The Monkey Link

by Andrei Bitov

  In the end, I didn’t protest. I had harassed and bedeviled HIM enough, just letting him eat a little, sleep late, and stroll down to the sea once a day for a swim. I had not permitted him one drop of alcohol or even one thought of the fair sex … I had likewise not permitted him too much time petting all the various local children, pups, and piglets, to prevent the development of what I suspected was his tendency to pedophilia. And this for a whole month!

  The only way we could keep it up was by establishing ourselves, immediately. As soon as we appeared in Tamysh and were greeted by the populace, a sedate and eager throng who came streaming from the nearby farms and kissed our shoulders in natural expectation of the tradition-hallowed feast—right then, I declared that no, I was writing, we didn’t drink. Which, I should mention, plunged them into … And if it hadn’t been for the prospect of a funeral repast on the other side of the village that very day, I don’t know how this would have ended. At any rate, our neighbor Aslan later assured me that it might have ended badly indeed, if men like Alyosha and Badz hadn’t stood up for us.

  But the next day and again the next, the villagers’ manly and unshaven faces seemed to have been wedged between our fence pickets since the day before. Their patiently welcoming gaze expressed confidence that today we would change our minds. But—no, no! we’re working, I declared brazenly. Though how could there be any question of work, when HE was so depressed by all this “willpower”! I hid in the house like a prisoner, shamed by the honesty of their gaze. The entire village, all to a man, pitied HIM.

  Every other day, for literally five minutes, Aslan checked on my condition. This most worthy young man had early been left fatherless and now bore responsibility for the entire farm and his mother and sisters. Precocious maturity was perhaps his distinguishing characteristic. An invincible, boyish rosiness colored his already knightly features. He would tell us something about his troubles and invite us, without urging, to drop in and try the chacha he had just distilled{29} or a joint from the new stash of grass he had just received. He thought it had turned out well, he thought it was good … He didn’t insist.

  Aslan was probably coming to see HIM, not me.

  One day he arrived extraordinarily excited and pale. Apparently addressing himself this time to me alone, he asked me, as a man he held in such esteem, to keep an eye on his younger brother, who had recently begun to cause him some anxiety—in token of which he apprehensively sniffed his hands. I had already heard something from Aslan about the brother, but I had thought he was older: he was strong and rich and had shops in Gagra. Aslan was obviously proud of him, as if he dreamed of coming to resemble him in time. But how could I look after him from here, a hundred kilometers away?

  The trouble was, he said, he had dreamed of a different fate for his brother, a fate in no way similar to his own. What could he do, they had been orphaned early, all the money had gone for the funeral, all the responsibility had fallen to the eldest, and he’d had to pull a job (and he sniffed his hands again) … Just now he’d succeeded in knocking over a train and would have to hide, he had a safe haven where they wouldn’t find him. The important thing was that his younger brother shouldn’t follow the same path, because he was still immature, a romantic, he could take a notion to do anything. He knew the boy carried a blade, but now he was messing with his six-shooter, too! Maybe he’d even carried it!

  I thought Aslan was stoned and playing a trick on me, but it turned out there was no mystery. This was not Aslan. It was Aslan’s fifteen-minutes-older brother Astamur, who at this moment wasn’t so much running his shop, which was being tended by trustworthy people, as doing time in jail. Taking advantage of their extraordinary resemblance, he had swapped places with Aslan during a visit, in order to go and pull the job. Everything had worked out very successfully: the watchman hadn’t been killed, just wounded. But by now Astamur was in a great hurry to let Aslan out of the cell before the changing of the guard—a more trustworthy guard for one less trustworthy. His hands reeked of kerosene because he had just buried his TT army pistol in the vegetable patch, in a well-tended row of weapons, and he had to douse them with kerosene to keep them from rusting. Thus engaged in unaccustomed farm work, he had discovered that Aslan, too, had been digging in that row, whereas he had so hoped that Aslan would go to the agricultural college and remain a true peasant, and now he was so relying on me …

  And Astamur (if this was not Aslan) ran off to his safe haven where no one would look for him—ran “home” to the darkness and to prison.

