Pig: A Thriller (18 page)

             
“Why do you think that is?” Magda asked.

             
“I have no idea,” answered Snow. “But I’m sure you think you do.

             
“I do,” answered Magda.

“It’s simple. Wine is to love, as vodka is to porn.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Like most good ideas, it started off with good intentions. But you know what the road to hell is paved with, right?”

“Yeah, good intentions. This sounds like it’s going to be a long story. Give me some of the beet soup then.”

“Borscht. And have some mushrooms.” She slapped his hands reaching to break some of the buns into pieces that would fit into his mouth. 

“What?” Snow complained.

“Don’t do that. Barbarian! Cut the bread with a knife, don’t break it with your hands. Otherwise, you life will be broken, too.”

Snow cut his eyes sharply at her. Wasn’t that the whole point, that his life was broken? Sighing, he reached for a knife. Fucking Russians and their fucking superstitions.

“Mankind’s quest for a good buzz is as old as History itself. Culture's quest for altered states begins in the Garden of Eden with the eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Man wasn’t content being Man, he wanted the Food of the Gods, too. Modern, agricultural civilization was the result of that quest for a buzz, be it marijuana or hops. Plants are just as advanced as we are, you know, maybe more. Except that while we dedicated our energies to developing language, designing tools and extracting resources, plants focused on becoming chemical factories, needing only sunlight, water and trace minerals as feedstock. No legs or wings? Not able to move around and get access to those things? No problem, they just produced a variety of different chemicals providing flavour, nutrition or intoxication that lured humans into doing that for them.

“Where it went wrong was when we stopped using natural substances and started refining substances like distilled alcohol or sugar. Adam was the first substance abuser. God forbid him to eat the apple, but he went ahead and took it anyway.  A classic case of addiction. He couldn’t stop himself even when God told him not to.

“From there, it just gets worse. According to The Bible, Noah was the first to discover the grape. Genesis says that shortly after the Great Flood receded that, ‘Noah was the first to plant a vineyard. And he drank of the wine and became drunk.’ So alcohol is supposed to be a gift to Noah from God. A kind of reward.

“Ben Franklin explained it:

‘
In
vino
veritas
. Before Noah, men having only water to drink, could not find the truth. Accordingly, they became abominably wicked, and they were justly exterminated by the water they so loved to drink. This good man, Noah, having seen all his contemporaries had perished by this unpleasant drink, took a dislike to it; and God, to relieve his dryness, created the vine and revealed to him the art of making
le
vin
. By the aid of this liquid he unveiled more and more truth; and since this time all the best things, even the gods, have been called
divine
.’"

Snow chuckled. “Can’t argue with the man. Divine vines. Verisimilous vodka. Put some together with an olive and some vermouth and you’ve got the Holy Trinity.”

“No,” Magda corrected. “It wasn’t really Yahweh who gave divinity to Man. It was Dionysius. Long before. Not vodka, just wine. Zeus, the head god, was content simply ruling over Man. Dionysius wanted to boost him up to godhood. Prometheus gave Man fire, Dionysius gave him booze. You see, while Zeus sired Dionysus, he didn’t much care for being a father and sent him off to live by himself on Mt. Nysa. The plant world showed him altered states of consciousness even the so-called gods didn’t know and Dionysius decided to share it with Man: grapes, cactus, mushrooms, tree leaves, herbs, roots: they all showed Man the way to a higher level of being. Their molecules entered Man’s mind and altered his consciousness, shaping it into places Zeus never intended it to go. It was here that Dionysius discovered that knowledge is not intoxication, but heightened consciousness.

“See, that’s the difference between fermentation and distillation. Fermentation needs yeast, and yeast is really another miniature plant; well, a fungus actually, a cousin to the mushroom, a single-celled mushroom. And that’s where the magic comes from, not from squeezing and forcing the plant to give out more alcohol than it naturally would.

“You read too much,” Snow complained.

