I knew that he was sincere. We, homo-chimps, have a much better sense of intuition than humans. There is a lot we can still teach people.
The director guessed my thoughts.
“I hope that you will be able to teach us a lot. That’s another reason we had to part. To leave each other in time. You found the way out that we couldn’t find.”
“So today’s meeting with the resolution to send me to the zoo…”
“…Was partly staged. We have known for a while that you listen in at our meetings.”
“And Formula?” I wouldn’t be able to stand it if she…
“Dr. Pimenova was not in the know,” the director smiled. “She would never have agreed to let you go to a tropical forest, where you can’t boil your drinking water!”
“Never mind,” I said with relief, “she still has her beloved Johnny.”
The door behind me opened. I turned to see the alarmed faces of Gitta and Barry.
“Everything is in order,” I said. “The flight will continue.”
I reached out to switch off our connection, only to find that it had already gone blank.
“That was the director?” asked Gitta, “What did he want?”
“He wanted us to return,” I said. “But I refused. The flight will continue.”
Barry’s face looked ecstatic. I had conquered the director himself!
Gitta frowned. She didn’t believe me. But she would keep it to herself.
I stroked the girl’s head.
“No, I won’t teach her language,” I think. That conversation with the director has to remain a secret. The President of the Republic of Homo-Chimps must always be beyond reproach.
First published in Russian: 1985
Translation: Yvonne Howell
* * *
1. Jean-Baptiste Lamarcke (1744-1829), Charles Darwin (1809-1882) and Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) are the seminal nineteenth century founders of modern notions of evolution and genetics.
2. Sukhumi is a city on the coast of the Black Sea, in western Georgia.
3. The area known as the Congo lies in Central Africa, and is bisected by the equator. Bulychev wrote this story in 1985, during the long period of Mobutu’s reign over the country then known as Zaire. Despite his corrupt and dictatorial rule, Mobutu was supported by the U.S. as a staunch anti-communist ally. This feature of Cold War politics does not seem at all germane to Bulychev’s story, which properly invokes the Congo as the natural habitat of several great ape species (all of them now endangered): the common chimpanzee, bonobo, western gorilla and eastern gorilla.
ARKADY AND BORIS STRUGATSKY
1988
THOSE BURDENED BY EVIL
(EXCERPT)
The builders had left the building live-in-ready in the late fall: the rains had already gotten icy, and from time to time little snow pellets sprinkled down. It was somewhat strange and possibly even unique in its ornate and awkward-to-describe architecture. It was made wholly of red brick and stretched along Balkan Street for more than two blocks. The roof was flat, as if intended as a landing-place for the airships of the future, the façade lavishly decorated with pits and whorls of complex form, right-angled tunnels hanging above mountainous archways. And for what purpose, it would be interesting to know, did they carve narrow niches into the façade all the way to the fifth floor? Could they really be meant for the long, gaunt statues of unspecified heroes or martyrs of the past? And why did the architect need to erect towers at the corners of the astonishing building, just like you would see on a fortress, rounded, and of various heights?
The scaffolding had long ago been dismantled and taken away, the window-glass was clean and transparent, the brand-new doors in the entrances could not provoke any censure, and the stone steps that led up to them were clean, but the entire expanse from these steps all the way to the asphalt of the road was nothing but mud mixed with construction trash. There one could see wet, frayed sheets of plywood with frightful, protruding nails and broken bricks, cracked cinderblocks with rusted rebar, water-pipes twisted into spirals by some unknown force, sections of steam radiators forgotten by all, and buckets of some sort, smashed flat. Between the eleventh and twelfth entrances abided, listing to one side, some kind of tracked machine, and the wet wind kept slamming its half-open door.