  The prison was not far away, literally twenty kilometers, next door to a great rarity in our territory, a Christian church built by that “friend of the Abkhazian people” the Emperor Justinian, in the Romanesque style, naturally, in the sixth or seventh century, though of course it hadn’t functioned for the past sixty years. We will yet have sad occasion to tell about it …

  Aslan showed up the next day, apparently with no inkling as yet that his brother and I had talked. He was highly excited and therefore rosier than ever. Aslan invited me point-blank to go pull a job with him. They had to move fast, but Million Tomatoes had copped out at the last minute, and Senyok (this was a drifter who was working in the village that summer) wouldn’t do, he had started boozing at the cemetery with the inconsolables. About the great man nicknamed Million Tomatoes, later. About Senyok, later, too. But just now there was no way I could cope, either with Aslan or with HIM, for although HE had been dozing he immediately woke with a start, dying to get in on this affair that was none of his business. Only with difficulty did I succeed in thwarting their instant rapport—and if I hadn’t talked with Astamur the day before, I don’t know how I would have restrained the two of them.

  After delivering a measured lecture that almost put even me to sleep, I decided that it was already too late to sit down to work before swimming, and headed for the sea. I was still having trouble restraining HIM, for he continued to try and break away from me to Aslan, in his instant thirst to go pull a job, knock over a train. I allowed him to peek even longer than usual at a conjugal pair of pigs, who at this hour were always screwing by the Fifth Zantarias’ barnyard fence. Everyone in our village, I should mention, was named Zantaria or Anua, with just a sprinkling of Gadlias. The spectacle of the businesslike lovemaking of the pigs, for whom he had always cherished a sympathy I could not explain, was a distraction for him but also an excessive attraction, in my view. I dragged him on, trying to divert him with the more moderate and elevated scenes that appeared along our path, in the gaps between the leaves and the clear blue sky, day in and day out, at a definite hour and minute, like clockwork, tireless, rejoicing in the repetition like children. At exactly 4:15 a gigantic mulberry tree in the Gadlias’ farmyard would begin to chirp—the birds were announcing sunset, for, although the sun was still beating down full force, according to their information it was already sinking. At exactly 4:30 a cow who had become separated from the herd and felt homesick would return to the Thirteenth Zantarias’ barnyard, locate a familiar break in the fence overgrown with “asparilla” briers (about which we will also have occasion to tell a story, this time a cheerful one), and squeeze into the cornfield, where her mistress, by this hour, was already waiting for her … The cow, however, paying exactly no attention to the beating, would manage to snatch two or three ears of corn—and then a fourth and a fifth, while her mistress selected a replacement for her broken stick. And at exactly 4:45, in the last yard, a clean little old lady in mourning clothes would emerge carrying a towel-covered khachapuri in the outstretched dry branches of her arms, to place it in the oven (thoroughly heated up by this hour) that stood at the edge of the lawn. Why a stove on the lawn? … Carefully affixed to the facade there was a large, institutional-looking glass sign, apparently made on special order in the capital, Sukhum, in the workshop of one of the Zantarias, who dealt in signs for banks, schools, and scientific institutes.

  “1880-1983”

  was inscribed on the sign, without a name, b
ecause payment was per character, and everyone here knew anyway who had died. And 1880 was also the birth year of the poet who said, “Ever more often I see death, and smile … ”{30} The deceased had been the mother-in-law of the old lady who at this very moment was putting the sheet of khachapuri in the oven. But then how old was the living lady? No less than seventy-five, to look at her, but no more than a hundred and fifty, either. Walking past—for the umpteenth time!—neither HE nor I wearied of picturing Alexander Alexandrovich Blok at a hundred and three, for he found more poetry in awaiting his mortal hour, dozing in the sun, than he did in his immortal poem “The Twelve” … But already, out there beyond the old lady who was Blok’s contemporary, the farmyards ended and the sea lay open to view, separated from the village by a marshy strip of black mud in which a buffalo, also black, lay enjoying himself …

  So every day we went out to the beach, and HE wouldn’t go in the water for anything. Then, just as stubbornly, he wouldn’t come out, knowing that after we swam it was over—work would begin. In the water I indulged to my heart’s content in something categorically forbidden HIM: I tossed back a few drinks with Pavel Petrovich.