“Which only pissed the gods off,” continued Magda. “And the Kings who ruled in their names. What King wants sovereignty over a people who claim sovereignty over themselves? What King wants to rule (or, for that matter, ‘could’ rule) over a people who see divinity in the vine and not the vile? What King could rule, when hoping to raise an army, all he could raise was questions? What King would rule over a people whose only purpose for arms was hugging? Who preferred the anatomical to the atomical?

“It’s no accident that alcohol is the drug of choice for religions like Christianity. Certainly not psychedelics. If you could take a substance and talk to god yourself, why the hell would you need a priest or a church? So the priests and rulers pushed ethanol instead of enlightenment. Then, they went even further, controlling wine’s distribution and doling it out only in return for allegiance to King and Pope. The wine maker and brew master of the Middle Ages held a privileged position, regulating who had access to and those who didn’t. In Wales, at this time, when ale consumption hovered around eight quarts daily, the royal brewer ranked above the court physician in the hierarchy of that Court. At sea, the Captain of the ship was in sole charge of dispensing liquor to the ship hands.  The wisdom in plants went from being an aid to knowing one's self, to an instrument of control over others.

“But prohibition and controlled distribution didn’t work. It never does. Even the elephants were finding ways to get the knowledge of the plant world. So Zeus went further and used his power to once again change the God-Man-Plant relationship. He took something wonderful and turned it into pain. Wine is to love, what vodka is to porn.”

“Yep, way too much reading,” Snow repeated. “Makes a person wonder why you need my TV. To watch Pig’s porn channel I guess.”

“In the 38th Century A.D. (After Dionysus -- the 8th Century in our time), God taught an Arab alchemist named Jabir ibn Hayyan  the principle of distillation, and ushered in the era of plant subjugation. The helpful, loving properties that plants possessed were no longer freely offered to Man through fermentation, but were forcibly, unwillingly squeezed from them through distillation. The Arabs gave a name to this liquid which preceded oil as the currency of the Middle East. They called it "al-kuhl". We know it as alcohol.

“Jabir ibn Hayyan destroyed the Magic in plants, for Magic must be offered freely, it cannot be taken. He turned alcohol from elixir to effluvium. It became (shudder) domesticated. Totalitarianism replaced titillation. Do you know the Chinese word for beer is ‘liquid bread?’ ’Cause it’s full of vitamins. Doctors prescribe Guinness to pregnant women. What’s in gin? In vodka? You know what vodka really is? Rotten potatoes.

“It became a depressant, not an illuminant.  Today, we do not use its gift to expand and explore. We use it to constrict and obscure. Today we become badgered, bashed, banjaxed, battered, besotted, bibulous, bladdered, bent, blasted, bloated, bombed, blitzed, blottoed, buggered, befuddled, buckled, bevvied, boozed, buzzed and brained. Today, we become crocked, crapulous, cabbaged, clobbered, cockeyed, cunted, canned, corked, crashed, decimated dipsy, drenched, etched,  fecked, fucked, foxed, flushed, fuddled, gatted, goosed, gassed, guttered, giddy, groggy, glazed, glassy eyed, goosed, hammered, hanging, hooped, howling, jugged, juiced, lumga, looped, lit, loaded, mangled, mortal,  Magoogled, manky, mashed, mottled, muddled, paralytic, pickled, pie-eyed, plastered, poleaxed, poisoned, pissed, plastered, plowed,  plotzed , polluted,  potted, pixilated and primed. We become rat-arsed, rat-legged, ratted, ravaged, ripped, razzled, reeking, rendered, rubbered, ruined, sauced, scuppered, shattered, shit faced, stinko, scattered, stewed, snockered, slaughtered, stewed,  stiff, sloshed, smashed, snockered,  soused,  sodden, sozzled,  tight, tanked, totaled, tipsy, trashed, taut, toasted, wankered, warped, wasted, wobbly, wrecked, weltered, whacked, wonked and wazooed.

“Oh, yes, I forgot ‘Yeltsined.’

