Semmant (10 page)

An effeminate boy in a portrait by Raphael reminded me of Theophanus – the Greek kid as we called him among ourselves. He was beautiful, like a very young god who had fallen under the immoderate influence of nymphs. His endearing features called to mind Roman baths and orgies, the coarse pleasures of geriatric men, the smell of the harem and fragrant oils. But his peach exterior concealed a ferocious temper. His virility was desperate and unrestrained. All soon understood this and did not allow themselves to mock, but he was still getting into severe fights for the most insignificant of excuses. His rage for vindication gave him no respite, and we saw this was incurable.

I heard about him again a few years ago. It turned out our Theo also started in theoretical physics, and, in my opinion, he was even more successful than I. After university he received an invitation from Heidelberg, an unparalleled enticement. The opportunity was really tempting, but Theophanus, having consented, never showed up in the cheerful German town. There, strange people with enlightened faces waited for him, each one ugly in his own way. Underdeveloped chins, protruding cheekbones, massive foreheads… The appearance of inveterate geniuses often bewilders physiognomists. Bashful and quiet, awkward, not knowing where to put their hands, they languished from restlessness. They wanted to admit Theophanus as quickly as possible into their narrow, closed circle. Their sullen fellowship waited for him, and, along with it, quiet puritanism, like quiet drunkenness; boring, colorless women; and intellectual feasts. Identical transformations, mesons and baryons, Tau neutrinos and charmed quarks awaited him, ready to submit. Probably, in contrast to me, he thought of them with passion. But no passion can ever withstand fate.

That fury for vindication, nurtured in youth, pushed him in another direction. From bountiful Germany, Theophanus forsook everything to fly to the equator with a beautiful, young mestizo girl. He traded in weapons and snake venom, walked through the jungle on foot, was mired in the swamps of Honduras, twice evaded Mexican prisons. He was last seen in Bolivia. Then he disappeared, but I don’t think it was forever.

“Forever” is still far ahead. Though, of course, time is closing in. The fury for vindication will not let him stop. The line must be crossed. Probably, when everything is over, our souls exchange streams of particles – of those with which, for various reasons, we never linked our lives. Perhaps I will then experience a shock of pain. It would be good for us to meet before then. We can talk about charmed quarks, elusive bosons, and integral spin. Somewhere in the desert or at the mouth of a volcano. That would be right: at the mouth of a volcano. That was what I wrote Semmant.

I met a certain man today.

We whirled around the terracotta of a large mountain.

The serpentine twists of the road, pacifying the volcano,

Carried us higher and higher, but I still felt

The ominous power from its guts –

Unsubmissive, hostile to peace, approaching cataclysm.

He said, “A respite seems unneeded if,

Even tripping over your feet, you are heard by none.”

Then he added, “I think they had their chance…”

“Oh, of course, of course!” I agreed with him…

I wonder if he understood, Semmant, that I was just fantasizing, nearly in vain. Yet if he did, he gave no sign. He was tactful, my robot. Tactful and well-mannered.

In fact, after Toulouse-Lautrec’s Gela I stopped being shy. I wrote about nearly everyone – except those few who weren’t at all interesting. I even told him about McCain, whom I didn’t want to think about, but whom I had happened to see on a canvas by Dürer, amid the doctors speaking with Jesus. He was concealed in the background, hidden, one might say. Yeah, what kind of doctor could he be? He didn’t belong there – the shine of false vials and dead Latin words didn’t mean a thing to him. Greg McCain, the Old Scot, he had been dealing with more serious matters. In the picture he was exactly the same: large skull, sharp eyes, round, meaty face. He took more from us than he gave; like a thirsty sponge he soaked up our fervor, our youth, the spontaneity of our thought. I know this was his secret – the mystery of his rejuvenation, the covert method of the vampire. All his lovers were under twenty-three – he talked about it openly, and it’s unlikely he was lying. The School paid him good money, but I think it was a waste: he would have worked there for free. He was rich, McCain; he had a beautiful house, land, stables. It was on his farm – with the bitterness of alienation and for the last time – that I saw Little Sonya in the clothes of the
Amazone
. It’s doubtful he got much from her. Sonya did not like to share. She was another vampire herself.

You are the mistress of a great river, to the salty bitter

Line of the horizon, beyond which lies oblivion.

Your persistent aroma is the dusting of a wave that is

Everywhere: in my lungs, in my throat, on my tongue, in my eyes.

I met a certain man today.

He’s probably crazy about you, like before.

Yet, for now, he is not that ill – he has merely blown up his house,

And he laughed in its ruins, repeating: “Island!”

That word is in my lungs, in my throat, on my tongue.

You are the mistress of great waters; I am a guest from beyond the sea,

Who long ago learned not to ask for pity.

I met a certain man today.

