The Snail on the Slope Page 15

  Darkness had fallen, the moonlit, ashy-gray sky was peeking out through the gaps between the branches, and Candide again thought that this looked eerily like a stage set in a good theater. But he was aware that he was utterly exhausted, exhausted to the point of complete indifference. There was currently only one thing he wanted: to lie down somewhere beneath a roof (so that night filth wouldn’t fall on him as he slept), even if it was on a hard, foot-worn floor, but he would really prefer to lie down in an empty house, not next to these suspicious sleepers.

  Nava was now really hanging off his arm. “Don’t be afraid,” Candide told her. “There’s nothing to be afraid of here.”

  “What did you say?” Nava said sleepily.

  “I said don’t be afraid, they are all half dead, I could fight them off with one hand tied behind my back.”

  “I’m not afraid of anyone,” Nava said grumpily. “I’m tired and I want to sleep, since you won’t give me anything to eat. And you keep walking and walking, from one house to another, from one house to another, I’m sick of it, the houses are all the same inside, anyway, and everyone’s already lying down and resting, we’re the only ones wandering around . . .”

  Then Candide worked up his nerve and went inside a random house. It was pitch black inside. Candide pricked up his ears, trying to figure out if there was anyone in the house, but all he could hear was Nava’s loud breathing—she had buried her forehead into his side. He felt for a wall, then groped around with his hands, checking if the floor was dry, and lay down, putting Nava’s head on his stomach. Nava was already asleep. I hope we don’t regret this, he thought, there’s something wrong here . . . But it’s just for one night . . . And to ask the way . . . They can’t sleep during the day, too . . . If worse comes to worst, we can always go back to the swamp, the thieves must be gone by now . . . Even if they aren’t gone . . . I wonder how things are at the Settlement? . . . Does this mean that I’m leaving the day after tomorrow again? . . . No, it has to be tomorrow . . . Tomorrow . . .

  A light woke him up, and he thought that it must be moonlight. It was dark in the house, and the lilac light was streaming through both the window and the door. He began to wonder how moonlight could be streaming through both the window and the door across from it, then it dawned on him that he was in the forest, where there couldn’t be a real moon, but then he immediately forgot about it, because the silhouette of a man appeared in the strip of light falling through the window. The man was standing there, in the house, with his back to Candide, and he was looking out the window, and Candide could see from the silhouette that the man was standing with his hands behind his back and his head bowed—an attitude completely alien to the forest inhabitants, simply because they never had any reason to stand like this—and also precisely the way that Karl Etingof had liked to stand in front of the laboratory windows on foggy, rainy days, when they couldn’t do their work. And it came to him with complete certainty that this was Karl Etingof himself, who had gone into the forest long ago, had never been seen at the biological research station again, and had been officially declared missing. He felt breathless with agitation and screamed, “Karl!” Karl turned toward him slowly, the lilac light passed across his face, and Candide saw that this wasn’t Karl but some unfamiliar local villager. He silently approached Candide and bent over him, keeping his hands clasped behind his back, and Candide got a good look at his face, a haggard, beardless face, nothing like Karl’s. He didn’t say a word and apparently didn’t even notice Candide, stood up straight, and walked toward the door, still stooping, and as he was crossing the threshold, Candide realized that this was Karl after all, sprang up, and ran after him.

  He stopped right outside the door and looked up and down the street, trying to control the unpleasant nervous shaking that had suddenly taken hold of him. It was very light out, because a glowing lilac sky hung low over the village, making all the houses look completely flat and unreal. A peculiar long building, resembling nothing he’d ever seen in the forest, towered diagonally across the street, and people were milling around next to it. The man who looked like Karl was walking alone toward this building; he approached the crowd and was absorbed by it, disappearing into it like he’d never been there at all. Candide also wanted to come closer to the building, but his legs felt like jelly and he couldn’t walk an inch. He was surprised that legs like these could support him at all; afraid of falling down, he tried to grab on to something, but there was nothing to grab on to—he was surrounded by emptiness. “Karl,” he mumbled, swaying, “Karl, come back!” He repeated these words over and over and over again, then he screamed them loudly in despair, but nobody heard him, because at that very instant, someone let out a much louder scream, a pitiful and wild shriek, an obvious cry of pain, which made his ears ring and his eyes tear up, and he somehow immediately realized that the cry was coming from inside the long building, maybe because there was nowhere else it could be coming from.

