“It’s a pity it can’t last,” she brayed.
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“What kind of a future could we have? We certainly can’t stay hidden in these hills. Sooner or later we’re going to have to go down to the plains. If we go down toward the Serengeti, someone will devour me. You’re not the right age and don’t have the necessary experience to defend me from those predators, it seems to me. But even if we got away with it, we would have to contend with the mentality of an environment that has remained more or less unchanged since the first day of creation, right? On the other hand, if we decide to go back, the situation won’t be better: imagine what would happen once the media got hold of a story like ours. And then what kind of role models would we be for the young? It’s one thing not to be racist, but between the species a certain distance is necessary. And anyway, even here we wouldn’t be safe: don’t forget, I have a radio collar, and sooner or later they would find us. Goodbye, Visko.” She inhaled a tear, turned her tail and, swinging her hips, went down the hill toward the Olduvai Gorge and the Serengeti.
“Hey, wait a second, wait . . .” But she was already scampering down crags like a mountain goat. There was no way I was going to catch up with her. What could I do? I looked around. The view was breathtaking: for an instant I was suspended there, intoxicated by those wide spaces, those wild and boundless high plains that extended for hundreds of miles all the way to the Masai Mara . . . To my left I could see Ndutu and the flat savanna of Maswa. To the right, the Olduvai Gorge . . . my heart was beating like a cub’s. Courage, old Simba, I said to myself. Who says you’re too old for this life?
I took the path that led down to the valley and proceeded briskly alongside the road that led to the Naabi Hill gap, to the Serengeti. When I went by, a crested crane, a secretary bird, bustards and wailing lapwings took flight. In these parts, being a lion still meant something.
I finally came onto an endless plain with short grass from which emerged the huge granitic formations of the odd Kopje. Thompson and Grant gazelles, zebras, black-tailed gnus, Jackson’s elands, ostriches and oryxes grazed there under the watchful eye of cheetahs, lycaons, jackals and others of my kind. I couldn’t help but admire the elegant dignity of those ruminants, and I surprised myself by letting my gaze linger on the curve of their rumps. A new sensitivity for certain simpler sights in nature had awakened within me: the slender necks of oryxes, steenboks, the speckling of kudus, the short coat of the impalas, the little tails of the dik-diks, the small asses on some of the giraffes. I don’t know whether it was a survival instinct or modesty that made them move away with a certain alarm, murmuring and covering themselves with their tails.
I urbanely greeted some of the predators but didn’t feel like asking for information. They had the lynx-eyed look of serial killers. Those guys didn’t joke around: they tore things to pieces. And who knows what else they did to their prey that wasn’t in any documentary. With a shudder, I thought of Ljuba.
For a week I trotted far and wide, moving carefully among those tall stalks, keeping a low profile so as not to irritate the proprietors of those territories, and finally I found her near the Kopje of Moru.
She was grazing with a group of small dik-diks and big sunis. She gave me a chilly reception, but I couldn’t figure out the reason for her reserve. At any rate, she invited me to stay for the evening. She told me she had been adopted by the herbivores of that niche, that she had found a new family, new parents, new brothers and sisters.
“Come on, stay and eat with us,” she bleated suddenly.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Ljuba,” I objected. But she wouldn’t listen.
“Mom? Dad? Guess who’s coming to dinner!” She made way for me among a herd of bovids, and I followed her meekly, all purrs and good manners.
They tried not to betray any emotion, but they were struck dumb, as if bitten by a mamba.
I was introduced to two gazelles who talked to me with embarrassed coolness, and to two topis who simply looked at me with unconcealed aversion. I judged that the first two must be Mom and Dad, and the second two, dinner.
“Jambo, habari gani? Mimi Viskovitz,” I said with the most politically correct roar I could muster, and I complimented the lady on the dinner.
It turned out I had been confused: the two gazelles were friends and the two topis were the adoptive parents. But by that point the faux pas was done and I had helped myself. For the entire rest of the evening we sat there looking at each other in embarrassed silence.
“Damn,” Ljuba said later. “You told me you were a vegetarian.”
“Yes, but I thought that here—”
“You see, I told you it couldn’t last.”
“Give me some time, Ljuba.”
