The Monkey Link (20 page)

There really was something splashing within and around me, like surf
 
…
Silvery smoothness, and houses rising to the surface
 
…
A sudden smell of the sea, like homeland
 
…

“The Child,” babbled Pavel Petrovich. He, too, was already transparent, dissolving in the ocean as it closed around us. “Oh, if only I could—the Child!
 
…
No one has painted him yet. Because he’s not man, not beast, not God
 
…
Or maybe he
is
God
 
…
His face is like great water, ever flowing, its meaning is not of our world. Have you seen a true landscape? Look into his face! You’ll be blinded. That landscape shows through in the face of the mother waiting for him, carrying him under her heart
 
…
There, by looking closely, we might understand something more, if only we could
 
…
But no, Creation is beyond our comprehension. Only the Passion
 
…
 
”

The last glassful turned over within me several times, because this thought was too heavy to lift. I dove like a dark little gray mouse into the depths that glimmered before me
 
…

I woke up as if someone had poked me, in the small bare kitchen of a prefabricated apartment. Traces of unfinished construction proclaimed the building’s newness. I was lying on a cot, under a small blanket, and my shoes had been carefully removed. Near the head of the bed stood a bottle of beer, beside which lay an opener. This solicitude struck me as revolting. I even tripped over the bottle when I stood up on the linoleum in my socks—stood like Colossus on his clay feet, and with a colossal stagger, too. I went to the rosy window to learn where I was and what was making the strange, animate racket outside the window. I was very high up. Extending away from the window were boundless expanses, no longer urban but Russian. The forest stretched to the horizon. Only near the building did it change to the dense young undergrowth just across the highway, which at that hour was empty. Parting that undergrowth with his powerful chest—hence the marvelous rustle that had wakened me—and racing not toward the forest, for some reason, but toward the building, here came a frightened and maddened moose. I’m not much of an expert, I’m not a hunter, but he was obviously young, even though he had reached full adult size. He raced along, parting the saplings like grass, and the madness in his eyes was visible even from many stories up
 
…
or were his mighty legs thrusting so randomly and wildly that I only imagined he wasn’t seeing anything in his way? Above the forest horizon the red sun stood at exactly the same level as yesterday, when I had ceased remembering anything. Was this the same sunset, or a new sunrise, or the next sunset? Was I facing west or east?
 
…
But there was no apple orchard in front of me, and it could be inferred that I was facing the opposite direction, if one recalled that the last house where we were “eagerly awaited” had been in the orchard in front of us. In that case, it was sunrise! Veiled in a peculiar, mysterious mother-of-pearl, this beautiful
all
was still just beginning to catch fire
 
…
So, I was in Pavel Petrovich’s house! A terror not attributable to hangover seized me. The moose dashed at me and disappeared from view. I peeled my forehead from the windowpane and set off to reconnoiter, soundlessly, in my socks.

It was a one-room apartment. Quietly opening the door, I found the room just as empty as the kitchen. Except that the walls were hung with an endless quantity of landscapes. Going closer to one of them, I recognized it, not without astonishment, as the very landscape from which this whole episode had started. The next one, too. And the next
 
…
All the canvases had one and the same landscape. The leaves fell, the sun rose and set, snow blanketed everything, storm clouds gathered and rain poured down, and even in the dark of night, with a single star, its features could be made out
 
…
Always the same landscape, always from the same point. For all my sympathy, I couldn’t call this tolerable art; or, which is also possible, I knew nothing about it. But nowhere in these paintings did I see the spirit of Pavel Petrovich, who for two days had tossed my rickety little boat on his stormy billows. Especially in two unsuccessful ones: there was no excuse for the inexplicable washed-out shadow, the gray blur, that hung directly above the point from which he was painting this landscape
 
…
His nose! I guessed at last. This was his nose. The very nose that he had explained to me was so unneeded in a landscape. After looking around I turned to leave the room and almost cried out, for now I saw Pavel Petrovich.

In the corner behind the door a wide mattress had been laid directly on the floor; beside it, on his knees, was Pavel Petrovich. He had carefully bowed his head on the very edge of the mattress. And on the mattress itself there was—I didn’t immediately understand what
 
…
something inordinately large and round, covered with a sheet. And over in the distance, in the corner, right by the wall, behind the dune of the sheet, I spied a woman’s face. Both her pose and his were so lifeless that I was chained by terror, and the hairs found only in literature stirred like worms on my fuddled head. A mosquito was sitting on her brow. Its swollen belly glowed a separate red, from which I could tell that day had finally dawned. Could a mosquito suck a woman who was dead? still warm?
 