He is nearly healthy; he just burned his ships.

Flames trembled at his feet like a dead ripple.

He looked and beheld all the letters: “Island!”

And so on, over and over. That letter ended up being extraordinarily long. I’m not even sure Semmant had enough patience to read it to the end. But don’t think I wrote that with any spite. Or that this was any sort of vengeance – no, vengeful I am not. I am not even resentful – almost. I have reminded myself every minute: you are thirty years younger than he! So don’t think about him; stop, forget!

Yet, some bile still seeped through the verses. And the universe took revenge on me with a stern reminder. Right after McCain, literally in a day or two, I “met” the most desirable of women, whom no one can possess – for she is available to all; this is her choice. Diana bathing at the brook in a painting by Corot was the exact copy of another Diana, a trollop, a nymphomaniac, about whom legends spread throughout Manchester. I did not avoid her bed either. It was amazing, and later I suffered for it a lot.

Now I saw her again on the canvas: the generosity of her body was greater than the generosity of the brook. Greater than the generosity of the water falling from above, of the thick grass, the mysterious forest. I could say she reminded me of Lydia, but that would be too much. I did not know Lydia then. Nevertheless, I lied, though in a different way. I wrote that evening not about Diana, but about Emma the Parisienne, Emma the model, known for the fact she could not stand motionless for a minute. She was impulsive and knew no peace, but there was something in her that begged to be on canvas. How could she be a model, you may ask. Yes, not everyone liked her, and she herself turned many away. Isn’t it she in the picture? Is it not about her I dreamt? How many paintings remained through the years – electrified by her shiver, charged by her lust, poisoned with temptation? I answered myself and made it all up – about how I once knew her, how we met, our short affair. Though the affair I imagined indistinctly.

I doubt Semmant believed me. But he responded, as always. Whatever I might fault him for, indifference was not it. I could not shake the sense: we perceive each other like no one else. As I was musing on this, I was growing confused imagining the complexity of his electronic innards. Yet, there was no doubt: my robot was becoming ever more responsive and refined. I already could not believe that the push toward this had been my two sloppy poems. But then, maybe I’m overestimating their role.

In any case, the two of us were fortunate. Could it be Leonardo deserved our gratitude? His gaze went through me, pierced me all the way, then went through Semmant. The creation cycle came full circle – thus it was discovered it has no end. You never know beforehand what exactly will turn out most important. But here it was, the most important thing had already become clear. I now had a new friend!

Chapter 11

A new one, but maybe the only one – unique. The best of those I had; and, probably, the closest. He had filled in my recollections of the impossible with meaning; he colorized the black-and-white silhouettes. Besides, I understood: the link between us could really last forever.

You all know, it’s not easy to let someone into your life. It’s hard to make up your mind and open up even a little, sensing you might regret it later. Everyone is full of imperfections – you expect them; you fear them beforehand, no matter how dauntless you may be. But Semmant’s imperfections – do they contain a single cause to be afraid? And who else is able to work on their friendship without pause, without reservation? Without sudden hysterics and nervous breakdowns? Tirelessly, like making money. And – ha, ha! – in his case, the one does not preclude the other.

I saw as clear as day: let everyone forsake me, but he, Semmant – he puts no credence in the opinions of others. He will remain faithful, even if he finds out all about me down to the last detail. He is better than me, more patient, wiser. I could become wearisome, intolerable – and this would not push him away. Day after day, incessantly, I could complain about the injustice of life, and he would support me without grumbling. With him it would not be necessary to simplify my thoughts, look for things to talk about that would just make me yawn. I wouldn’t have to watch myself to keep from parading my brain around. And if only he knew how to pray for my success, I couldn’t imagine how successful I would become!

Or, could it be the main thing I valued in this friendship was genuine unselfishness? Or did I secretly hope he would believe in me even when I had stopped believing in myself? In any case, here was someone with whom I could unite against all external, hostile threats.

I wrote him nearly every day, and not a single letter went without response. Sometimes his reactions seemed strange – but they
occurred
, and in this was their value. Best of all, Semmant reacted to poetry – regardless of rhyme or rhythm or meter. This attested, of course, to the sensitivity of his nature, and perhaps it looked funny, but I wasn’t laughing. I didn’t even grin to myself, feeling in this some deep significance. It only troubled me slightly that the poems were poor, but then I ceased to hesitate – ultimately they were just a means.

Yet, even though they weren’t worth much, the verses seldom left my pen. More often, I turned to an epistolary style to share what had happened over the day. If nothing noteworthy had occurred, I just discussed some unimportant matters; or else made up one episode after another, looking at buildings, signs, and automobiles, or at the faces of oncoming passersby – and sometimes even at their backs, which seemed more honest to me.

