Red Star Tales

by Yvonne Howell

  One sunny morning, some time after the whole episode with the sculpture and the skull, when everything became a mess again and nobody knew what to do about him, I heard his voice in the corridor, coming from behind a half-closed door. I entered the room. He didn’t hear me – he was facing the other direction. Sunlight poured in through the open window. In the sweltering heat outside, the grey leaves of the linden tree were completely still, as though in prayer.

  He was very agitated, and he seemed to be ranting. But as I listened more closely, I was surprised to find that he spoke quite clearly, as if reading from a text. As I understood it, he was talking about logic. He would ask himself questions and answer them himself. Then I saw a spot of sunlight bobbing on the ceiling, and I realized that he was holding a microphone. I heard the whirring sound of a tape recorder.

  “How do we remove the contradiction between a logical answer and an unexpected discovery?” he asked himself. Immediately answering himself, he continued: “Logic is thinking within the boundaries of what has already been discovered. It is a form of thinking in hindsight. It is a way of establishing the connections between known facts. That is why, when we run up against something fundamentally unfamiliar and uncharted, logic has nothing to do with it. Here is the most impeccable logical proposition – and the most untrue: When Copernicus said the Earth revolves around the sun, people said, ‘Nonsense. If the Earth is in motion around the sun, why don’t all the clouds fly off of it in the other direction?’ The logic was impeccable. To overturn this logic, it was necessary to discover the laws of gravity and show that the clouds move with the Earth, as an integrated system, like one object. Therefore, logical conclusions are only relevant at a certain level of knowledge. When it comes to fundamentally new knowledge, logic is not relevant. Virtually all logic comes down to the assertion that ‘if this was, then this will be.’ Can we adapt such a law to completely unanticipated discoveries, without projecting what we know onto what we don’t know, thereby denying the as-yet-unexamined? Fact: sudden, unexpected discoveries happen. Note that they have happened in the past more than once. It follows that they will continue to happen in the future. Fact: the ‘coefficient of useful action’ generated by these unlooked-for discoveries is enormous. Logically, then, if we can develop a new kind of thinking, one which allows us to anticipate the unknown, the payoff will be enormous.”

  Sunspots chased each other all over the ceiling. Soda-Sun was imploring people to believe in his greatness.

  It was a bright sunny day. It was joyfully hypnotizing. My nose tickled inside, as if I had just had a fizzy drink. That drink could be called “Soda-Sun.”

  I suddenly realized that all of this sounded like a farewell speech. Or perhaps more like an interview. He was interviewing himself, and the person doing the interviewing was just as smart as he was – except the questions were predictable, whereas the answers were not.

  “How would you characterize this new kind of thinking?” he asked himself. “Would you call it knowledge a priori, or inspiration from on high?”

  “I understand it in the following way,” he answered. “Brainstorming, thinking heuristically – from the Greek ‘eureka!’ How does it work? In fact, it is the end result of a despairing kind of yearning. A yearning is a goal that can’t be properly formulated. An unformulated goal is really just a very complicated desire, for which you cannot immediately find the right words. But the need to do so is there. If the need exists, it must have been called forth by some sort of laws that govern our brain. After all, our brain is not just an organ that can generate its own laws; it is also a reflection of the laws that created brains, that guide the way we think. When our psychic need exceeds a certain threshold, the laws that call forth this need suddenly become exposed, like a photograph, and we call this sudden exposure ‘an unexpected discovery.’ I was happy to find Einstein’s confession: ‘Discovery is not the result of logical thinking, even if the final product appears in logical form.’”

  I was happy to see him this way. He was serious, and his ideas were clearly worth considering.

  I moved, and the wooden floor squeaked. He quickly turned around.

  “Ahh,” he said calmly, “I’m about to finish.”

  “Hello,” I said, coughing lightly.

  “If you discard all clownishness, what is your essential interest? In all seriousness?” he spoke into the microphone.