…
Now I also discerned a vein pulsing on her temple. Then the mountain under the sheet also began breathing rhythmically, and Pavel Petrovich was snoring, barely audibly
 
…
An extravagant feeling of happiness overwhelmed me. I gazed and gazed at this boundless pregnant face, a landscape of steppe and freedom in which we no longer exist
 
…
ancient as a burial mound, young as a wildflower
 
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And the soothed, gentle little face of Pavel Petrovich
 
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And on both, traces of tears from the swift, heavy thunderstorm that had passed in the night
 
…
Softly, on tiptoe, I left the apartment. The door was ajar, and the lock dangled useless on its last screw. There was still no one in the street. A cock crowed from someone’s balcony, and after a moment’s thought another answered him
 
…
Only now did I notice that I was in my socks, but I definitely wasn’t going back for my shoes. I headed in the direction of the hypothetical highway, to hitch a ride to where my explanation awaited me.

I could have found Pavel Petrovich’s house from memory, or more accurately, I could have arranged to meet him at the point of his landscape
 
…
I was shackled by an unconquerable fear at the mere thought of it, every time. Even a return to the police station (I already had the book) was less frightening to me, though I never made that trip, either. So the keepsake key is still there, and I still can’t get into the church. Quite a few years have passed, a lot has happened. Whether I left home or my wife left me, my lady friend hasn’t returned, either. And although I have never encountered Pavel Petrovich again, all the totally forgotten things he said during those hellish days when I vanished through his trapdoor have evidently sunk right to the bottom, or as people say nowadays, have become embedded in my unconscious. From time to time and for no obvious reason, they float up to the surface in the form of stunning illuminations (stunning primarily to me). For a short while, crushed and exalted by an idea that seems to me to be my own, I “have my reward,” I feel smug. But then and there I rake out the whole reward, suddenly realizing that this, too, is not mine, my idea, it belongs to those days, to Pavel Petrovich. And then the crocodile cucumber surfaces in my mind, or the gaming laundry tub starts spinning, or the gym horse starts beating its hoof, or Fujiyama’s belly astonishes my eyes, or the welding torch blazes up in my mind, or I remember Pavel Petrovich’s nose against the background
 
…
The seasons, marking my years, fly past as on his landscapes, one idea attaches itself to another, and even though it’s not mine, I don’t forget it the second time
 
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Ever since, I’ve been unable to look calmly at Cezanne—I’m always afraid I don’t fully understand him
 
…
And when I come across someone’s majestic discovery—necessarily about fate, necessarily about God, soul, or homeland—I take fright even as I admire it, because Pavel Petrovich, if only I could re-create him in full, said it certainly as well and perhaps almost better, said practically the same thing as our prophets—and he said it to
me.

Yes
 
…
Things were said
 
…
But who said all these things, and to whom? Who convinced whom of the truth of what?
When
and
where
? And what happened? What ever came of all these things that were said? What cloud were we living on, where did we fly to, and where are we crawling around now? Poking holes in layers and tumbling out of bounds? Let’s fly higher by falling even deeper! In accordance with the laws of the correlation of top and bottom. Realistically applying them to reality, exchanging outer for inner and vice versa, not changing our living space and doing nothing in it or with it, producing nothing
 
…
exchanging outer for inner and inner for outer, thing for thing, as at a bazaar
 
…
so that the woman becomes a man, the dead thing alive, the man a woman, and the live thing dead
 
…
and what’s in it for us, what’s our profit in this spiritual marketplace? So many times we have soared up and fallen, so many times we’ve turned ourselves inside out with effort or retreated into our shell, yet where have we opened our eyes the next morning, and with whom?
As
whom have we awakened—there’s another question. And who awoke?? It’s odd, this groping at oneself: Who’s this? To this day, I
 
…
with my usefulness, which sometimes seems real even to me
 
…
and other people are so convinced of it, as if by conspiracy
 
…
they’ve asked me to come, moved over to make room, invited me to visit them
 
…
invited me as one of their own, as someone like them, just as good, even better
 
…
invited me into the world, the people, the ethnic groups, the family
 
…
I tried, I approached, I was liked
 
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When did it end? At what line did I balk, failing to cross it, every time? Who drew this magic circle around me?
 
