Who Is Martha? (2 page)

In the end it was music that dealt the ripening old man the crushing blows. It devoured him and spit him out, only to devour him again. The child Levadski, the old man Levadski, too naïve to curse the day on which he imagined he found music. It found him, and it drove into him like an almighty whooping cough, making him more and more hunched, so that he squinted up at it more dwarfed than a dwarf. This is how Levadski wandered through life. His hunch grew like his awe for music and birds. Yet neither the music nor the birds thought about condemning Levadski.

Done, damn it! Levadski feebly tapped his scrawny thigh. So, the suspicion that he had carcinoma of the lung was confirmed! The patient and pseudo-respectful whispering of his doctor at the other end of the line had said as much. The news hit Levadski harder than it would have if the diagnosis had been roared down the receiver.

He would have liked to say a prayer, something sublime, but everything venerable seemed either unspeakable or defiled by mortal fear and self-pity. Impure, simply impure. Ultimately everything in this world referred to man, to man alone. Even in the purportedly altruistic stirring of the soul yapped a little I! I! I!, and a tiny actor stood whistling in the wings of the most deceptively genuine feelings. Disgusting, thought Levadski, you can’t even face a stroke of fate candidly. He thought this and knew that another Levadski, as if to confirm his thought, hovered the height of a hat above him, amusing himself at this sight: an old man with lung cancer sitting in a rocking chair, with a pretentious strip of sunlight on his pigeon chest and how strange, all the particles of dust, how they danced in the ray of light making it visible in the first place.

Levadski pursed his lips and, in his mind, spit on the carpet. What was he still supposed to think, when what he knew of human beings filled him with disgust? This scrap of knowledge ruined his pleasure in the unknown, in the mysteries of nature that were yet to be revealed. That he would no longer come to discover them made him livid. May youth divine the secrets of creation; the thought triggered a dull pain. It was not that he begrudged the others, those left behind, the revelation, no. Levadski just thought that mankind, if anything, had a simulated reverence for the simple and the great. It was the simple and the great that he felt sorry for, because it was pure curiosity that led man to pursue the wonders of nature; every solemn gesture was pure hypocrisy; every action, even if it was a self-experiment with a deadly outcome or involved years of sacrifice in the name of science, was nothing but egotistical defiance, nothing but pure self-assertion.

Levadski rose trembling from the rocking chair. Even now he had lied: regardless of mankind, it was not the simple or the great he felt sorry for, but that he would be denied coming one step closer to this mystery. He was envious and jealous and he begrudged the others, knowing at heart that all effort was in vain – the mystery of life would just grow further out of reach, for as long as this world still existed.

I have tramped around on this globe for long enough, Levadski thought. He opened the balcony door and sat back down in the rocking chair. The dusty curtain enveloped the figure of its guest for a moment, the street air. The street itself entered Levadski’s library, filled it with the bothersome yet welcome signs of life, the honking of car horns, the shouting of children and the perpetual hurry of women’s heels. He could also hear snatches of a conversation between ravens: “I love you,” “I love you too,” “Feed me!” “Antonida! Put your trousers on! Now!” a mother’s voice ordered. Levadski raised an eyebrow; when he was Antonida’s age, names like hers didn’t exist, and girls still wore skirts.

“Oh dear,” Levadski sighed. Why the intimation of his imminent demise hadn’t allowed him to die on the spot, but had instead stirred up a lot of dust was an enigma. His chin dropped to his chest like an empty drawer onto a table; there is nothing to be had here, thieves, leave me alone. He opened his mouth. The ray of sunlight now rummaged in his mouth. Levadski stuck out his tongue and rolled it back in. Birds are better than we are, he thought, not least because they are able to open their beaks properly, unlike human beings, whose mouths only open by dropping their bottom jaw; birds simultaneously raise their upper beak slightly!

Slowly Levadski shut his mouth again. He remembered that many decades ago he had observed a common redstart through a pair of binoculars with a fat tick close to its eye. The bird didn’t seem bothered by the tick. On a sun-drenched wall, it gently quivered with its orange-colored tail in front of its bride. At the time, Levadski could have sworn that the female was smiling at the male while it trembled in courtship. He had always suspected that birds smiled. Now, sitting in his rocking chair, he suddenly realized how this worked: The female bird smiled at her sweetheart just by looking at him. In spite of the ugly tick close to its eye. By being near him, she was smiling at him.

