The Snail on the Slope Read online

  A sound like running water came from the receiver. Then everything went quiet, and Peretz noticed Bootlicherson watching him with stern, accusing eyes.

  “What is he talking about?” Peretz whispered. “I don’t understand a thing.”

  “That is not surprising,” Bootlicherson said frigidly. “This is not your phone.” He looked down, wrote something down in his notebook, and continued: “By the way, this is an absolutely unacceptable violation of the rules. I insist you put down the phone and leave. Otherwise I’ll have to call the authorities.”

  “Fine,” said Peretz. “I’ll leave. But where’s my phone? This is not my phone. Then where is my phone?”

  Bootlicherson didn’t answer. His eyes were closed again, and the phone was again pressed to his ear. Peretz heard more squawking.

  “I’m asking you, where’s my phone?” Peretz screamed. He could no longer hear anything in his receiver. There was more rustling and crackling, then he heard the series of short beeps that indicated he’d been disconnected. He dropped the receiver and ran out into the hallway. He threw open office doors, finding a mix of familiar and unfamiliar employees everywhere. Some were frozen completely still, resembling sitting or standing wax figures with glass eyes; others were pacing their offices, stepping over the telephone cords that dragged behind them; still others frantically wrote in thick notebooks, on scraps of paper, in newspaper margins. There were no free phones. Peretz tried to take a phone away from one of the employees frozen in a trance, a young man in coveralls, but he immediately came to life, started squealing and kicking, then everyone else began to shush them and wave their arms, and someone shouted hysterically, “This is an outrage! Call security!”

  “Where’s my phone?” shouted Peretz. “I’m human, just like you—I have the right to know. Let me listen! Let me have my phone!”

  They kept throwing him out of rooms and locking the door behind him. He made it all the way to the top floor, where by the entrance to the attic, next to the machine room of the perpetually broken elevator, two on-duty mechanics were sitting and playing tic-tac-toe. Peretz leaned against the wall, out of breath. The mechanics glanced at him, smiled vaguely, and bent over the paper again.

  “You don’t have phones either?” asked Peretz.

  “We do,” one of the mechanics said. “Not have phones? We haven’t sunk that low.”

  “So why aren’t you listening?”

  “Can’t hear a thing, why bother?”

  “Why can’t you hear a thing?”

  “’Cause we cut the line.”

  Peretz wiped his face and neck with a balled-up handkerchief, waited until one of the mechanics won the game, and went downstairs. The hallways had gotten noisy. Doors were opening; employees were coming out for a smoke. There was a buzz of lively, excited, agitated voices: “I’m telling you, it’s a fact: licorice is made out of liquor. What? But, after all, I read it in this book . . . Can’t you hear it yourself? Li-co-rice. Li-quor. What?” “I checked the Yvert catalog: one hundred and fifty thousand francs, and that was in 1956. Can you imagine how much it must cost now?” “These cigarettes are a bit odd. They say they don’t put any tobacco in cigarettes nowadays, they take special paper, shred it, and saturate it with nicotine . . .” “Tomatoes can also give you cancer. Tomatoes, pipes, eggs, silk gloves . . .” “How did you sleep? Just think, I couldn’t fall asleep all night—that pile driver simply wouldn’t stop. Hear that? It was like that all night . . . Good morning, Peretz! They were saying you left. I’m glad you stayed . . .” “They finally found the thief, remember how things kept going missing? Turns out, it was the discus thrower from the park, you know, the statue by the fountain. The one with an obscene inscription on his leg . . .” “Perry, do me a favor, lend me five bucks till payday. Till tomorrow, that is . . .” “And he wasn’t flirting with her at all. She was throwing herself at him. Right in front of her husband. You don’t believe me, but I saw it with my own eyes . . .”

  Peretz went down to his office, said hello to Kim, and washed his face. Kim wasn’t working. He was sitting still, his hands resting on top of his desk, staring at the tiled wall. Peretz took the cover off the arithmometer, plugged it in, and looked expectantly at Kim.

  “Can’t work today,” Kim said. “Some idiot keeps going around fixing everything. I’ve been sitting here, not knowing what to do.”

