The Monkey Link (25 page)

But today was Friday already. And only noon. Yesterday had whistled past me like a bullet past my temple. We—what was left of the cohort, Marxen, Daur, and I—were riding in Research Associate Dragamashchenka’s car. The responsibility I faced had utterly sobered me, and something had become clear. Complications had arisen with the Englishman. It was embarrassing to refuse him, you understand, but the road to the site of the monkey settlement lay past a “facility.” What kind of facility this was the researcher didn’t tell even me, but I understood that the Englishman was not to see the monkeys. For me, however, the researcher said, meaning me, it could be arranged if I was interested. They couldn’t pay me for my talk, but this they could do. Even tomorrow, they would take the institute bus and go, and while they were at it they would check on how the preparations for winter were coming, winter’s the main problem for monkeys. Last winter was tough, lots of snow, they had trouble getting through, it went down to twenty-five below in the mountains where the monkeys were and their tails got frostbitten, but otherwise they survived, and if they survived that winter, they’ll survive the next ones, too, except of course they need support, they have the little house against bad weather, and they do need extra food, but still they’re free, in effect
 
…
But you’ll see for yourself. Are they better off free? No question—if you could just get a look at these beauties! What manes! These are lions, not monkeys
 
…
The presence of lively emotion in the discourse of the monkey researcher, as he had proved to be, gladdened me. Down at the bottom of my nearly emptied authorial womb something began to stir, rapidly swelling and bulging in the likeness of an idea. Soviet monkeys
 
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The liberation of the monkey
 
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The Russian monkey
 
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A monkey living free, under conditions of socialist society
 
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Without a cage
 
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Monkey freedom
 
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A republic of monkeys
 
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Monkey ASSR
 
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Couldn’t say that—everyone would be offended. The monkeys would not be offended. The main thing was not to offend the little monkeys. I would allow no harm to come to
them.
—No, I could write this, I had to! “We gave them their freedom
 
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their manes grew, but their tails got frostbitten
 
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they need feeding
 
…
 
” There was something to this! I always get pregnant the first time
 
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But then I can’t deliver for years. The fruits of my womb press down upon each other. The mass begins to ferment. It no longer results in wine—I have to distill moonshine.

And drink it, too. We each had a small
chacha
at Daur’s, where we made a brief stop to change our shirts and take a shower. That was not the purpose, as it turned out. They had turned off the water in Sukhum again, and Daur’s shirt was too tight on me. I rolled up the sleeves a bit higher. He could not refrain from glancing in the mirror, and even I was pleased with myself. I sat
HIM
down on the can, and while he strained, I chased monkeys. It’s a very beautiful place and a picturesque road, they say
 
…
Suppose I’m going there with about six monkey experts; suppose I ask them about monkeys, the way I asked Doctor D. some time ago about birds; suppose they’re of different nationalities: an Abkhaz, a Georgian, an Armenian, a Greek, a Jew, a Russian
 
…
I could take the Ainglishman along, too
 
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don’t take the Ukrainian
 
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suppose they’re inhabitants and patriots of this very land
 
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suppose they’re amateur historians, as all of them are, here in the province
 
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suppose they just happen to tell me the history of the region, and also just happen to start arguing: which of them is a real native, who is more native
 
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suppose the argument grows into a quarrel between the Georgian and the Abkhaz, between the Georgian and the Armenian, between
 
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no, I won’t for the world quarrel with the Jew
 
…
this is our business
 
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“This is an ancient quarrel of Slavs among themselves”
{42}
 
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and, well, in a group like that, the Jew is more of a Slav
 
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but not a Georgian, not an Armenian, and not a Greek, certainly
 
…
and besides, is a Russian all that far from a Jew?
 
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the Jews are more Russian than we are
 
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every time, they plan to live here; every time, we don’t want to live
 
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not that again! you’re on your way to see the monkeys
 
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yes, but I haven’t arrived yet!
 
