The Snail on the Slope Page 24

  “No, no, hang on,” Peretz said impatiently. “What Criminal Code? This has nothing to do with the Criminal Code! Did you read it?”

  “I didn’t just read it, I typed it up myself. And edited it for style. Bootlicherson doesn’t know how to write, you know—he only learned to read when he got here, at that . . . By the way, pookie,” she said anxiously, “Bootlicherson is waiting outside. Let him come in during breakfast, he likes that. He’ll make you sandwiches . . .”

  “Screw Bootlicherson!” Peretz said. “Tell me what I’m supposed—”

  “You can’t say ‘Screw Bootlicherson,’” objected Alevtina. “You’re still just my pookie, you don’t understand a thing . . .” She pressed on Peretz’s nose, as if to beep it. “Bootlicherson has two notebooks. In one notebook, he writes down the things that other people say, for the Director’s benefit, and in the other notebook, he writes down what the Director says. Keep that in mind, pookie, and don’t you ever forget it.”

  “Hold on,” said Peretz. “I want to talk to you. I won’t sign this directive . . . this gibberish.”

  “What do you mean, you won’t?”

  “I just won’t. I can’t bring myself to sign a thing like that.”

  Alevtina’s face became stern. “Pookie,” she said. “Don’t be stubborn. Sign it. It’s very urgent. I’ll explain it all to you later, but now you have to—”

  “What’s to explain?” said Peretz.

  “Well, since you don’t understand, it needs to be explained to you. So I’ll explain it to you later.”

  “No, explain it to me now,” said Peretz. “If you can,” he added. “Which I doubt.”

  “Ooh, look how fierce he is,” said Alevtina, and kissed him on the temple. She glanced anxiously at her watch. “All right, all right, if you insist.”

  She sat down on top of the desk, put her hands underneath her, and began, narrowing her eyes and looking over Peretz’s head. “There exists administrative work, and on this work everything else rests. This work did not come into being yesterday or today—the base of this vector goes back deep into the past. To date, it has been given material form through existing orders and directives. But it also stretches far into the future, where it is still only awaiting manifestation. It is like building a highway along a planned route. At the end of the asphalted segment stands a surveyor, with his back to the completed road, and he looks into his theodolite. You are that surveyor. The imaginary line corresponding to the optical axis of the theodolite is the part of the administrative vector that has not yet been manifested, you are the only person who can see it, and it falls to you to give it material form. Do you understand?”

  “No,” Peretz said firmly.

  “It doesn’t matter, keep listening . . . Just as a highway cannot turn left or right at will but must follow the optical axis of the theodolite, so each next directive must serve as a continuation of all the preceding directives . . . Pookie, darling, don’t try to delve into it too deeply—I don’t understand it myself—but that’s for the best, really, because delving deeply begets doubt, doubt begets stasis, and stasis means the end of all administrative activity, and therefore the end of you and me and everything else . . . This isn’t rocket science. If we don’t have a single day without a directive, things will be all right. This directive here about establishing order—it’s not coming out of the blue, it’s tied up with a preceding directive about nondecrease, and that one is tied up with the order about nonpregnancy, which follows from the regulation about excessive perturbability . . .”

  “What the hell!” said Peretz. “Show me all these orders and regulations . . . No, better still, show me the very first order, the one that’s deep in the past.”

  “My goodness, what for?”

  “What do you mean, what for? You’re telling me that they follow logically. I don’t believe it!”

  “Pookie,” Alevtina said. “You’ll get to see it all. I’ll show it all to you. You’ll read it all with those nearsighted eyes of yours. But you have to understand: there was no directive the day before yesterday; there was no directive yesterday, unless you count that piddling little order about the machine, which was oral at that . . . How long do you think the Administration can manage without directives? Everything’s already topsy-turvy this morning: people are going around everywhere changing burned-out lightbulbs, can you believe it? No, pookie, suit yourself, but you have to sign the directive. I only want what’s best for you, you know. Sign it quick, meet with the team leaders, give them a pep talk, then I’ll bring you anything you like. You can read it, study it, delve into it . . . Although it’s best if you don’t delve too deeply, of course.”