…
I balked at an invisible line, beyond which acquaintanceship ended and life began: the ordinariness, the workload, and the disillusionment. Every time, I was obligated to no one: I didn’t ask for this, you yourselves invited me, I didn’t much want to, look to yourselves
 
…
Smiling, excessively modest, I entered into the next alien existence as if it were my own. Poets, women, Armenians, literary critics, foreigners, peasants, nouveaux riches and has-beens, classicists and modernists, monks and convicts, whole generations of fathers (who are also the sons)—they all moved over and almost gave up their places
 
…
I settled down as if in my own place, an empty place, a place occupied by no one, a place needed by no one
 
…
And only a kindred man didn’t move over but demanded that I share with him, not my life, by any means, but a half liter to start with, didn’t move over because he recognized in me, or perhaps in himself, the same kind of man, and, just in case, suspected me of a faster betrayal reaction.

Not so long ago, there was plenty of everything. Of earth, of water, of air. One would have thought. But no. They’re almost gone. Just another little push and they
will
be gone. Plunder of the habitat. But what’s so bad about that? The gold and the precious stones are still in someone’s pockets, albeit someone else’s. The village lost at cards has not disappeared. Solid matter is guarded by the law, at least to some extent. With more transparent matter, it’s far worse. Where is the water, the air? Drained away, evaporated. But there are things even more delicate and transparent than water, more incorporeal than air
 
…
The spirit! What banditry, as yet undetected, seethes on its many floors! Ideas swarm in skulls as if not alive, as if no one’s. No one has caught anyone red-handed (red-minded). And no one has been taken at his word
 
…

Where is he? I hope he’s alive. But I’m sure he is. As for me, here I sit
 
…
and I even
 
…
What is the captivating thing about life? The fact that it’s really life! You could never make it up. And if anyone finds these recollections implausible in some respects—all right, some things really have become distorted in my memory, and some have been lost
 
…
Far more implausible than anything described above is, simply, this morning of alive and eternal life: I am painting it directly from nature, and only a week ago I couldn’t even have imagined its future existence
 
…
Could I, even a month ago, when I feared that my last hour had come, have imagined that it too would pass, and that I wouldn’t sleep, drink, eat meat, know women—that I would be writing here, and my hand would refuse to lift and make the sign of the cross, as it used to lift in unescapable sin? Could I have imagined myself in this particular kitchen, which I have never seen before, the kitchen to which I have withdrawn for the night so that this hospitable house won’t thunder with my typewriter and wake up my hosts, who, after their laborious peasant labors and yet another family funeral, have fallen asleep at last? Could I have known that in the kitchen where I sit there would be, in addition to me, two baby chicks, one big and one little—they all died, these two are all that’s left of the last two broods, but even in the kitchen they’re cold, and the little chick keeps trying to creep under the bigger one, though actually he’s not big either, but the big chick chases him away, and then, once they’re awake, they go clattering single file around the cement floor until finally they think of doing something I would never in my life have thought of: they settle down on my foot, as the warmest spot in the kitchen, and though I’m rattling away like a submachine gun as I approach the long-dreamt-of end, and the noise makes them peep in fright, they don’t get down off my foot, they peep but they endure, and who will tell me now that I’m not alive, if I have baby chicks warming themselves on my living body and all three of us are now alive, living, and surviving, as we struggle, albeit with different kinds, but all of us with the cold? No one, and especially not I, would have suggested this even yesterday, but someone knew
 
…
as surely as I know right now, when outside the window it’s beginning to turn gray, and emerging from the darkness is the white wall of the house, and the marvelous English (Abkhazian) lawn (
agazon
), the grass-carpeted farmyard—I know for sure that some hens and a turkey and an endless number of turkey chicks will come running out, right now, onto this delightful glade, and a heifer named Mani-Mani (“Money-Money”) is going to stick her face through my door, not expecting me here, and gaze at me as in the painting
The Adoration of the Magi,
and Mama Natella will drive her away and start putting the
khachapuri
in the oven at the very moment I finish this story on August 23, 1983,
{28}
with a baby chick on my right foot