…
what do they quarrel about?
 
…
oh, that’s easy, we just have to get the details
 
…
the Abkhaz, naturally, quarrels about Georgianization, the elimination of Abkhazian schools, the registration of Abkhazians as Georgians
 
…
the Georgian, naturally, cannot bear this historical injustice and says didn’t we give you television in 1978, didn’t we give you a university?
 
…
you said it! you “gave”—you gave because you’d taken, confiscated, first you confiscated and then you gave
 
…
what could we confiscate from you? you didn’t even have literacy
 
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well, but for how many centuries were the Abkhaz the kings of Georgia!
 
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what! the Abkhaz, kings?! in our country!? ha, ha, ha
 
…
you Georgians never waged war, the wars were waged by the highlanders—Circassians, Abkhaz, Ossetians—and you were always under somebody
 
…
under the Persians, the Mongols, the Russians
 
…
but where
were you? you
were always under
us,
you’ve always been part of Georgia, you
are
Georgians
 
…
at this point they enter into hand-to-hand combat, it’s the start of a national struggle, what’s it called—Stalin used it for the first Bolshevik newspaper—
Borba? Zorba? Cobra?
 
…
by the way, where’s the newspaper?
 
…
ah, the newspaper
 
…
we do have newspaper
 
…
that isn’t quite true to life
 
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they’d never say it that directly, or else they’d cut each other’s throats
 
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they say it that way privately, away from each other, to a third person, I mean, of a third nationality
 
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and what does the person of a third nationality tell them
 
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he tells them they’re fighting in vain, because in any case, before either of them existed, there was a Greek colony here (if the person is Greek)
 
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or if the person is Armenian he says that back in Assyrian times this was strictly Armenian land
 
…
now everyone will pounce on the Armenian: oh sure, Nefertiti was Armenian, Napoleon was Armenian, Leonardo da Vinci was Armenian
 
…
but we have no quarrel here, the Armenian will say; why quarrel, if they were Armenian?
 
…
the Russian alone remains modestly silent and makes a mental note, because why quarrel about what happened when, before Russia even existed? before Russia even existed, this land could belong to anyone you please, be my guest, but the minute Russia appeared, then to whom could the land have belonged?
 
…
not
Turkey
?
 
…
what did you want with Turkish rule?
 
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you’re Christians: fear God
 
…
that’s what the Russian will never say while they quarrel on their way to the monkeys, having forgotten all about them
 
…
the Russian is admiring the landscapes, winning them inch by inch from the infidel for his own little book, what will it be called?
Monkey Sapiens
 
…
not bad
 
…
Homo Bilegus
 
…
what’s “leg’ in Latin? oh, come on! oh, the ones who make shoes for invalids? orthopedists, that’s it! so which is it, ortho- or ped-? ortho-dox, peda-gogue, pedi-atrician, pederast
 
…
Homo Pedis,
that’s funny
 
…
no,
pedi
is children
 
…
something’s wrong
 
…
coming, coming! I’m ready, I’ll be right out
 
…

This is what happened. While I was preparing for my talk. Daur had been mainlining at the home of his neighbor, a Greek who was remarkable for the fact that as soon as he and Daur got their apartments in this new building, Daur did nothing, because he had no money for repairs and because he labored in the arts (
sapiens sapiens
), but the Greek, because he was a truck driver at a furniture combine, a workingman, a man with a skill (
sapiens habilis
), immediately undertook to finish everything in oak with his own hands—everything—the parquet, the walls, the ceiling, the bath—it went on for four years, and when everything was done he took an ax and hacked it all back to smithereens, after which he became pensive and solitary (I had never seen him this way) and could associate only with Daur. I, of course, didn’t immediately guess why Daur had withdrawn to his neighbor the Greek’s, perhaps because I occupied his can for so long, but I realized it when we stood before the audience, which consisted mainly of female research associates under thirty, some of them even pretty (three out of seven), and there were exactly three of us (
HE
calculated it for me, then and there): Dragamashchenka, Daur, and I
 