“No, Visko, we’re too different, can’t you see?”
I shook my head.
“And now I’m engaged.”
With her muzzle she pointed out the two kids who were at dinner, one of whom was shaking like a leaf. “But it’s not just that, Visko, you’re old enough to be my . . .” She began counting. If she was one year old, there could be fifteen generations between us. “What can I say? We’d look ridiculous together, don’t you see? And time won’t make you any younger.” She lowered her eyes.
It was there our story ended.
With my tail between my legs, I once again set out on the road past the caldera. She had hurt me. Not so much by what she said—basically she was right. But by the way she had said it. With a little twisted smile of compassion and embarrassment. I knew that feeling, I had felt it myself watching other animals undergo the humiliations of old age. When even the most cowardly animals made fun of them. When even the lowliest grip kicked them off the set because they were ruining the long shots. When even the tourists lowered their video cameras.
It gave me pleasure to see old friends again—the girls, the cubs. Even some hyenas.
Since that dinner, I never loved another ruminant. Or even ate one. Except that Ljuba, of course, or whatever her name was. For a little while, her fat made me gain weight, but with time and exercise (roar) , I worked it off.
YOU’RE AN ANIMAL, VISKOVITZ!
I, Viskovitz, was a microbe.
I was told, “It’s not size that counts, Viskovitz. The important thing is to be yourself.”
As if that was easy. I’d barely had time to grow fond of my name when I became two microbes: VISKO and VITZ. Imagine what it was like when I turned into four: VI, SKO, VI, TZ. I was coming apart.
In the Precambrian period, we all were. Some said, “What can you do? That’s life.” I thought “metabolism” was a more appropriate word.
Our idea of fun was to become sediment along with coacervates and proteinoids; methane and ammonia were considered a “nice atmosphere.”
When I began to be called V,I,S,KO, V,I,T,Z, I saw it was time to do something. But what? And who would do it? I was in a minority even in myself. I was addressed as “they.”
It was then that I heard the Voice: “V,I,S,KO,” it said to me. “It’s time to become an animal.”
“Animal?” At that stage I was open to any suggestion— what was degeneration for one could be evolution for another. “I wouldn’t know where to begin,” we confessed.
“By being an egoist, by being full of yourself. We hold on to our little ‘I’ with all our might. It shouldn’t be hard for you.”
We tried. What was left of me in my eight microbes felt a tremor of pride, an increase of viscosity, and with a heroic effort, we molded them into one plasmodium. I believe that was the first multicellular organism, and was truly the first “I.” To be precise, I, Viskovitz.
“And now?” I asked.
“Hmmm . . . Now you have to learn to kill and devour others. As big as you’ve become, that shouldn’t be hard for you.”
“Others who are alive?”
“Only until you’ve killed them, Visko. There’s nothing wrong with it—it’s called heterotrophic life.”<
br />
It didn’t seem dangerous. The life forms nearby looked pretty puny. I looked around and soon found some that fit the bill: Zucotic the bacillus, Petrovic the vibrio and Lopez the spirillum. Three septic and virulent paleogerms who’d been infecting me with their toxins for the whole Archeozoic era. I went up to them, slapped them around and ate them. It was the first instance of “survival of the fittest,” a concept that would go far.
“And now?”
“Now you have to learn how to . . . do that thing. I mean to say . . . conjugate with another organism and recombine. Find someone you like and exchange some DNA.”
“But—”
“There’s nothing dirty about it, Visko. Follow your heart.”
I thought he was referring to VITZ, the four cells who were kicking around in my sarcina—with a little imagination, you could consider them my heart. I ejected VI to see where he would go. He immediately began to wriggle away, taking off for the wide-open spaces, twisting and flexing his plasma. I followed him, paddling with my flagella until I saw him get to an albuminoid gelatin made of silvery microplasms, held together by long, filamentous cilia and purple fimbriae. That’s where I lost his trail.
“Hey you, gel!” I yelled. “If I’m not mistaken, you’ve stolen my heart.”
“Around here, hearts come and go,” she sneered, the heart stealer. “What was yours like?”
“A spherical mycoplasm, somewhat flexible and squishy, the last time I felt it beat.”
