The Snail on the Slope

by Arkady Strugatsky

  “Just don’t think that I’ll talk to those people,” she announced, “you’ll have to do all the talking now, you’re the one who’s going there, so you do the talking. Me, I don’t like dealing with people who don’t even have faces, I don’t like that at all. You can’t expect much from a man who can’t tell a boy from a girl . . . My head’s been hurting since this morning, and now I know why . . .”

  They came upon the village before they expected to. Candide had apparently gone a bit too far left, and the village appeared between the trees to their right. Everything here had changed, but Candide didn’t immediately realize what was happening. Then he understood: the village was sinking underwater.

  The triangular meadow was already full of dark water, and the water was rising before their eyes, filling the clay basin, flooding the houses, swirling silently through the streets. Candide stood by and watched helplessly as the windows disappeared underwater, the waterlogged walls sank and collapsed, and the roofs fell in—and no one came running out of the houses, no one tried to get to shore, no one appeared on the surface of the water. Maybe there wasn’t a single person left, maybe they had all gone away that night, but he could sense that it wasn’t that simple. A strange thought suddenly came into his head: this wasn’t a real village, this was a mock-up that had been standing around, dusty and forgotten, until someone wondered what would happen if you flooded it with water. Maybe something interesting would happen? So they flooded it with water. But nothing interesting did happen . . .

  Bending fluidly, the roof of the flat structure vanished into the water without a trace. A soft sigh seemed to pass over the dark water, the smooth surface rippled, and it was all over. Candide was standing in front of an ordinary triangular lake, as of yet fairly shallow and devoid of life. It will eventually become bottomless and full of fish, which we’ll try to catch, prepare, and preserve in formaldehyde.

  “I know what this is called,” Nava said. Her voice was so calm that Candide looked at her. She really was completely calm; she even seemed pleased. “This is called a Surpassment,” she said. “That’s why they had no faces, I just didn’t understand at first. They probably wanted to live in the lake. I’ve heard it said that the ones who used to live in the houses would be allowed to stay and live in the lake, there will always be a lake here now, and the ones who didn’t want to live in the lake would leave. I’d leave, personally, although maybe it’s even nicer to live in a lake. But no one can know that . . . Should we go for a swim?” she suggested.

  “No,” Candide said. “I don’t want to swim here. Let’s go find your trail. Come on.”

  If only I could get out of here, he thought, because I’m like that machine in the maze . . . We all stood around and laughed as it busily rooted around, searched, and sniffed—and then someone would pour water into a small depression in its path, and it would get touchingly lost, but only for a moment, and then it would again begin to bustle around, moving its antennae, buzzing and sniffing, and it didn’t know that we were watching it, and on the whole, we didn’t care that it didn’t know it, even though that was probably the most terrible thing of all—if it actually was terrible, he thought. Our imperatives can neither be terrible nor kind. Our imperatives are only imperative, and everything else about them is a story we tell ourselves . . . as do the machines in their mazes, if they are able to tell themselves stories. It’s just that when we make mistakes, our imperatives grab us by the throat, and we start crying and whining about how cruel and terrible they are, whereas they simply are what they are; we’re the ones who are silly or blind. I’m even capable of philosophizing today, he thought. It’s probably because it’s so dry. My goodness, I’m even capable of philosophizing . . .

  “There’s your trail,” Nava said angrily. “Go on, please.”

  She’s angry, he thought. I didn’t let her swim, I’m always silent, it’s dry and unpleasant here . . . Whatever, let her be angry. When she’s angry, she’s quiet—thank goodness for small mercies. Who uses these trails, anyway? Do people really walk here often enough for the trails not to get overgrown? This is a strange kind of trail—it’s not footworn, it’s like a trench . . .

  At first, the trail passed through dry and favorable places, but after a while it descended steeply down the side of a hill and became a boggy strip of black mud. They had come out of the strip of passable forest and were again surrounded by swamps and thickets of moss. It became damp and stuffy. Nava immediately perked up—she felt a lot better here. She was already chattering nonstop, and soon, a familiar buzzing noise materialized and lodged itself inside Candide’s head, so he was now moving in a daze, forgetting about any kind of philosophy, almost forgetting where he was going, surrendering himself to random incoherent thoughts—maybe even visions rather than thoughts.