…
Dragamashchenka introduced Daur, a man known to everyone in the city, and Daur was supposed to introduce me, a man known to all though unknown in the city, and to tell the story, as it were, of my literary career. Daur boldly stepped forward and said that they saw before them a man who was interesting primarily for the fact that he was
 
…
Here I froze in anticipation, on the threshold of sincere delight and counterfeit embarrassment, for I have rarely met such a gift of eloquence as Daur’s. As a
tamada
, or toastmaster, he surpasses all, leaves them in the dust. He’s especially eloquent and witty in the presence of ladies, so that I had often actually envied him—he so far surpassed me in such situations that I merely exploited my advantage as his elder and adopted the pose of a teacher, admiring my pupil and approving his every word
 
…
Daur inhaled with his whole chest and did not exhale again. Or so it seemed, at least. He stood there, chest thrown out, eyes and mouth round, and we benevolently awaited his exact word. The girl on whom his eye was fixed began to blush uncontrollably, the sweat streamed down Daur’s face, but his next word was never born. Dragamashchenka began to applaud, Daur exhaled at last and sat down, and I stood up.

A man is a man, that is, very weak. I couldn’t help blooming like an emphatically luxuriant flower against the background of the preceding orator. If they were biologists, then of course what did they know about biology? And of course, I was the very man to teach them to understand their own subject. I talked to them about
 
…

My nocturnal inspiration was still boiling in me. When I finished, last night, I simply hadn’t said everything. As always, the things for whose sake you write it all, the two or three thoughts that troubled you so much that they actually sat you down at your desk to express them—these are the two that prove not to have been expressed. Neither Pavel Petrovich nor I, much as we drank, had ever finished thinking them out; I had simply shot through the text and emerged with the two of them in my hands, finding no place for them anywhere along the way. Even Pavel Petrovich hadn’t had time to explain them to me.

“The pig
 
…
 
” Pavel Petrovich was saying to the young ladies. “Can you give me any reason why we traditionally hold such a contemptuous, ungrateful, and churlish (see there, even I almost said ‘swinish’) attitude toward this astounding animal?” Pavel Petrovich had apparently decided to pursue his idea of the Creator as an artist who had revealed himself through the creation of water. “Not only is the pig clean and intelligent, it is also the most perfect creature in the natural system of the peasant farmyard. The problem of pollution-free production, which cannot be solved under the conditions of late-twentieth-century technical progress, was solved at the dawn of mankind’s development by the invention—I emphasize, the invention—of the Pig! Nothing in the history of human civilization has so perfectly emulated and replicated Creation as the peasant farmyard. It is a painting of Creation, framed by the fence. The fenced vegetable patch—this is an invention equal to the wheel. This too, primordially, was round. Only partition, the presence of a neighbor, gave it rectangularity
 
…
 
”

The total unexpectedness of the word “rectangularity” jolted the orator. He glanced all around and chose for himself a little blonde, who didn’t appeal to me personally (I had my eye on another one), but both of us (in one person) were picking up signals from a third, a little typist at a publishing house I knew. Her shy invitation embarrassed me: this was someone who should be avoided but not offended
 
…
“Rectangularity,” having escaped his lips, inspired him, and he easily went on to discover a connection among the following words: Russia, kolkhoz, nomads, neutron bomb, “without a single nail,” fire, “with dung in their hands,” raft and church, “eighteen wars with Turkey—and no Dardanelles,” Vikings, Teutons, Swedes, Tatars, Lithuanians, Turks, Poles, Ermak, “
nach Osten
,”
{43}
swamp, cut a window, Siberia, geographic range, Europe, tundra, horses, hides, women, cattle slaughtering, primitive tribes, moonshine, the freeze-over, dumplings, palms, California
 
…
“Too bad about Alaska!”
 
…
Khrushchev
 
…