The Slynx (34 page)

After all, you can't count everyone, can you, Murza?

In December, at the darkest time of the year, Olenka delivered triplets. Mother-in-law came by and called Benedikt in to come look at the brood. She congratulated him. He lay there, empty and heavy-hearted, waiting for the signal; and there wasn't any. All right then, he'd go take a look.

There were three kids: one appeared to be female, she was tiny and cried. Another seemed to be a boy, but it was hard to tell right off. The third--well, you couldn't figure out what it was-- to look at, it was a fuzzy, scary-looking ball. All round-like, but with eyes. They picked it up in their arms to rock it, and started singing: "Bye Baby Bunting, Daddy's gone a-hunting ..." and with a shove it pushed away, jumped on the floor, rolled off, and disappeared into a crack in the floor. They all rushed to catch it, their hands outstretched. They moved stools and benches--but no luck.

Benedikt stood around awhile, watched, as though through a fog, congratulated Olenka on a successful delivery. Then he went back to his room. Mother-in-law ran to call Terenty Petro-vich to take a look so she could brag about her grandchildren.

He lay down on the bed that had seen so many sighs and groans. He had made himself a serious rut, lying there dur-

ing all those empty years, those countless, joyless nights. He frowned and thought: If the thing just stayed under the floor that wouldn't be so bad, but what if it comes out and starts chewing up books? Maybe he should spackle the cracks closed? The floor boards had gotten quite thin. The family could scrape up a big heap in a day. Sometimes you'd walk by and it looked like there was a whole head of hair fallen on the floor! You could never tell, that thing might come out from under the floor and head straight for the book room. It would gnaw on the bindings, the spines . .. There's glue in there. Leather sometimes.

As if he didn't have enough worries, and here ... It would eat them up, it would definitely eat them! It needs to eat, right? There are threats to art all around: from people, rodents, the damp! How stupid and blind Benedikt used to be, blind as the blind men at the market: they sing, sing their hearts out, but they live in darkness, for them it's dark at midday! He didn't understand anything back then, like he was a worrum! He asked all kinds of silly questions, frowned, and opened his mouth wide so it was easier to think, but he didn't understand anything.

How come we don't have mice? How come we don't need them? Well, we don't need them because we live a spiritual life: we've got books preserved here, and art, and mice would come out and eat up our treasures! With their tiny, sharp teeth, crunch crunch, nibble nibble, they'd chew them up, ruin them!

But Golubchiks have a different life, they depend on mice. They can't do anything without mice. They need them for soup, of course, and stew, and if you want to sew yourself a coat, or trade at the market, pay taxes, that is, pay the tithe. There's the house tax, the pillow tax, the stove tax--you need mice for all of them. So that means they can't keep books at home, no, no, no! It's either one or the other.

And why is it that spiritual life is called a higher life? It's because you put books up as high as you can, on the top floor, on a shelf, so that if misfortune strikes and the vermin get into the house, the treasure will be safer. That's why!

And why do Father-in-law, Mother-in-law, and Olenka have claws on their feet?--for the same reason, of course! To protect

spirituality! To be on the watch for mice! You won't slip by them. That's why there are three fences wrapped around the terem! That's why the guards are so strict! That's why they search you when you come in! Because no matter who you are, even the fanciest suitor or some other very important person, you could still bring a mouse in with you and you wouldn't even notice.

If you have a rat's nest in your hair a mouse could make its own nest there too.

It could hide in your pockets, that happens sometimes.

Or in a boot.

It couldn't have been clearer, but he hadn't understood. And he hadn't understood Illness, goodness knows what he thought. But Illness is in people's heads, Illness is human ignorance, stupidity, Freethinking, dimwittedness, it's when they think "Oh, well, who cares, it doesn't matter, mice and books can live in the same izba." Jeez! A book in the same izba with a mouse! Horrible even to think about.

And how stubborn the scum are: you'd think no one let them read, that someone took away poems and essays! And just why did the government hire Scribes, why did it build the Work Izba, teach people letters, hand out writing sticks, scrape bark clean, sew bark booklets? It's a lot of extra work for the government, extra effort, fuss and bother! It's all for the people, that's who it's for. Catch all the mice you like, go on, be my guest--then trade them for booklets and read to your heart's content!

