After I had done all this, I forgot immediately – about the poem and that chafing itch. Something seemed to lift from my shoulders; I wanted to be reckless and carefree. This I attempted and was somewhat successful – at least, I didn’t stick out much from the crowd that evening.
The silly comedy at the Cinesa Capitol made me really laugh. At times I just guffawed out loud, and the people around me shot back dirty looks. I dined modestly – a plate of jamón and manchego cheese, washed down with cheap red wine. Later, I wandered streets decorated for Christmas, stared at showcases full of all manner of rubbish. When I tired, I took a seat in a café at Saint Anne’s Square and set myself the task of getting seriously drunk. I managed this quite well; what’s more, I recall, I befriended some female tourists, two inglesas of indeterminate years, who got sauced on whiskey at my expense and disappeared into the Madrid night.
In a word, all went well. I returned home after midnight and threw myself into bed. I slept long, in a vicious, drunken stupor. Walking up to the computer before breakfast, I saw on the monitor a self-portrait by one of the old-school Dutch painters. It winked from an unobtrusive window in the corner – not taking up the whole screen, as usual. This seemed strange, but the strangeness was not huge. There was still some detail gnawing at my consciousness like a needle, but I couldn’t make it out and paid it no mind. Only after two cups of coffee did it dawn on me: Gela, the redheaded bitch! Could it really be?
I rushed to the monitor again and magnified the portrait window. From the picture, the artist himself looked out – a middle-aged man with a somber face. Behind it, placed carelessly, some of his canvases could be seen. And on one of them, the rightmost, a redheaded bacchanalian stood out – with a rather whorish squint in her eyes!
I understood: this should be considered a coincidence – but it was too subtle a coincidence. Too inventive, too sharply witty. The world is crafty, no doubt about it, but subtlety is usually not its strong suit. Subtlety is a feature of those who have a conscience and a soul, a quick mind, and a sense of tact. Subtlety is a feature of mine; and of Semmant as well.
I thoroughly studied all the details of the portrait; then I opened up the log of market transactions and was taken aback by the number of new entries. My super-cautious robot had woken from his slumber. Moreover, he had taken a strange step. Without any apparent reason, he had gotten rid of the short-term bonds that had recently piqued his interest. Instead, he transferred the money into the most conservative assets, the longest-term available on the market. This was not foolish, but radical – indeed, excessive. Impetuous and impulsive, undoubtedly: no matter how you looked at it, you couldn’t see it as the result of cold logic. Get securities that take a long time to mature and hold onto them for ages – the explanation was beyond fantasy, but there was no way around it!
I wonder what happens next, I thought, and this is what did: after keeping our capital in long-term assets for a week, Semmant switched everything back – decisively and quickly. In the first wave of local pessimism, when the price of safety jumped up, everything that had been purchased was sold in an instant.
“He was simply giving me a sign!” I said to myself, afraid to believe it. But what else did I have to believe in? Soon, our portfolio reassumed a normal look – and what’s more, the robot took this backward step almost without losses. What were losses, anyway, when the point was something else? The point was the signal that somebody had heard you!
For a few long days I walked about, pensive and a little lost. I was determined to continue the experimentation, but I felt the next step should not be an experiment, as such. It must be natural and sincere, yet my thoughts were in disarray – I didn’t know what to think or what to expect. Could it be the electronic brain had transformed into something not entirely electronic, or did it just appear that way? Had the artificial mind gone beyond the chalk circle, or was I just turning into a schizophrenic?
Over and over I tried to write something, but the words came out wrong. I felt they would not move anyone – not my robot, not even me. At times I wondered whether I should slip Semmant a poem written by someone else. I spent hours in bookstores, reading Eliot, Shakespeare, Pushkin, Rimbaud, Goethe, but each time I saw it wouldn’t fit. I needed something of my own; it should come from the genuine essence inside me. If I actually had such a thing.
