Numbers in the Dark and Other Stories (22 page)

She laughs, revealing two pointed young incisors. She’s uncertain. The search for oil deposits in California has brought to light skeletons of animal species extinct these fifty thousand years, including a sabre-toothed tiger, doubtless attracted by a stretch of water lying on the surface of a black lake of pitch which sucked the animal in and swallowed it up.

But the short time granted me is over: the flow stops, the pump is still, the embrace is broken off. There’s a deep silence, as if all engines everywhere had ceased their firing and the wheeling life of the human race had stopped. The day the earth’s crust reabsorbs the cities, this plankton sediment that was humankind will be covered by geological layers of asphalt and cement until in millions of years’ time it thickens into oily deposits, on whose behalf we do not know.

I look into her eyes: she doesn’t understand, perhaps she’s only just beginning to get scared. Well, I’ll count to a hundred: if the silence goes on, I’ll take her hand and we’ll start to run.

INTERVIEWER: I’m speaking from the picturesque Neander valley, near Dusseldorf. Around me lies a contorted landscape of calcareous rocks. My voice resounds against the walls both of natural caves and man-made quarries. It was during work on these stone quarries that in 1856 one of the oldest inhabitants of this valley was found, someone who settled here about thirty-five thousand years ago. Neanderthal Man: that was how they agreed to call him, after the valley. I have come to Neanderthal to interview him. Mr Neander—I will address him with this simplified appellation throughout our interview—Mr Neander, as you may know, is somewhat diffident by nature, bad-tempered even, partly it’s his old age, and he doesn’t seem particularly impressed by the international fame he enjoys. Nevertheless he has politely agreed to answer a few questions for our programme. Here he comes now, with his characteristic rather lolloping gait, looking me over from beneath the prominent arch of his eyebrows. This immediately prompts me to ask him a somewhat indiscreet question out of a curiosity doubtless shared by many of our listeners. Mr Neander, did you expect to become so famous? I mean: as far as we know, you never did anything remarkable in your life: then all of a sudden you found you were a very important person. How do you explain this?

NEANDER: That’s what you say. Were you there? Me yes, I was there. You no.

INTERVIEWER: Agreed, you were there. Well, do you feel that is sufficient?

NEANDER: I was already there.

INTERVIEWER: That’s a useful point I think. Mr Neander’s great merit isn’t so much the simple fact of being there, but of having
already
been there, having been there then, before so many others. Precedence is a quality no one would wish to deny Mr Neander. However much… even before that, as further research has demonstrated—and as you yourself can confirm, isn’t that right, Mr Neander?—we find traces, many traces and on a number of continents, of human beings, yes, already human humans…

NEANDER: My dad…

INTERVIEWER: Right back as far as a million years before…

NEANDER: My gran…

INTERVIEWER: Hence your precedence, Mr Neander, no one can deny you, though it would seem to be a relative precedence: let’s say that you are the first…

NEANDER: Before you anyway…

INTERVIEWER: Agreed, but that’s not the point. What I mean is that you were the first to be believed to be the first by those who came after.

NEANDER: That’s what you think. Before that there’s my dad…

INTERVIEWER: Not only him, but…

NEANDER: My gran…

INTERVIEWER: And before that? Concentrate now, Mr Neander: your gran’s gran!

NEANDER: No.

INTERVIEWER: What do you mean, no?

NEANDER: The bear!

INTERVIEWER: The bear! A totemic ancestor! As you have heard, Mr Neander considers the forefather of his family tree to have been a bear, no doubt the animal-totem taken as the symbol of his clan, his family!

NEANDER: Your family you mean! First there’s the bear, then the bear goes and eats up gran… Then there’s me, then I go and I kill the bear… Then I eat up the bear.

INTERVIEWER: Allow me to explain to our listeners for a moment, Mr Neander, the valuable information you are giving us. First there’s the bear! how well you express it, asserting with great clarity the precedence of raw nature, of the biological world, which forms the backdrop, isn’t that right, Mr Neander?, the lush backdrop to the advent of man, and it is when man steps so to speak into the limelight of history that the great adventure of our struggle with nature begins, a nature that is first our enemy, then is gradually subdued to our will, a process lasting thousands of years that Mr Neander has evoked so powerfully in the dramatic scene of the bearhunt, a myth almost of the founding of our history…

NEANDER: It was me was there. Not you. There was the bear. Where I go the bear comes. The bear is all around where I am, if not, not.