  Peretz clutched his cheeks and shook his head. Alevtina jumped nimbly down from the desk, dipped the quill into Venus’s cranium, and handed Peretz the pen. “Go on, darling, write, quick . . .”

  Peretz took the pen. “But I’ll be able to revoke it later?” he asked plaintively.

  “You will, pookie, you will,” Alevtina said, and Peretz saw that she was lying. He hurled the pen aside.

  “No,” he said. “No, no, no. I won’t sign this. Why in the world would I sign this gibberish, when there are probably dozens of sensible and reasonable orders, decrees, and directives that would be absolutely necessary, actually necessary, in this loony bin?”

  “Such as?” Alevtina said quickly.

  “My goodness . . . You name it . . . For God’s sake . . . Even . . .”

  Alevtina took out a notebook.

  “Even . . . Even the order,” said Peretz with incredible vitriol, “instructing the employees of the Eradication Team to self-eradicate as soon as possible. There we go! Let them all throw themselves off the cliff . . . or shoot themselves . . . Today! And put Bootlicherson in charge . . . I swear, that’d do more good . . .”

  “One second,” said Alevtina. “So they have to commit suicide by firearm before twenty-four hundred hours today. Bootlicherson is in charge.” She closed the notebook and thought it over. Peretz was watching her, stupefied. “And why not?” she said. “Good idea! That’s even more progressive . . . Darling, do try to understand: if you don’t like the directive, don’t sign it. But then give me another one. You gave me another one, and now I’m content.” She jumped off the desk and started bustling around, putting plates in front of Peretz.

  “The crepes are in here, the jam is in here . . . The coffee’s in the thermos—it’s hot, careful not to burn yourself . . . Have some food, and I’ll throw a draft together and bring it to you in half an hour.”

  “Wait,” said Peretz, dumbstruck. “Wait . . .”

  “You’re a clever one,” Alevtina said fondly. “You’re doing great. Just be nicer to Bootlicherson, that’s all.”

  “Wait,” said Peretz. “You’re kidding, right?”

  Alevtina ran to the door, and Peretz rushed after her, shouting “You’re out of your mind!” but he didn’t catch her. Alevtina had vanished and Bootlicherson had materialized in her place, like a ghost. He had already cleaned himself up, his hair was slicked back, he was again his normal color, and he was still willing to do anything.

  “This is brilliant,” he said quietly, nudging Peretz back toward the table, “this is marvelous. This is certain to go down in history . . .”

  Peretz backed away from him, as if he were a monstrous centipede, and bumped into the table, knocking Tannhäuser onto Venus.

  11.

  CANDIDE

  He woke up, opened his eyes, and stared at the low, lime-encrusted ceiling. Worker ants were again walking across the ceiling. The ones going right to left were carrying things, and the ones going left to right were unencumbered. A month ago, it was the other way around; a month ago, Nava was still here. And nothing else had changed. We’re leaving the day after tomorrow, he thought.

  The old man was sitting at the table and looking at him, rooting around in his ear. The old man had gotten very haggard—his eyes were sunken in, and he had almost no teeth left. He
was probably going to die soon, this old man.

  “What is happening, Silent Man?” the old man said in a whiny voice. “You do not have a single thing to eat. Since Nava has been taken from you, you never have food in the house anymore. Nothing in the morning, and nothing at lunch, and I did warn you—do not go, it is wrong. Why did you choose to go? You must have listened to too many of Crookleg’s stories and left, but does Crookleg understand what is right and what is wrong? He does not, and his father was the same way, and his grandfather was just as slow-witted, and so were all of Crookleg’s ancestors, and that is why they are all dead, and Crookleg himself will surely die, there is no getting around it . . . Maybe you do have some food, Silent Man, maybe you just hid it, eh? A lot of them do hide it . . . If you did hide it, then you should take it out, quick, because I am hungry, I cannot do without food—all my life I have been eating, it has become a habit . . . Now that your Nava is gone, and Tagalong has been killed by that tree, things have been rough . . . Tagalong—now there was a man who always had plenty of food! I used to eat three pots in one sitting at his house, although it was never any good, it was not fully fermented, that is probably why he got killed by that tree . . . I did tell him—it is wrong to eat such food . . .”