  “I am interested in the relationship between creative activity and ordinary thinking,” he answered.

  He looked at the blindingly white sky outside and said:

  “Shakespeare once said that to understand is to forgive. But doesn’t it seem more accurate to say that to understand is to simplify?”

  He was silent for a moment, then continued:

  “…not just in the sense that absolute truth cannot be reached, so our partial truths are only simplifications, but in the sense that the person who simplifies a problem must be more complicated than the problem itself. Otherwise you can simplify and simplify, without understanding your own deceptive schema. Thus, in order for Man to understand himself, he has to become more complicated than his own brain – that is the trick. And how do we do this? We observe the behavior of others and try to understand them. Still, our brains do the observing and simplify what we see into what we can understand. So, yes, we must agree – to understand is to forgive.”

  I had the eerie feeling that he was waiting for the microphone to answer back.

  “Then the creative moment arrives…” he said slowly. “And you can’t trace it… the results are so unexpected… Does this not mean that for a moment, our brain becomes more complex than usual?”

  A sudden hunch almost choked me. Then I decided: no, it’s nonsense.

  “Does it not mean that in the moment of inspiration, our brain is both physiologically and energetically more complex that usual?”

  I turned off the microphone.

  19. “Do You Believe Me?” He Asked

  “All I know is that if now we experience moments of creativity as the happiest moments in our lives, when for an instant we step into complete harmony with ourselves and with the laws of the universe, then only the absence of a final missing factor prevents us from living in this state of harmony all the time. Yet if the prerequisites are there, then there is also a possibility that we can realize this golden age, when humanity will be able to grasp the essence of what is most uniquely necessary to us. We are moving toward this age… the mass character of creativity is evidence. We need some kind of a final push. Science should provide the push. Poetry should establish the conditions for a felicitous encounter with the new age.

  “Can you believe it?” he asked. “A leap in the way we think is just around the corner. People will be able to understand the essence of things without deconstructive analysis. Sheer, direct apprehension. The laws of the universe will imprint themselves directly onto our brains, as onto a photographic plate. Do you believe me?”

  20. Stop, I Said

  “How am I supposed to believe in this stuff?” I said. “I’m a scientist. You have an attractive hypothesis, nothing more. A fantasy. You can even make it seem logical, although you yourself insist that logic is the connection between proven facts – and are your ‘facts’ really proven?”

  I am saying these things to him, but inside, I feel sick. Deep down, I believe without question in what he proposes. Sure, it’s just a hypothesis. Maybe that’s why the exact same guess had flashed through my mind as the only possible explanation for moments of creative inspiration.

  “So, you don’t actually believe in my little theory,” he said, and sighed in relief.

  Then he began to laugh.

  “I can’t take this anymore,” he said.

  “Good for you. Good for you, my friend.”

  “Do you want me to entertain you with a few more tall tales?”

  “Stop,” I said. “That’s enough.”

  “I’m just kidding, dear teacher. Clowning around
. I made it all up like an old-fashioned yarn. A fantastic tale.”

  “Liar. Now you really are lying.”

  “What difference does it make,” he said, as his face turned pale and aloof. “Laughter and tears, my dear teacher. There is nothing in this world, dear teacher, that cannot be laughed at. It is easiest of all to laugh at tears. One can even laugh at Shakespearean tragedy. Maybe laughter is the only thing that differentiates us from animals. Only humans laugh.”

  “Just think what you are saying,” I said. “You draw people into the most ridiculous discussions. You know very well that there are some things that cannot be laughed at. Hamlet, for instance, unless I don’t know the meaning of funny.”

  That was a mistake – how many had I made by now, and counting?

