* In the light of current scientific knowledge, Kasin’s form of rabies appears to present a peculiar combination of the progress of the disease in humans and in animals.
I visited the patient but could not do anything for him. Only Pierre Rufin could alleviate the boy’s pain. I thought this would be only just, having heard that Yves had frightened Kasin, provoking the boy into attacking him. Anna said Yves poked the boy with a long knife, at the same time displaying the samples in the jar. Our samples, from Buutje.
I am so ashamed of myself!
NOVEMBER 18TH IN THE YEAR 1821
I cannot eat, drink, stand, sit. I shall try to find a way of getting Rufin to the cave.
NOVEMBER 19TH IN THE YEAR 1821
Rufin refused to treat Kasin. He said that his Hippocratic oath obliged him to treat people, but not animals. What stupid pedantry from a self-taught quack! I cursed him more harshly than I had anyone before, but he merely shrugged, turned his back on me and walked off. So I could only watch Kasin’s painful death, together with Anna. It made me even more certain that my task was to help not the professor but these children, who only had me. And Anna.
Anna. Anna. Anna.
The following entry is undated, but was written on either November 19th or the day after.
UNDATED
Rufin told Moltique that the children had returned. Moltique invited me to see him and enquired – with seeming politeness – why he had not had word from me. I lied and said that Rufin had just beat me to it. I was about to bring Moltique this happy news.
I no longer have any respect for myself.
UNDATED
We buried Kasin. I wanted to supply a simple cross for his grave and some text. Anna told me just to forget. Kasin was at rest now.
DECEMBER 1ST IN THE YEAR 1821
In late November, it got considerably colder. Outside it is frosty, freezing. Now and then there is snow. There is something strangely fragile about the early winter days; the darkness resembles glass. I wish I could describe these frost-clad trees, the forest as silent as a cathedral.
UNDATED
Moltique called me in. His eyes were bulging, he had not shaved, tidied up his hair or washed out his mouth. I wondered if he was losing his mind. He demanded information. Had I managed to draw up a summary of everything he had said? Had I managed to find some kind of connection between the mutation of organisms and legends? Me? He was asking me, his lowly assistant? My reply did not please him. He spat at me and shouted, ‘What am I going to do with these freaks, then? Just go away? Forget all about them?’
I said he could help the children. He repeated the word ‘help’ scathingly, before telling me to get out of his sight.
I am sure Moltique is simply mad and his discoveries are the products of an errant mind. There is no snowman.
DECEMBER 20TH IN THE YEAR 1821
We are stuck. Our research is making no progress. It is so cold that I have to concentrate all my thoughts and energy on moving, to stay warm and alive.
DECEMBER 24TH IN THE YEAR 1821
The men killed an elk and cut it up. The cook used it to prepare a tasty meal to celebrate Christmas. I ate it, listening to the men grow nostalgic and sing carols. Some recalled their families. Even the most hardened criminals have mothers. I hope they do not miss their children. I hope they have forgotten they ever gave birth to these savages. But I suspect that’s not the case: I think of women yearning for the best for their children – maybe even now, though they may know better. What about the mothers of the children of the cave, and their mothers, fathers, grandmothers, grandfathers, neighbours, uncles, aunts, acquaintances – do they remember, or have they succeeded in forgetting?
I hear footsteps outside. Too light to belong to any of the men in our camp.
The following short verses are undated but fit here to describe the romantic relationship that blossomed between Agolasky and Anna. Poetry is not Agolasky’s strong point, but the verses evoke his confused mind well.
I do not know why I came.
Now I know.
But I have to say no.
I do not know why I should go.
Wake me up, I have a dream.
I wake up, the dream lives on.
Do you see what I do not,
the border between reality and dream?
You are a light in darkness.
You are warmth in coldness.
You bring beauty to this ugliness.
I cannot claim it for my own.
I am only one of many,
the least significant.
