The Slynx (33 page)

the singers in amazement. Like they hadn't just been arguing, their hearts incensed, hadn't exchanged angry looks and put on grimaces of mutual disdain; like their hands hadn't been itching to punch the other guy in the kisser so he wouldn't look at me like that, so that he didn't make faces, didn't talk through his teeth, didn't hold his nose! It's hard to stay mad when you're singing: if you open your mouth the wrong way, you'll ruin the song. If you squawk, you lose track, like you've dropped something, and spilled it! If you ruin a song, you're the fool, you'll be to blame, there's no one else! The others have gone on, they're carrying the tune along nicely, calmly, and it's like you were drunk and tripped and fell face down in the mud. Shameful!

Please go tell my wife,

That on the steppe I froooooooze! --

Lev Lvovich broke off, banged his head against the table, and began to cry, like he was barking. Benedikt was scared, he stopped singing and stared at the Oldener, forgetting to close his mouth, which remained open at the letter O.

"Lev Lvovich! Lyovushka!" pleaded Nikita Ivanich. The Stoker ran all around, tugged at the crying man's sleeve, grabbed a cup, put it down, grabbed a towel, dropped it. "Now what is this! Lyovushka! Come on, that's enough! We'll manage somehow! We're alive, after all, aren't we?"

Lev Lvovich shook his head, rocking it on the table, like he was saying no and he didn't want to stop.

"Benya! Get some water, quick ...! He's not supposed to be under stress, he has a heart condition!"

They gave the Oldener something to drink, dried him with a towel, and fanned his face with their hands.

"You sing so well!" said Nikita Ivanich comfortingly. "Did you study or is it just natural? Does it run in your family?"

"Probably ... Papa was a dentist," sniffed Lev Lvovich one last time. "And on my mother's side I'm from the Kuban."

YER'

They say you can never have too much of a woman's body-- and they're right. Olenka expanded sideways, forward, and backward. You couldn't have asked for anything more beautiful. Where once she had a dimpled chin there were now eight. She had six rows of tits. She had to sit on five stools, three weren't enough. Not long ago they widened the doorway, but they'd been stingy: it needed to be widened again. Any other husband would have been proud. But Benedikt looked at all this splendor without any excitement. He didn't feel like playing goats, or tickling and pinching her.

"Benedikt, you don't understand anything about female beauty. Terenty Petrovich, now, he appreciates ... Go sleep in another room."

To hell with her, then. She might squash him at night, smother him. Benedikt made himself a pallet in the library. From there you could hardly hear her snoring. And that way the signal would come quicker.

He slept fully dressed, and stopped bathing: what a bore. Dirt collected behind his ears, all kinds of garbage. Creatures of some kind settled in: slow, with lots of legs; at night they moved from place to place, uneasy. Maybe they were lugging their nests somewhere, but you couldn't see who they were--they were behind the ears. His feet were sweaty and stuck together. It didn't matter. You lie there like a warm corpse: your ears don't hear, your eyes don't see. True, he did wash his hands; but he had to for his work.

... And where is that clearest of fires, and why does it not burn?

You get up, go to the kitchen, pluck a meat pattie out of a bowl with two fingers, with a third you scoop the jelly out of the bowl.

You eat it. No emotion. You eat it--that's all. Now what? Start dancing a jig?

You open the window bladder--a fine rain drizzles, needling the puddles; the clouds are low, the whole sky is covered, it's dark during the day, as if the sun had never risen. A serf crosses the yard--he covers his head from the rain and goes around the puddles, carrying a sack of hay to the Degenerators. A long time ago, oh, how long ago it was, in a former life!--you would have tried to guess: Will he slip or not? Will he fall? And now you look on sort of dumbly: Yeah, the serf slipped. Yeah, he fell. But there's no joy in it anymore.

... The lamplighter should have lit them, but sleeps. He sleeps, and I'm not to blame, my sweet...

From the bedroom came a clicking and clattering: Olenka and Terenty Petrovich were playing dominoes and laughing. Another time he would have burst into the room like a tornado and beat Terenty's mug black and blue, loosened a few teeth for him, and kicked him out of the family quarters! Olenka would have got what was coming to her as well: he'd have grabbed her by the hair, by those bobbins of hers, and smashed her sour-creamed face against the wall. Again! Once more! Another time for good measure! He'd have stomped on her and given her a few in the ribs, in the ribs!

