Awakening, 2nd edition (48 page)

Today’s stupid demarches, daring remarks, and ostentatious bravery—all of this was just the shadow of a former life with its golden-plated hollow ideals. But new, real life had already claimed its rights. And that ’s why twenty minutes ago, having run into Alex in a hallway, I slid my eyes away. And when he asked , “So are you ready to vote?” I nodded. Nodded q uietly . . .

Knock-knock . . . Alan lifted his head. Who the hell is that? Must be Alex—to make sure his elector is indeed ready to vote. Who else would bother to stop by for a visit, especially this late? Guess it ’s time for another obedient nod, if not worse . . .

But it turned out to be someone else.

“Still up?” Michael asked. “Good. Let ’s go downstairs, have a drink with everyone. We need to get our spirit s back up —they’ve been dying ever since we found that piece of paper.”

Alan forced himself to produce a tight smile.

“No. Thank you, but no.”

“Let’s go, ” Michael said in a tone that signaled he would entertain no objections. “We need to get together for a drink. It ’s the last evening.”

“There will be more evenings.”

“They’ll be different. There will be a boss and a dozen employees. Let ’s go.”

Indeed, Alan thought, what difference does it make? Tomorrow I ’m going face all of them anyway. Including Alex. At least here ’s someone who seems to care . . .

“Give me a second, ” he said. “I ’ll grab my key.”

As they walked shoulder to shoulder down the hallway, Alan caught himself thinking that until now he had never noticed that he was taller than Michael. Somehow it always seemed to him that they were about the same height. Perhaps, he thought, it ’s because we never walked together like this .

“You’ve been having second thoughts, haven ’t you?” Michael asked suddenly when they approached the stairs. “Now you think that coming here wasn ’t such a great idea.”

“Why?” Alan was taken aback. “Why would you think that ? I ’m . . . I ’m glad I ’m here.”

It didn’t sound too convincing. He was caught off guard.

“Glad to hear that, ” Michael said. Then he suddenly stopped. Alan turned to him – and faced an intent gaze of dark un blinking eyes.

“Just in case you ’ve been having any second thoughts, ” said Michael, “try taking it easy. Some things it’s better to learn here.”

“I’m not sure I understand, ” Alan said.

“Good for you.”

And Michael headed down the stairs, his steps emitting a hardly audible squeaking song.

I’d like to see all this shit happening to you, Alan thought angrily. Would you be so tough and brave, huh?

And then it suddenly occurred to him: yes, he would .

Had it been Michael instead of him, he most likely would not have been yelling and kicking in the water . . . Most likely he would ’ve managed to avoid being put there in the first place. He would not have been on that boat . He would not have ended up overboard. And had he somehow end up there, he would ’ve rather jabbed Alex in the eye than yelled , “For you!” And finally, finally, had he had no choice but to yell . He would ’ve done it with no hesitation and without attaching any significance to the action. He would not be sitting on his bed by the nightstand like a mourner by a fresh grave. And he would make Alex pay dearly.

“Mike!” he shouted without realizing fully why he was doing it.

Michael stopped.

“Listen,” Alan walked down to him and said, this time quietly , “Remember that note someone left in . . . uh . . . Alex ’s room?”

“Yes. What about it?”

“Has that ever happened to you? I mean have you ever had to live through a real blackmail attempt?”

“I never give people any pretext to blackmail me, ” Michael was looking at him as though expecting something.

Alex said the same thing, Alan was about to remark, but felt that that was too much for him.

“What if you give no pretext, but someone keeps trying anyway?”

“What’s there to try then?” there was irony hiding in Michael ’s eyes. “Let him try all he wants, why would you care?”

Alex lost his patience.

“Stop it. Really. You know what I ’m talking about. If someone is after you big time . . . Someone ’s bullying. Not like in high school. For real. Like a mobster. With no pretext, except he needs something from you and he ’s stronger . . . Did you ever have to go through anything like that ? When you need . . . when you need to figure out how to live through it . . . when you just need to survive . . .”

“To survive, ” Michael repeated after him slowly. “Be careful there. You keep surviving for too long—and you forget how to live.”

One day, millions and millions years ago, an ape was darting through the ancient shaggy forest, leaving behind blood stains on the ground and patches of brown fur on sharp hard thorns. She breathed heavily, every breath coming out of her breast with a whistling sound. With every drop of blood coming out of a wide -open wound on her back , her movements were becoming slower and slower. From time to time she was shooting back a frantic hunted-down look. There, among gigantic trunks entwined with green ivy , a striped fur kept flashing. The fur ’s owner was closing in, steadily and tirelessly, and although the ape, while squalling and howling, ran rapidly, the distance between them was closing . The ape didn ’t remember what sort of wild luck helped her to escape her chaser the first time, but to her bones she knew something else: she had to run. Run as long and as fast as s he could. And so she was running.