  Candide got up and looked through Nava’s old hiding spots. There was really no food. Then he went outside, turned left, and headed in the direction of the square, toward Big Fist’s house. The old man trailed behind him, sniveling and whining. Bored, discordant shouts were coming from the field: “Hey, hey, sow, be merry, we have all these seeds to bury . . .” Echoes rang in the woods. Every morning, Candide now imagined that the forest had gotten closer during the night. This couldn’t really be true, and even if it was, it was unlikely to be observable by the human eye. And there probably weren’t actually more deadlings in the forest than before; it just seemed like it. And this was was probably because Candide now knew exactly what they were, and because he hated them. Whenever a deadling emerged from the forest, there would immediately be shouts of “Silent Man! Silent Man!” And he would go there and destroy the deadling with his scalpel—quickly, reliably, with cruel enjoyment. The whole village would rush over to gawk at this spectacle, invariably gasping in unison and hiding behind their hands when the steam-shrouded body opened wide along the length of the terrible incision. Kids no longer teased Silent Man; they were now scared to death of him and ran away and hid whenever he appeared. In the evenings, the villagers whispered furtively about the scalpel inside their houses, and at the behest of the shrewd village head, people had begun to use the deadling hides to make serving troughs. These troughs turned out well—they were big and durable . . .

  Hearer was standing ramrod straight in the middle of the square, waist-high in the grass. He was enveloped by a lilac cloud, his palms were turned up, his eyes were glassy, and he was foaming at the mouth. He was surrounded by a crowd of curious children, who were watching and listening with their mouths open—they never got tired of this spectacle. Candide also stopped to listen, and the children vanished into thin air.

  “New forces keep entering the battle . . .” Hearer was raving in a metallic voice. “A successful relocation . . . Vast peaceful regions . . . New squads of helpmates . . . Peace and fusion . . .”

  Candide kept going. His head was fairly clear this morning, and he felt able to think, so he began to think about who he was, this Hearer, and what he was for. It now made sense to think about it, because Candide now knew a few things, and it occasionally even seemed to him that he knew quite a lot, if not everything. Every village has its own hearer: we have a hearer, and the Settlement has a hearer, and the old man keeps boasting that the now-mushroomy village used to have a hearer who was really something special. There had probably existed a time when many people knew what the Surpassment was and understood what the successes in question were, and at that time they had probably been interested in having many people know about it, or at least they thought that they were interested in that. But then it turned out that they could manage perfectly well without the vast majority of these people, that all these villages had been a mistake, and that the men were merely goats . . . This had happened when they learned to control the lilac fog, and when the first deadlings emerged from the lilac clouds . . . and the first villages found themselves at the bottoms of triangular lakes . . . and the first squads of helpmates appeared . . . But the hearers remained and the tradition continued, a tradition that had never been abolished simply because they had forgotten about it. This tradition was meaningless, as meaningless as this entire forest, with its synthetic monsters, its cities that rained destruction, and its sinister Amazons, the priestesses of parthenogenesis, the cruel and self-satisfied mistresses of viruses, the puffy, steam-bloated rulers of the forest . . . as meaningless as the endless hustle and bustle in the jungle, all those Great Soil Loosenings and Waterloggings, an endeavor monstrous in its scope and absurdity . . .

  His thoughts flowed freely, almost automatically—in the course of the previous month, they had managed to carve familiar, permanent channels in his brain, and Candide knew ahead of time what emotion he would feel next. This is what they call “thinking” in our village. I’m about to feel doubt . . . I didn’t even see anything. I met three forest witches. But you never know who you’ll meet in the forest. I witnessed the destruction of the sly village, a hill that looked like a factory of living things, the merciless execution of an armeater . . . Destruction, factory, execution . . . These are my words, my concepts . . . Even Nava thought that the destruction of the village wasn’t destruction—it was the Surpassment . . . But I don’t know what the Surpassment is. I’m afraid of it, I’m disgusted by it, but that’s merely because it’s alien to me, and perhaps the correct phrase is not “mercilessly and pointlessly siccing the forest on people” but “a masterful, highly organized, carefully crafted offensive by the present on the past,” and maybe even “a recently matured and invigorated present attacking an obsolete, rotting past” at that. Not depravity but a revolution. A law of nature. A law that I’m watching from the outside with the biased eyes of a stranger—a stranger who doesn’t understand a thing, and for that very reason imagines that he understands everything and has the right to judge. Like a little boy furious at the mean old rooster who is cruelly trampling the poor little hen beneath his feet . . .