  Then Peretz noticed a note on his desk: “For Peretz. This is to inform you that your phone is located in office 771.” Peretz sighed.

  “You’ve got no call to sigh,” Kim said. “You should have come to work on time.”

  “But I didn’t know,” Peretz said. “I was planning to leave today.”

  “Serves you right,” Kim said drily.

  “I still listened for a bit. And you know, Kim, I didn’t understand a thing. Why is that?”

  “You listened for a bit! You silly man. You fool. The chance you missed . . . I don’t even want to talk to you. Now I’ll have to introduce you to the Director. Just out of pity.”

  “Please do,” said Peretz. “You know,” he continued, “it occasionally felt like I was getting it, like I was grasping certain fragments of ideas, very interesting ones at that, but I’m now trying to remember them—and there’s nothing there.”

  “Whose phone was it?”

  “I don’t know. It was in Bootlicherson’s office.”

  “Ahh . . . That’s right, she’s on maternity leave. Bootlicherson has no luck. He hires a new woman, she works for him half a year, then always—maternity leave. Yes, Perry, you got a woman’s phone. So I might not even be able to help you . . . Besides, no one listens to it all in a row, probably not women either. You see, the Director is addressing everyone at once, but at the same time, he’s speaking to each person individually. Do you understand?”

  “I’m afraid that—”

  “For example, here’s how I’d recommend you listen. Write out the Director’s speech in a single line, excluding punctuation, and select words at random by throwing down imaginary dominoes. If two domino halves agree, the word is selected and written down on a separate piece of paper. If they do not agree, they word is temporarily rejected, but it’s left on the page. There are a few subtleties, associated with the frequency of vowels and consonants, but that’s a second-order effect. Do you understand?”

  “No,” said Peretz. “I mean, yes. I wish I had known about this method. So what did he say today?”

  “It’s not the only possible method. There’s also, say, the variable-stroke spiral method. This method is fairly crude, but if only basic economic issues are under discussion, then it’s very convenient due to its simplicity. There’s the Stevenson-Zade method, but it requires the use of electronic devices. So I’d say that in the majority of cases, the domino method is best, while the spiral method is preferred in situations with a limited and specialized vocabulary.”

  “Thank you,” Peretz said. “And what did the Director talk about today?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What? . . . Uhhh . . . What did he talk about? W-What did he . . . say?”

  “To whom?”

  “To whom? To you, say.”

  “Unfortunately, I can’t tell you that. That’s classified information, and you are, after all, a visiting employee. So don’t be angry.”

  “I’m not angry,” said Peretz. “I’d just like to find out what . . . He was saying something about the forest, about free will . . . The other day, I was throwing stones into the abyss, just for fun, for no particular reason, and he said something about that, too.”

  “Don’t tell me about that,” Kim said nervously. “That’s none of my business. Or yours either, since it wasn’t your phone.”

  “Come on, wait, did he talk about the forest at all?”

  Kim shrugged. “Well, of course. He never talks about anything else. That’s enough about that. Tell me how you tried to leave instead.”

  Peretz told him.

  “You shouldn
’t beat him all the time,” Kim said pensively.

  “I can’t help it. I am a fairly strong chess player, and he’s just an amateur. And then he plays in an odd sort of way.”

  “It doesn’t matter. If I were you, I’d give it some serious thought. Something’s been off about you lately . . . People write denunciations about you . . . You know what, I’ll set up a meeting with the Director for you tomorrow. I think he’ll let you go. Just make sure to emphasize that you’re a linguist, a philologist, that you came here by accident, and mention as if in passing that you had really wanted to get into the forest, but that you’ve now changed your mind, because you consider yourself unqualified.”

  “All right.”

  They were silent for a bit. Peretz imagined himself face to face with the Director and blanched. The domino method, he thought. The Stevenson-Zade method . . .

  “And most important, don’t be afraid to cry,” Kim said. “He likes it.”

  Peretz jumped up and walked around the room in agitation. “My God,” he said. “If I just knew what he looks like. What he’s like.”

  “What he’s like? Not very tall, red-haired . . .”

  “Bootlicherson says that he’s a real giant.”

