The Physics of Sorrow (17 page)

At first, the engineers officially dubbed it the “Time Bomb,” and it really did look like a bomb or a shell, with its elongated 228-centimeter body and rounded tip. Then they decided that was bad luck, so they changed the name, at least officially, but the fuse had already been set off.

In 1945 they wanted to open the capsule. Out of nostalgia for the lost, pre-war world? No. They wanted to add the most magnificent invention: a diagram of the atomic bomb. Then they decided against
it. But twenty years later they couldn’t help themselves and buried a second capsule in the same place, where, alongside information about the atom bomb and several newer weapons, they added a Beatles record, birth control pills, and a credit card.

(Time bomb, 1938)

V
OYAGER

The attempts to preserve time continue. The year is 1977. With the
Voyager
space shuttle, the strategy changes—the capsule can be buried in outer space. Until now, the direction had been down deep in the ground, now it’s up deep in the sky. As far away as possible from earth, that dangerous place.

The golden plate contains a photograph of a five-centimeter-long fetus, a nursing mother, an astronaut in outer space (very similar to the fetus), a house, a supermarket, silhouettes of a man and a
woman (the woman is pregnant and the baby is visible). But the best part are the sounds—the sound of rain, wind, a chimpanzee, a kiss, frogs, a crying baby being soothed, a tractor, a galloping horse, conversation around a campfire.

The shuttle is American, it was launched in the heat of the Cold War (such linguistic irony). We knew about
Voyager
only because there, on the golden plate, was a Bulgarian folk song. However, it also contained a greeting from the American president (we didn’t know about that), that very same toothy Jimmy Carter, whom one neighbor woman of ours wanted to hack to bits with a cleaver like a chicken. So, in any case, now Jimmy Carter and that Bulgarian folk song were wandering amid the stars together. We were proud that our song of all things had been chosen. We later found out that it wasn’t alone in the cosmos, but cheek-by-jowl with Azerbaijani bagpipes and a Georgian choir from the USSR, Aboriginal songs, Senegalese drums, Mozart, Bach, Beethoven . . . And we were slightly disappointed by this. Who knows why, but we imagined that all the aliens, when they stepped out in the evening onto their chilly celestial porches, liked best of all to play that Bulgarian folk song about a fierce rebel on their record players. (Small nations love being fierce.) I didn’t understand any of the heavily dialectal lyrics of that song and was seriously worried about how the aliens would be able to understand it.

I hope they still haven’t understood it, otherwise we’ll lose them for good. Or maybe they gave it a listen and that’s why they’re late in coming. In short, Delyo, the hero of the song, threatens that if the Turks force two of his aunts to convert to Islam, he’ll storm the village and
many a mother’ll bawl / an’ many a young bride’ll howl / even the lil’ baby in the belly’ll cry out
. . .

That baby in its mother’s womb, flying on the same disc with Delyo, better watch out.

O
THER
C
APSULES
, O
THER
T
ESTAMENTS

The year is still 1977. The place is the city of Pleven.

“In the foundation of the Pleven Memorial Panorama, in the floor of the lobby, a capsule with a message has been buried. It will be opened in exactly one hundred years, when all of us will be living under communism,” the chairman of the State Council, Comrade Todor Zhivkov announced during the placement of the capsule.

“Well, we won’t
all
be living under communism,” my father says and switches off the TV, “that guy thinks he’s gonna live forever.” I imagine how one hundred years from now, the new man,
Homo communisticus
, opens up the capsule and reads the instructions from his forefather, the now-fossilized
Homo socialisticus
.

And what was written inside? Slogans like “a firm right hand . . . the benefits of communism . . . to each according to his needs . . .” and other mumbo-jumbo, as we said back then.

This capsule-mania turned out to be catching. Everyone was racing to bury messages for the future. Our school’s turn eventually came around. The capsule resembled a big glass test tube. I had the feeling I’d seen it in the chemistry lab. In front of the whole school,
the principal read our message to the future Pioneer, who would live under communism, and then stuffed it inside. Then they added three drawings and three essays by students. There had been an essay contest on the topic: “How do I see myself in the year 2000?” In short, we saw ourselves as communists let loose in the cosmos. Communism had conquered the globe and was already being exported to nearby planets. We drew cosmonauts in their spacesuits with red stars on them, tethered to the mother ship with something like an umbilical cord or a rope and with a bouquet of daisies in one hand. Or make that poppies. Poppies were more fitting, since they had “sprung from the blood of fallen heroes.” Later I would find out that poppies would always come in handy for other, more intoxicating uses as well.

They put those kinds of things in that capsule back then, and the Pioneer coordinator even suggested stuffing in the school flag as well, but the test tube turned out to be too small.