  . . . Crookleg is limping down the main street, saying to anyone he meets (and if he doesn’t meet anyone, then he says it for no particular reason) that Silent Man must have left, he left and took Nava with him, he was probably going to the City, and the whole time, the City doesn’t even exist. Maybe he wasn’t going to the City, maybe he was going to the Reeds, the Reeds is great for fishing—stick your fingers in the water and there’s your fish. Then again, what good would the fish do him, Silent Man doesn’t even eat fish, the idiot, but maybe he decided to catch some fish for Nava, Nava does eat fish, so he’s catching some fish for her. But then why was he asking about the City all the time? Nooo, he didn’t go to the Reeds, and we shouldn’t expect him back anytime soon . . .

  And Big Fist is walking along the main street toward him, saying to anyone he meets that Silent Man kept dropping by, trying to convince him—let’s go to the City, Big Fist, he’d say, let’s go the day after tomorrow, he spent a year asking me to go to the City the day after tomorrow, and when I got so much food ready that the old woman wouldn’t shut up about it, he up and left without me and without my food . . . One guy, fur and fuzz it, he went off without any food, he got thumped on the head, now he doesn’t go anywhere anymore, he’s afraid to go without food, even if he has food he won’t budge, that’s how good they thumped him . . .

  And Tagalong is at home, standing next to the old man, who’s having breakfast, and saying to him, you’re eating again, and you’re eating someone else’s food again. Don’t think, he says, that I mind sharing, I’m just amazed that one skinny old man can put away so many pots of the most filling food. Keep eating, he says, but do tell me, maybe there really is more than one of you in the village? Maybe there are three of you, or at least two of you? Because it’s almost uncanny, watching you—you eat and eat, fill your belly, then you go on about right and wrong . . .

  Nava was walking next to him, holding his hand with both of hers, and was telling him enthusiastically, “And there used to be another man who lived in our village, he was called Tortured Questioner. And this Tortured Questioner, everything hurt his feelings, and he was always asking why. Why is it light during the day and dark at night? Why are there liquor beetles but no liquor ants? Why are deadlings interested in women but not in men? The deadlings stole two wives from him, one after the other. The first one was stolen before my time, but I was already living there when they stole the second wife, and he went around asking why they didn’t steal him, only his wife . . . He’d wander the forest all day and all night, on purpose, so they’d take him too and he’d find his wives, or at least one of them, but they never did take him, of course—deadlings aren’t interested in men, they want women, that’s their way, and they weren’t about to change that for some Tortured Questioner . . . He also kept asking why we work in the field when there’s plenty of food in the forest as is—just ferment it and eat it. The village head told him, if you don’t want to, don’t do it, no one’s making you . . . But he just kept repeating: why, why, why . . . Or there was the time he pestered Big Fist. Why, he asked, is the Upper Village overgrown with mushrooms but our village isn’t? At first, Big Fist explained it to him calmly: the Surpassment has
already happened in the Upper Village, and it hasn’t happened here yet, that’s all there is to it. But he asked: Why is the Surpassment taking so long to happen here? What do you care about that Surpassment, Big Fist asked, is it a friend of yours? Tortured Questioner just wouldn’t let up. He wore Big Fist out—he yelled so loud that the whole village could hear, started waving his fists, and ran to the village head to complain; the village head also got mad and got the whole village together so they could chase Tortured Questioner down and punish him, but they never did catch him . . . He pestered the old man a lot, too. At first, the old man stopped eating at his house, then the old man started hiding from him, then he finally couldn’t take it anymore: leave me alone, he says, you spoil my appetite, you do, how am I supposed to know why? The City knows why, that’s all there is to it. So Tortured Questioner left for the City and never came back . . .”