Still, she was doomed. Less than a minute later, steel claws dug into her back again and bloodthirsty jaws swung open rapaciously above her stiffened neck. The warm screeching supper had been delivered fresh and ready to be consumed. But at that moment, which was supposed to be the last moment of the ape ’s life, something unexpected happened. Instead of a victorious roar , a plaintive bass mewing rolled across the bewildered forest. The terrible claws pulled in suddenly, and the ape, free , contrary to all her expectations, darted away. She didn ’t look back and never learned what had made the king of the forest set her free. Perhaps he got his paw stuck in a hardly noticeable yet dangerous crack in the old log. Or it could be that , carried away by his hunting ardor , he didn ’t pay enough attention to a falling branch. It was an old forest and the ape had seen many times these huge , heavy and very dangerous moldered boughs cracking under the weight of long , gray-haired patches of moss , and flying down.

Whatever happened on that day behind her back stayed in the past. But something else remained with her to serve as a reminder of the accident for as long as she lived: the scars and the crippled leg .
A nd fear. Until her last breath , she remembered vividly the claws mangling her back , and a confident wheezing. That moment when she was still alive, but was already doomed. The moment of ultimate helplessness. And the sticky viscous fear of that moment stayed in her mind, and intermixed in blind echoes with the millions of fears of millions of other apes, settled many years later in their descendants.

Although of course this fear pre -dates apes. It began many millennia before they even walked the earth. It began wit h all sorts of primordial life—running, crawling away, fleeing death caused by another being. Accumulating, drop by drop, generation after generation, their deep horror was settling in their ge nes, penetrating every cell and saturating their brain s . And when man came into existence , this horror was already seared deadly into his soul and consciousness.

Whoever we inherited it from, this is our primal fear. Fear of being defenseless. Fear of the moment when you are still alive, but already completely helpless. When you breathe , feel, and understand everything, yet there is nothing, absolutely nothing you can do. When you are completely helpless in the face of illness, mutilation, someone ’s jaws, catastrophe, circumstances, pain, suffering . . . And above all—in the face of other people. In the face of their evil, tortures, beatings, humiliations. In the face of the animal cruelty of a lynch mob who had found its human victim. In the face of murderers and sadists, executions and concentration camps, indifferent carriers of orders , and enthusiastic butchers. In the face of people.

For nothing and no one causes people more pain and suffering than other people.

And at some point, the dreary horror of a victim gave birth to its extreme opposite—an opposite that helped the grownup ape come to terms with fear, at least to some degree. Unknown to animals, its origins lost in the mazes of evolution, this opposite gained a life of its own—an independent and horrifying life. Long ago , it ceased to be a means of protection, a shield, a reaction. It broke free and made man , to serve it blindly—to serve, while believing wholeheartedly that he is serving himself. No longer a means to an end, this opposite became the sole purpose of existence for many, a poison that permeates any society and any group of people. It spawned a new breed of crippling fear—fear of a soulless system, built by people. Luring stronger than drugs, holding no barriers, demanding endless adoration and worship, wearing costumes of many colors, hiding behind countless alluring slogans, morphing endlessly, growing and weakening, but never dying, it became the most dominant obsession of mankind.

And the name of this opposite is Power.

Chap t e r Nine

“Did you know that when, in nineteen eighty nine , they were electing the President of Poland, there were five hundred members of parliament voting?” Chris asked loudly with no particular connection to anything that was being discussed.

“Yeah
—so?
” Alex said. “Alan, can you do me a favor, pass me a napkin, please.”

“Nothing
—except that P
resident Jaruzelski won by a margin of—” Chris broke off. “Any ideas?”

“Forty votes?” Joan guessed.

“Twenty three?” lowered the stakes Paul.

“A single vote, ” Chris said solemnly. “Out of half a thousand. Just one.”

“That’s impressive, ” Robert agreed. “And the moral of the story is . . .?”

“Every vote counts, ” replied Joan instead of Chris.

“Precisely,” Chris confirmed. “Especially because there ’re eleven of us here instead of five hundred. And the stakes . . .” he looked back at Clark , sitting as usual at a separate table in the company of his crew. “Bottom line, we ’d all better think hard.”

“So let’s go and think, ” Alex proposed, getting up. “Looks like everyone ’s done with breakfast.”

“General Jaruzelski ’s presidency, ” said Michael, staying in his seat, “didn ’t last long.”

He set his cup of coffee on the table and looked at Chris.

“He was elected in summer, and in the December he was asked to leave, to put it mildly. So there could be more than one moral.”

They took their time to settle down in the boardroom . At first, they went for the seats they had grown used to over the last four days, but Joan complained that the bright sun was for some reason hurting her eyes today and asked Kevin whether he ’d be open to the idea of trading seats. Kevin, being a true gentleman, promptly agreed . A second later , more unusual activity erupted in the form of Paul going round the room and looking rather loudly for , “Something less squeaky than that ancient piece of junk .” The antique he was referring to was an innocent noiseless chair in which he had spen t the last few days without once complaining about it .