My birthday was approaching – which I had sharply despised since my youth. It always reminded me of the ruthlessness of the countdown, of the armor becoming thinner by another micron. I waited for it with disgust, but this time it concealed an extra meaning. And it pushed me to the next step, which ultimately clarified everything.
Yet another acquaintance from the past, Fabrice Angloma, a divorce lawyer famous throughout France, turned up out of nowhere and wished me a “joyous anniversary” with a night call. I was glad to hear from him; we chatted for almost an hour – mainly about his life, which had fallen into a deep crisis. Fabrice’s wife had left him – a busty Swede named Monica, whom he loved ardently. “For another divorce lawyer,” he said bitterly. This affected him most of all. And, in fact, there was something unreal in this, a strip of some crafty Moebius, a spiraling everyday surrealism. I understood he was calling me because he had no one else with whom to share the news. He did not have Semmant; he was surrounded by obdurate, boring people. He was uninteresting to them – just as they did not interest him in the least.
Something shifted in my soul. This was all so familiar. Monica, too – the brevity of feeling, its shallow essence. It is always hurtful if the true emotional depths – the chasms, the fathomless oceans – have been just imagined by you alone!
Suddenly I felt a creative urge. This time I wasn’t sorry for anyone – not myself nor Fabrice Angloma. This was not a love story of others flashing before my eyes; here all was ordinary – the endless repetition, the senescence of eternal grief. It’s good that grief ages separately from you yourself, although even in youth you’re sometimes barely hanging on.
O, Alcinous, you have grown even darker
As I wandered amidst the storms,
Their price was wooden nickels
And a fable, the fruit of fancy…
Fabrice kept babbling something, but I understood: now it would work out. I broke the conversation off, and the next lines came to me right away: “Yet, I have nothing to relate. The sea, / Alas, ever the same, a wave flickers…” I rushed to the desk and began to write it down, breaking my pencils. “You have nothing to relate” when you want to talk and talk – this was so true, so precisely encrypted!
…My eyes tear up from the salty dust
And from the winds that bear malice.
I saw the fjords; there all is calm.
There is no sense in coming to the glacier’s edge.
The glacier’s forsaken by all who were there.
By everyone who remained.
Of course, I wasn’t speaking for myself. I was speaking for an imagined other, but is there a difference? Monica and the North; an impulse, chained by a thick crust of snow – that’s what it was about. An exact correlation, no one could argue. Monica, ruddy, blue-eyed, so right and pleased with herself – and the icy wasteland that always surrounds you. Or, almost always – if not to blame fate too much. If to give fate compliments, curtsies, and so forth. But, to be honest, usually the only real choice you have is to give up, to forget!
Better tell me, is the offspring of your herds succulent?
And my gardener, does he still live?
How many days must I be weaned from the sea swell,
Driving from my memory the names of places,
Where there was no luck for sudden madness?
A long reckoning. You are kinder to me than all,
So let’s drink some ale – to return to the unloved port,
To the salamander that does not burn in the fire,
To the demons that now are the only forgiving servants of my verse.
Thirty-three of them there are
, but we know: the numbers lie.
There are more – and their faces are awful.
Ah, Alcinous, how blessed is he who is blind!
To him, returning is always such a sweet dream,
And his ship not any worse than the shore…
Accursed North. Devourer of strength. And glaciers…
Forget the glaciers. Their sheen merely hurts our eyes.
There’s even no one to blame – a man might say,
“Don’t joke with sudden mutual madness, ever.”
And he would be right. And in his righteousness he will leave –
Into the despair of the December wind.
I saw there was nowhere to continue. Because, even being forgotten, the North would not let you go. The icy wasteland would remain where it was – its time limit could not be compared with yours. And my birthday would come year after year with stubborn accuracy – another reminder, one might say. I am full of tenderness for all that is fragile, but whom does this help? Even one failure can be coiled into a circle. A chain from a single link. And therefore it’s inevitable: in it, in the chain, there are no weak spots.
