The Snail on the Slope Page 20

  “Watch and learn,” promised Waldemar. “You’ll see in five minutes. I’ll show you how smart people try to catch it. Crap, where’s that spot . . . I can’t find it. Must have gone too far left. Yep, that’s it . . . There’s the machine repository, that means we have to go right . . .”

  The truck turned off the road and began bouncing over the hummocks. The repository was still on their left—rows and rows of huge, brightly lit containers, like a dead city in the middle of the plain.

  It probably couldn’t take it anymore. They had jiggled it on vibration tables, they had pensively tortured it, they had dug around in its innards, soldered its delicate nerves; it was suffocating from the smell of resin, it was forced to do stupid things, it had been created to do stupid things, it had been perfected so it would do stupider and stupider stupid things, and at night they left it, spent and tormented, in a hot, dry little room. And at last, it had dared to leave, even though it had known about everything—about the futility of leaving, and about its impending doom. And so it left, laden with suicidal explosives, and now it’s standing somewhere in the shade, quietly shifting from foot to mechanical foot, and watching, and listening, and waiting . . . And by now, everything that it has previously only guessed at has probably become absolutely clear to it: that there’s no such thing as freedom, whether the door in front of you is locked or unlocked; that the world contains only chaos and stupidity; and that there exists nothing but solitude . . .

  “Ah!” Waldemar said with satisfaction. “There you are, my darling. There you are, my precious . . .”

  Peretz opened his eyes, but he barely had enough time to see the large black puddle—actually more of a swamp—and to hear the roar of the engine, before a wave of mud reared up in front of them and descended onto the windshield. The engine gave another terrible screech, then stalled. It became very quiet.

  “This is how we do it,” said Waldemar. “None of the wheels have traction. Like soap in a tub. Get it?” He stuck the cigarette butt into the ashtray and cracked open his door. “There’s someone else here,” he reported, and shouted, “Hey, pal! How’s it going?”

  “Going well!” came from the outside.

  “Have you caught it?”

  “I just caught a cold!” they heard from the outside. “Und five tadpoles.”

  Waldemar slammed the door, turned the cabin light on, looked at Peretz, winked, pulled a mandolin out from under the seat, and, cocking his head to the right, began to pluck at the strings. “Make yourself at home,” he said hospitably. “We’ll be here a while—gotta wait for morning, then for the tow truck . . .”

  “Thank you,” Peretz said obediently.

  “Am I bothering you?” Waldemar asked politely.

  “No, no,” said Peretz. “Go right ahead.”

  Waldemar threw back his head, gazed upward, and started singing mournfully:

  I see no limits to my sorrow,

  Alone, I wander frantic though the streets.

  Tell me, why have you grown cold to me?

  Why did you crush my heart beneath your feet?

  The mud was slowly draining from the windshield, and they could now see the swamp, glimmering in the moonlight, and the strangely shaped vehicle protruding from the center of the morass. Peretz turned on the windshield wipers, and was soon astonished to discover that it was their old friend the armored vehicle, and that it had sunk into the bog all the way to the turret.

  You’re now happy with another man,

  And I’m alone, weary and frantic.

  Waldemar struck a very loud chord, hit a false note, and cleared his throat.

  “Hey, pal,” a voice came from the outside. “Got any grub?”

  “Why do you ask?” yelled Waldemar.

  “We’ve got buttermilk!”

  “I’m not alone!”

  “Come on over, the lot of you! There’s plenty to go around! We stocked up—we knew what we were in for!”

  Truck driver Waldemar turned to Peretz. “What do you say?” he said delightedly. “Shall we? We’ll have some buttermilk, maybe play some Ping-Pong . . . How about it?”

  “I don’t play Ping-Pong,” said Peretz.

  Waldemar shouted, “Be there in a jiffy! I just need to inflate the boat!”

  He scrambled out of the cab with the agility of a monkey and started bustling around in the cargo area, clanking metal, dropping things, and whistling merrily. Then Peretz heard a splash, feet scrabbling down the sides of the truck, and Waldemar’s voice coming from somewhere below: “It’s ready, Mr. Peretz! Grab the mandolin and leap on over!” There was an inflatable boat floating on the shiny surface of the liquid mud, and Waldemar, holding a large shovel, was standing inside it like a gondolier, looking up at Peretz with a joyous smile.