THE YEAR 1822!
The year has changed. We have been on this excursion for well over two years now. Though some days crawl by painfully slowly – I am lonely and even frightened at the camp – the years have nevertheless flown past. I can barely recall what I was when I set out on this journey. I have lived an entire life during these years and feel older than my age. I think now how peculiar the human mind is. I should be sad but, despite the pain, I smile and feel a happiness in my breast that I have never before experienced. Anna and I have been meeting often, almost daily. The days slip past – what a waste. I should be pondering over Anna’s and the children’s future, but I prefer to enjoy every minute with them – with her! Her laughter makes me happy, her wisdom makes me more trusting and her certainty gives me the strength to endure the unendurable. The children of the cave have only two alternatives: to stay hidden or die. But we have already found them, and I do not know how to persuade the men and Moltique to forget that this place ever existed.
JANUARY – IN THE YEAR 1822
I told Anna about my mother and she said she knew others like her: people who lead normal lives despite their animal side, which they keep strictly hidden, even from their intimates. I have been dwelling on my mother’s burden. My father must know, but the subject was never raised with me. Did they not trust me? Did they not want to land me with the responsibility? I wondered about the extent of my mother’s animal traits and concluded they must have been few in number because she has been alive for a long time… It occurred to me that my parents might no longer be alive; I would not get word about their deaths before surfacing from here. I try not to think about the matter because it is enough that I know I caused worry to my parents by going on this senseless adventure. Maybe they wonder, as I do here in the middle of the forest, if I am dead or alive, ill or in perfect health.
JANUARY – IN THE YEAR 1822
I had another strange dream last night. My mother had expressionless yellow eyes and, when she looked at me, I could not discern her attitude. Awake, I thought about how she was in my memories: brown eyes glinting humorously and intelligently. I saw love in them even when she was telling me off for my pranks. Those cold, haunting eyes were not real, but the product of my imagination. This forest, tirelessly humming, and the men, pursuing their basest needs, are consuming my strength. I am not that same youth who set off in May 1819, eager to accompany the scientist he admired. If I could travel back in time, I would go and drum some sense into myself: aspiring to the unreachable is the road to madness!
JANUARY – IN THE YEAR 1822
Anna hopes I will secure help for all the children who live in shadows. While it is too late now for herself and the other children of the cave, she does want my stories to persuade people to keep their children even if they have mutations, and for the world to become a safe place even for those who are different.
I wonder what I can do. I could publish my story of the children. I could show what they are like: how beautiful, how special, how able. Once again, it grieves me that I have to make do with words. Words give the reader the option of doubting my narrative, or of filtering it through their imaginations, as will inevitably happen. But even if I could draw and paint, I could be suspected of exaggeration at best, fraudulence at worst. My witnesses would not be much use either, because not one of Moltique’s men would enter a magistrate’s court or anywhere else the long arm of the law might re
ach. Moltique himself is the only one I could pin my hopes on. He would talk about the children, all right, but would present no evidence. Parading them in Paris would be far too risky, and Moltique would not consent to take them along while still lacking a theory concerning the reasons for the children’s animal traits. The same goes for the specimens in jars. Moltique could not bear scientific circles mocking him for setting out to find the heirs of the Paphlagonian people and finding merely a group of freaks for whose traits he had no explanation. Particularly when he had already written to Paris about his discovery and associated ape theories! It would be much easier to return empty-handed and tell some (fabricated) tale about our wondrous adventures in north-west Russia.
I recall all the incredible tales about Moltique’s adventures and his reputation for unbiased research into legends, and pity the fool I once was. How easily hoodwinked I have been!
I also wonder why the academy has failed to send anyone.
JANUARY 25TH IN THE YEAR 1822
Her mouth tastes as if she had never uttered a bad word about anyone.