INTERVIEWER: Right. It seems that our Mr Neander’s mental horizon goes no further than that part of the world that lies in his immediate field of perception, excluding any representation of events occurring beyond that in time or space. The bear is where I see the bear, he says, if I don’t see it, it’s not there. This is certainly a limitation one would wish to bear in mind during the rest of the interview, taking care not to ask him questions that exceed, isn’t that right?, the intellectual capacities of a still rudimentary stage in the cycle of evolution…

NEANDER: That’s you. What are you talking about? What do you know? Food, right? It’s the same food I’m after and the bear’s after. The best at catching the quick animals is me; the best at catching the big animals is the bear. Right? And then either it’s the bear takes them off me or me takes them off the bear. Right?

INTERVIEWER: Perfectly clear, I agree, Mr Neander, no need to get worked up. It’s a case, how can we say, of symbiosis between two species, one species of the genus
homo
and the other of the genus
ursus;
or rather, what we have is a biological equilibrium, if you like: in the midst of the ruthless ferocity of the fight for survival, a tacit understanding is established…

NEANDER: And then, either it’s the bear kills me, or me that kills him, the bear…

INTERVIEWER: There we are, the fight for survival flares up again, the best adapted wins, not just the strongest that is—and Mr Neander, despite his rather short legs, is very muscular—but above all the most intelligent, and Mr Neander, despite the concave curve to his almost horizontal forehead, displays surprising mental faculties… Here is the question I’ve been wanting to ask you, Mr Neander: was there a moment when you feared the human race might go under? You understand me, Mr Neander, might disappear from the face of the earth?

NEANDER: My gran… My gran on the ground…

INTERVIEWER: Mr Neander goes back to this episode that must have been a, let’s say, traumatizing experience in his past… Or rather: in
our
past.

NEANDER: The bear on the ground… I ate the bear… Me: not you.

INTERVIEWER: Precisely, that’s another thing I wanted to ask: was there a moment when you had the clear impression of the human race’s having won, the certainty that it would be the bear that would die out, not us, because nothing could stop our onward march, and that you Mr Neander would one day deserve our gratitude, I mean the gratitude of a humanity that has reached the highest point of its evolution, a gratitude I now extend to you today from this microphone…

NEANDER: Mmm… Me if I have to go on I go on… if I have to stop I stop… if I have to eat the bear I stop and eat the bear… Afterwards I go on, the bear stops still, a bone here, on the ground, a bone there, on the ground… Behind me come the others, they come on, up to where the bear is, stopped still, the others stop, they eat the bear… My son gnaws at a bone, another son of mine gnaws at another bone, another son of mine gnaws at another bone…

INTERVIEWER: Mr Neander is now bringing to life for us one of the culminating moments in the life of a clan of hunters: the ritual banquet after a successful hunt…

NEANDER: My brother-in-law gnaws another bone, my wife gnaws another bone…

INTERVIEWER: As you will have heard in Mr Neander’s own words, women were the last to help themselves at the ritual banquet, which constitutes an admission of the inferior social status to which women were condemned…

NEANDER: Your woman you mean! First I bring the bear to my wife, my wife lights the fire beneath the bear, then I go off to pick some basil, then I get back with the basil and I say: well now, where is the bear’s thigh? and my wife says: I ate it, right? to check if it was still raw, right?

INTERVIEWER: As early as the communities of hunters and gatherers—for this is what emerges from Mr Neander’s account—there was already a strict division of labour between men and women…

NEANDER: Then I go off to pick some marjoram, then I get back with the marjoram and I say: well now, where’s the bear’s other thigh? and my wife says: I ate it, right? to check if it was already burnt, right? And I say: well now, you know who’s going to go and pick the oregano, don’t you? You’re going, I’m telling you, you’re going for the oregano, yes you are.

INTERVIEWER: From this delightful little family vignette we can glean many hard facts about the life of Neanderthal man: first, his knowledge of fire and its use in cooking; second, the gathering of aromatic herbs and their gastronomic application; third, the consumption of meat in large detached portions, which would require the use of proper cutting implements and hence implies a highly developed ability to work flint. But let’s hear if our guest has anything to tell us about this himself. I will formulate the question in such a way as not to influence his response: Mr Neander, you with your stones, yes, those nice round stones you see so many of hereabouts, didn’t you ever try, I don’t know, to play with them, to bang them against each other a bit, to see if they were really that hard?