But now it didn't matter; they're playing and let them play.

You lie there. Just lie and lie there. "Ne'er a drop of divinity, nor single sigh of inspiration." No tears, no life, no love. For a month, perhaps a half a year. Suddenly: hark! Something blows in on the breeze. This is a signal.

You perk up right away, on guard. Has it come, or did you just imagine it? Seems like you imagined... No! There it is again! Clear as clear can be! You rise up on your elbow, cock your ear to one side, listening.

There's a faint light in your head--like a candle behind a door cracked open ... Careful not to scare it off...

It's gotten a bit stronger now, that light, and you can see the room. In the middle there's nothing, and on that nothing--

there's a book. The pages are turning ... It seems to be coming closer and closer, you can almost make out what's written ...

Then your mouth goes dry, your heart pounds, your eyes go blind: you just saw the book, and the pages were turning, they were turning! But you can't see what's going on around you, and if you do see it, it doesn't mean anything at all. The meaning is over there, in the book; the book is the only real, living thing. Your bed, stool, room, father- and mother-in-law, your wife and her lover--they aren't alive, they're like drawings! Moving shadows, like the cloud shadows running across the earth--and they're gone!

But what kind of book it is, where it is, why its pages are turning--and is someone turning them or is it moving on its own? That is a mystery.

One time he felt the pull--and rushed to check Konstantin Leontich. He was driving by, and suddenly he felt the pull: What if he's got one? There wasn't anything there, just a string of worrums. Now that was a false signal.

There are true signals and then sometimes there are false ones: if the signal is for real, then the vision you see in your head gets stronger, thicker, so to speak; the book you see in your vision gets heavier and heavier. At first it's clear and watery, and then it thickens; you see its paper, white, oh, so white, or yellowed and rough, you can see every freckle and spot and scratch on it, like you were looking at skin close up. You look and you laugh from the joy of it, just like you were about to make love.

The letters too: at first they slip and jump around. Then they settle into even rows, nice and black, all whispering. Some are open wide like they were inviting you: Come on in!

Take the letter O for instance. It's a round window, like you're looking down from the attic at a burbling, chirping spring forest: you can see streams and fields far away, and if you're lucky and you squint your eyes, you might see the White Bird-- tiny, distant, like a white speck. Or the letter [*], Pokoi. Well it's just a doorframe! And what's beyond that door? Who knows, maybe a completely new life no one ever imagined! One that's never happened before!

X, Kher, or [*], Zhivete, they block the way, they won't let you in, they crisscross and close off the passage: Stay out! Forget it!

[*], Tsi, and [*], Shcha, have tails, like Benedikt before his wedding.

[*], Cherv, is like an upside-down chair.

[*], Glagol, is shaped like a hook.

Now if the signal is really true, then it all comes together: the paper, the letters, the picture you can see through them, the whispering, and the hum, the wind from the turning pages--a dusty, warm wind--it all thickens in front of your eyes, floods you, washes over you in a kind of airy wave. Then you know. Yes! That's it! I'm coming!

And in a flash it falls away and leaves you, all the heaviness stays on the bed, all the dull daze, the thick, bodily, meaty heaving from side to side. Suddenly there's no confusion, no laziness, no sticky, slurping swampy bog in you. You rise in a single surge, taut like a thread pulled tight, light and resonant; there's a goal in your head, you know what to do, you're collected and cheerful!

All that sticky weight falls away--there's only the surge! The soul!

The robe wrapped itself around his shoulders like a magic skin. The hood, his reliable protector, leapt onto his head: I may not be seen, but I see through everyone! His strong weapon seemed to grow into his hand--his trusty hook, bent like the letter [*]
,
Glagol! "With words to burn the hearts of men!" With a birdlike, lilting cry, with one sweep of the hand, I call my comrades. Always prepared!

Wondrous comrades, a flying division! You call from the yard or from the gallery--and there they are, as if they neither sleep nor eat, each dozen in harmony like a single being! Ready. Onward! Stern, shining warriors, we rise and fly, neither snow nor rain nor sleet shall stop us--we know no obstacle, and the people part like the sea before us.

