The Monkey Link

by Andrei Bitov

  Silence.

  Indescribable, however.

  “But silence stands in our room like a spinning wheel … ”{98}

  Then it is, after all, describable?

  But a spinning wheel? Before long, in what dictionary will you be able to look up this word?

  And besides, you won’t find silence.

  Until it comes over you irrevocably. Until “an elephant treads on your ear” and leaves you tone deaf.

  Silence came on like an elephant … Is that good?

  It’s not good …

  A year passed, and I literally stood on the slope of that oak mountain, waiting. The country awoke and looked around unrecognizingly: Who were these people? It had not survived 1984 after all … First thing in the morning it began a new life. It forbade itself to take a hair-of-the-dog, and it cut down the vineyards. There was no sense in returning to Tamysh. Hacked-up coils of pipe lay scattered on the famous lawns. The fiery heart of the farmyard had been torn out. The populace was digging its weapons and, in the same garden rows, burying its stills. At the Seventh or Fifth Zantarias’, the Fifth or Seventh Zantaria took his sawed-off shotgun, sweetly redolent of kerosene, and shot the local policeman point-blank as he dismantled the still.

  It no longer made any sense to go to Tamysh, because now we could go to America. There we rested up from it all by telling all about it. What did they understand about this?

  “Five more years have passed, / And a hundred rocket blasts”—Daur’s five-year-old son was already writing excellent verses, but I was still standing in the monkey grove, not moving from the spot. People found ways to drink, of course, but the vines had been felled and the weapons dug. History ripped the pages from my unwritten book, one after another. As soon as it became permissible to joke, people lost the desire, and little by little they began to kill each other. Only in the beginning did it seem that they had ceased to joke because hope had dawned. All my premonitions turned into reality, and I was too late with my prophecy. To tell the story of the Rafik with the Armenian and the Georgian, the Jew and the Russian, had become irrelevant. But what else did I know? My knowledge of monkeys was poor. When I remembered, I tried to close my ears. To have been acquainted briefly with the monkeys’ leader and more closely with the alpha male was obviously not enough. As the years went by, I was no longer even sure that they were specifically called hamadryas baboons, and not something else. Well, how can you write about a tribe if you don’t even know their name? They weren’t Americans …

  And why were things so bad, when they were finally going so well for me? People entered, as always, uninvited, but sober and shaven. They had used the nailbrush first thing in the morning, they smelled of made-in-Hong Kong, and they said, Everything is permissible. What was permissible they didn’t say. “Now you may write your Monkeys … ” But who the four-letter needed my Monkeys!

  Better they hadn’t smiled. They entered with caressing tiger-smiles, they unlocked the cage … The zoo, it turned out, was not on the outside.

  Where are my Soldiers of Empire?

  Where is Dryunva? Selling atrocious matryoshki at the Brandenburg Gate. Where is the Eye? Published his best-seller in Paris. Where is the Drifter? On a yacht in the Mediterranean, with an intellectual friend. Where is Zyablikov? Fled to Mongolia. Where are the Inventor Brothers? Opened a patent office, jointly with one of the emirates. Million Tomatoes? Auditing shops. Einstein? Washing dishes in Princeton. Saltyk alone sings his old songs. And Colonel Adidasov is at his old job.

  Did I lead them out to the shore of the Pontus? Or did they burn up in the conflagration?

  Where are my Live Souls?

  What are you laughing at? Not the television … Yourselves? I have walked in sneakers all over the Empire, and I am weeping, like Gogol. Comrades, we have entered a new historical period! The freedom to laugh at our own selves.

  They had gotten their way. HE had burned up in this conflagration, and I had taken to drinking alone. HE or I? I was left like Robinson without Friday. It was no joke to stand idle for seven years without moving, always in the same ringing uninhabited grove—snow did not fall, summer did not come. Within, the autumnal splendor of emptiness. And all around, only changes! A home at last, a wife, a child. I’ve returned from America to a dacha. I’ll just dig my potatoes and take off for Paris. Glasnost. An enveloping muteness …

  Fullness. Emptiness. Not a line. What, am I without HIM? What is Friday without Robinson … I have surrendered. Joined the herd. Hurrying on before, the leader continues to roll ahead of him a kind of monkey Tao. If anyone thinks I know what that is, the TAO, it’s the Tuva Autonomous Oblast …

  But how the primordial birds have pecked my head!

  A restlessness took hold of me. No urge toward a change of place.{99} No part of me left alive on the map. Only Albania. Luckily I couldn’t go there. An aching sensation of mediocrity. Recollections of youth.

  There are women of whom you’re unworthy,

  There are women whom you have not saved.{100}

  I was gripped by the premonition that I had missed my time. That is, that I had missed a premonition.

  I have no God, I have no Mom—

  I hold a pistol in my palm.

  I have no God, I have no Mom …

  And so, I was passing time at the dacha, just outside Moscow. All evening we played cards and watched television. What did Ruslan Imranovich say again to Rafik Nisanovich?{101} “Rafik Nisanovich,” said Ruslan Imranovich to Rafik Nisanovich. And this time what did Rafik Nisanovich reply to Ruslan Imranovich? “Ruslan Imranovich,” replied Rafik Nisanovich to Ruslan Imranovich. And there was method in this: my wife doubled the stakes. I had two sequences of three and she had one, but hers was higher, and I lost.

