The Snail on the Slope Read online

  “I’m not a forest scholar,” Peretz said earnestly. “They won’t let me in the forest. I don’t know the forest.”

  Proconsul, nodding absentmindedly, was quickly writing something on the cuff of his shirt. “Yes,” he was saying, “yes, yes. Unfortunately, that is the bitter truth. Unfortunately, we still encounter this—bureaucracy, red tape, a heuristic approach to the individual . . . You may talk about that too, by the way. You may, you may, everybody talks about it. And I’ll try to get your presentation cleared with the Board of Directors. I’m damn glad, Peretz, that you are finally getting involved in our work. I’ve been watching you closely for a long time . . . There we go, I scheduled you for next week.”

  Peretz turned off the arithmometer. “I won’t be here next week. My visa’s expiring, and I’m leaving. Tomorrow.”

  “Oh, we’ll figure something out. I’ll talk to the Director, he’s a member of our club himself, he’ll understand. Count on staying another week.”

  “Please don’t do that,” Peretz said. “Please!”

  “But I have to!” said Proconsul, looking into his eyes. “You know perfectly well, Peretz: I have to! Good-bye.” He made a military salute and left, swinging his briefcase.

  “What a tangled web,” said Peretz. “Do they think I’m a fly or something? The garage foreman doesn’t want me to leave, neither does Alevtina, now here’s another one.”

  “I don’t want you to leave either,” said Kim.

  “But I can’t stand it here anymore!”

  “Seven eighty-seven multiplied by four thirty-two . . .”

  I’m still leaving, thought Peretz, pressing buttons. I’m still leaving. You don’t want me to, but I’m still leaving. I won’t play Ping-Pong with you, I won’t play chess with you, I won’t sleep with you or have tea and jam with you; I don’t want to sing you songs anymore, do calculations on your arithmometer, help mediate your disputes, and now, on top of everything, give you lectures that you won’t even understand. And I won’t think for you—think for yourself—and I’m leaving. Either way, there’s nothing I can do to make you realize that thinking isn’t a diversion, it’s a responsibility . . .

  Outside, behind the unfinished wall, the pile driver was banging, the jackhammers were pounding, and bricks were clattering down. Four workers—naked from the waist up and wearing caps—were sitting side by side on top of the wall and smoking. Then a motorcycle roared and sputtered right beneath the window.

  “Must be someone from the forest,” said Kim. “Quick, multiply sixteen by sixteen for me—”

  A man yanked open the door and rushed into the room. He was wearing a hazmat suit, and his unfastened hood dangled at his chest on the cord of his walkie-talkie. Above the shoes and below the waist, the hazmat suit bristled with pale pink young shoots, and its right leg was ensnared by an endless orange vine that was dragging on the floor. The vine was still twitching, and Peretz imagined that it was a tentacle of the forest, and that it would soon flex and drag the man back—through the corridors of the Administration, down the stairs, across the yard, past the wall, past the cafeteria and the workshops, then down again, along the dusty street, through the park, past the statues and pavilions, toward the winding road, toward the gates, but then passing them on the outside, going toward the cliff, down, down, down . . .

  He was wearing motorcycle goggles, his face was caked with dust, and Peretz didn’t immediately realize that this was Stoyan Stoyanov from the biological research station. There was a large paper package in his hand. He took a few steps along the tiled floor, along the mosaic of a showering woman, and stopped in front of Kim, hiding the paper package behind his back and jerking his head in a strange way, as if his neck was itchy.

  “Kim,” he said. “It’s me.”

  Kim didn’t answer. His pen was audibly scratching and ripping the paper.

  “Kimmy,” Stoyan said obsequiously. “I’m begging you.”

  “Get out of here,” said Kim. “Lunatic.”

  “One last time,” said Stoyan. “The very last time.” He jerked his head again, and on his scrawny shaved neck, right in the groove at the nape, Peretz saw a short, pinkish shoot—very thin, sharp, already curling into a spiral, and trembling as if with greed.