We tear them away and take them; we save them. If the signal was really true, we take them and save them, because then

there really was a Book there. It called, beckoned, cried out, came in a vision.

But if the signal is false--well, then there isn't anything. That's the way it was at Konstantin Leontich's. Nothing but garbage.

But it turned out all wrong at Konstantin Leontich's. Why? Well, because Benedikt was riding along in his sleigh, darker than a thundercloud, lost in his thoughts, and his thoughts were grim and tearful like autumn clouds--clouds in the sky, clouds in the breast, it's all the same, feelosophy has got that part right. Without seeing, he knew that his eyes were red with blood, that he had dark, deep rings under his eyes, that his face and curls had darkened, stuck together--uncombed, unwashed, his head had become flat, like a spoon. His throat was sticky from smoking, as though he'd swallowed clay. He turned the corner and suddenly he felt the pull: over there. In that izba.

And then he allowed himself some Freethinking, or what you might call a violation of procedure. He went alone, right then, without his comrades. Whoa! he cried to Nikolai. He pulled on the reins and stopped him: Wait here; he threw on his hood and kicked the gate open with his foot.

They teach you: never go out on a confiscation alone--it's Freethinking, and they're absolutely right: you wouldn't go alone for firelings, now, would you? The fireling might guess that there's a human walking around, and cry out, and put out its light to warn the others, mightn't it? And what if it turns out to be a fake fireling? Well, in our business it's the same thing: science is the same everywhere.

Konstantin Leontich screamed and resisted. He hit Benedikt on the arm so hard it really really hurt. In professional terms: he complicated the confiscation.

He let out a blood-curdling yell and called his neighbors. They didn't come, they'd hidden. Then he tore the hood off and recognized Benedikt. He squealed and hit him in the face when he recognized him.

He scratched him furiously; he even knocked him over.

But he made a mistake when he grabbed the hook with his

hands; the hook is double-edged, you shouldn't grab it with your hands.

That's not what it's for.

The hook is to grab the book with, to catch it, drag it to you, to pull it toward you; it's not a spear. Why is it so sharp? So that it's dangerous for a Golubchik to hold on to the book when it's confiscated. They all clutch the book tight, so the hook is sharpened. That way, if you get out of hand, you won't be able to hold on, you'll slice your hands off in an instant, and every single last one of your fingers!

On the outside and the inside it's sharpened really sharp, that's why you need practice grabbing and turning with it; that's why every confiscated book has cuts from the hook, like little wounds. A clumsy Saniturion could carelessly slice through a book, and that must never happen, you can't ruin art. If the work is good and clean, you can pull in a book with one flick, and there'll only be a little scar.

So they work in groups or brigades: one comrade confiscates the book, the others use their hooks to catch the Golubchiks in the izba by their clothes, or by the collar, they wind him up, in rags.

And another thing the hook is useful for: if the Golubchik is rambunctious, the hook is good for knocking him off his feet, so he falls down right away, and for that there's always a set of horns handy. It's a professional instrument too, but simpler, it looks like the letter Y, or a set of tongs. When someone falls, you can hold his neck down to the floor to make sure he doesn't get back up.

Saniturions used to be given spears. One poke, and that was the end of the Golubchik. But we don't do that anymore, now we're humane.

And a Saniturion should also watch himself, his hands always have to be clean. The hook will always be dirty from the Golubchik: with blood or vomit, whatever; but the hands have to be clean. That's why Benedikt always washes his hands.

Because otherwise how are you going to hold the book after the confiscation? In the sleigh when you're on your way back?

So there you have it, that's the technique, the tricks, or the scientific organization of labor. It seems simple, but it's not so simple. It's crowded in the izba, and dark; you bump into each other--a lot of people complain.

Freethinking is out of place here, but Benedikt let it happen, as always. So he went and got wounded by Konstantin Leontich: on his hands, and on his face, and on his chest too; and he sprained his ankle. And all in vain: it was a false signal, there weren't any books.

It was the day of the October Holiday, Konstantin Leontich was getting ready for the yearly recount, he was washing rags out in the tub--pants, a shirt. Well, so there'll be one Golubchik missing, the Murzas won't count Konstantin Leontich. They'll write down in the official lists: taken for treatment.