The Slynx (7 page)

If you complain, they say: "That's the Slynx staring at your back."

No. Not likely. Couldn't be. It's something slinking around on the inside, or maybe, like Nikita Ivanich says, it's feelosophy.

You look at people--men, women--like you're seeing them for the first time, like you're a different creature, or you just came out of the forest, or the other way around, you just walked into the forest. And everything seems strange, sad and strange. Take that woman. You think: What's she for? She's got cheeks, a stomach, she bats her eyes, she's talking about something. Turning her head, smacking her lips, and what's inside her? A meaty darkness, squeaking bones, strings of guts, and nothing else. She laughs, she's scared, she frowns--but does she really have any feelings? Thoughts? What if she's just pretending to be a woman and she's really a swamp monster? Like the ones that hoot in the bushes, crackle the old leaves, creak the branches, but never show themselves. What if you went over to check? You could set your fingers like horns and poke her in the eyes. What would happen? Plunk. She'd fall, right?

You wouldn't get away without a fuss, the men would give you a thrashing, they wouldn't care that you're a government Scribe, an official Golubchik--they'd beat you black and blue, and if some Lesser Murza started asking questions, they'd swear up and down that that's how you were, that your blue face was just a plain old Consequence, that your parents had the same ugly mugs, and your grandmother too.

Today, for instance, toward evening, right at work, who knows why, feelosophy suddenly churned up inside Benedikt. Dimly, like a shadow under the water, something in his heart started to turn, to torment and call him. But where? Hard to say. There was a tingling in his back, and he felt tears rise. It was either like you were fixing to get good and mad, or wanted to fly. Or get married.

He couldn't get the Gingerbread Man out of his head. What a scary story. He sang and sang ... He ran and he ran and he ran . .. You can't catch him, he's the Gingerbread Man ... And then he got caught. Snap.

It was Varvara Lukinishna with all her vague talk too. She's gotta know what "steed" means. Discontent, that one. Who knows what Fyodor Kuzmich, Glorybe, might do in poems. That's what poems are for, so you don't understand a thing. And if Fyodor Kuzmich, Glorybe, is speaking in different voices,

well, that's just... Everybody does that. Take Benedikt: this morning he left home, walking in the sunshine, the snow squeaking underfoot, lots of pleasant thoughts swirling in his head, not a care in the world. But now, with night coming, it was like he was someone else: weak, scared, and it was so dark out that going out on the street was like wearing a boot over your head--but he had to. And Olenka wasn't there, and it was even more miserable in the izba without her.

The clapper clunked: work's over.

The Golubchiks jumped up, tossed their writing sticks down, pinched the candle flames, hurried to pull on their coats and crowded around the door. Jackal Demianich, a Lesser Murza, made the rounds of the tables, put the finished scrolls in a box, stuffed the empty ink pots in a basket, and wiped the writing sticks with a rag. He grumbled that we're using up a lot of rusht, that you can't keep enough sticks on hand, and that's what a Murza does, he grumbles and gripes at people, and Jackal Demianich is given that power over us because he's a Veteran of the Ice Battle. What sort of Battle it was, and when, and just who Jackal Demianich fought, and whether he struck down a lot of Golubchiks with a cudgel or a bludgeon, we don't know, and don't want to know--and even if someone told us we'd forget.

So the day's over, it's gone, burned itself out. And night has fallen on the town, and Olenka sweetie disappeared somewhere in the winding streets, in the snowy expanses, like a vision, and his fleeting friend the Gingerbread Man was gobbled up, and now Benedikt hurried home, making his way over the hills and drifts, tripping and falling, shoveling the snow with his sleeve, and feeling a path through the winter, parting the winter with his hands.

What is winter, after all? What is it? It's when you come into the izba from the cold, stomping your felt boots to knock off the snow, shaking it off your coat and slapping your frozen hat against the door jamb; you turn your head, and your whole cheek listens to the warmth of the stove, to the weak current from the room. Has the stove gone out? God forbid. Undressing, you go all wobbly in the warmth, like you're thanking someone; you hurry to blow on the fire, to feed it with old, dry rusht,

with wood chips and sticks, you pull the still warm pot of mouse soup out of the swaddle of rags. Fumbling in the hiding space behind the stove, you grab the bundle with the spoon and fork and feel grateful: everything's in order, they didn't steal it, there weren't any thieves, and if there were, they didn't find anything.