JANUARY 26TH IN THE YEAR 1822
I am out of my mind and do not know where to start. I spent the morning with Anna and the children at the cave. Some of them are hibernating, others are unwell because of the cold and some have never felt better: the boy with the hairy back has grown thick, dense fur, which keeps him warm in the gales.
I have started collecting the names of the children’s parents and relatives, in order, possibly, to contact them later. Or at least appeal to their consciences when I mention them in the interviews I shall give after establishing that general opinion is on the children’s side. (I recognize my own naivety in hoping for this scenario, but what else can I do? Anna believes in me. My own conviction must be firm.)*
When I returned to the camp, Moltique was waiting for me at the end of the path. He looked frenzied, crazier than ever. He wanted to know – for once and for all, he said – what kind of information I imagined I could get out of the children and if I could link that information to any existing theories. I decided to tell him straight that I had no scientific skills. My sole talents were my mother tongue, Russian, fluent French (thanks to my father) and an ability to note things down. I added that I trusted that he, the great scientist, could bind together the information that had been gathered, or at least decide what knowledge was needed to reach conclusions. For the first time during the whole of our journey he did not mock me or laugh at me. He became silent, then turned and walked away, head bowed. I remained standing in the middle of our camp till I felt the snow burning my soles.
* The list of the names of the children’s parents and relatives has not been found in the academy’s archives. There is reason to suspect it has been either destroyed or confiscated.
I was about to go to bed when Moltique called me to him. He announced tersely that we were to leave the camp. He would not discuss the matter further.
I know now that I shall not be able to sleep all night. We shall go and I shall not see Anna again.
JANUARY 27TH IN THE YEAR 1822
In the middle of the night I had a desperate idea: I suggested to Moltique that we ask the academy to send someone who could draw the children of the cave. Even if we did not find an explanation for their mutations, we could at least introduce these wonderful children to the world via pictures. This might facilitate new projects and prompt a fresh excursion to the cave. We could return, better equipped, new people with us.
Moltique did not like the idea; to be precise, he did not like the idea of us needing anyone else besides himself. And that is why he put paid to the thought of drawing the children. I saw I had approached the matter from the wrong angle.
Just before he sent me packing, he snapped, ‘Anyway, soon nobody will draw the wonders of the world. They’ll be immortalized by means of light. And soon you too will be useless – a means of writing will be invented that has no need of pen and paper, nor even a knowledge of Russian.’
More than by his words, I was hurt by the knowledge that I would have to leave Anna.
Moltique, however, was upset only on his own behalf, in his selfish way. As I walked out of his hut, he muttered that the academy was no longer interested in him… I assumed his claim was prompted by the fact that his letter had given rise to no action. I did not want to ask if the expedition might have got lost on the way. We are so far from civilization, after all, that not a single man has ever strayed into our camp.
Moltique is impossible.
A nocturnal addition: I cannot get to sleep. I am cold. Not even wrapping myself in furs warms me up. I am also exercised by what Moltique said about light and image. I want to know more about how light produces an image: is it like a shadow sticking to the ground, or to stone, fabric, paper? What attaches it? And what about details such as faces, are they made visible? I would wish for nothing more than to be able to carry Anna’s picture against my chest, on my chest, close to my heart!
JANUARY 28TH IN THE YEAR 1822
The men have been ordered to ready us for the journey. They gather together a heap of necessary things. Prolonged lassitude has become feverish enthusiasm, not like when we left Paris, but rather humbler, more human. I almost like the men, because for the first time they appear fragile, emotional. I hear someone talking about his mother and it touches me. I remember wishing that the men’s mothers had forgotten the wretched creatures they had carried and nourished, those misbegotten scoundrels. Perhaps the men cannot help it. I wonder what scars we each carry in our souls and bodies. For the first time in my life, I ask myself if a criminal character might be a similar aberration of nature to feathers or a parrot’s tongue. What about my own peculiarities, the fantasies I harbour of pictures I can transfer onto paper with my eyes? Illusions, fantasies, genius, a dream, or something once heard in a Parisian tavern and mistaken for my own invention?