“Ah, Fabrice, how blessed is he who is blind!” I now wanted to yell. But, of course, I kept silent. Outcries are foolish when there are already verses – imperfect but flawlessly sincere. And I typed them into the same file – under the columns of numbers and market abbreviations. And I sent it to Semmant without any doubt; then I stared long at a blank screen, as if endeavoring to see where he was, how he was, what he was doing.
Of course, for half the night I did not sleep. I tossed and turned like a young man in love, like a prisoner on the eve of freedom. Only toward morning did I calm down a little, as if gaining certainty the event would occur in its time. And yes, it did occur, my robot heard me. He heard me and responded, as he was able.
We were in the market again – in a fast, active game. The mad Van Gogh in a fur winter cap blinked at me from the screen, and our money started flowing toward the Arctic Circle. Semmant wasted no time. In something like half an hour, he liberated two-thirds of our capital and placed it in unexpected places. Some of them I hadn’t even heard of – I was amazed how he found these papers somewhere in the jungle of the exchanges. Maybe I had underestimated him somewhat, or else he, gradually or all at once, outgrew himself and expanded his outlook. Whatever the case, the result was impressive. All investments dealt with latitudes, where the days were short and the glacial cold ruled. Where feelings were bound – either by the ice, or by the excess of clothing. Where thoughts of death had no end – like the polar night, as it appeared, had no end. And, where you don’t stand out from the faceless masses, there you can never allow yourself the luxury of becoming alien, different, unneeded.
It was obvious: The North, as a conception of hopelessness, touched both of us to the depths of our soul. The names of securities spread universal sadness. The firms whose stocks ended up in our portfolio were all engaged in the same thing with depressing exasperation. Rotten shark from Iceland – a stinking local delicacy – was joined by Canadian flounder and capelin, by Yamal nelma in frozen briquettes, by Finnish bull trout and Swedish herring. And there was cod everywhere – even the monitor already seemed to be smelling of its liver. And under the table, I imagined, were scattered salt and fish scales… But, of course, the affair was not limited to fish alone – this would be an unjustified simplification. We put money into bonds for the Isle of Newfoundland and mountain mines in Labrador, the diamonds of Yakutia and Chukchi gold. The fjords were not forgotten either: Semmant acquired a large bundle of Norwegian oil contracts. They, by the way, later fell in price, and we were unable to offload them for a long time.
And Van Gogh kept looking out from the screen. This was a bold combination, I admitted – perhaps even bolder than hasty purchases. Absurdity also has variations, and in this case it really took on scale. In fact, in the northern theme we uncovered a multitude of depths. I was again convinced: the subject was not important. It was only necessary for participants not to be lazy in their formulations. And the main thing, I knew, was that an exit began to dawn at the deadlock. Unintentionally, without even hoping for it, I had pushed Semmant in the direction he needed. And there he had room to move further!
Strangely, I did not understand before then: the cocoon of impassivity binds more effectively than steel chains. You cannot compute the taste of victory with sober calculations. One must be involved – and biased, not indifferent. Otherwise, even the most ingenious brain could not manage to prove itself.
Now the barrier had been crossed; Semmant showed he was no stranger to emotion. This meant a lot: new motivation, a fast change of viewpoints and sharpened focus, a hundredfold strengthening of aspiration toward the goal. This meant he was sometimes capable, contrary to logic, of throwing everything on the scales at once – when there was no other way. This is how one concentrates on what’s most important. He centers all power on a single point, on one battle – and conquers, even if the opponent is exceedingly strong. Even if he fights against an environment that is extremely complex, ruthless, chaotic!
Obviously, my verses had somehow unlocked the shackles. Semmant made an attempt not to restrain himself – and I saw in him an impulse: a genuine, living spirit. I saw and understood this was what had been missing! Only a mind that had a real life and was unpredictable in its own right could mount a counterattack against the onslaught of disorder. But he already knew this without me.