  “You just give it to her and say that it’s from Stoyan, that’s all. If she asks you to the movies, lie and say that you urgently have to work tonight. If she tries to give you tea, tell her you just had some. And refuse the wine, too, if she offers. Eh? Kimmy? The very lastest time!”

  “Why are you squirming?” Kim asked maliciously. “Turn around!”

  “Did I bring one in again?” Stoyan asked, turning around. “Ah well, it doesn’t matter. Just give this to her, nothing else matters.”

  Kim, leaning across the table, was doing something to Stoyan’s neck, kneading and massaging it with his elbows splayed out, grimacing in disgust and muttering curses. Stoyan was patiently shifting from foot to foot, bending his head and arching his neck.

  “Hi, Perry,” he was saying. “Haven’t seen you in ages. How are you? And here I am with another present—what can you do? . . . The very very last time.” He unfolded the paper and showed Peretz a bouquet of acid-green forest flowers. “And the smell of them! The smell!”

  “Stop wriggling,” snapped Kim. “Stand still! Lunatic! Nincompoop!”

  “I’m a lunatic,” Stoyan agreed ecstatically. “I’m a nincompoop. But! The very very last time!”

  The pink shoots on his hazmat suit were already withering, shriveling, and falling onto the floor, onto the ruddy face of the showering woman.

  “Done,” Kim said. “Now go away.” He stepped away from Stoyan and threw something writhing, half dead, and bloody into the trash can.

  “I’m going away,” Stoyan said. “I’m going away this instant. You know, Rita had another funny spell, now I’m almost afraid to leave the biological research station at all. Perry, you should come visit us, talk to them, maybe—”

  “As if!” said Kim. “There’s nothing for him to do there.”

  “What do you mean, nothing?” Stoyan exclaimed. “Quentin’s wasting away before our eyes! You just listen: a week ago Rita ran away—well, what can you do, that’s life—and during the night she came back, wet, white, and frozen. The guard went up to her unarmed—don’t know what she did to him, but he’s still out cold. And our entire experimental plot has overgrown with grass.”

  “So?” Kim said.

  “And Quentin has been crying all morning—”

  “I know all that,” Kim interrupted him. “What I don’t understand is what it has to do with Peretz.”

  “What do you mean? What are you saying? If not Peretz, then who? I can’t do it, right? And neither can you . . . Or maybe you think we should ask Claudius Octavian Bootlicherson!”

  “Enough!” Kim said, slamming a hand down on the table. “Go do your job, and don’t let me see you here again during work hours. Don’t make me angry.”

  “I’m done,” Stoyan said hastily. “I’m done. I’m leaving. You’ll give this to her?”

  He put the bouquet on the table and ran outside, shouting in the doorway, “And the cloaca’s working again!”

  Kim took a broom and swept all the debris into a corner. “The crazy fool,” he said. “And that Rita . . . Now we have to do the calculations all over again. Damn him and his love affair.”

  They heard the irritating roar of the motorcycle beneath their window, then all was quiet again, except for the pile driver behind the wall.

  “Peretz,” Kim said, “why were you at the cliff this morning?”

  “I was hoping to see the Director. I was told that he sometimes does his morning exercises by the cliff. I wanted to ask him to let me go, but he never came. You know, Kim, I think everyone here lies. Sometimes I think that even you lie. ”

  “The Director,” Kim said pensively. “You know, that really is a thought. Good for you. A bold move.”

  “I’m still leaving t
omorrow,” said Peretz. “Randy will take me, he promised. I’m not going to be here tomorrow, just so you know.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought it, I wouldn’t have thought it,” Kim continued, not paying attention. “A very bold move . . . Maybe we really should send you in there, to sort things out?”

  2.

  CANDIDE

  Candide woke up and thought, I’m leaving the day after tomorrow. And Nava immediately stirred in her bed in the other corner and asked, “You aren’t sleeping anymore?”

  “No,” he answered.

  “Then let’s talk,” she suggested. “Since we haven’t talked since last night. OK?”

  “OK.”

  “First tell me when you’re leaving.”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Soon.”