The building was live-in ready, but there was no sign at all of inhabitants. It was empty in the stairwells, empty, dark, and quiet, and it smelled of paint and disuse, and the elevator cabs, lifted all the way to the roof, were frozen and lifeless. All the doors of all the entrances seemed firmly and dependably locked, and this was probably actually the case, though it was possible to get into the building. And people went into it. And they probably came out, as well. At any rate, on the stone steps of the thirteenth entrance, leading into the south corner tower, dirty footprints could be seen. On the long, painted handle of the front door a criminologist could find fingerprints with no effort. The dust on the vestibule’s cement floor had here and there rolled up into a multitude of little balls, as if someone, having come in from the street, had energetically shaken out his rain-soaked hat.
And someone had forgotten, or thrown aside because it was useless, or forgotten in a panic, an ancient, half-opened little suitcase on the stairwell landing of the fourth floor, and lolling out of the little suitcase was a waffle-weave towel of doubtful freshness. On the landing of the eighth floor, in the corner, by the door of apartment number five-sixteen, two spent shell casings gleamed faintly: it is possible that they had also been forgotten here by someone, but most likely they were lying where a firearm’s extractor had thrown them out. It should be noted that the door of apartment five-sixteen was firmly locked and had not opened since these areas had been abandoned by the foreman of the finishing crew. Or, let’s say, by the foreman of the cleaning crew.
In the building only a single solitary apartment was open. For some reason, it lacked a number, but, if one were to count according to the logic of the layout, it would be apartment five-twenty-seven, intended to be a three-room apartment on the twelfth (last) floor of the south corner tower.
In one of the rooms of this apartment the window looked out onto Labor Avenue. The room itself was covered in cheap, unassuming wallpaper, twisted electrical wires stuck from the center of the ceiling, the parquet floor, though passably smooth, was still in some need of a sanding, and in the corner farthest from the window stood, forgotten by the builders, a wooden fold-out bed, thickly caked in mortar and oil paint.
In this room people were talking. Two of them.
One stood by the window and was looking down at the muddy expanses under the grey, drizzling sky. He was immensely tall, and on him was a black chlamys that completely concealed his frame. Its lower fringe fell freely on the floor, but in the shoulders it rose steeply upward and to either side like a Caucasian burka,1 but so energetically and steeply, with such dreary defiance, that one was no longer thinking about a burka – there are no such burkas in this world! – but about powerful wings hidden under the black material. Then again, of course, he could not have any wings there, and, probably, he didn’t, but simply some sort of clothing of an unusual and unfamiliar cut. And this clothing was no more strange or unfamiliar than the material itself, with moiré shadows looming over it: on the uncanny chlamys not a single fold could be guessed at, not a single wrinkle, so that it seemed at times this was not clothing at all, but a gloomy spot in space where there was nothing, not even light.
And on the head of the one standing by the window there was, doubtless, a wig, white, maybe even powdered, with a short braid almost to the shoulders, tightly plaited with black string.
“How sad!” he pronounced, as if through clenched teeth. “You look, and it seems as though everything here has changed, but in actuality, everything has remained as before…”
His companion did not answer right away. Apparently completely unafraid of getting dirty, he was sitting on the fold-out bed, having crossed his short legs that
did not reach the floor, and was quickly leafing through a plump, beat-up notebook, now and then snatching up and replacing the little pages that fell out. A little, pudgy, somewhat dirty man of indeterminate age, in a grey, shabby little suit: tapered pants, drooping socks, also grey, and half-boots, grey as well from long use, never having known brush, shoe polish, or even a rag. And a grey, contorted little tie with its knot, as the English say, under his right ear.
The little man was probably hot, his plump face was red and covered in small beads of sweat, his moist, whitish hair, through which his skin shone pink, clung to his skull. The little man had taken off his hat and jacket, and they sprawled in the corner in a disorderly, soaked-through pile together with a bulging, scratched-up briefcase from the days of the first NEP.2 A completely ordinary little man, no match for the one who towered like a black boulder before the window.
“But how you have changed, Potter!” he shouted back, finally. “You are positively impossible to recognize! And no one will recognize you…”
The one who stood by the window snorted. His little braid jerked. The wings of his black chlamys stirred.