  “Where’s Nava?” he screamed. “Where are you, little one?” He realized that he was about to lose her, that the time had come, that he was about to lose everything that was dear to him, everything that bound him to his life, and that he’d be left all alone. He turned around, about to rush back inside the house, and saw Nava, who was throwing back her head and slowly falling backward, and he caught her and picked her up, unable to understand what was happening to her. Her head was thrown back, and he could see her naked throat, the place where most people have a single dimple between the collarbones, and where Nava had two, and he would never see them again. Because the crying hadn’t stopped, and he knew that he had to go over there, to the place where they were screaming. And he knew very well that it would be heroic, because he’d carry her there himself, but he also knew that to them it wasn’t heroic at all but a completely normal and natural procedure, because they couldn’t understand what it meant—to hold your living, breathing, only daughter in your arms and to carry her yourself to the place where they were crying.

  The screaming suddenly stopped. Candide saw that he was already standing right next to the building, in the middle of the crowd, in the front of the square black door, and he tried to figure out what he was doing here with Nava in his arms, but he didn’t have the chance, because two women came out of the square black door with Karl at their side, all three of them frowning and looking displeased, and they stopped, continuing to talk. He could see their lips moving, and he could guess that they were arguing, that they were annoyed, but he didn’t understand the words—the only thing he managed to make out was the vaguely familiar word chiasma. Then one of the women, still in the middle of the conversation, turned toward the crowd and gestured, as if to invite them all inside the building. Candide said, “One second, one second . . .” Then he pulled Nava even closer to him. The loud crying began again, everyone began to move, the fat people began to hug each other, cling to each other, pet and caress each other, their eyes were dry and their lips were clamped shut, but they were the ones crying and screaming, saying good-bye, because these turned out to be men and women, and the men were saying good-bye to the women forever. No one dared to go first, so Candide went first, because he was brave, because he knew the meaning of the word duty, because he knew that there was no help for it anyway. But Karl looked at him and gave a barely noticeable shake of the head, and he was filled with an unbearable horror, because this wasn’t Karl after all, but he had understood and started walking backward, bumping against soft, slippery objects with his back. And when Karl shook his head again, he turned around, threw Nava over his shoulder, and ran on weak, rubbery legs along the bright, empty street, as if in a dream, not hearing any pursuing footsteps behind him.

  He came to when he ran into a tree. Nava shouted out, and he put her down on the ground. There was grass underfoot.

  The whole village was visible from here. There was a cone of glowing lilac mist hanging over it, and the houses looked blurry, as did the tiny figures of the people.

  “I c
an’t remember a thing,” said Nava. “Why are we here? I thought we already went to bed. Or is this all a dream?”

  Candide picked her up and carried her on and on and on, forcing his way through bushes and getting tangled in the grass, until he got to a place where it was completely dark. Then he kept going for a little while longer, put Nava down on the ground again, and sat nearby. They were surrounded by tall, warm grass, and it wasn’t damp at all—Candide had no idea the forest contained such dry and favorable spots. His head ached, he was very sleepy, and he didn’t want to think about anything; there was only a feeling of vast relief, because he had intended to do something horrible and hadn’t done it.

  “Silent Man,” Nava said sleepily, “you know, Silent Man, I finally remembered where I’d heard that language before. You spoke it yourself, back when you couldn’t think straight. Listen, Silent Man, maybe this is the village you came from? Maybe you’ve just forgotten? Because you were very sick then, Silent Man, you couldn’t think straight at all . . .”