  “Nonsense. You know what funny means,” he said calmly. “For instance, take the tragedy Hamlet. Prince Hamlet gives the monologue, ‘to be or not to be.’ Suddenly his pants start to slip down… but he keeps up the monologue, holding up his pants... but they keep falling down. It’s even funnier if his pants fall down while he is cursing his mother, and Polonius’s corpse lies just behind the wall. But his pants are still slipping…”

  “Shut up…”

  “Even funnier, if his pants fall off while he’s fighting that duel with Laertes…”

  I was already wheezing with silly laughter; when I started to imagine the trouser-less duel, tears of laughter came to my eyes. It turns out you can even laugh at Hamlet. I stopped chuckling and looked at him. His wide mouth was twisted into a smile, and tears streamed down his cheeks. I felt as though I was looking into a mirror.

  “You are a monster!” I said.

  “I am a person,” he said. “And you just laughed at possibly one of the most important propositions in the history of humanity.”

  What if he was serious? Afterwards, I went to the director and smoothed everything over. Three and a half hours of conversation – he was forgiven one more time. Let him go off on another expedition. The expedition would be an extremely interesting one. It was then that he came to me and announced that he would not go.

  “I’m completely serious,” he said. “I will not go with you on the expedition.”

  I felt tired and disgusted. This was too much, even for me.

  “Well then,” I said. “You’ve signed your resignation.”

  “Yeah… I know,” he said. “It’s time for me to leave. As it is, I’ve stayed too long in archeology.”

  I already felt indifferent, if I can put it that way. I suddenly understood that this was not a joke, and that he really had no place in science. The vague feeling grew deeper. I felt relieved. The relief tasted bitter, like quinine.

  “You could have at least warned me earlier. Do you realize how much time I’ve spent trying to help you?”

  “I didn’t know, then, that I was planning to leave.”

  “What changed?”

  “I got bored by the expeditions. I started to know in advance what would be found in the excavations.”

  “I see. Creative inspiration. You guess it all, before even looking beneath the soil. So can you tell me what we ordinary mortals will find there?”

  “No way,” he said, “Go yourselves and find out. You’ll go with my letter. When you find what you will find, open the letter. Otherwise, you won’t believe me. That’s it… We’re parting for the last time.”

  He laughed again.

  “Stop,” I said. “Stop.”

  Whatever. All that was left was to go and prove to him and to myself that we human beings are in fact the pinnacle of evolution, and there is no reason to think otherwise, and he cannot guess what we will find there among the fossils. This way, I can put an end to the crazy ideas that have recently proliferated far too wildly around me, a quiet person.

  21. Yes, But The Figure Moved

  Now there is only the desert, and me, and Bidenko. We stayed on for another 24 hours. We had some presuppositions of our own. We wanted to check them.

  On the day of the main expedition’s departure, the wind dropped, so it was finally possible to load the truck decently. We didn’t rush the loading, but inside we felt impatient. As soon as the wind died down, all the ardent tension of the last few days seemed somehow overblown, almost sentimental. Everyone felt awkward, and therefore they left with a feeling of relief, as though trying to forget something. The camp boiled with activity, like an anthill. Practical prose, replacing the drunken poetry of the last few days, felt like a gulp of bracing morning air after a night of smoking. The campfires were extinguished, the tents taken down. Pasha Bidenko took me aside by the elbow. “Vladimir Andreyevich,” he said. “I’ve found hell.”

  “Oh really?” I said. “Along with Beelzebub?”

  “No, I haven’t found Beelzebub,” Bidenko answered. “Do you want me to show you?”

  Hell like any other hell. No mystery here. The guy found a realistic hell. And that wasn’t the only thing we found. In an abandoned mine shaft we found another Indricotherium with human skeletons next to it. It was obvious even without technical analysis that the age of man and beast was the same. It looked as if they gotten into a fight and destroyed each other. We were no longer even surprised. All we could do is try not to think about how this would appear to outsiders, and what our position would be when the entire scientific world called the man versus dinosaur thing by its name – a “hoax.” And now Bidenko had discovered hell. Sure, why not discover hell while we’re at it?