  “Bootlicherson is an idiot. A show-off and a liar. The Director is a red-haired man, on the heavy side, with a small scar on his right cheek. He’s a little pigeon-toed when he walks, like a sailor. In fact, he actually used to be a sailor.”

  “And Randy said that he’s lean and wears his hair long, because he’s missing an ear.”

  “Who’s this Randy?”

  “A truck driver, I’ve told you about him.”

  Kim laughed sardonically. “How could truck driver Randy know all that? Listen, Perry, you shouldn’t be so gullible.”

  “Randy says that he’d driven him and seen him a few times.”

  “So what? He’s probably lying. I was his personal secretary, and I haven’t seen him once.”

  “Haven’t seen who?”

  “The Director. I was his secretary for a while, before I defended my thesis.”

  “And you haven’t seen him once?”

  “Of course not! You really think it’s that simple?”

  “Wait, so how do you know he’s red-haired, etcetera?”

  Kim shook his head. “Perry,” he said gently. “Dear heart. No one has ever seen a hydrogen atom, but everybody knows that it has a single electron shell with specific characteristics, and a nucleus which in the simplest case consists of a single proton.”

  “That’s true,” Peretz said weakly. He could feel that he’d gotten tired. “Then I’ll see him tomorrow.”

  “No, no, ask me something simpler,” said Kim. “I’ll set up a meeting for you, I can guarantee you that much. But I can’t tell you who or what you’ll see there. And I don’t know what you’ll hear there either. After all, you aren’t asking me whether the Director will let you go, and you’re right not to ask. Because I can’t know that, right?”

  “But this is different,” said Peretz.

  “It’s the same thing, Perry,” Kim said. “It’s the same thing, I assure you.”

  “I probably seem very obtuse,” Peretz said sadly.

  “Maybe a tiny bit.”

  “It’s just that I didn’t sleep well today.”

  “No, you’re just impractical. Why didn’t you sleep well, anyway?”

  Peretz explained. And he got scared. Kim’s good-natured face suddenly turned beet red; his hair stood on end. He snarled, grabbed the phone, dialed the number in a frenzy and roared, “Hotel manager? What’s the meaning of this? How dare you evict Peretz? Siiilence! I didn’t ask you what ended, I asked you how dare you evict Peretz! What? Siiilence! Don’t you dare! What? Nonsense, bullshit! Siiilence! I’ll crucify you! You and your Claudius Octavian Bootlicherson! You’ll be scrubbing toilets, you’ll be sent into the forest within twenty-four hours, within sixty minutes! What? Yes . . . Yes . . . What? Yes . . . All right. That’s better. And only the best linen . . . That’s your business, on the street if you have to . . . What? Good. OK. OK. Thank you. I apologize for the trouble . . . Well, of course . . . Thank you very much. Good-bye.”

  He put down the receiver. “It’s all settled,” he said. “He’s a wonderful man. Go rest. You’ll live in his apartment, and his family will move into your old hotel room—there’s no other way, unfortunately . . . And don’t argue, I beg you, don’t argue, it’s absolutely none of our business. It was his choice. Go, go, that’s an order. I’ll give you a call about the Director later.”

  Peretz staggered out onto the street, stood still for a bit, squinting in the sun, then headed to the park to look for his suitcase. He didn’t find it immediately, because the suitcase was tightly gripped in the strong alabaster hand of the thieving fountain-side discus-thrower, the one with an obscene inscription on his left thigh. Actually, the inscription wasn’t even that obscene. Someone had written in indelible pencil GIRLS, BEWARE OF SYPHILIS.

  4.