  “Go to sleep,” said Candide. He didn’t want to think. He didn’t want to think about anything. Chiasma, he remembered. And he instantly fell asleep.

  Not quite instantly. He did manage to remember that it wasn’t Karl who had disappeared, it was Valentine, and Valentine was the one who had been officially declared missing, while Karl had died in the forest, and his body, which had been found by chance, was put inside a lead coffin and sent to the Mainland. But he thought that he had dreamed this.

  When he opened his eyes, Nava was still sleeping. She was lying on her stomach in a hollow between two tree roots, her face buried in the crook of her left elbow, her right arm flung off to the side, and Candide saw a thin, shiny object held loosely in her dirty little fist. At first he couldn’t figure out what it was; it only brought suddenly to mind the strange dreamlike night, and his fear, and his relief that something terrible hadn’t happened. And then he realized what this object was, and even its name unexpectedly bubbled up in his consciousness. It was a scalpel. He waited for a bit, verifying that the shape of the object corresponded to the sound of the word, dimly aware that there was nothing to verify, that he was right, but that this was utterly impossible, because both the scalpel’s shape and its name were absurdly incongruous with this world. He woke Nava up.

  Nava woke up, sat up, and immediately began to talk. “What a dry spot, I never thought places this dry existed, and look, nothing grows here but grass, Silent Man.” She stopped talking and brought the fist with the scalpel to her face. She stared at the scalpel for a second, then she squealed, frantically hurled it away, and sprang to her feet. They were both looking at it, and both were afraid. “What is that, Silent Man?” Nava whispered finally. “What a horrible thing . . . Or maybe it’s not a thing? Maybe it’s a plant? Look how dry it is here—maybe it grew here.”

  “Why is it horrible?” asked Candide.

  “Of course it’s horrible,” said Nava. “You should hold it . . . You try it, try holding it, then you’ll know why it’s horrible . . . I don’t know why it’s horrible myself . . .”

  Candide took the scalpel. The handle was still warm, but its sharp tip was cool; if you carefully traced it with your finger, you could find the place where it stopped being warm and became cold.

  “Where did you get it?” Candide asked.

  “I didn’t get it anywhere,” said Nava. “It must have climbed into my hand as I slept. See how cold it is? It probably wanted to get warm, so it climbed into my hand . . . I’ve never seen anything like this . . . this . . . I don’t even know what to call it. It probably isn’t actually a plant, it’s probably an animal, it might even have legs, but it’s tucking them away, and it’s so hard and so mean . . . Or maybe we’re still asleep, Silent Man?” She suddenly broke off and looked at Candide. “Weren’t we in the village last night? We were, we were, and that faceless man was there, and he kept thinking that I was a boy . . . And we were looking for a place to sleep . . . Yes, and then I woke up, you weren’t there, and I started feeling around me . . . That’s when it climbed into my fist!” she said. “And here’s the strange thing, Silent Man, I wasn’t a bit afraid of it then, just the opposite . . . I actually needed it for something . . .”

  “It was all a dream,” Candide said resolutely. His skin was crawling. He could now remember everything that had happened last night. Including Karl. And that inconspicuous shake of the head: run, while you still can. And the fact that the real Karl had been a surgeon.

  “Why aren’t you talking, Silent Man?” Nava asked anxiously, peering into his face. “What are you looking at?”

  Candide waved her off. “It was a dream,” he repeated sternly. “Forget about it. You’d better go look for food, and I’ll bury this thing.”

  “Do you know what I needed it for?” asked Nava. “I was supposed to do something . . .” She shook her head. “I don’t like that kind of dream,” she said. “Bury it nice and deep, or it’ll get out, crawl into the village, and frighten someone . . . You should put a stone on top of it, the heavier the better . . . All right, go bury it, and I’ll go look for food.” She sniffed the air. “There are berries nearby. That’s amazing, how can there be berries in such a dry place?”