“Well, you can have it back if you want. But you’re going to have to come get it, Plasmodium.”
“Plasmodium is my morphotype. The name is Viskovitz.”
“And gel is your aunt Sally. The name is Ljuba.”
I cautiously moved alongside her and stuck to her gluey mass. Then I extroverted “I,” stiffened him and sank him into her body so that he would find his lost partner. In the splish-splash I ended up losing “I” as well. He slid out of his membrane and dove, plasma and periplasma, into her “U.”
And that is how I invented sex. I may have been a little clumsy, but my heart had been in it. I asked the gelatin how it had been for her.
“That’s sex?” She burst out laughing, quivering all over. “You call that sex?” Still roaring with laughter, she contracted her siphon and took off without a backward glance, leaving me there with my heart in pieces.
It was the emptiness that hurt, that abyss in the center of my being. Not that VISKOTZ was an ugly name, you understand, but it was the name of a wounded Plasmodium, of a being maimed in its “I.” I decided to build a cage of murein around the remains of my heart.
“Don’t do it, Visko,” the Voice warned me.
“You again!” I exclaimed. “Can we find out once and for all who the hell you are?”
“I am . . . the voice of your most ancient plasma. The primordial Microbe, the Protocell from which all of you were born, the I who includes all of you. You can call me VI.”
“VI?”
“Yes, the VI. The VI of Visko, your mind; the VI of Vitz, your heart; the VI of the seed you sowed; the VI of all that is Vital, my son.”
“Well, get a load of that.” And yet that speech of his had a certain logic. Something of the first microbe might still be inside me. And inside the others. “So your plasma would be inside the whole lot of us? Even in that Ljuba, just to pick a name . . .”
“Exactly so. And I promise you one thing: you will find her again, Visko, you will find her again. And maybe things will go a little better. Maybe.”
“And perhaps you were even inside Zucotic, Petrovic and Lopez?”
“Yes, and I still am. You’ll be meeting them again, too, Visko. My imagination is what is.”
“You’d like even those guys to evolve?”
“Not ‘evolve.’ That’s a word I don’t like. What is fun is ‘change,’ Viskovitz.”
“Just a minute there. You called me Viskovitz. But you know perfectly well that name doesn’t mean anything anymore.”
“I know what I’m saying. Look into your heart and you’ll see that I’m right. Go ahead, don’t be afraid—it’s not a spiritual exercise . . .”
I bent over, hydrolized my polysaccharides and peeked inside. Naturally I saw only T and Z. But then the V and the I of Visko began to stir. To copy themselves—they became bilobed, sectioned and finally split. A few minutes later the regeneration was complete, and I found myself face-to-face with him again—VITZ.
“Well, I’ll be,” I yelped. I was myself again, the old animal, in better shape than ever. Good, I said to myself. Very good. No one can stop me now. The time had come to teach the world a lesson. That thieving ecosystem! I burst out crying and laughing like a little kid. I was sure that from my salt tears, the ocean would take shape, yes sir, the ocean—and from there, life would begin, true life . . .
“Good for you,” the Voice complimented me. “Now you’re an animal. But you still have one more thing to learn.”
“Let’s hear it. Meiosis? Fermentation? Ontogenesis?”
“Death, Visko.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“You’re not a microbe anymore, Visko. Animals die.”
“Just a minute, pal . . . give up everything?”
“Everything.”
Alessandro Boffa
YOU’RE AN ANIMAL, VISKOVITZ!
Alessandro Boffa was born in Moscow. He completed his studies in biology in Rome, and now divides his time between Italy and Thailand. This is his first book.
INTERNATIONAL
FIRST VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL EDITION, JUNE 2003
Translation copyright © 2002 by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.
Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage International and
colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Boffa, Alessandro.
[Sei una bestia, Viskovitz, English]
You’re an animal, Viskovitz / Alessandro Boffa: translated from the Italian
by John Casey with Maria Sanminiatelli.
p. cm.
I. Casey, John. II. Sanminiatelli, Maria. III. Title.
PO4862.0338.S4513 2002
853’914—dc21
2001050592
www.vintagebooks.com
www.randomhouse.com
eISBN: 978-0-307-43035-9
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