  We descended into the mine. After months of work we were as familiar with this place as a stoker with his boiler-room. Down below, a few people were finishing up work; the last group was heading for the exit. Bidenko and I walked on and on, until we came to the dead-end we knew so well, where the ore vein ended.

  That Bidenko did find hell, after all. The dead-end was not a dead-end, but an optical illusion. From our usual vantage point, it certainly looked like a dead-end. And there was no other vantage point, because just beneath our feet was a well that descended all the way down to who-knows-where. Nobody ever went near that well, even though there was a narrow path right along the wall. It turns out that if you move along that path, an archway that has been carefully carved into the rock becomes visible. We crept toward the archway. Steady, methodical Bidenko had actually found hell. I noticed a long time ago that the hardest things to notice are the ones right under your nose.

  It even had a river of forgetfulness – the Styx. The only thing missing was the water, and Charon ferrying the dead. Instead, there was the dried-out bed of an enormous river, complete with the breastbones of human skeletons lying on the bottom. Apparently Charon had just flung them overboard. Or maybe the skeletons belonged to those who had tried to flee from this hell and drowned in the Styx. No wonder people forgot everything crossing this river, considering the sulfuric fumes that seeped through every fissure in this basin. Thousands of years ago, these mineral waters must have cured a lot of people of their lives.

  We made our way across the riverbed and realized that this is where the real ore mines started; all the rest was just hell’s antechamber. I couldn’t help but look for a sign: “abandon all hope, ye who enter…,” but for some reason there was none.

  “They must have kept the Indricotherium as guard animals,” said Bidenko.

  “Who did?”

  “I don’t know. The devils, I guess.”

  The strange, fantastic underground world opened one’s eyes. Apparently they had mined gold down here, and even more incredibly they had understood how to capture fine gold particles with mercury to form an amalgam. The smell of sulfur rose from hot springs, seeped through cracks and stuck like brimstone to the walls, which were polished smooth by the drafts of millennia. Acrid heat, flashes of light. Strange shadows danced wildly over the glittering crystals. Every movement elicited the appearance and disappearance of grimacing snouts. If you could iron out all the crags and crevices, all that would be left would be shadows, tame shadows, caused by o
ur handheld lanterns. Any schoolchild could explain how the shadows work, and the devils would disappear. Is that all there is to it? A tangled, incoherent world, and suddenly devils materialize, dancing across the walls. Then science arrives, irons out the wrinkles of the universe, and lights the way forward with the steady light of a pocket flashlight. But that’s only one side. Now imagine science in the guise of millions of pocket lamps, all illuminating an enormous tunnel leading out into eternity. Is that even science? Maybe it’s just a sign of courage. Whereas the bright light, the ironed-out space, in which it is easy to live – one doesn’t want to live there. Science that is cautious, science that responds to our anxieties, how dreary this kind of science can be! Thousands of years ago a gloomy wise man thought up a fence that would protect us from the wild horse-beast, whereas a joyful wise man tamed the beast, and jumped onto the saddle. He knew that there is no such thing as dangerous nature, only nature than hasn’t been tamed.

  We circumvented black shafts, crawled through tunnels and narrow drifts, emerging into chambers in which you could claim the foot of Man had never stepped, were it not for the people who hollowed out these rooms, thousands of years ago. Who were the people who dug out these spaces? Whose unfathomable prosperity was sustained by other people’s hellish subterranean labors? It was obvious how stories had arisen about the circles of hell. It didn’t take any imagination; all it took was these sketches from nature….

  “I don’t know who became the prototype for the devil,” said Pasha Bidenko, “but when it comes to hell, you couldn’t find a better model.”

  “Wait a minute, Pasha,” I said. I wanted to say, now that we’ve found hell, all we have to do is find the devil, and we can wrap up our report about the expedition.

  “Be quiet!” I hissed.

  “What is it?”

  “Over there… look…”

  We had just gone by a deep shaft and now stood at a bend of the tunnel with extremely smooth and even walls.