  CANDIDE

  Candide left before dawn so he could get back in time for lunch. It was about six miles to the Settlement; the road was familiar and footworn, covered in bald patches from all the splashed grasskiller. It was considered safe for walking. Warm, bottomless swamps lay to the left and right: rotting black branches stuck out of the fragrant rust-colored grass, giant swamp toadstools poked out their sticky caps, looking like shiny, round domes, and occasionally he’d come across abandoned, crushed houses of water spiders right next to the road. It was difficult to tell what was happening in the swamp from the trail; the densely interwoven treetops above his head emanated a myriad of thick green columns, ropes, and gauzy, weblike threads, their impatient roots reaching into the bog. The greedy, insolent greenery created a wall that looked like fog, and that hid everything but the smells and sounds. From time to time, something would snap off in the yellow-green gloom and slowly tumble down, the noise lingering, then there’d be a thick, greasy splash, the swamp would sigh, rumble, and squelch, and there’d be silence again—then a minute later, the fetid stink of the disturbed abyss would worm its way onto the road through the green curtain. It was said that no man could walk across these bottomless places, but the deadlings walked everywhere; they weren’t deadlings for nothing—the swamp didn’t accept them. Candide fashioned himself a cudgel just in case, not because he was afraid of the deadlings—as a rule, deadlings didn’t pose a threat to men—but because rumors abounded about swamp and forest life, and for all their absurdity, some could turn out to be true.

  He had walked about a quarter mile from the village when Nava caught up with him. He stopped.

  “Why did you leave without me?” Nava asked, sounding slightly out of breath. “Told you I’d go with you, I did, I don’t want to stay in that village by myself, there’s nothing for me to do there by myself, no one loves me there, and you’re my husband, you have to take me with you, it doesn’t matter that we don’t have kids, you’re still my husband, and I’m your wife, and the kids, they’ll still come. Only I’ll be honest with you, I don’t want kids yet, I have no idea what they are for or what we’d do with them. I don’t care what the village head says, or that old man of yours, in my village it was completely different: if you wanted to have kids, you had them, and if you didn’t want to have kids, you didn’t.”

  “Go home right now,” said Candide. “Where did you get the idea that I was leaving? I’m just going to the Settlement, I’ll be home for lunch.”

  “Good, then I’ll come with you, we’ll go home for lunch together, I made lunch yesterday, and I hid it so well that even that old man of yours, he won’t find it . . .”

  Candide walked on. Arguing was pointless; may as well let her come. He even cheered up, feeling the urge to pick a fight, to swing his cudgel, to take out the many years’ worth of accumulated despair, anger, and helplessness on someone. On the thieves. Or on the deadlings—what difference did it make? Let the girl come. Thinks she’s a r
eal wife, talking about not wanting kids . . . He swung as hard as he could and whacked a tree stump by the side of the road with his cudgel, then almost fell over: the stump disintegrated into dust and the cudgel flew through it as if it were a shadow. Several nimble gray animals jumped out, plopped into the dark water, and disappeared.

  Nava bounded next to him, now running ahead, now falling behind. Once in a while, she’d grab Candide’s hand and hang on him, looking very pleased with herself. She talked about lunch, which she had hidden so cleverly from the old man, about how the lunch might have been eaten by wild ants, if she hadn’t done something so the ants would never ever find it, about how some annoying fly woke her up, and about how yesterday, when she was falling asleep, he, Silent Man, was already snoring, and he was muttering strange words in his sleep, and how do you know words like that, Silent Man, it’s really amazing, no one in our village knows words like that, only you know them, and you always knew them, even when you were very sick, you knew them . . .

  Candide both listened and didn’t, the familiar tedious droning echoing in his brain. He was walking and thinking dull, rambling thoughts about why he couldn’t think about anything, it was probably from the constant vaccines, the most popular village pastime besides mindless chatter, or maybe it was from something else . . . Maybe it was the effect of this drowsy way of life—not even primitive but downright vegetative—that he’d been forced to lead ever since that distant time when his helicopter crashed full speed into an invisible barrier, warped, broke its propellers, and fell into the swamp like a ton of bricks. That’s probably when I got thrown out of the cabin, he thought. That’s when I was thrown out of the cabin, he thought for the thousandth time. I hit my head on something, and I never recovered . . . And if I hadn’t been thrown out, I would have drowned in the swamp along with my helicopter, so it was actually a good thing that I was thrown out . . . It suddenly dawned on him that these were deductions, and he was delighted. He had thought that he’d long since lost the capacity for deductive reasoning and only knew how to say the same thing over and over again: the day after tomorrow, the day after tomorrow . . .