For the essay contest “How do I see myself in the year 2000?” held before the burial of the capsule, I wrote only a single sentence: “I don’t see myself, because in the year 2000, the world will end. This is a fact.” I can’t say why I did it. I was immediately called before the Pioneer coordinator, who labeled it a “provocation.” The main question was who had been telling me these “facts.” Which only strengthened my suspicion that everybody knew what was going to happen, but they were keeping it under wraps as a state secret. I was old enough to know not to rat my grandma out. I lied, telling them I’d heard it from some fat Polish woman at the seaside. I purposely said “fat,” so as to express my attitude toward this provocateur. Poles weren’t like us, they lolled topless on the beach and sold Nivea hand cream on the sly. Let them go look for her.

It goes without saying that my early warning did not make it into the test tube.

In the meantime, I redoubled my efforts to fill my own capsule. In absolute secrecy, in step with the spirit of the times, as they said back then. In step with the spirit of the . . . Jesus, where did that come from? Remembering is never innocent, phrases from that time come back to me. There’s suddenly a bad taste in my mouth. In step with the spirit of the times. In step with the spirit . . . I’ll repeat it a few more times to make it meaningless.

B
OX
N
UMBER
73

And one more “time capsule,” one of the official ones. An ordinary paper envelope with red capital letters: “To be opened when he becomes a Komsomol member.” Under socialism, they were given to every child right at birth. I have placed this fragile paper capsule in box number 73 and, contrary to the instructions, the envelope is only now being opened. Inside, the following was typed out:

              
Dear Young Man,

              
There are moments in a person’s life that are never forgotten. Today, with trembling hands you untie the knot of your scarlet Pioneer’s neckerchief, replacing it with a red Komsomol membership booklet. This is a symbol of the great trust the Party and our heroic and hardworking people have in you.

              
Be decent and daring in word and deed! Dedicate the drive of your youth and the wisdom of your mature years to that which is dearest to all generations—the Homeland!

Yet another stellar example of socialist-speak. I now see that it is a mouthful:
Be decent and daring in word and deed! Dedicate the drive
. . .
What are all those Ds, why make the tongue scoot along on its ass? I wonder whether those suit-wearing fates handed my mother the envelope when she was still in the delivery room? While she was still in shock and didn’t know which way was up, she was given diapers, a pot to boil bottles in, and a representative from the Regional Committee of the Communist Party came and handed her the letter. Don’t worry about the kid, we’ve already preordained his fate, first he’ll become a young Pioneer, then he’ll put on his Pioneer’s neckerchief, then he’ll replace it with his Komsomol booklet, it’s all written here. Set. In. Stone.

I was first thinking to toss out the envelope, but then decided to put it back in its place, in box number 73. There need to be such things inside, too.

I think I need to reinforce the box with added protection against such radioactive waste from the past. But what if only this capsule survives? What if it’s discovered and a cult grows up around it? I shouldn’t have gone there. I can see it ever so clearly.

F
UTURE
N
UMBER
73

Many years after the apocalypse, life springs up again and after several millennia man makes a reappearance. These new post-apocalyptites develop more or less the same as earlier people did, not counting a few insignificant deviations (mutations), for example, the fact that they are incapable of abstract thought. Clearly, nature or God learned a lesson from the previous, less-than-smashingly successful experiment and has made some healthy adjustments.

Suddenly, the New Ones accidentally stumble across a buried but miraculously intact capsule with messages from before the apocalypse. The event is indescribable. Finally, some trace of their forefathers. But it is the most idiotic and laughable message imaginable
(but they don’t realize this). Some testament to their descendants, which should be opened 200 years later. Part of it has been worn away, but individual phrases have survived. They decipher it carefully. And devotedly, as stone tablets are read.

We must heed this testament and change our lives accordingly, that’s how it is everywhere. Only one person resisted. On the contrary, he kept saying, we should do the exact opposite of what is written on the stone tablets if we want to avoid the fate that befell our forefathers. But no one listened to him. The Testament was circulated far and wide and every word was interpreted as specific instructions for action.

Every cliché (and a cliché is nothing more than an abstraction that has swallowed its own tail) becomes dangerous when it is made literal. Three empty, meaningless phrases from the distant twentieth century turned the life of a heretofore united and happy society, in which abstractions did not exist, upside down: . . .
Prepared and trained for the sea of life . . . The socialist family—the basic cell of our society . . . To spill your blood for the homeland . . .

The sea wasn’t far away. They immediately turned it into an Academy, where they began training the young and the old. The teacher would swim out in front, with the students around him in shoals, with their frail, knowledge-hungry bodies, flailing their arms and legs. The more frail and sickly among them quietly sank, falling back and left behind. The survivors felt at home in the water, their backs grew enormous, they knew everything about life in the sea. What erudite athleticism, what academic muscle . . . the non-drowned poets sang. On land they started to feel like beached whales. And life gradually returned to the sea. (What an evolutionary step backward.)

After that, true to the second line of the Testament, they filled the sea with wooden cells. Every newly married couple received one as a wedding present and lounged in it of their own free will.

Three times a year they celebrated the Day of the Great Bloodletting, on which they injured themselves, so as to offer up spilled blood to the Homeland. And since they had no idea or instructions as to what it was, they simply gathered up the blood in a huge container, which they soon dubbed accordingly: “Homeland.”