He clenched his fists in anger, tossed and turned on the bed, and in his head everything grew clearer and clearer, like a great space was opening up! Good Lord! That's how it always was, in ancient times too! "But is the world not all alike . .. Throughout the ages, now and ever more?" It is! It is!

Beneath a canopy of fetid thatch, In valleys far below the mountain's crest, A web has bound both kith and kin, Nearby, an earthly mouse now builds its nest.

Now kith and kin crowd round the valley,

They clamor, yet each one is still alone, And each conceals in his own desert A frozen knot, an ever precious stone.

There you go! In the Oldener days people did the same thing: they made mischief, had a spell of Freethinking, hid books in the cold somewhere, in the damp, all frozen in a knotted bundle. Now he got it!

In the stony cracks between the tiles

The faces of the mice squeezed through,

They looked like triangles of chalk,

With mournful eyes on either side--one, two.

That's right, there's no holding a mouse back! It can get through any crack or crevice!

... Life, you're but a mouse's scurry, Why do you trouble me?

Ah, brother pushkin! Aha! You also tried to protect your writing from rodents! He'd write--and they'd eat, he'd write some more, and they'd eat again! No wonder he was troubled! That's why he kept riding back and forth across the snow, across the icy desert! The sleigh bells jangle ting-a-ling! He'd hitch up a Degenerator and it was off to the steppes! He was hiding his work, looking for a place to keep it safe!

Neither fire nor darkened huts, Just woods and snow to greet me, The whitened stripes of frosty ruts Are all that here do meet me.

He was looking for a place to bury ... Suddenly, everything became so clear that Benedikt sat up and put his feet on the floor. Why didn't he realize it earlier... ? How could he have missed the instructions? ... A long time ago! What did they sing with Lev Lvovich?

Steppe and nothing else, As far as the eye can see ...

Out on that lonesome steppe A coachman called to me.

Well! Why did he go racing off to the steppes, if not to hide books?--"in his own desert / a frozen knot, an ever precious stone ..."

Please do tell my wife, That on the steppe I froze, And that I took with me Her undying love!

What love is he talking about? It was a book! What else could you love but a book? Huh?

"Tell my wife ... that I took with me." He asks his pal to tell his wife so that she doesn't keep looking, otherwise she'll be missing them ... Now there's a poem for you! Not a poem but a regular fable! Governing instructions rendered in a simplified, popular form!

That's why Lev Lvovich was crying. He probably buried some books too, and now he can't find them. That's enough to make you cry. But he started singing and remembered!

How did they hint to Benedikt? Benedikt asked them: Are there any books around to read? And they answered: You don't know your ABCs. And he said: What do you mean I don't know them, I know them! And they said: "Steppe and nothing else, as far as the eye can see ..." It was a hint. A fable. That's where the books are buried, they were telling him. We don't keep them at home.

All right. Where is the steppe? The steppe is in the south . .. But why did he keep saying: the west will help us? .. . And Nikita Ivanich kept telling him: No way, it won't help, we have to do it ourselves. So which is it? Where are they?

Mother-in-law knocked on the door: "Time to bathe the children! Are you going to watch?"

"Don't bother me!" screamed Benedikt, pounding his fist. "Close the door!"

"Should we bathe them?"

"Shut the door!"

She broke his train of thought, dammit! ... Benedikt dressed hurriedly, throwing on his coat, the robe, and the hood. He dashed down the stairs and whistled to a lethargic Nikolai to hitch up.

He drove him impatiently, tapping his boot in the sleigh. He had to check the horizon. He absolutely had to. Before the faint winter light was gone, he had to survey the horizon in all four directions.

Benedikt was driving to the watchtower, that's where. He'd never been up in the watchtower before. Who would have let a Golubchik up there, anyway? It was forbidden, it belonged to the government, only guards and Murzas are allowed on the tower. And why is that? Because you can see far and wide from there, and that's governmental business, it's not meant for just anyone! An ordinary Golubchik has no call to be looking off far and wide: it's not fitting. Maybe there are warriors approaching off in the distance! Maybe a ferocious enemy wants to take a bite out of our bright homeland, so he's sharpened his sticks and marched off toward us. That's governmental business! It's forbidden! But no one would ever stop Benedikt, since he was a Saniturion.