“That is not what I am talking about,” he said. “You do not understand.”
It was as if the grey little man did not hear him. He would leaf through his notebook and then leaf through it again. It was an unusual notebook: now one, now another little page would suddenly light up from within with a clear red light, and sometimes even a distinct trimming of fire would flare up along the edges, and it seemed even that a little puff of smoke would leap up, but then these tricks would suddenly cease, after which would come relief that, this time, the little man’s fat, dirty fingers had remained whole.
“And you cannot understand,” continued the one who stood by the window. “You have been idling here all this time, and you can no longer see what is in front of you… I, on the other hand, am looking at it with a fresh eye. And I see: some fundamental essentialities have remained unwavering. For example, now as before, they do not even know why they exist in the world. As if this is some sort of secret behind the Seventeen Locks!..”
“Behind the Seven Seals,” the grey little man corrected him absently.
“Yes. Of course. Behind the Seven Seals… Now have a look at them: walking straight through the mud, clinging to each other like sick men… And they are drunk!”
“Oh, yes, that happens here,” pronounced the grey little man, distracted from his activity. He marked his place in the notebook with a dirty finger and began to look at the back of the one standing by the window, into the smooth, black expanse under his braid. “It’s been happening less lately, but it still happens just the same. You will get used to it, Hephaestus, I promise you. Don’t be moody. You didn’t used to be moody!”
The one who stood by the window slowly turned and looked at his grey companion, and his companion, as always, instantly averted his eyes, and backing away, scowled, as if a scorching heat had puffed into his face.
For the countenance of the one who stood by the window was such that no one would succeed in becoming used to it. It was lean like an ascetic’s, cut along the cheeks by vertical wrinkles, as if by scars on either side of a lipless mouth, itself narrow as a scar and deformed either by chronic palsy or cruel suffering, but possibly simply by a deep dissatisfaction with the general condition of things. Still worse was the color of the emaciated countenance: greenish, unalive, suggesting, it must be said, not decay but rather verdigris, disordered oxides on old bronze that has gone long uncleaned. And his nose, disfigured by some sort of lupus-like skin disease, looked like a discarded bronze casting that had been carelessly welded to the statue’s countenance.
But most terrifying of all were the gleaming black eyes below the high, eyebrowless forehead. They were huge and bulging, like apples, their whites riddled by bloody veins. Always, in all circumstances, they burned with one and the same expression: equal measurees of loathing and fierce, rabid aggression. The eyes’ gaze acted like a cruel blow that brings on ringing, half-swooning silence.
“It is not moodiness,” pronounced the one standing by the window. “Even before, I hated drunks, all those devourers of toadstools, of poppy, of hemp… Maybe that is what I should have started with, but there would have been no time for it, after all! And now, I see, it is already too late… You surely noticed: yesterday’s client presented himself drunk! To me! Here!”
“But they are frightened!” said the little grey man reproachfully. “Try to understand them, Weaver, they are afraid of you! Even I am sometimes afraid of you…”
“Fine, fine, we have already talked about that… I have already heard all that from you: that man is intelligent does not always mean an intelligent man… Homo sapiens means the possibility of thinking, but not always the ability to think… and so on. I do not occupy myself with self-solace, and do not advise you to do so… Here is the thing: let me have an assistant here. I require an assistant. A young, educated, well-raised person. I require a person who can meet the client, can help him put upon his coat…”
“Put on,” pronounced the little grey man very quietly, but the one who stood by the window heard him.
“What?”
“You should say ‘put on his coat’.”
“And what did I say?”
“You said, ‘put upon’.”
“And what should I say?”
“You should say ‘put on’.”
“I do not sense any difference,” the one who stood by the window said imperiously.
“And just the same a difference exists.”
“Fine. All the more reason. That is what I am saying: I need an educated person who knows the local dialect to perfection.”
“The young people these days, Ironsmith, know their own language poorly.”