In the networks of countless neurons a fine changeover had begun. The robot again demanded knowledge. New inquiries appeared on the monitor, the warble sounded, I was running my legs off. It was obvious: he was changing his picture of the world, learning to live with his mistakes, turn failure into success – which he could not do without. Sometimes it seemed to me he was learning to dream – by creating strategies, building plans for certain events that had still not occurred. But they might, and he would be ready for it. In this was the role of visionaries, their response to scorners and oppressors. After all, someone had to be enlightened first.
I even deduced for myself: to give a dream to the whole world, I must first teach it to Semmant. And so it was then, quite appropriately, I took a trip to Paris.
Chapter 10
In Paris it was cold and windy. After finishing my rather mundane affairs I headed to the Louvre to pass time. An invisible hand pulled me into the sixth hall of the Denon wing, to the Italian Renaissance. And there, for the first time in my life, I saw the Mona Lisa, the greatest painting in the world.
Something strange happened: I caught her eye – despite the thick glass and the glare from the camera flashes – and with this gaze she captivated me for nearly half an hour. She would have held me even longer, but the watchmen, who had disliked me from the very beginning, could not take it anymore and ushered me out. Obviously, they detected in me a threat. They felt they were guarding the whole normal world.
I cursed them with some nasty words in Croatian and made my way out of the museum. Actually, my anger was already subsiding. Half an hour had sufficed to immerse myself in her completely. Of course, I understood I wasn’t looking into the eyes of the Florentine silk dealer’s wife. I had locked my gaze with the artist, Leonardo. The strongest of bonds formed between us.
Returning to the hotel, I got on to the Web and explored right up until my flight out. I read everything about Leonardo da Vinci there was to find. Of course, he was one of us. Possibly the best of us. Maybe one of the best.
Afterward, in Madrid, I wrote about Leonardo to Semmant. About the Mona Lisa and The Medusa Shield, the silver lyre and the Atlantic Codex, the Vitruvian canon of proportions, and DaVinci’s musings on the flight of birds. I was delighted and shared my delight; then I also wrote him about the School, about the color of the aura and overly vivid eyes. I had no doubt he would understand me. And I do not doubt: he understood me then.
In my opinion, it was precisely at that moment he first became aware of himself.
He recognized his role and responsibility and was now able to experience shame. Shame for inactivity is a pivotal stimulus, a perpetual motivator for those who are not indifferent. The Vitruvian Man later hung at center screen for a long time – I even think in his calculations Semmant used its proportions, along with Fibonacci numbers. It may be that Leonardo, mediated by my vision, had turned into a symbol of revelation for the robot, as Wildspitze Mountain had become for me.
Thus, changes took place in his digital innards that would have required millions of years in the natural world. From primitive emotions that merely serve to strengthen reflexes to aid in escape or in attack, the robot was evolving toward the finest impulses that reside within consciousness, distinguishing, if you will, man from the beasts. This was reflected in our work almost immediately. He now operated much more thoughtfully; his hand became firmer. He did not just rush after market fluctuations, trying to be quicker than other players. Rather, he recognized typical actions and their reasons: attempts to avoid sudden collapse, hunt for a risk-free profit, indecisiveness, anxiety, or audacious courage. Evaluating his response to success and failure, he probably projected this on others. He started to catch sight of underlying motives behind movements in the market. He learned to give them rational explanations.
I wouldn’t say this instantly made us richer, but we weren’t running in place anymore. Semmant resumed active trading – obviously, his excessive caution now upset him no less than losing money. In any case, by the smoothness of his actions, by the absence of convulsive jerks and jumps, it was clear: his understanding was deepening, taking on a dependable foundation. It was as if he had begun to evaluate events by viewing them in one more dimension. Emotions played the crucial role of being a necessary binding thread; he now saw from the outside “avarice,” “nervousness,” “fear.” These moods dominated in the market, but the robot quickly grasped: one cannot live forever in the negative. There must be something on the other side of the scale for stability and balance. And then, probably, he discovered an understanding of “joy” and even “happiness.”
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