No one stopped him. Naturally.

The watchtower was higher than the highest terem, higher than the trees, higher than the Alexander column. There was a room on the very top. In the room, set in the walls, were four small windows, four slits facing the four sides of the world. Above it sat a slanted four-sided roof, like a hat. Like the one the Murzas wear. When you look up from below--way, way up, under the clouds, the government workers and guards swarm like little ants. They crawl from one place to another, fiddling around with something. Down on the ground the guards have poleaxes. Benedikt rose heavily from the sleigh, one part of him at a time, his awful eyes looking through the crimson slits. He raised his hood--and the guards fell prostrate onto the hard, frozen snow crust. He stepped into the tower. There was a strong doggy smell from dirty coats and the acrid odor of cheap rusht: they were

smoking damp, uncleaned rusht with twigs and straw. The wood steps clunked and clattered under his feet. There was a spiral staircase covered with yellow ice--this was where they relieved themselves and stamped out butts. On the walkways, sparkling with frost, someone had scratched curse words, the usual stuff. Not a whiff of spirituality .. . He climbed slowly, leaning on the hook, stopping on the landings to rest. Steam came out of his mouth and hung there, hovering in clouds in the foul, frosty air.

On the top landing the guards jumped in surprise when they saw the red robe of a government worker.

"Out!" ordered Benedikt.

The workers took off, tearing down the stairs, pushing one another, all eight legs thundering down.

From the tower you could see far away. Far away. .. There wasn't even a word in the language to say how far you could see from the tower! And if there was a word like that, you'd be scared to say it out loud. Ooooh, so far away! To the farthest of far, the edge of the edge, to the limit of limits, all the way to death! The round pancake of the earth, the whole heavenly vault, the entire cold December, the whole city with all its settlements, with its dark, lopsided izbas--empty and wide open, gone over with the fine-tooth comb of the Saniturions' hooks and still inhabited, still swarming with scared, senseless, stubborn life!

O world, roll up into a single block, A cracked and broken sidewalk, A fouled and filthy warehouse, The burrow of a mouse!

A thin strip of horrible yellow sunset filled the western window, and the evening star Alatyr twinkled in the sunset. The pushkin stuck out like a small black stick in the confusion of streets, and from that height the rope looped around the poet's neck and hung with laundry looked like a fine thread.

The sunrise lay hidden in a dark-blue blanket in the other window, covering the woods, rivers, more woods, and secret

fields where red tulips sleep under the snow, where Benedikt's eternal bride hibernates, dressed in frosty lace, inside an icy, decorated egg, with a smile on her luminous face, my unfound love, the Princess Bird, and she dreams of kisses, of silky grass, golden flies, and mirrored waters where her unspeakable beauty is reflected, shimmers, ruffles, multiplies. In her sleep the Princess Bird sighs a happy sigh and dreams of her beautiful self.

To the south, lit by a terrible double light--the yellow from the west and the dark blue from the sunrise side--in the south, blocking the impassable snowy steppe with its whistling whirlwinds and stormy columns, in the south, which runs, runs ever onward toward the dark blue, windy Ocean-Sea, in the south, beyond the ravine, beyond the triple moat, covering the whole width of the window, spread the red, adorned, embellished, ornamented, painted, many-towered, many-storied terem of Fyodor Kuzmich, Glorybe, the Greatest Murza, Long May He Live.

"Ha!" laughed Benedikt.

Joy spurted from him like foamy, sparkling kvas.

Joy, thou beauteous godly lightning, Daughter of Elysium.

Suddenly, everything became as limpid as a spring brook. It was all right in front of him, clear as day. That's what it was! There! .. . There, right before him, unspoiled, unspent, a treasure trove full to the brim, a magical garden blooming and fruitful in its pink-white froth, a garden flowing with the sweetest juice, like a billion blind firelings! There, packed tight from its sonorous cellars to its aromatic attics, was the pleasure palace! Ali Baba's cave! The Taj Mahal, for cryin' out loud!

Of course! In the south, that's right! So the west did help! The light was from the west, the star was a beacon. It illuminated everything! He guessed, he figured it out, he understood the clues, he understood the fable--and everything fit together!