“And just the same, it is precisely a a young person I require. It will be uncomfortable for me to command an old person, and I intend precisely to command.”
“Here no one does anything for free,” hinted the little grey man with a cynical smirk. Neither the old nor the young. Neither the well raised nor the louts. Neither the educated nor the ignoramuses… Except maybe some enthusiastic drunk, but even he will be in expectation the whole time that they will bring him a little something. Out of respect.”
“Well, so be it. No one is going to force him to work for free… How talkative you are, though. Do you have anyone in mind?”
“You’re lucky, Khnum, I have in mind a suitable individual. Forty years old, a PhD in mathematical physics, so well-bred that he can use knife and fork, practically doesn’t drink. And as concerns his life essences, pictured separate from the body…”
“Spare me! Spare me your deals! You would do better to tell me what he will ask. His price!”
“I don’t know very much about that, Ilmarinen. I guarantee, however, that his request will amuse you. Whether you will be able to fulfill it is another matter!”
“Even so?”
“Precisely so.”
“And do you believe that this lies beyond the bounds of my abilities?”
“And do you still believe that you can do anything in the world?”
The bloody-black apple glanced at the little grey man from over the left wing, and the little man again shrank and lowered his eyes.
“Tame your foul tongue, slave!”
A baleful silence fell, and only after several long seconds did the untamed little grey man mutter:
“Well why do you have to be so pompous, my Ptah? Just call me Ahasuerus Lukich.”
“What sort of nonsense is this?” the one who stood by the window pronounced with loathing. “Why.. Ahasuerus?”
First published in Russian: 1988
Translation by Kevin Reese
* * *
1. The “burka” is not the Muslim religious garment “burqa,” but a traditional garment worn by men in the Caucasus mountains. Made from felt or karakul, it has high, squared-off shoulders meant to give the wearer an impo
sing silhouette.
2. The New Economic Policy, a short-lived (1921-28) Soviet-era experiment with free enterprise.
DALIYA TRUSKINOVSKAYA
1990
DOORINDA
(EXCERPT)
That’s when police captain Chernishev realized: this was exactly how the onset of schizophrenia would feel. “Comrades, you’re getting this wrong,” he said with confidence. “This can’t be. Your mystery hand has most likely come from here—”
He pointed at the black drapes that blocked out the light from the window (the window was too close to the theater stage and the light was unwelcome).
Director Berman drew the drapes. The window frame, the sill, the panes – everything was covered with ancient dust and grime. “This window hasn’t been opened in a hundred years. Even if you wanted to, you couldn’t, particularly from the outside,” the director said.
“So you also think this devilish hand emerged from the cabinet?” asked Chernishev, hoping for a definitive no.
“Sounds demented,” the director said, “but it’s true.”
The whole story was pretty crazy.
The incident happened during the Romeo and Juliet performance. The director’s wife was playing Juliet. Well, the passing years are hard on anyone, so to fit the wife to the part, they’d fabricated this luxurious mane of a wig for her. (As a matter of fact, it had been a while since anyone had seen her onstage in her own hair.) And so there she was, the aging Juliet, standing in the wings and waiting for the prompt. Right in front of her was a three-step staircase that led to the stage. Next to the stairs was a steel cabinet, which was always locked. Past the cabinet was the above-mentioned draped window, followed by a wall with a set of hooks, then a door to the service stairs, another wall, and a passage backstage. Nowhere to hide, in other words.
Our Juliet stood and chatted with her girlfriend from younger days, who back then used to show more promise than Juliet, but was now playing Juliet’s nanny. (Consorting with a director does marvels in the theater world.) It was almost time for Juliet to flounce onto the stage like the fourteen year-old she portrayed. Already she had advanced her varicose-veined leg onto the first step, underlit by a dim little bulb – and then all hell broke loose. The cabinet’s door opened and a pitch-black hand reached out, clutched the wig, yanked it off Juliet’s head, together with all the hairpins, and vanished back into the cabinet.
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