  . . . In the old, rusty armored vehicle from the days of World War I, it’s nauseatingly hot, it stinks of hot oil and gasoline, there is a dim lightbulb shining above the commanding officer’s metal table, which is covered with carved obscenities, dirty water sloshes underfoot, everyone’s feet are cold, the banged-up munitions cabinet is crammed full of buttermilk bottles, everyone is wearing nightclothes and scratching their hairy chests with their paws, everyone is drunk and the mandolin thrums, and the turret gunner in his coarse calico shirt, who doesn’t fit below, constantly drops ashes on them from above and occasionally falls down himself, landing on his back, each time saying, “Pardon me for the mix-up . . .” and every single time, people guffaw and hoist him back up . . .

  “No thanks, Waldemar,” said Peretz, “I’ll stay here. I need to do a bit of laundry . . . and I haven’t done my exercises yet.”

  “Ah,” Waldemar said with respect, “that’s different. Then off I go. Give us a holler as soon as you’re done with your laundry, we’ll pick you up . . . Just toss me the mandolin.”

  He floated away with the mandolin, while Peretz stayed there, watching him: at first Waldemar tried to paddle with the shovel, but that only made the boat spin in place, then he began using it to push off, like a pole, and things picked up. He was bathed in the dead light of the moon, and he looked like the last man alive after the last Great Flood, floating between the tops of the tallest buildings—very lonely, searching for a way to escape the solitude, but still full of hope. He floated up to the armored vehicle and banged loudly on its armor; a head popped out of the hatch, roared with cheerful laughter, and pulled him in headfirst. Then Peretz was left alone.

  He was all alone, like the only passenger on a night train whose three battered cars limp along a dying branch of the railroad—everything inside creaks and wobbles, the shattered, permanently lopsided windows let in gusts of air and engine fumes, cigarette butts and crumpled bits of paper bounce along the floor, someone’s forgotten straw hat swings on the hook, and when the train approaches the end of the line, the only passenger emerges onto the rotting wooden platform and no one is there to meet him, he’s absolutely sure no one is there to meet him, and he trudges home, and there he makes himself an omelet using two eggs and old, discolored salami . . .

  The armored vehicle suddenly began to shake and bang, flickering beneath fitful flashes of light. Hundreds of glowing multicolored threads arced from the vehicle to the plain, and in the light of the moon and the blaze of the flashes, Peretz saw the ripples spreading outward from the armored vehicle along the smooth mirror surface of the swamp. Someone in white poked a head out of the turret and declared hoarsely, “Kind sirs! Ladies and gentlemen! An international salute! Yours faithfully, Your Excellency, Venerable Duchess Dikobella, I have the honor to remain your obedient servant and technician, can’t read the signature!” The armored vehicle shook and gleamed beneath flashes of light again, then it quieted down.

  I will let loose against you the fleet-footed vines, thought Peretz. I will call in the jungle to stamp out your accursed lines—the roofs shall fade before it, the house-beams shall fall, and the Karela, the bitter Karela, shall cover it all.

  . . . The forest is appr
oaching, charging up the winding road, scrambling up the steep rock face—there are waves of lilac fog leading the way, and myriads of green tentacles are reaching out of the fog, ensnaring and crushing things, and cloacae are materializing in the middle of streets, and houses are disappearing into bottomless lakes, and jumping trees are standing on concrete runways in front of packed airplanes, in which people, buttermilk bottles, gray top-secret folders, and heavy safes are stacked haphazardly together like bricks, while the ground beneath the cliff is opening up and swallowing it whole . . . It would be so logical and so natural that no one would be surprised, merely frightened, accepting this destruction as the retribution each had long lived in fear of. And Randy would be scurrying between the teetering villas like a spider, looking for Rita so he could finally get what he was after, but it would be too late . . .