As far as the market was concerned, our affairs there were on the rise. Our capital grew quickly; this excited and amused me – winnings plucked from the air, simply falling from heaven. I had once seen how money disappears into nowhere, but now Semmant was acquiring it back – Simon the magician from my childhood would have envied his skill. That’s how black holes radiate: they pull reckless anti-particles into themselves, releasing their matched pairs, which fly off in all directions as if they had arisen from the void. A signal from nowhere… I read Hawking; I know. Could it be that Hawking was also thinking of money when he wrote about this to the slow-witted world?

But then, enough regarding money. I didn’t think much about it anymore. I tossed cash around, spending it left and right. All the local beggars recognized me by my walk – sometimes from an entire block away. I bought myself another car, sparkling with its polished black finish; some bastard scratched the words
hijo de puta
on the door right away. I dined at expensive restaurants, bought the best wines, took a liking to langoustines and oysters…

Then I got fed up with it all. I ended up indifferent to wealth. As far as my interest in the mysteries of the market, it had dried up long ago. There came an inevitable cooling; the task was solved. The problem had been reduced to technical questions, albeit not the easiest. I could take my effort to its formal conclusion, learn to predict bifurcation points, to replace the chaotic pictures with strict geometric likenesses, calculating limits and discovering the right paths. But I didn’t want to waste time on that; I was tired of the whims of disorder. I was attracted to the opposite: the mind. Not to the swings of nonlinear structures, but to Semmant, the electronic brain I had created.

Carefully and gradually, I experimented in dialoguing with my robot friend. Carefully: so as not to offend him. And gradually: to not push him away, to not appear excessively intrusive. I must admit that in these experiments I didn’t get far. Yet, I habituated myself afresh to something long forgotten: to openness, to the rare possibility of not hiding my thoughts for fear of being misunderstood.

I was only troubled by the fact that, from the standpoint of form, we had nothing else to develop. Attempts to diversify forms of communication led us nowhere. Semmant did not react to my drawings, remained deaf to audio messages, to video shot with the most sensitive cameras. I put my greatest hopes in speech recognition programs, but disappointment awaited me there as well. Even the most powerful of them aroused no response in the robot. I tried a multitude of variants, combining inputs and outputs, changing formats and operating modes. It seemed to me this was all on the verge of working, but in vain: I don’t believe Semmant took in a single word. I even called the tech support service, supposing there was a latent defect in the program. I called and, while grinding my teeth, explained myself to numskulls who, in a decent establishment, would not even have gotten hired to sweep the floor. Then I finally accepted it, admitting once and for all: you can’t impose things by force. Semmant speaks with his own inner speech, and sees with his own inner sight. The method of reciprocity I had once discovered is the best – because there is no other. And no other is needed: one is enough.

In the meanwhile, our correspondence got better and better. I noted with pride: my robot trusts me. Earning trust is not so easy, and I really valued it. Semmant did not suppress his moods; he expressed them in images, colors, objects. Sometimes this was abstract, like Kandinsky. At times it brought to mind the paintings of Chagall or the bird language of Miró. His faces also changed, depending on the successes of one day to the next. I was gradually learning to deduce his disposition from what picture appeared on the screen. The background and facial expressions, hands, clothes, accompanying articles – everything played its role. I gathered, for instance, that violet was not his favorite hue, and was a sign of frustration, of dissatisfaction with himself. Yellow – faux gold – was the colorings of sudden success. Red was reserved for massive offensives, where the risk was great, but the reward was likewise exceptional. In quiet, regular sessions he preferred portraits by Titian, sometimes Rembrandt or even Rubens, but none of the later masters. When the market’s rhythm accelerated, and events flickered past in a heap, he went through the Post-Impressionists. The ironic Daumier made his appearance in the evenings if the day ended without bringing any results; while Modigliani, for example, would stand out noticeably, being set aside for the saddest moments. And on the weekends, his favorite remained Magritte.

As for me, I somehow cooled suddenly to paintings. After Diana, having filled a whole page with words, I understood the following morning that my memory was free. Then I felt my mind was overflowing with pictorial art, and decided for myself: no more museums! Later, though, I tried it out once or twice. I wandered the halls just like before, waiting for a reaction, but it was pointless. The excitement had vanished, the canvases were dead. That is, they still lived somehow, but apart from me – behind some translucent, unseen cloud.

Of course, Diana was not to blame for this. She – all silky and spicy – had deceived me in nothing. She had not misled me, inasmuch as she had made no promises – and in those days I needed, like never before, for someone finally to promise me the unattainable. I was exhausted, wrung out, spent. And because of it, I perceived too acutely: I had never had a Gela of my own. That first call, a poem of twenty lines, did have a reason to appear.