  And went upstairs to my room. Downstairs the children were asleep, my wife was getting ready for bed. I took the typewriter out of its case and inserted a sheet of paper. The keyboard was overgrown with gray fur. Mechanically I looked at my hands. I remembered: dust on his hand … What was that from?

  Not like this, all at once. Seven years—and all at once. As though perestroika had taught nothing … Standing in the grove, I stretched my stiffened legs.

  I lay down. Someone’s unread manuscript crackled underneath me like leaves. Everybody was writing now—and I was supposed to read it … Pencil to write notes. Pad to write them on. Angrily I knocked the manuscript together in a ragged pile …

  AWAITING MONKEYS

  I wrote, on the back of the young author. And underlined it.

  Never had I taken such a risk! Never had I written the title before writing at least a page. Lest I stumble, right at the start. A blank page looks dreadful with just the title, all by itself at the top! Worse yet if there’s an epigraph. For example, “Linger a while, moment!” At this point a Russian Faust comes along. Stops dead in his tracks.

  “Ah, but who,” I wrote fearfully,

  is awaiting whom? Ape-man, alpha male … The first and the last … In what beginning is my end? … Obligation. Obsession. For oh! yes, O! is the mega-letter. The ovum. Oval. Zero. Onus Opus Onan Odium It’s so elegant So intelligent What shall I …

  Oh, I already hate them!

  Not those innocent, or rather blameless, mammals—I hate the very necessity of writing about them.

  Why, strictly speaking, am I Obligated to write about them? And where does this Obsession fit into the plot?

  The page ended. I wrote the number two and lapsed into a reverie. “Description of Waiting,” I wrote, and again lapsed into a reverie. I put three periods as ellipsis points, like this … And promptly put the number three, as if omitting the description temporarily. As if to say, that’s a technical question.

  They were right, those critics! In my own example, I was becoming convinced that any kind of formalism was evidence of paucity of thought and poverty of content. If writing a few words beginning with O indicated a thought, what was my “description of waiting”? I definitely had nothing to describe—t
hat was the problem!

  Well, I’m waiting. There was meaning in that. I remember there was some meaning. But then it would have been better if they hadn’t come running … Immediately they were nothing special. People. Ordinary people, just like us. Except slightly handsomer than we are, perhaps, from their point of view. Wonderful manes. The chest and arms. When they come pouring down the mountain at you with this uniquely alive, powerful rustle, face on, so to speak, growing rapidly larger as they come closer, and it’s not they who are running but you running at them … this is amazing. Like a movie. Because a movie is something you haven’t seen in real life … but here it’s real life! And that, let me tell you, is something! That’s life, not the zoo …

  But now he’s right beside you. The baboon. He’s the chief baboon, because the first. He suddenly becomes smaller than his own size. Probably he just seemed bigger when he was running so fast. But also because everything he has behind somehow doesn’t compare with what he has in front. Behind, the baboon is somehow unfinished. As if he’d been run over. There are unfortunate dogs like this, with paralyzed hind limbs … smooth-haired breeds, the Great Dane, bulldog, boxer … with disproportionately narrow rear ends … that was how Linda died, God rest her soul! What is it like, there in dog paradise? Probably like here …

  So he’s half lion, half dog. Inhospitable, glowering. You shouldn’t meet his glance, they warn you about that. That is, it’s all right to meet it, but avert your eyes immediately. Don’t stare straight at him, because he’ll perceive it as aggression. Might even grab. His fangs fill you with … Wouldn’t grab the alpha male, of course. He bragged endlessly, that Dragamashchenka … You’re not advised to stare at the females, either—this, too, the leader might take personally. I kept having to remind HIM of this … Aha! At last I remember! I was still with HIM then. We were together then, at the monkey colony. HE … Well, how could HE help staring, when she had God knows what going on behind! The whole thing was turned inside out, unconcealed, and shone with all the colors of the rainbow. It might even change hue depending on maturity, ripeness, and readiness … Never in my life had I seen anything uglier! Although, on second thought, the question is purely aesthetic, which is to say, debatable. These frightful genitalia are presented as the main argument, for good reason. And painted, possibly, with love. Yes, exactly. With love! Without love, it would never make sense. Evolution didn’t toil over this makeup without purpose. In the end, you can’t deny that it’s … You and I have hidden it all—the only thing left is the photo on our passport. That’s where the marriage stamp goes. But they … Even on their faces they have something similar, like the ischial callosities, but a trifle more modest … what’s the term? anyway, those things on the cheek, near the nose … also striped red and blue. Clowns, masks, the carnival, the revealed secret—the secret is the mask. So when they look at a portrait, that is, at a face, they’re already forming an idea of the charms that await them there … I must give HIM his due: he had always perceived nature more keenly and vividly than I. I would have to distract him somehow, because the leader was already watching disapprovingly.