You gulp down the usual thin soup, spitting the claws out into your palm, and start thinking, looking at the feeble, bluish flame of the candle, listening to the scuttering and scurrying under the floor, the crackle in the stove, the wail just outside the window, begging to be let in; something white, heavy, cold, unseen. You suddenly imagine your izba far off and tiny, like you're looking down at it from a treetop, and you imagine the whole town from afar, like it was dropped in a snowdrift, and the empty fields around, where the blizzard rages in white columns like someone being dragged under the arms with his head arched back. You imagine the northern forests, deserted, dark, impassable; the branches rock in the northern trees, and on the branches, swaying up and down, is the invisible Slynx--it kneads its paws, stretches its neck, presses its invisible ears back against its flat, invisible head, and it cries a hungry cry, and reaches, reaches for the hearth, for the warm blood pounding in people's necks:
SSSLYYYNNXXX!

Fear touches your heart like a cold draft or a small paw, and you shudder, shake yourself and look around, as if you don't know who or where you are. Who am I?

Who am I?

Ay. Ugh. This is me. I just let things get out of hand for a moment, I almost dropped myself, just barely caught hold .. . Ugh . . . That's what it does, that Slynx, that's what it does with you even from afar, it sniffs you out, senses you, fumbles for you through the distance, through the snowstorm, through the fat log walls. And what if it happened to be nearby?

No, no, I shouldn't think about it, to hell with it, scare it off, I should start laughing or dance a squatting dance like on the May holidays. Sing a loud, happy song.

Ay, tra-la-la, tra-la-la. Ay, tra-la-la-la la! Tra la-la la la! Faldi-rol-fiddle dee faddle. Hey diddle diddle dum dee!

There you go. That's better ... Fyodor Kuzmich, Glorybe,

teaches us that art elevates us. But art for art's sake--that's no good, he says. Art should be connected to life. "My life, or are you just a dream? ..." Maybe ... I don't know.

What do we really know about life? Even if you think hard about it. Who told it to be? Life, that is. Why does the sun roll across the sky, why does the mouse scuttle and scurry, the tree stretch upward, the mermaid splash in the river, the wind smell of flowers? Why do people hit each other over the head with sticks? Why is it that sometimes you don't feel like hitting, but want to go off somewhere in the summer, without roads, without paths, toward the sunrise, where the greengrass grows all around, shoulder high, where the blue rivers play, and above the rivers the golden flies swarm, the branches of unknown trees hang down to the water, and on those branches, white as white can be, sits the Princess Bird. And her eyes take up half her face, and her mouth is human, red. And she's so beautiful, that fancy Princess Bird, that she can't get over herself. Her body's covered with lavish, delicate white feathers, and she's got a tail seven yards wide that hangs like a braided net, like lacy goosefoot. The Princess Bird turns her head this way and that, admiring herself, kissing her lovely self all over. And no one in his life has ever been harmed by that white bird. And no one ever will be. Amen.

ZELO

Rich people are called rich because they live rich.

Take Varsonofy Silich, a Greater Murza. He's in charge of all the Warehouses. He decides when to have a Warehouse Day, whose turn it is, and what to hand out.

Varsonofy Silich has a governmental turn of mind, and he looks that way too: he's a blubbery sight, even for a Murza. If you took six Golubchiks and tied them together, it wouldn't even make for half of Varsonofy Silich, no, it wouldn't!

His voice is deep, rough, and kind of slow. For instance, you might need to tell the workers that on the Sunday before the May Holiday they have to open the Central Warehouse and hand out half a pood of goosefoot bread to the Golubchiks, and two skeins of uncolored thread. Some other simpler fellow would just open his mouth, say what he had to say, and close it again till next time.

But that wouldn't be the governmental approach to things, and no one would listen to him. Someone who talked that way wouldn't be a Murza.

But Varsonofy Silich does it like he's supposed to: in the morning he calls in the Lesser Murzas and the Warehouse Workers, and starts: "D-i-s-t-r-i-b-u-t-e ..." But what exactly they're supposed to distribute he doesn't get to until evening because he doesn't like to give away official goods.