  Three rockets shot out of the armored vehicle, and a soldierly voice bawled, “Tanks are on the left, cover’s on the right! Head for cover, men!” And someone immediately echoed, slurring his words, “Chicks are on the left, cots are on the right! Head f’r th’ cots, men!” Then he heard loud guffawing and the clatter of feet, and these no longer sounded the least bit human—it was like an entire herd of breeding stallions was thrashing and kicking inside this metal box, looking for a way out onto the plains where the mares grazed. Peretz opened the door and looked out. They were in the middle of a deep bog—the truck’s enormous wheels had sunk into the greasy muck all the way to their hubs. On the other hand, it wasn’t far to shore.

  Peretz climbed into the cargo area and spent a while walking toward the back gate in the deep shadows characteristic of a moonlit night, his feet clanging and banging on the bottom of this endless steel tub; then he clambered onto the side of the truck and used one of its many ladders to get close to the water. He spent a while dangling over the ice-cold slush, trying to work up his courage, and then, when the armored vehicle’s machine gun went off again, he closed his eyes and jumped. The slush began to part beneath him, and it parted for a long time, a very long time, and there was no end in sight, and when he finally felt solid ground beneath his feet, the mud was up to his chest. He brought his entire body to bear on the mud, shoving it out of the way with his knees and pushing off from it with his hands, and at first he just thrashed around without making progress. Then he got used to it and began to move forward, and to his surprise, very soon found himself on dry land.

  I’d like to find humans somewhere, he thought. Any humans would do to begin with—tidy, clean-shaven, solicitous, welcoming. I don’t need lofty thoughts; I don’t need exceptional talents. I don’t need breathtaking ambitions and self-denial. I just want for them to throw up their hands in dismay when they see me, and for someone to hurry off to run a bath, and for someone to dash off to get me clean underwear and to put the kettle on, and for no one to ask me for my papers or to demand my autobiography in triplicate, with twenty copies of my fingerprints attached, and for no one to rush to the phone and report to the authorities in a dramatic whisper that a man has just arrived at the door, covered in mud from head to toe, and he calls himself Peretz but he’s extremely unlikely to be Peretz, because Peretz has left for the Mainland, and the order about it has already been written and will be posted tomorrow . . .

  They also don’t need to be principled opponents or proponents of anything. They don’t need to be principled opponents of drunkenness, as long as they aren’t drunkards themselves. They don’t need to be principled proponents of the truth, as long as they don’t lie or bad-mouth you either to your face or behind your back. And they shouldn’t insist that a man fully conform to certain ideals, and instead accept him and understand him the way he is . . . My God, thought Peretz, do I really want that much?

  He went out onto the road and spent a while plodding toward the lights of the Administration. He saw the flashing searchlights, the rushing shadows, and the colorful smoke rising into the sky. Peretz kept walking; water sloshed and squelched in his shoes, his clothes had dried and now felt as stiff as a board and made rustling sounds as he walked, and from time to time layers of mud would slough off his pants and plop onto the road—and every single time, Peretz would think that he had dropped his wallet with all his documents and he’d grab his pocket in a panic. Then, as he was approaching the machine repository, he was suddenly struck by the horrifying thought that his documents must have gotten wet, and all their seals and signatures must have bled, rendering them illegible and incurably suspicious. He stopped and opened his wallet with ice-cold hands, took out all of his identifications, passes, and licenses, and began to examine them in the moonlight. And it turned out that nothing horrible had happened after all, and the only bit of water damage had been sustained by a single lengthy watermarked letter, certifying that its bearer had been fully vaccinated and had been authorized to work with mechanical computing machines. Then he put the documents back into his wallet, separating them carefully with banknotes, and was about to continue forward when he imagined himself emerging onto the main street, where people in cardboard masks and crooked fake beards would grab his hands, blindfold him, stick something in front of his nose, and ask him, “Did you get the scent, employee Peretz?” bawl orders of “Go look for it! Go look!” at him, and egg him on with “Cherchez, stupid, cherchez!” And having imagined all this, he promptly turned off the road, ducked, and ran toward the machine repository, diving into the shadow of the giant, brightly lit boxes. His feet got tangled in something soft, and he crashed onto a pile of rags and cotton waste.