  She ran off, sprinting swiftly and silently along the grass, and quickly disappeared behind the trees, while Candide stayed put, the scalpel lying in the palm of his hand. He didn’t bury it. He wrapped a tuft of grass around the blade and stuck it beneath his shirt. He now remembered everything, but he still couldn’t understand a thing. It had been a strange and awful dream, and somebody had been negligent enough to allow a scalpel to fall out of it. It’s too bad, he thought—my head is exceptionally clear today, but I still don’t understand a thing. That means I never will.

  Nava soon came back and poured out an entire heap of berries and a few large mushrooms from beneath her shirt.

  “I found a trail, Silent Man,” she said. “We shouldn’t go back to that village, what do we care about some village? Here’s what we should do, we should take that trail, and we’ll be sure to get somewhere. And when we get there, we’ll ask for directions to the Settlement, and everything will be fine. It’s amazing how much I want to get to the Settlement right now, I’ve never felt like that before. And let’s not go back to that sly village, I had a bad feeling about it from the first, we were right to leave, or we might have come to grief. If you ask me, we should have never gone there in the first place, the thieves did shout at us, telling us not to go there, shouting that we wouldn’t make it out alive, but you never do listen to anyone. So we almost came to grief because of you, we did . . . Why aren’t you eating? The mushrooms are filling, and the berries are tasty, you should rub them between your fingers, crumble them up, you’re just like a baby today. I remember now, my mom always told me that the best mushrooms grow in dry places, but back then, I didn’t understand what dry meant, my mom told me that lots of places used to be dry, like a good road is dry, that’s why she knew what it meant, but I didn’t know . . .”

  Candide tasted a mushroom, then ate it. The mushrooms really were good, as were the berries, and he felt more alive after eating. But he still didn’t know what to do. He didn’t want to go back to that village either. He tried to visualize the region as it had been described to him by Crookleg, who had sketched it on the ground with a stick, and he remembered that Crookleg had talked about a road to the City that was supposed to pass right through these parts. A very good road, Crookleg had said with regret, the most direct road to the City, but you can’t cross the bog to get to it, that’s the catch . . . He had lied. He had lied, the lame one. He had crossed the bog, and he had probably been to the City, too, but he had lied about it, for some reason. And maybe the trail that Nava found is that very same direct road? We’ll have to risk it. But first we do need to go back. We need to go back to that village . . .

  “We do have to go back, Nava,” he said, after they had finished eating.

  “Go back
where? To that sly village?” Nava got upset. “Why are telling me this, Silent Man? Haven’t we seen enough of that village? If there’s one thing I don’t like about you, Silent Man, it’s that there’s no coming to terms with you like with other, normal people . . . Didn’t we already decide that we aren’t going back to that village? I even found you a trail, I did, and here you are talking about going back again . . .”

  “We have to go back,” he repeated. “I don’t want to go back myself, Nava, but we have to. What if they can tell us the quickest way to the City?”

  “What do you mean, the City? I don’t want to go to the City, I want to go to the Settlement!”

  “Let’s just go straight to the City,” said Candide. “I can’t take it anymore.”

  “OK, fine,” said Nava. “Fine, let’s go to the City, that’s an even better idea, not like I’ve never been to the Settlement. Let’s go to the City, that’s fine by me, everything is fine by me, except for going back to that village . . . I don’t know about you, Silent Man, but if it were up to me, I’d never go back to that village.”

  “I feel that way, too,” he said. “But we have to go back. Don’t be angry, Nava, I don’t want to go back myself, you know.”

  “If you don’t want to go back, why go?”

  He neither wanted nor was able to explain to her why they should go. He got up and walked in the direction he thought the village lay without looking back. He walked along the warm, dry grass, past the warm, dry tree trunks, squinting in the warm, uncharacteristically abundant sunlight—he walked toward the horror that he had lived through, which made his muscles painfully tense up, toward a strange, quiet hope, which was managing to fight its way through the horror, like a blade of grass sprouting through a crack in the pavement.

  Nava caught up to him and began walking next to him. She was angry—she even stayed silent for a while—but eventually she couldn’t stand it any longer.