The thought that his body was at the mercy of a parasite, that his lung had been thrown to a sea creature as food, made Levadski peevishly swing back and forth a couple of times in his rocking chair. I am at the mercy not only of that bloodsucker but also of a cocktail of chemicals if I let myself in for chemotherapy, thought Levadski, and clenched his fists.

He noticed that following the telephone conversation he far too frequently used inappropriate language, words that he had always avoided in his life, “bloodsucker” or “damn it.” That he had even been sick was outrageous and a certain sign of his decay. Who cares, Levadski thought, if I kick the bucket soon. His eyes widened. There you have it, kick the bucket, that’s the kind of language I hear myself using! I should just die! Die and rot! Levadski gestured dismissively, rose from the rocking chair with a groan and shuffled to the shelf with the medical books.

Cyclophosphamide, sounds like a criminal offense … checks the multiplication of rapidly dividing cells. Side effects: nausea, vomiting, hair loss. May damage the nerves and kidneys and lead to loss of hearing, as well as an irreparable loss of motor function; suppresses bone marrow, can cause anemia and blindness. Well, Bon appétit. Levadski would have liked to call the doctor and chirp down the line.

Tjue-tjue

Ku-Kue-Kue—Ke-tschik-Ke-tschik!

Iju-Iju-Iju-Iju!

Tjue-i-i!

If the doctor had asked him what this was supposed to be, Levadski would have stuck with the truth: A female pygmy owl attracting its mate, you idiot! And hung up. He felt like a real rascal. At the age of ninety-six Levadski was game for playing a prank. The dusty lace curtain stretched towards him, slowly as if submerged in water, behind it the spruce that lay in front of his house, with a little gold in its green beard and birds, birds, birds that hopped, as voices, as light and shadow plays, from branch to branch, from tree to tree, from cloud to cloud, from day to day, angels, always among people.

Levadski suddenly had the feeling he needed a walking stick. He leaned against his bookshelf, amazed he had been able to live without a walking stick up until now, shook his head and put this oversight down to being a scatterbrain.

“Adieu,” said Levadski to the medical dictionary in his hand before he shut it. He looked around his apartment, undecided as to what he should do. Instead of watering the flowers, making himself some porridge, or dusting, he took a walk around the four corners of his library to calm his nerves.

The only thing that really seems to belong to man is the genuine. And the only genuine thing about man, Levadski thought, breathing on his magnifying glass, is his pride! He was proud of the bookshelves that filled the walls. Though this trait belonged to the department of deadly sins, how could it be bad and depraved if it was purer, more sincere and unselfish, than the love that man imagined himself capable of? It was only pride that had no foundation and needed no admirers to sustain itself. Maybe it did poison the soul. But it also elevated the humble species of man a little, albeit to dubious spheres, from whence it became aware of the flicker of an immeasurably greater providence. The most beautiful thing was: A single surge of pride banished any breeding ground for loneliness. So why shouldn’t man commit this sin?

“So what if I was never capable of love?” Levadski asked the back of a slim volume with the tight gold lettering
Manual for the Domestication of Extremely Reluctant Parrots
. “At least I was capable of being proud, I was proud of you, little book. Just as love allegedly pulls the rug out from under lovers’ feet, my pride pulled the rug out from under my feet. I didn’t soar high or for long, so I didn’t land on my beak, but softly and in my element – in my library. I was never disappointed …”

Levadski would have liked to cry, but he suspected that these tears would have been on account of the doctor’s phone call rather than the solemnity of the moment, and so forbade himself to. My decorum will be the death of me, thought Levadski, for even the most natural thing suddenly seemed inappropriate to him. Honesty, he said to his books, is a slippery customer, it always slips away methinks when we believe we are surrounded by it. Levadski breathed on the magnifying glass again and polished it on his sleeve. Methinks! What a way to express myself! That he had a long time ago thought of winning over the opposite sex with this pathetic affected behavior, when his head had been filled with nothing but the mating dances and brooding habits of birds, was something he did not want to be reminded about. But he did think about it, he thought about it with a hint of bitterness. After a fulfilling academic life he knew: Women would have interested him more if they hadn’t constantly insisted on emphasizing that they were different from men. If they had been like female birds, a touch grayer and quieter than the males, perhaps they would have awakened his interest at the right time. Levadski would gladly have procreated with such a creature. Only he didn’t know to what purpose.