  Therefore I couldn’t be any too critical today when HE pulled my trousers on without asking and charged straight across the cemetery—where, toward morning, the inconsolable friends of the deceased were still drinking on one of the graves—in order to get there in time (he had figured this correctly and clearly) to grab one little drink with them in memoriam, and one more till the store opened. But now the wives began driving the cows out to pasture and herding the farmers home, and he and I just made the first bus into Sukhum.

  HE sat impatiently in my brand-new snug-fitting white jeans, on the front seat as if on horseback, it seemed, urging the bus onward. But the bus, since it was the first, made long stops everywhere, waiting for its regular clients with their grunting sacks. And even when the client wouldn’t be going today, because the Seventeenth Zantaria’s brother-in-law’s friend Valiko had promised to pick him up in his car—this, too, took no less time than if the client had boarded and come along, especially since he might nevertheless change his mind about going with Valiko and load his grunting ears of corn into our bus after all.

  And while HE wriggled and fidgeted, I, still on the momentum of nocturnal inspiration, noticed a few things with my peripheral vision, though it was swimming from the two drinks. Peaceful, non-dusty, daybreak scenes. Nature has no hangover … But someone had stretched out at the roadside so freely, so limply, in the still-cold sunlight: red shirt, and tangled light brown curls that somehow seemed so Russian … there was something Russian even in his pose. The bus departed at last, and for some reason I began to worry about this man. What was wrong with him? … Now I would never know—I was on my way. And he was back there, left behind. He looked like Senyok, our drifter,{31} who earned his keep around the farmyards by helping to harvest the corn … worked on our farm, too, taciturn, bony, always smiling affectionately, a sinking, sunset smile. No, it wasn’t Senyok after all … And besides, was there really anyone there? In the end, he just flashed by like a bloodstain at the side of the road—the bus was already leaving, I didn’t get a good look. But as we pulled away my anxiety kept growing, as though stretching taut the single thread that still bound me to life … I could—I could still stop the bus, run back, help him, even save him … The terror of the unnoticed event was strangely familiar, strangely comparable with the inexplicable ecstasy of an approaching inspiration—a line from a poem never written by anyone floated up from a tearful fog, my eyes grew wet—

  Ever more often I see death, and smile—

  but now the bus opened and closed its doors again, and I never did get off, I was listening with my peripheral hearing to snatches of an odd conversation about some sort of Abaz—not Abkhaz … Again the Abaz, the Abazinians … I couldn’t understand.

  And HE kept on wriggling and wriggling with impatience, cursing each stop, although by now he, too, was listening to the conversation, which had gradually begun to intrigue him. His blood boiled when he caught the thread, in the blend of Abkhazian and Russian: certain “Abuzinians,” hated by the storyteller, had attacked the village again and destroyed the crops … HE had always “loved the smoke of burnt stubble.”{32} His nostrils flared. Well, but that’s how it is. All these things are still a recent memory in this land: raids, fires, curved sabers, rustled herds, captive maidens …

  “Damned Abuzinians—I’ll shoot them all, every mother one!” I heard.

  … and HE kept on wriggling and wriggling with impatience, showing no mercy for my trousers.

  Each detail crowds out another detail. We succeed in reporting one particular only by omitting another particular. An irreparable pity! The whole of literature could probably be described in terms of details struggling for their existence. In this battle the bearers of locks and curls, of swanlike necks and wasp waists, of pantalettes and crinolines, have long since perished on paper swords. No portrait, no clothing—the modern hero is not only “faceless” but also undressed and unshod. Not only featureless, but also pantless. The landscape, too, has been excised.