  “You always say that—soon. Sometimes you say soon, sometimes you say the day after tomorrow, you think they are the same thing, maybe, but no, you’ve learned how to talk by now, at first you were mixed up all the time, you’d mix up house and village, grass and mushrooms, even men and deadlings you’d mix up, or else you’d start muttering, we couldn’t understand a word, no one could understand a thing . . .”

  He opened his eyes and stared at the low, lime-encrusted ceiling. Worker ants were walking across it. They were moving in two straight columns: the ones going left to right were carrying things, and the ones going right to left were unencumbered. A month ago, it was the other way around: the ones going right to left had mycelium, and the ones going left to right were unencumbered. And in another month it’ll be the other way around again, unless they get other instructions. Black signaling ants were stationed next to the columns at regular intervals, slowly moving their long antennae and awaiting orders.

  A month ago, I also woke up and thought that I’ll leave the day after tomorrow, but we didn’t go anywhere, and once, long before that, I woke up and thought that the day after tomorrow we will finally leave, and of course we didn’t leave, but if we don’t leave the day after tomorrow, I’m leaving by myself. Of course, I’d already thought this once, but this time I’m definitely leaving. It’d be good to leave right now, without talking to anyone, without pleading with anyone, but I can’t do it now, when my head isn’t clear. And it’d be good to decide once and for all: as soon as I wake up with a clear head, I’m immediately getting up, going outside, and walking into the forest, without letting anyone talk to me; that’s very important, not to let anyone talk to me, not to let them wear me out, not to let them talk my head off, especially those spots over my eyes, until my ears ring and I feel nauseated, until a fog fills brains and bones both. And Nava is already talking . . .

  “. . . and it turned out,” Nava was saying, “that the deadlings were taking us somewhere at night, but at night they don’t see well, they’re almost blind, and anyone will tell you so, Humpy, say, would tell you, but then he’s not from these parts, he’s from the village that was next to our village, not the one we live in now, but the one I lived in without you, with my mom. So you couldn’t know Humpy, his village got overgrown with mushrooms, the mushrooms took over, and it’s not everyone who likes that, Humpy, now, he left the village immediately. There was a Surpassment, he said, and now the village isn’t fit for people . . . Yeah. And there was no moon at the time, and they probably got lost, everyone got crowded together, and there we were, stuck in the middle, and it got so hot, I could barely breathe . . .”

  Candide glanced at her. She was lying on her back, her hands behind her head and her legs crossed, and she was motionless, except for her lips, which were constantly moving, and her eyes, which occasionally glittered in the half light. When the old man came in, she didn’t stop talking, and the old man sat down at the table, pulled the pot toward him, smelled it, sniffling loudly, and began to eat. Then Candide got up and wiped the night sweat from his body. The old man sprayed spit as he slurped the food down, keeping his eyes on the serving trough, which was covered with a lid to protect it from mold.

  Candide took the pot away from him and put it next to Nava so she’d stop talking. The old man licked his lips and said, “Tastes bad. Whoever you visit nowadays, it tastes bad. And that trail I used to take has gotten completely overgrown. I walked a lot back then, I walked to training, and I would walk to the swimming place—swam a lot in those days, I did. There was a lake there once, now it is a swamp, and there is danger in walking now, but someone must walk there still, else where did all the drowned people come from? And take those reeds. I could put it to anyone: Who made those paths through the reeds? And nobody knows, nor should they. And what is it you have in that trough? If it is soaked berries, say, then I would eat them, I am fond of soaked berries, but if it is just yesterday’s leftovers, scraps, then I do not want them, eat your scraps yourself.” He paused, glancing between Candide and Nava. Without waiting for an answer, he continued: “And there, where the reeds have sprung up, we cannot sow there anymore. Back then, we sowed because it was needful for the Surpassment, everyone took it to the Clay Meadow, and they take it there still, but they no longer leave it at the meadow, they bring it back instead. It is wrong, and so I have told them, but they do not know what wrong means. The village head asked me in front of everyone: Why is it wrong? Big Fist was right here, like you, even closer, Hearer was right there, say, and over there, where your Nava is, the three Baldy brothers were standing and listening, and he asked me in front of them all. What are you doing, I tell him, we are not alone, I say . . . His father was the smartest of men, but maybe he was not his father at all, I have heard it said he was not his father, and indeed, he does not look like him . . . Why, he says, is it wrong to ask in front of everyone, why it is wrong?”