Levadski took a book from the shelf and blew the dust from it.
Dictionary of the Language of Ravens
by Dupont de Nemours, incomplete edition. A French ornithologist colleague had hidden the facsimile inside a cake, smuggled it through the Iron Curtain in time for Levadski’s seventieth birthday. Levadski’s delight in the facsimile had gotten the better of his reason to such an extent that he kissed the Frenchman on his moustache in front of the entire professoriate. Somebody raised his glass, he could remember that, and said, “A kiss without a moustache is like an egg without salt!” Everybody drank to international friendship and raven research, the words “May the day come when …” and “A clear conscience should not be a utopia” rang out. People clinked glasses and patted each other on the back. “From the primeval fish to the bird: a stone’s throw!”; “From the lungfish to the human: the bat of an eye!” They hoped he would gain many years of pleasure from this unique and scientifically speaking totally uninteresting book. His anniversary was at the same time a farewell. He left the university and the students – everything that he had never really been attached to – with the thought that he would not live much longer. “
Adieu, mon ami!
” Levadski had tried to joke when he stood opposite the Frenchman at the airport. The Frenchman nodded hastily and withdrew from Levadski’s brotherly kiss feigning a coughing fit. In the airplane the man with the moustache suffered a heart attack. For a time, Levadski was under the illusion that he had brought about the demise of his French colleague with his collegial kiss. If he’d explained to him that it was the custom in his country, like a weak handshake in Central Europe, perhaps the good man wouldn’t have died.

“Such a beautiful book,” said Levadski. He said it loud enough for the other books to hear. “This, children, is how the destiny of a man fulfills itself,” Levadski continued ceremoniously. “A stranger arrives, makes a present to a stranger and gives up the ghost!” The books listened as if Levadski hadn’t already told this story twenty times. “When, you won’t believe it, on that very day, I was thinking that
I
would have to die soon! Such a beautiful gift …”

Levadski opened the book and smoothed out the pages, his knuckles cracking. He made a cracking noise with every motion, he always had since he was a child. Even when he sighed or sneezed. Once he had a bout of hiccups where every hiccup was accompanied by a cracking noise and he kept on cracking. A whole day passed by like this. Levadski turned the pages of the dictionary with a great sense of pleasure.

Kra, Kre, Kro, Kron, Kronoj

Gra, Gres, Gros, Grons, Gronones

Krae, Krea, Kraa, Krona, Krones

Krao, Kroa, Kroä, Kronoe, Kronas

Kraon, Kreo, Kroo, Krono, Kronos

It’s a blessing I know French, thought Levadski, otherwise I would have had to learn it at the age of seventy to read this gem of a book. Simply and unassumingly the content of the language of ravens had been scraped together and distributed over twenty-seven pages, silent and powerful. Levadski remembered the bad mood he had fallen into every time he read the dictionary. Every time he stumbled over the word which suggested that man, in his search for enlightenment, had possibly overlooked the decisive junction – a word from the language of ravens. Which one was it? Levadski turned the pages and felt a surge of heat creeping up his hunched back.

Kra (quietly, deliberately, talking to himself ) – I am

Kra (quietly, drawn out) – I am fine; or I am ready

Kra (short staccato) – Leave me

Kra (tenderly, coquettishly) – Hello; or Wake up; or

Excuse the tomfoolery

Kra (questioningly, long) – Is somebody there?

Which word was it then?

Krao (loud and demanding) – Hungry

Kroa (chokingly) – Thank you, thank you so much,

such a pleasure

Karr (resolutely) – Adieu!

Kro …

Kronos! Kronos was the word! “Let us fly” in the language of ravens,
chronos
in Greek. Levadski shut the book. It was this junction that mankind had rushed past, past its own kinsfolk – past its brother animal. And along with it, consideration of the existence of a common primeval language had been buried! “Dear books,” Levadski said to his library, “that contemporary animal psychology stubbornly refuses to credit the higher vertebrates with the power of abstraction and a center of speech is not only a scandal. It is a disaster! The existence of a common primeval language is perfectly obvious. Tell me, does the animal give the impression of being apathetic? On the contrary, the animal looks lively and inquisitive, not because it has just laid an egg, but because it possesses language. Language …” raved Levadski, craning his neck. “Just like us the animal has named and internalized all the objects and impressions known to it. Otherwise the animal would long ago have died in isolation, darkness and silence, and even its heightened animalism would not have been able to compensate for its lack of speech. The animal has made sense of the world like we have, by naming this world!”