  But so far the baboon was busy demolishing the “granules.” They did, in fact, prove to be a treat, despite their unprepossessing appearance. There were actually enough of them for one. He raked them all into a pile and seated himself on the bar. Hovering around him were females and flunkies. A certain female was the most flirtatious, another male the most pesky. They, too, got something: she a granule, he a beating. HE was observing the female, I the flunky. In particular, the flunky informed on a young whipper-snapper who dared, behind the leader’s back, to eat a granule that the leader had accidentally dropped. Reprisal was instantaneous. First the flunky got beaten, then the next male within reach. The next-within-reach began squealing something about justice and got it again, but this time the guilty party was presented as proof, and he, too, got it, rather indulgently, as a matter of form. With an exaggeratedly plaintive howl, testifying to the heaviness of the sovereign’s hand, he ran off to apprise everyone of the existence of justice. At last the fink was given one of the granules. The leader was wise and just, he was weary of his subordinates’ petty squabbles. Having attended to justice as casually as to a call of nature, the leader turned away—and caught HIM staring immodestly at the royal favorite. For some time they eyed each other, but at last even HE understood … averted his eyes and didn’t get a beating. For the leader, this was enough. He apparently considered it an acknowledgment of defeat, if not a victory.

  And that was all, I think. I don’t think there was anything else. After that, we sat on the bank and did what we had come here to do. Reclining by the campfire not far from the Rafik, under the arching branches, we gobbled kebabs made of meat taken from the juvenile delinquents, sipped young wine taken from the old folks, glanced across the river at the other bank teeming with monkeys—and, in embarrassment, averted our surfeited glance from their hungry one. From the look the leader threw the alpha male, I understood that the leader was wise. He was the first to realize that there would be no more, there were roots and acorns for now, and he shouldn’t count on more than a one-time incentive for the leadership in plain view of his subordinates. He understood all this about Dragamashchenka, and, preserving a sense of his own dignity …

  … Omitting the description of waiting, I covered the back of the young author’s next page, under the number three:

  Output without input. 0 — I. 0 — 0.

  O. It’s a hole, a void, a vacuum, it vacuums out all my thoughts. And I resist (make faces, stream like a flag) this wind and whistling, wave my arms, slowly twist, untwist, and twist again, the only part of me alive is my suit with its flapping double entendre, trousered double-breastedness—and the necktie on my shoulder. A movie hero …

  Two zeros, two holes. In one. out the other.

  O is flat, O is a mirror … I shatter my face against my own reflection.

  Reflection … rejection, dejection. L’Etranger miserable. Camus and Hugo all in one. The novel Whom?

  The old monkey in Krylov’s fable holds a child-sized oval mirror and makes faces at me in it. He has grown “weak in the eyes” …

  In infancy I understood the fable thus: “The monkey is old and grows to be eyes … ” I didn’t know then that he would grow to be my eyes.

  I could have no suspicion that I would grow old.

  The page ended, and I wrote the number four.

  “Fire,” I wrote below it. “Description of the Conflagration.”

  That’s it! That’s the thing I not only couldn’t but also didn’t want to describe! And besides, what can I write if I don’t remember anything! I remember only the black hole of the sea, and charred seagulls on the shore, like moths around a great lamp. The lamp was shaped like a rooster. I remember I was alone. Without HIM. I turned away to keep from watching. Several flaming brands shot quite far out and fell into the water like spent rockets, barely lighting up a greasy black sea with seagull corpses floating in it. For some reason I kept thinking that by some miracle HE would suddenly surface out of what was happening behind me. Grubby, insolent, kindred, he would say something cheeky to me, something especially rude and insulting—and I would agree with him and be happy as never before. “It’s your own fault,” HE would say, for example. “Don’t forget to turn off electrical appliances when you go out. And besides, your novel was … well, it’ll burn like blue blazes!” “Blue?” I would ask, and force myself to turn and look. But the flame bursting from the windows is not blue, or even red, but black, like the sea … But the white walls are pink and the black sky is white, and in the sky, high above the conflagration, at the pinnacle of the coiling spire of smoke, there is something fluttering like a flag—now red, now gold, a red golden cockerel.{102} He flaps and screeches, fanning the fire with his wings … “To hell with it!” I would say lightly, of the manuscript. “We’re alive … ”

  But HE never did come, and I never did turn to look, merely rep
eated without cease the sole prayer I remembered—the publican’s prayer:

  God be merciful to me a sinner.

  God be merciful to me a sinner.

  God be merciful to me a sinner.

  No strength to lift my head, no strength to lift my hand and cross myself, standing in that same monkey grove.

  One, two, three, four … Mousie’s tugging at the door. One, two, three, four, five … Bunny’s glad to be alive. Five. I crossed out the number and omitted—after the monkeys—the fire as well …

  O … Omissions, omens, orisons … Nymph in thy … Opprobrium, opium, oblivion. A nobody. A zero without a stick. Without balls. Orchidectomized. Orphaned.

  O is the Tao! Ta-da, the Tao! I didn’t know what the Tao was, had no idea—and that, again, was the Tao. “Word,” incidentally, is the most nonexistent word. How can it name itself? Word equals Tao. Word minus Tao equals O. O equals Tao minus word. The word “word” is already a koan.