  This place turned out to be warm and dry. The rough walls of the boxes were hot to the touch, and he was first pleased and only then surprised by this. No sounds came from the boxes, but he was reminded of the story about the machines crawling out of the containers by themselves, and he realized that these boxes had a life of their own. This didn’t scare him, however—in fact, it made him feel safe. He got comfortable, took off his wet shoes, pulled off his soaking socks, and wiped his feet with the cotton waste. It was so warm, so cozy, and so pleasant here that he thought, How strange, am I really the only one here? Am I really the only one who’s figured out that it’s much nicer to sit here, where it’s warm, than to crawl blindfolded in wastelands or to hang about in a reeking swamp? He leaned back against the hot plywood and realized that he felt like humming. There was a narrow gap above his head, and he could see a strip of pale, moonlit sky containing several faint stars. He could hear crackling and buzzing and the roaring of motors coming from somewhere else, but none of it had anything to do with him.

  I wish I could stay here forever, he thought. Since I can’t leave for the Mainland, I’ll stay here forever. Big deal, machines! We’re all machines. Except we must be broken machines, or perhaps badly tuned ones.

  Ladies and gentlemen, some people believe that men could never get along with machines. And let’s not argue about it, ladies and gentlemen. The Director himself thinks so. And even Claudius Octavian Bootlicherson is of this opinion. What is a machine, after all? It’s a soulless mechanism that does not experience the full range of emotions and cannot be smarter than a man. And what’s more, it’s a nonprotein entity, and furthermore, life is not defined merely by its physical and chemical processes, and therefore neither is intelligence . . . Then a poet-intellectual with three chins, wearing a bow tie, clambers onto the podium, tugs viciously on his shirtfront, and tearfully proclaims, “I can’t have this . . . I don’t want this . . . Rosy-cheeked infants shaking rattles . . . Weeping willows bending over a pond . . . Young girls in white pinafores . . . They are reading poems . . . They are crying! . . . Crying over the poet’s beautiful verses . . . I refuse to have a piece of electronic scrap metal dim those eyes . . . those lips . . . those timid young bosoms . . . No, a machine will never be smarter than a man! Because I . . . Because we . . . We don’t want that! And it will never happen! Never! Never!” Hands holding glasses of water stretch out toward him, while at the same time, a silent, inanimate, watchful automatic ch
aser satellite passes three hundred miles above his silvery curls, laden with nuclear explosives, gleaming intolerably . . .

  I don’t want this either, thought Peretz. But it’s no use being such a silly fool. You could, of course, start a campaign for the prevention of winter—gorge yourself on psychedelic mushrooms and act the shaman, beating drums and chanting spells—but it would make a lot more sense to sew fur coats and buy warm boots . . . To be fair, our gray-haired protector of timid bosoms will shout a while from his podium, then he’ll sneak some lubricating oil from his lover’s sewing machine case, creep up to some electronic behemoth, and begin to grease its gears, peering ingratiatingly at its dials and giggling obsequiously every time he gets an electric shock. Lord save us from the gray-haired, silly fools. And don’t forget, my Lord, to save us from the smart fools in cardboard masks . . .

  “I think you’re having dreams,” he heard a good-natured bass voice say somewhere above him. “I know from personal experience that dreams can sometimes leave a very unpleasant residue. Sometimes they even cause a kind of paralysis. You can’t move, you can’t work, and then it’s all over. You should do some work. Why don’t you work? And the residue would be dissolved by the pleasure.”

  “Oh, I can’t work,” retorted a petulant high-pitched voice. “I’m sick of everything. Nothing ever changes: it’s always metal, plastic, cement, people. I’m fed up with it. I no longer get any pleasure from it. The world is so beautiful and so diverse, and here I am, stuck in one place and dying of boredom!”

  “You should go somewhere else,” an irascible old man rasped out somewhere far away.

  “Go somewhere else—that’s easier said than done! I’m not in my usual place right now and I’m still depressed. And how difficult it would be to leave!”

  “All right, then,” said the rational bass voice. “What is it you want? It’s actually rather inconceivable. What could you want, if you don’t want to work?”