  Yellow-green patches slowly floated by them on both sides, the ripe narcotic mushrooms sprayed fans of reddish spores, a stray forest wasp rushed at him with a high-pitched whine, trying to hit him in the eye, and they had to run for a hundred yards to get away from it; colorful underwater spiders clung to vines, making a lot of noise as they fussily crafted their edifices; the jumping trees crouched and squirmed, preparing to leap, then froze in place when they sensed people, pretending to be ordinary trees—there was nothing to attract the eye, and nothing to remember. And there was nothing to think about, because thinking about Karl, about last night, and about the drowned village meant becoming delirious.

  “. . . Tortured Questioner was a kind man, he and Crookleg were the ones who found you in the Reeds. They were heading to the Anthills, but they somehow ended up in the Reeds, and they found you there and carried you back—actually, Tortured Questioner was the one who carried you back, Crookleg just walked behind him and picked up everything that fell out of you. He picked up lots of things, he told us, then he got scared and threw them all away. Nothing like that, he told us, ever grew around here or ever could. Then Tortured Questioner took your clothes off, very strange clothes they were, no one could figure out where and how that kind of thing might grow . . . So he cut these clothes up and planted them, thought they might grow, he did. But nothing he planted grew, it didn’t even sprout, so he again started going around and asking, why do all other clothes grow if you cut them up and plant them, whereas your clothes, Silent Man, didn’t even sprout? He even tried pestering you lots of times, wouldn’t leave you alone, but you weren’t thinking straight at the time, you’d just mumble things, like that man without a face, and hide behind your hand. So he had to give up, none the wiser. Then a lot of men started going to the Reeds—Big Fist, Tagalong, even the village head himself—hoping to find another one like you, they were. They never did find anyone . . . That’s when they gave you to me. Nurse him, they said, as best you can, and if you nurse him back to health, he’ll be a husband for you, it doesn’t matter that he’s an outsider—you’re kind of an outsider yourself. You know, I’m an outsider, too, Silent Man. Here’s what happened: the deadlings captured me and my mother, and it was a moonless night . . .”

  They were going uphill again, but it didn’t get less damp, although the forest became sparser. There were no more tree trunks, rotten branches, or heaps of rotting vines. The colors around them changed from green to yellow and orange. The trees became less crooked, and the swamp became strange—it was now flat, without any moss or mud piles. The grass alongside the road became softer and more lush, not a blade out of place, as if someone had chosen and planted them one by one.

  Nava stopped midword, sniffed the air, looked around, and said matter of factly, “We should hide. Looks like there’s nowhere to hide around here . . .”

  “Is someone coming?” Candide asked.

  “A lot of them are coming, but I don’t know what they are . . . They aren’t deadlings, but we should still hide. We don’t have to hide, of course, they are already close anyway, and besides, there’s nowhere to hide around here. Let’s step off the trail and watch . . .” She sniffed the air again. “It’s an unpleasant kind of smell—doesn’t smell dangerous, it doesn’t, but I wish it were gone . . . Don’t you smell it, Silent Man? It reeks of rotten ferment—like there’s a pot of rotten, moldy ferment right in front of your nose . . . There they are! Hey, they’re little, they aren’t scary, you can just chase them away . . . Ooh-ooh-ooh!”

  “Be quiet,” said Candide, taking a good look at them.

  At first, he thought that there were white turtles crawling toward them along the trail. Then he realized that he had never seen animals like this before. They looked like giant opaque amoebas or very young tree slugs, except that tree slugs didn’t have pseudopods and were actually a bit bigger. There were a lot of them, and they were crawling single file, at a good pace—dexterously projecting pseudopods, then pouring their bodies into them.

  They were soon very close—they were white and shiny, and Candide also noticed the sharp, unfamiliar odor and stepped off the trail, pulling Nava after him. The amoeba-slugs crawled past them one by one, paying no attention to them. They turned out to be twelve in number; Nava couldn’t resist and kicked the twelfth one with the heel of her foot. The slug nimbly retracted its behind and began to hop. Nava was ecstatic and was about to catch up to it and give it another kick, but Candide grabbed her by the clothes and held her back.

