every time Candide looked behind him as he exited a house, he thought he could see them carefully and furtively watching them leave.