Momentarily moved, I look at Simon and see a happy smile on his face. I only ever remember him smiling – or rather grinning lecherously – when telling mendacious tales of his non-existent adventures with women. Now he is saying something to Cook, hands moving about, and he throws his head back and laughs up at the sky. In other circumstances, I might be able to ignore his stupid tales… In other circumstances, he might not feel the need to entertain older rogues with his repulsive lies.
I turn to look at Paul and, for a moment, I see him as just as harmless as he is. Is he not a victim rather than guilty – a fatherless boy, for whom Moltique, along with his party, represented a family of sorts, because he had no other?
I wish I had no feelings for Anna and the children. I would like to be as eager to go as the men, who are gathering up things and dreaming of what they will encounter on the way: drink, food, women, people, music, cities.
But I am not about to go anywhere, though I pretend otherwise to Moltique.
JANUARY – IN THE YEAR 1822
I was returning from Anna when I noticed I was being followed. I heard panting, the crunching of snow, sobbing and irritable hissing. I stopped to wait. Soon, two very hairy little boys waded out of the snowdrifts. I recognized them at once as the Vodkin brothers. The smaller of them cannot speak. His behaviour is also highly animalistic, so I do not expect he will live very long, given what Anna has reported. The larger of the two, by contrast, is like anyone else, apart from a thick covering of fur and the fact that he is unusually clever, gentle and caring. Panting heavily, he said he knew we were leaving. I did not know how to answer, so I told him, in confidence, that I was staying. Contrary to what I imagined or hoped, the information did not calm him. It had the opposite effect, in fact: his eyes widened and he hit me! I was so surprised that, for a moment, I could only hold my ringing ear and tingling cheek. Then he began to cry and I was not able to challenge him over his conduct. I shifted my feet awkwardly, because the younger Vodkin was clinging to his big brother’s fur so that I could not comfort his grief-stricken sibling. Finally, the boy calmed down enough to
explain that he had hoped I would take his brother along with me wherever I would be going. He said he suspected that his brother might have contracted the disease that was killing children in the cave. The younger Vodkin had got mixed up in a scrap involving the most animal-like of the children. Teeth had been bared and the younger Vodkin had been bitten. Rabies. I thought of Kasin and I knew the older brother was thinking the same thing.
Come night, I once again go back on my decision: I will not stay behind when the expedition departs. Instead, I will go, to return either alone or in suitable company. I will find out if anyone, in any part of the world, has studied the mutations carried by the children of the cave. It may take the rest of my life, but I do not intend to let a single child suffer as the children I know do now. I am also profoundly sad that I cannot do anything for the younger Vodkin; I only hope he reaches the end of his natural life before the rabies strikes.
JANUARY – IN THE YEAR 1822
I listen to the men talking in the dark. Fist’s voice rings out again. I fear him the most. He speaks more quietly, but even though I do not hear everything, I discern the gist: he is using foul language about Anna. He is talking about his youthful travels in the Rhineland, where he heard about the udder goat, a woman who forms an alliance with the Devil. I can almost smell the men’s fear growing as they listen to the story. They glance at the forest, shifting restlessly and swearing. Then someone says, perhaps Cook, that on his deathbed, Yves had spoken of all the things he had done with the ‘hairy bitch’ belonging to ‘the Professor’s little helper’ – that’s me! The comments raise snorts and the conversation changes direction. Apart from being repulsed by Yves’s disgusting tales, I am profoundly saddened by the way Anna and the children are treated. These men have no understanding of what is beautiful or noble; their world revolves around the region between their shit-spouting mouths and their arseholes – and I write like this because good manners are nothing to me now. Would my father deny me, if he saw what had become of me? Would I be allowed to continue using his name? The Agolaskys – men who love peace, women who cherish beauty. I no longer measure up to my name.
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