  He glanced at Hearer, who was sitting in the grass with his usual dazed expression, shaking his head back and forth and trying to remember where and what he was. A living radio. Therefore, there are also living radio transmitters . . . and living tools, and living robots, yes—for example, the deadlings . . . Why don’t I feel a single ounce of sympathy toward this splendidly crafted, wonderfully organized undertaking—only hatred and disgust?

  Big Fist silently came up behind him and gave him a crack between the shoulder blades. “Standing there and staring, fur and fuzz it,” he said. “One guy, he also used to stare, then they twisted his arms and legs off, now he doesn’t stare anymore. When are we leaving, eh, Silent Man? How long are you planning to pull my leg? You know, the old woman took off, went to live somewhere else, fur and fuzz it, I had to sleep at the village head’s for three nights running myself, and I’m thinking of spending tonight with Tagalong’s widow. The food has gotten so rotten that even that old fart doesn’t want it, he just makes faces and says, your food’s all rotten, fur and fuzz it, I can barely stand to smell it, never mind eat it . . . But I won’t go to the Devil’s Cliffs, Silent Man, I’ll go to the City with you instead, we’ll get ourselves some women. If we run into the thieves, they can have half the women, I’m not greedy, fur and fuzz it, and we’ll bring the rest of them back to the village, we will, so they can live here, they shouldn’t be swimming over there for nothing. One woman, she also used to swim and swim, she got a good smack in the face, now she never swims anymore, can’t even stand the sight of water, fur and fuzz it . . . Listen, Silent Man, maybe you were lying about the City and those women? Or mayb
e you imagined it—the thieves took Nava from you, so you imagined it in your grief. Crookleg doesn’t believe it, you know—he thinks you imagined it. How could the City be in a lake, fur and fuzz it? Everyone says it’s on a hill, not in a lake. How could you even live in a lake, fur and fuzz it? We’d all drown in there, it’s full of water, fur and fuzz it, there are women in there, but so what—I won’t get in the water even for a woman, I don’t know how to swim, and anyway, why should I? But at least I can stay on shore as you drag them out . . . So here’s what we’ll do, you’ll go in the water, fur and fuzz it, and I’ll stay on shore, and we’ll be done in no time . . .”

  “Did you make yourself a cudgel?” Candide asked.

  “And where am I supposed to get a cudgel in the forest, fur and fuzz it?” argued Big Fist. “I’d have to walk over to the swamp to get a cudgel. And I don’t have the time, I’m guarding the food so that old man doesn’t get his paws on it, and what do I need a cudgel for, anyway, when I’m not planning to get into any fights . . . One guy, he also used to get in fights, fur and fuzz it—”

  “All right,” said Candide, “I’ll make you a cudgel myself. We’re leaving the day after tomorrow, don’t you forget.”

  He turned around and went back. Big Fist hadn’t changed. None of them had changed. However hard he tried to drum it into them, they didn’t understand a thing, and they appeared not to believe a word: The deadlings can’t be working for women, that’s a real tall tale you’re telling, pal, three men together couldn’t get to the top of it. Deadlings scare women half to death, you take a look at the old woman, then you can talk. And the village sinking underwater, that was the Surpassment, everyone knows that already, you don’t need to tell us that, and what those women of yours have to do with it, I don’t know . . . And anyway, Silent Man, you didn’t get to the City, come on, admit it, we won’t be mad at you, since you’ve spun such an amusing yarn. But you didn’t get to the City, we all know that, because the people who make it to the City don’t come back . . . And it wasn’t women who took your Nava, it was the thieves, our usual local thieves. You would never have fought off the thieves, Silent Man. Though you’re a brave man, of course, and you sure can manage those deadlings—it’s almost too awful to watch . . .