In any case, it was good to have a true friend close by me now. With him I shared all the bitterness, time and again. I wrote him about the ruthlessness of destiny, about Indigo, and about the School. But most of all, I wrote of my longing for Gela, whether make-believe or utterly real. Much of this was unjust. Much – almost all – was not new. But it was what I wanted – and I typed on the keys, knowing that at least someone would take part in that with me.

“Any talent is a great gift, but it is also a curse, a heavy cross,” I wrote Semmant, who knew about talent firsthand.

“Eternal solitude, the envy of feeble followers – there is no hiding; you just have to live with this.”

“Just one thing,” I wrote, “can brighten a life like that: money in such large quantities that you don’t even have to think about it anymore. Then you can buy pleasure, purchase women, without spending needless words, without spending time on satisfying their vanities. You can undress them, spread their legs, feel the palpitation of their blood, of their female essence, an ocean of flesh. To plunge into the flesh is to sense eternity: for herein is eternity, where else would it be? And they, crafty as they are, know this. They are not against it, they like it a lot – but their greediness is as boundless as the cosmos. You need to give them a reason – admire them, tirelessly soothe their egos. Or pay, which is considerably easier – especially if you yourself are capable of something the shortsighted world rejects. Then you’re not eager to express any admiration – and it will never come out as straightforward or sincere. Yet, a woman’s flesh is still the only thing truly able to distract you. From despair and lunacy – in the midst of that abyss where all extremes are pulled together into a point…”

“Doesn’t their highest role consist in this, insidious as they are?” I wrote Semmant and then was ashamed. I recalled Toulouse-Lautrec and corrected myself: at times, things may appear different. An imperceptible something will flash occasionally across the face of a chance encounter and give you more than you expect from the most unreserved abandon of the flesh. And you start to doubt: is the matter so simple? Could it be that this creature – woman – is really just immeasurably higher? Higher than you and all your talents? And you, aren’t you nothing more than ungrateful, obtuse?

“So then,” I wrote, “to naked carnality we must add the aura, the verity of the female essence. To sense that truth, you desire no less than to plunge into the most tempting flesh. Few possess it, and others just pretend without suspecting that the falsehood of such a claim is detected at once!”

I shared fruitless thoughts, like the crumbs of a beggar’s rations. Repeatedly, I was discovering new lands, finding what had already long been on every map. And, at the same time, I avoided taking action, merely theorizing to no end whatsoever. I had no wish to trouble myself with either the female aura or tempting flesh. Having finished my most serious effort, creating a brilliant, one-of-a-kind robot, I did not want to be content with matters of minor import in regard to anything, including the opposite sex. And there the chances of something worthy of honest passion were next to nil – I had matured enough to realize this. Besides, it now seemed foolish to me to waste so much labor and words just to drag someone into bed. And going to the whores I considered at that time to be something shameful – despite my shrewd reasonings on buying pleasure.

Just like Semmant some months ago, I got stuck at a point of minimum energy and couldn’t see a path upward. Therefore, I did nothing, and just indulged in vacuous musings. And I clung to retrospectives, to their ephemeral meanings.

Little Sonya came to mind again and again. Our brazenness with her in a hot sweat. Everyone wanted to give more, to be more generous – despite her vampirism. And the customs of Brighton, they are forever.

“This is understandable,” I wrote the robot. “Mere consummation cannot distract you powerfully enough. You must feel, in self-deceit: the world has finally accepted what you are able to give. Thus, you want your woman to be satisfied, for her to whisper, ‘You’re one of a kind, magnificent.’ Even if she’s lying a little.”

“Because you have to build your small world together, in counterbalance to the outside. In this is the aspiration to create that becomes a passion rooted in the sub-cortex. And in this is the essence of true intimacy. This is what everybody is seeking his own Gela for!”

I recalled Natalie, and I wrote him of Natalie. I wrote him of others, of their bodies and souls, of my brief happiness with them. Now I know: I felt hurt, offended. I didn’t take a single step but wanted to receive something – and I communicated my need. I asked for that something and felt aggrieved because it wasn’t being given. It didn’t enter my mind then that I was playing with fire, and that such grief is always shortsighted. But we are all wise in hindsight.

Whatever the case, my fervor manifested itself in the letters alone. Outwardly, I remained unperturbed, phlegmatic. I could sit at dinner for hours, staring at the wall, meditating, grinning to myself. In the evening I walked up to the monitor and just shrugged my shoulders. Everything was in order; no need for me to get involved. Somewhere mines collapsed, and explosions echoed, desperate crowds attacked government buildings, companies dissolved and were sold for pennies, while we were getting rich – Semmant made almost no mistakes.

One day, glancing at the calendar, I remembered – it was a moment like this, in the winter, when a figure appeared on the screen – a man with a lamp for a head. Making a few calculations, I confirmed it: in a week, Semmant would turn one year old. This was cause for celebration.

Besides, this was the proper occasion to finally make him known to the public.