  But it’s true! Not only the hero, not only the narrator’s dubious “I,” but also the author himself (not as a character in these lines, but as a person!) at the moment of the narrative (not when he’s immediately writing it down, but when it’s actually happening) is displaying himself without this “detail.” This detail is also property! It must be acquired. Existence in the transitional phase between capitalism and communism collides with this last circumstance. A pair of pants, to be sure, is the very last form of private property, which is why Lenin would have done better to seek his “separately considered country” somewhere in Africa. Russia isn’t Africa, but still, I was planning to go south, to our Black Sea subtropics (an imperial brag about climatic zones), and at almost forty-five years of age (a quarter-century of writing) I had no pants. This does not imply, by any means, that I had sold them for drink. Which, incidentally, is not so easy to do. In the good old days men drank away their last shirt, “down to the cross.” (That is, the cross, too, was thought of as clothing, and sometimes they even drank away the cross; I remember someone tried to palm off a brass one on Prince Myshkin{33} as silver.) But in our day, perhaps because shirts have become scarcer than pants, men have begun to drink away their last pair of pants instead of their shirt. I think the expression is more likely figurative (the image of the last pair of pants in Russian literature … ). The image of one’s last pair of pants is quite unaesthetic—trying to sell them (which, incidentally, I’m trying to do), not to mention buying them (incidentally, someone will buy)—the expression is more likely figurative, like the expression “I have no choice,” which is always used at a moment when people are choosing from not one but two things, a moment when they do have a choice. So I did have pants on—I didn’t have southern pants. Although it was already autumn, the south should be warm, the velvet season; I hadn’t been there for a long time, and my expectations of the south were exaggerated. And lo, a beautiful lady, reluctantly outfitting me for the south, presented me with a pair of white trousers. The only insult to my masculine vanity was that her legs turned out to be longer (mine, it seems, are a bit short)—confirming that if she lived under other conditions (meaning the United States, most likely), she could have insured them, like Marlene Dietrich. But the zipper zipped, and I decided that they fitted me just right. I could say a lot more here about the lady (“You’ll regret it,” she told me in farewell, and indeed I do), but with this I end my striptease and take off the last pair of pants in Russian literature.

  Or—put them on. My pants, by the way, were the real thing, even though white. That is, they were jeans. That is, Lees. I was especially proud (anyone who really knows will appreciate … ) of that company’s logo, a tiny thing the size of a laundry tag, not the vulgar blob as big as your whole rear end. True, they were too white … A writer’s skill, as we were taught in school
, is manifested chiefly in his choice of detail. Who can say whether these trousers are needed here?

  But I needed them!

  I see them.

  And I see them on HIM.

  He has deflowered them.

  Across his rear end there is already a spreading red stain from the mulberries he mashed on the bus (that’s why he was wiggling so impatiently! … ), but he sees it not at all (and will not soon see it), what he sees is “the Black Sea there, the sand, the beach,” he sees nothing but palm trees—for him, this suffices for Rio de Janeiro.{34} He is standing on someone’s front steps, under one of those elegant pre-Revolutionary wrought-iron canopies, on a small, quiet, not-yet-awake street in the capital city, Sukhum, where the dust is still lazy in the shade, and “with elbow bent sharp” he is triumphantly blowing a green bottle. Actually, he’s drinking from it. And the bottle itself isn’t green, the liquid in it is green (I had never seen any like it … ). He himself is drinking it for the first time, he has never before encountered such vodka, and right on the spot he has joyously christened it “Green Demon.” But actually, the vodka is labeled “Tarragon” and bears the color of the herb with which it is supposed to have been prepared. So here he is, joyfully drinking it, in the very first doorway after buying it, and the higher he tips his head back the bluer is the sky, the more golden the sun, the pinker the walls of the houses, the more delicate the tracery of the leaves, and at this moment, as he sees himself, he looks like the mulatto in white pants, even though deflowered … and not like the Young Pioneer bugler in the park (which is how I see him), in whose shade he is finishing the bottle, though no longer alone but with Daur, who has arrived in time. He and Daur caress pink Sukhum with their gaze. Palms—no shit! … Passing in front of them there’s even a donkey, or perhaps a policeman—the one carries a watermelon, the other munches a round flat bread, the one will flicker an ear, the other an eyebrow, and that’s all.