  Nava got up, handed the pot to Candide, and started to clean up. Candide began to eat. The old man paused and watched him for a while, making chewing motions with his mouth, then remarked, “Your food is not fully fermented, it is wrong to eat such things.”

  “Why is it wrong?” Candide asked, to tease him.

  The old man snickered. “Oh, Silent Man,” he said. “You would do better to keep silent, Silent Man. You would do better to tell me, I have long since asked: Does it hurt a lot to have your head cut off?”

  “What’s it to you?” Nava shouted. “Why don’t you leave us alone?”

  “She is shouting,” the old man informed them. “Shouting at me. She has not given birth once, yet she shouts at me. Why have you not given birth? You have lived with Silent Man for a long time, but you have not given birth. Everyone gives birth but you. That is wrong. And do you know what wrong means? It means not welcome, not approved of—and since it is not approved of, it is wrong. What is right, that we do not yet know, but what is wrong is wrong. Everyone ought to understand that, and you especially, because it is a foreign village you live in, they have given you a house, they have gotten you Silent Man here for a husband. The head on his shoulders may not be his, it may have been stuck on, but his body is healthy, and it is wrong to refuse to give birth. And so we conclude that if a thing is wrong, it is as unwelcome a thing as it possibly can be.”

  Nava, looking angry and sulky, grabbed the trough from the table and went into the pantry.

  The old man followed her with his eyes, sniffed a few times, and continued. “What else could wrong mean? We can and must understand that if a thing is wrong, it is harmful . . .”

  Candide finished eating, banged the empty pot down in front of the old man, and went out onto the street. The house had gotten very overgrown at night, and he couldn’t see much in the surrounding dense undergrowth. He could only make out the old man’s tracks, and the spot by the door where the old man had sat and fidgeted, waiting for them to wake up. The street had already been cleared. The arm-thick green creeper, which had sneaked out of the tangle of branches above the village during the night and put down roots in front of the neighboring house, had been chopped down and soaked in ferment, and was already starting to turn dark and sour. It had a sharp and appetizing smel
l, and the neighbor kids clustered around it, tearing off the brown flesh and stuffing juicy, succulent chunks into their mouths. When Candide walked by, the eldest shouted indistinctly with his mouth full: “Silent Man’s a deadling!” But no one else joined in—they were too busy. The street, orange and red from the tall grass in which the houses were drowning, was otherwise empty; the earth was dappled with faint green spots from the sun streaming through the crowns of the trees. He could hear a discordant chorus of bored voices from the field: “Hey, hey, sow, be merry, we have all these seeds to bury . . .” Echoes rang in the woods. Or maybe those sounds weren’t echoes. Maybe they came from the deadlings.

  Of course, Crookleg was sitting at home and massaging his leg. “Sit down,” he welcomed Candide. “Here’s some soft grass I spread for guests. You’re leaving, they say?”

  Here we go again, Candide thought, we’re starting all over again. “What, is it bothering you again?” he asked, sitting down.

  “My leg, you mean? Nah, this just feels good. You pet it like this and it gives you a nice feeling, it does. And when are you leaving?”

  “Exactly when we talked about. If you’d come with me, maybe even the day after tomorrow. But now I’ll have to find someone else who knows the forest. I can tell you don’t want to come anymore.”

  Crookleg gingerly stretched out his leg and instructed, “When you come out of my house, turn left and keep walking until the field. Walk through the field and go past the two stones, you’ll see the road right away, it’s not too overgrown, as it’s full of rocks. Stick to the road, it’ll go through two villages: the first one’s empty, mushroomy, the mushrooms overgrew it, not a soul’s left there, and kooks live in the second one, the blue grass went through them twice, they’ve been sick ever since, don’t you even talk to them, no point, it’s like they’ve lost their memories. And after the kook village, the Clay Meadow will be right there, on your right. And you don’t need anyone to show you the way, you’ll make it there yourself nice and easy, won’t even break a sweat.”