  “They are so funny!” said Nava. “And look at them crawl—they look just like people walking, they do . . . I wonder where they are going? They are probably going to that sly village, Silent Man, they are probably from that village, and now they are coming back, but the Surpassment happened there already, and they don’t know it . . . They’ll hover by the water for a bit, then they’ll come back. Where will they go, poor things? Maybe they’ll go look for another village? . . . Hey!” she shouted. “Come back! Your village is gone, there’s nothing but a lake there now!”

  “Be quiet,” said Candide. “Let’s go. They don’t understand your language, so don’t waste your breath.”

  They kept going. The slugs had made the trail a bit slippery. We met, then we went our separate ways, thought Candide. We met, but our paths didn’t cross. And I got out of the way. I did, and they did not. This fact suddenly seemed to take on an outsize significance. They are small and helpless, and I’m big and strong, but I stepped off the trail and let them go by, and now I’m thinking about them, whereas they went past, and they probably don’t even remember me. Because the forest is their home, and there are all sorts of things in the forest. Like a house can contain cockroaches, bedbugs, and lice, or even a foolish stray butterfly. Or there might be a fly banging against a window, trying to get out . . . You know, it’s not true that flies bang against windows. When a fly does that, it imagines that it’s flying. And I’m imagining that I’m walking. Simply because I’m moving my legs . . . From the outside, I probably look ridiculous and . . . how can I put it . . . pitiable . . . pitiful . . . What’s the right word . . .

  “We’ll come to a lake soon,” said Nava. “Let’s hurry, since I want something to eat and drink. Maybe you could catch me some fish . . .”

  They went quicker. The reed thickets began. Fine, thought Candide, maybe I do look like a fly. Do I also look like a human being? He remembered Karl, and remembered that Karl hadn’t looked like Karl. It could very well be, he thought calmly. It could very well be that I’m a completely different man than the one who crashed his helicopter all those years ago. Except in that case I have no idea why I’m still banging against the window. After all, when that had happened to Karl, he was probably no longer doing so. How strange it will be when I get to the biological research station and they first lay their eyes on me. I’m glad this has occurred to me. I should think long and hard about this. I’m glad it’s still a long way off, and that I won’t be getting to the biological research station anytime soon . . .

  They came to a fork in the road. One side seemed to lead to the lake, while the other mad
e a sharp turn and went off somewhere to the side.

  “Let’s not go that way,” said Nava, “it goes uphill, and I want a drink.”

  The trail became narrower and narrower, then it became a trench, finally getting completely buried in the thickets. Nava stopped.

  “You know, Silent Man,” she said, “maybe we shouldn’t go to that lake? I have a bad feeling about that lake, something’s wrong with it. I think it’s not actually a lake, it’s not all water, there’s something else there—a lot of it.”

  “But there’s water, too, right?” asked Candide. “You did say you wanted a drink. And I could do with one myself.”

  “There’s water, too,” Nava admitted reluctantly. “But it’s warm water. Bad water. Dirty water . . . You know what, Silent Man, stay here a bit, you make too much noise when you walk, I can’t hear a thing for all the noise that you make, stay here a bit and wait for me, and I’ll call for you, I’ll whistle like a hopper. Do you know how hoppers whistle? That’s how I’ll whistle. And you stay here, or even better, sit a bit . . .”

  She dived into the reeds and disappeared from view. And then Candide became aware of the deafening cotton-wool silence that reigned here. The insects weren’t buzzing, the swamp wasn’t sighing or wheezing, the forest animals weren’t calling, and the hot, damp air was still. This wasn’t the dry silence of the sly village, which had been like the silence behind a theater curtain at midnight. The silence here was like being underwater. Candide carefully crouched down, pulled a few blades of grass out of the ground, rubbed them between his fingers, and then he suddenly saw that the soil here must be edible. He tugged a tuft of grass out of the ground, complete with soil and roots, and began to eat. The dirt satisfied both his hunger and his thirst—it was salty and cool. Cheese, thought Candide. Yes, cheese . . . What is cheese, anyway? Swiss cheese, processed cheese. Hard cheese. How strange . . .