“The only thing we don't get is enlightened.

“That is why I don’t drink. To excess. Because elephants don’t. Even they know better.”

“Oh, okay,” Snow said in reply. “Thank God I asked. You AA guys stay sober one day at a time. I get drunk one day at a time. Can I have my TV back now?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“How would you be able to watch it if you’re always over here?”

“Why would I always be over here?”

“Shut up and eat your mushrooms. There’s an old Russian proverb: It is better to trust a woman and be disappointed than to eat your borscht alone. What I’m saying is that it’s pointless to try and sweep the spiders out of your hair with vodka. So stop trying.”

             
“Your English has sure improved in the past four days since you broke into my trailer,” Snow observed, pulling out a tube of Chap Stick and applying it to his lips.

             
“It has, hasn’t it?” Magda agreed, with a hint of a smile. “You must be a good teacher.

             
“Give me that,” she demanded and put the lip balm on her own lips. Immediately, she could feel the menthol soothing her skin. Spearmint, she thought, licking the flavouring off of her lips and putting on a new layer. Like the kind that grew wild in the Baikal region. Without asking, she slipped the tube into her pocket.

“Do you realize that for the next few days our shit is going to be the same colour?" Magda commented.

             
“What do you mean?”

             
“The beets. They make your crap red. I thought I’d better tell you. Just in case you thought I poisoned you and you were bleeding to death.”

             
“Why would you poison me?” Magda had fried the mushrooms with onions in butter, then added cream and poured the mixture over black bread. Snow cut the slice into quarters and swallowed it down. He hadn’t even realized he was hungry.

             
“You’re rich,” she said. “A foreigner. There are people in Russia who would kill you just for your boots. But don’t worry. I’ve seen your room. It’s more likely you would be robbing me.”

             
“What about the mushrooms?” He forked down another quarter slice of the mushrooms on toast.

             
“What about them?”

             
“What do they do? Turn my pee green?”

             
“No, your thoughts wild.”

             
“Pardon?” He thought perhaps she was having trouble with her English again.

“We’ll have the same thoughts for the next hour or two. They’re hallucinogenic. The mushrooms. I pick them in the forest.”

"It's a drug?" He pushed the plate away. "I don't need it."

"A drug?" she snorted. "No. Just a simple food. Plants,
luschke
. God's very own plants."

"They sound like drugs."

"Viagra is a drug. Thalidomide is a drug. These are just fungi. Mushrooms. They pop out of the animal shit in the woods.”

“I don't need them," Snow insisted, pushing the plate away.

"Maybe not." She pushed the plate back. "Maybe they need you. Maybe you need each other.”

“How do you mean?”

“Cowshit and mushrooms are symbiotic. You know how it works. Cows trample the forest, leaving grass, cows graze and shit, mushrooms grow on the shit. The humans come down from the trees and feed on the mushrooms. It transforms them from monkeys into something else. They start using fire to beat back the forest. More grass grows, more mushrooms, and humanity flourishes. Mushrooms need cowshit and grassland to grow. Sound familiar? Just like you. Anyway, it’s too late. How do you say in your country? That's the way the cabbage rolls. You’ve already eaten more than enough.”

“I’m in your hands.”

“No, you’re in your own hands.”

“Why do you do this? Take mushrooms?”

“Why do you drink?”

“To feel better.”

“You mean to feel less. Alcohol is a depressant. It doesn’t make you feel better.”

“Okay,” granted Snow. “To feel less. You haven’t answered my question.”

“Alcohol destroys your dreams. Mushrooms feed them.”

“To answer your question ….” Magda began.

“What question?” Snow interrupted.

“The one you want to ask me. Why I’m here. Where I’m from. Why I’m not ‘normal.’”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean.” Magda held out her hand. “‘What were you?’” you want to ask me.

“My God! Your fingers! What happened to them?” They were all flattened, black, crushed, without nails.

“These are not mine. My own were quite different.”