And how could you? You give one Golubchik a half pood, and then you have to go and give one to his wife, and one to the kids, and to the old, blind, limping grandma and grandpa, and to all the relatives or workers in every household. Don't you have to feed the Degenerators?--yes, you have to. In the Central Settlement alone there's at least a thousand izbas, you can count 'em, and if you take all of Fyodor-Kuzmichsk, the whole town will want to be fed, and well, you couldn't ever save up enough for everyone!

And don't you want to eat too? And your family? And the Warehouse Workers? And their serfs? Well, there you have it! You can't do it without the right approach.

You need to be smart, to think things through. Lids, for instance. Now, a simple Golubchik, one of the soft-hearted ones, what would he think? Just take the lids and hand them out. In a flash, the rumor would spread, a crowd would gather--you wouldn't be able to breathe, there'd be a crush, a stampede, cries, shouts, cripples riding piggyback on people with two legs --cripples who were trampled the last time--and they'd scream: "I'm an Invalid! Give a Lid to an Invalid!!!" Little kids would weave through the crowd pickpocketing; some would drag cats in on a string, or a goat, so as to get an extra lid; this is my brother-in-law, they'd say, he wants one too. So what if he's

got fur or horns or an udder--well, Golubchiks, that's Consequences for you, or are you all squeaky clean yourselves?

They'd murder each other, take off with as many lids as they could carry--some would have heart attacks from lugging the load, and afterward they'd sit in their izbas looking at what they'd got, and wouldn't know what to do with them. What do you cover with them? This one's too big, and that one's too little, they don't fit anything. They'd turn them over and over, smash them in disappointment, and throw them out in the backyard under the fence.

No, you can't do things that way with us.

So Varsonofy Silich, figuring all this out, taking stock, thinking deep, decided not to give out any lids. Better for the people and for the lids.

And he thought: If you boil soup without a lid it will come out thicker, it kind of settles down. It's tastier.

He also thought: Since there aren't any lids, everyone will have a secret longing: If only I had a lid for my pot! Life is better when you've got a dream, and sleep is sweeter.

Now that's governmental thinking.

That's why Varsonofy Silich lives rich, he's got a two-story terem with onion domes, he built a porch around the top floor, it's called a gallery, and serfs walk around and around the gallery --to scare everyone--keeping watch to make sure there isn't any evil intent toward the owner, to make sure no one's wanting to go and throw a rock at his house or something worse ...

In the courtyard there are different services and trades; barns, warehouses, a sty for Degenerators, barracks where the serfs live. There are tons and tons of serfs: mouse-catching serfs, flour-grinding serfs, kvas-brewing serfs, marshroom gatherers, horsetailers, as many as you like. There are floor-washing serf-girls, spinners and weavers, and there's one special woman who just makes snowballs, rolls them in crushed fireling flour, and serves them at meals, and Varsonofy Silich partakes of them.

One time Benedikt got to see Varsonofy Silich in all his glory. Benedikt was walking along and some Lesser Murzas were blocking off the road--"Halt, don't pass"--barking at the Gol-

ubchiks and warming some backsides with spikes--"Don't get pushy." Then the plank gates opened, bells clanked, Degenera-tors stomped their felt boots, a sleigh creaked--
maaaaama!
-- and there was Varsonofy Silich himself sitting in the sleigh like a great mountain. The people were happy, they tossed their hats in the air, and bowed low: "Good day, and Long May You Live, Varsonofy Silich, our dear provider, and the same to your wife, and your children as well! What would we have to eat and drink without you, our dearest one, sweet golden light of our lives!"

Everyone shouted this at him--Benedikt too--so that he would soften a bit, the Herod, and add more food next time-- some lard, perhaps, or turnips and horsetail for holidays--and not eat everything up himself.

But Benedikt had never seen Fyodor Kuzmich in the flesh. And he didn't dare hope to.

And then today, the most ordinary February day you could pick, a gray, dull, powdery blizzard day with a boding north wind --blowing and sweeping the snow powder from the roofs down your collar, freezing the Golubchiks' necks and painting their ears the color of poppies--in a word, it was an ordinary, everyday sort of day, today! Today! A sleigh drove up to the Work Izba, and in it were Heralds all decked out in belts and hats and sleeves and leggings, they were wearing everything you could possibly imagine--and they made an announcement: Fyodor Kuzmich himself, Glorybe, desires to honor your izba with a luminous visitation.