NEANDER: What’s that you’re saying about stones? Don’t you know what you do with a stone! Clank! Clank! That’s me with a stone: clank! You get the stone, right? you put it on a big stone, you get that other stone, you lay into it, sharp, clank! you know where to hit it sharp? there! that’s where you hit it!: clank! a sharp hit! go on! ow! that way you squash your finger! Then you suck your finger, then you jump up and down, then you get hold of that other stone again, you put the stone back on the big stone, clank! You see it’s split in two, a thick splinter and a thinner splinter, one curved this way, the other curved that way, you pick up this one that’s easy to hold, this way, like this, you pick up the other with the other hand, that way, like that, and off you go: clunk! understand that you go clunk there, right there, go on! ow! you’ve stuck the point in your hand! then you suck your hand, turn round on one foot, then you get hold of the splinter again, the other splinter in the other hand, clunk!, a little splinter’s split off, ow! in your eye! you rub your eye with your hand, kick the big stone, get hold of the thick splinter again and the thin splinter, clunk! you split off another splinter right nearby, clunk! another, clunk! yet another, and you see that where they’ve split off they’ve left a nick that goes in nice and round, and then another nick, and then another nick, like that up and down all around, and then on the other side too, clunk! clunk! see how it’s coming off all around, finer and finer, sharper and sharper…

INTERVIEWER: Our thanks to…

NEANDER:… then you give it little taps like this, clink! clink! and you split off tiny tiny splinters, clink! clink! and you see how that leaves lots of tiny tiny teeth, clink! clink!

INTERVIEWER: Yes, we’ve understood that perfectly. On behalf of our listeners let me thank…

NEANDER: Understood what? Now you can hit it here once: clonk! and then afterwards you can hit it again the other side, clunk!

INTERVIEWER: Clunk, exactly, let’s move on to another…

NEANDER:… that way you can hold it properly in your hand, this stone, now it’s worked both sides, then the real work starts, because you get another stone and you put it on the big stone, clank!

INTERVIEWER: And so on, very clear, what matters is how you begin. Let’s move…

NEANDER: Oh no, once I’ve begun, I don’t want to stop, there’s always a stone on the ground that looks better than the first one, so I throw away the first and get this other and clank! clank! and lots of the splinters flying off you chuck and lots are even better to work, so I get going on those, clink! clink! and it turns out I can have all these stones come out just how I want and the more nicks I make the more other nicks I can make, where I’ve made one I make two, and then in each of these two I make another two, and in the end the whole lot breaks to bits and I chuck it in the heap of the broken splinters which is growing and growing on this side, but on the other side I’ve got a whole mountain of rocks still to be turned into splinters.

INTERVIEWER: Now that Mr Neander has described for us this frustrating, monotonous work…

NEANDER: Monotonous! You’re the one that’s monotonous! Do you know how to make nicks in stones, you, nicks all the same, do you know how to make the nicks monotonous? No, so what are you talking about? I know how to do it all right! And ever since I started, ever since I saw I’ve got the thumb for it, you see this thumb? this thumb that I put here and the other fingers I put there and in the middle there’s a stone, in my hand, gripped tight so it can’t slip out, ever since I saw that I was holding the stone in my hand and hitting it, like this, or like that, well since then what I can do with the stones I can do with everything, with the sounds that come out of my mouth, I can make sounds like this, a a a, p p p, ny ny ny, and so I never stop making sounds, I start speaking, I never stop speaking, I start speaking about speaking, I start working stones I can use for working stones, and meantime it occurs to me to think, I think of all the things I could think when I think, and it occurs to me I’d like to do something to have others understand things, paint some red stripes on my face for example, no reason in particular, just to let the others know I’ve put some red stripes on my face, and I think I’d like to make my wife a necklace of boar’s teeth, no reason in particular, just to have people know that my wife has a necklace of boar’s teeth, and yours doesn’t, I don’t know what you think you have that I didn’t have, I had everything I wanted, everything that was done afterwards, I’d already done, everything that was said and thought and meant was already there in what I said and thought and meant, all the complication of complication was already there, I only have to pick up this stone with my thumb and the hollow of my hand and the other four fingers that fold over it, and everything’s already there, I had everything that others had later, everything others knew and could do later I already had not because it was mine but because it
was
, because it was already, because it was there, whereas later others had it and knew it and could do it less and less, always a bit less than what might have been, than what there was before, what I had before, what I was before, I really was there then in everything and for everything, not like you, and everything was in everything and for everything, everything you need to be in everything and for everything, even everything wrong that came later was already there in that clank! clank! clink! clink! so what are you trying to say, what do you think you are, what do you mean thinking you’re here when you are not, or if you are it’s only because I really was and the bear was and the stones and the necklaces and the hammerings on the fingers and everything you need to be and that when it’s there is there.