Authors: Andrei Bitov
The Black Sea doesn’t interest him, either. The only thing about it that interests him is the sulfur. That sulfurous bottom layer, which continues to grow, leaving only a few dozen meters for surface life. That layer interests him, again, from the standpoint of the activity of the human species. But whether because the people here in the south are all lazy and incompetent, or because there’s a kind of secrecy
…
so far, he has obtained no information on the dynamics of the sulfur layer more precise than what he himself already possesses. And no one is suggesting where to obtain it. More likely, they themselves don’t know.
The monkey colony itself doesn’t interest him. Nor, especially, do their experiments. To begin with, none of their work is up to the mark. This Dragamashchenka
…
They say he has an off-limits laboratory, something to do with man. But he just won’t talk. Won’t talk because he doesn’t have anything, or because he doesn’t need to? Secrecy, or the appearance of secrecy? Dragamashchenka is no biologist
…
But he doesn’t talk, as a professional. Yesterday, though, Doctor D. himself talked. Cracked, spilled his secrets. He shouldn’t have argued about man yesterday. He had one drink too many with them. Not surprising, when that girl in white
…
Regina, was it?
…
was hanging on his every word. They have much better liquor, by the way, than he has at the station. One and the same Academy of Sciences, you’d think, but the liquor is different. Why should monkeys get better liquor, as if they were bosses over the birds?
This thought should cheer the doctor, for, again, it is not about birds and monkeys, but about man. And for that reason, of course, he will go on the excursion to the site of the natural monkey settlement. In the first place, he has never seen primates in a herd, close up. He is very tempted to take a good look at the structure of their society
…
The monkey is free in Russia, under socialism! We’re not free, but the monkey is! The story is that freedom immediately led to the blossoming of their secondary sexual characteristics: their manes grew thick as lions’ manes, and their gluteal calluses blossomed like roses. But their tails got frostbitten. It’s Russia, after all, even though without cages. And, too, they can’t feed themselves, they require supplemental feeding—vestiges of socialism already
…
Hm. He will have to go.
But here we are already violating our own precepts—we’re beginning to think for Doctor D.
All we can state with confidence is that he suddenly emerges from his reverie and starts to hurry. Because there’s something up ahead. A lot of seagulls, a racket. Looks as if there’s even a man
…
With Pavel Petrovich, we somehow find it easier to think what he thought. It’s much harder to predict what he will say.
In the first place, we increasingly see Pavel Petrovich face on, unlike Doctor D. Perhaps because he’s always talking, and we’re listening. Face on, he’s shorter and wider than the doctor, even more so than he actually is. So it seems. They’re nearly identical in both height and weight, but the impression is quite different. By the way, it has been very amusing to observe the two together: one always in profile and the other face on, one tall, the other short, one gaunt, the other not exactly fat but tubby-looking, and apparently with a bald spot, for some reason, in contrast to the doctor, although this is untrue: Pavel Petrovich definitely isn’t bald. It has been amusing to observe them together, and it’s too bad they have parted so soon.
Having received the money, Pavel Petrovich goes charging into the bushes face on, like a little wild boar. Squat and sturdy, he barrels along in a straight line, as if meeting no obstacle, as if parting not only the bushes but also the houses and fences. And he pops out onto the highway, right at the bus station. Sprawling around it is a modest, dusty little bazaar with two roosters (feet tied with a bootlace, eyes rolled up from the utter horror of life), three watermelons, and a bundle of
churkhcheli
, but he doesn’t stop to look at all that, he goes straight up to a wrinkled little old man who has an inordinate growth of gray stubble and is dozing under his inordinately large cap (the kind that was once nicknamed an “airdrome”), so that his face is completely indiscernible behind the stubble and the cap, but Pavel Petrovich sweeps all this aside and achieves swift understanding, rather divinely, even. And now, holding a dark bottle corked with a plug of newspaper, he looks like a Partisan ready to fling himself under an enemy tank. He dives into a fence, just as he did into the bushes, and promptly finds himself on the shore, but in a completely different place—the very place the doctor is now approaching, alerted by the racket of the seagulls.
There is a dolphin on the shore.
He has been dead quite a while. The flies are already hard at work on him. By now even the gulls don’t seem to want to eat him, they are merely circling and screaming, impressed by the event itself.
It is indeed an event.
Doctor D. stares vacantly at the dolphin’s flank, which is streaked with tints of walleye white and mother-of-pearl
…
“streaked” is the wrong word
…
“traced” is wrong, too
…
“shimmering” is wrong, “gleaming” is wrong
…
there’s no right word. It is unlike Doctor D., professionally observing the death of an individual, to have thoughts about it, about either the death or the individual. But now for the first time he has suddenly, unthinkingly, fallen into a reverie. Is the dolphin totally dead? On first thought, of course, he isn’t alive. But is he all that dead?
The morning light lies freely on his skin and slides off like a glance. His flank has dried, and as it loses its own warmth it is taking on the temperature of the environment. As if the sun were licking up its warmth, and not vice versa. The dolphin is no longer reflecting but isn’t yet absorbing, either: the water has dried from his flank, but the light has not. The unarguable fact of death is bewildering precisely from the scientific point of view. A liberation from the biological program, from the previous servitude of feeding and multiplying. A release. Go to sleep. Rest. The doctor feels like asking, “What’s wrong?”
The dolphin remains dumb. Not, ultimately, in the sense that he is “dumb as a fish” (the doctor, as you are aware, knows that the dolphin is not a fish). He has nothing to say. And specifically not to you—to him, the doctor.
The dolphin holds his peace. As if he’s still waiting for something, and it hasn’t come.
“This one won’t come back to life,” Pavel Petrovich says.
The doctor has been so engrossed that he is genuinely frightened. The silence breaks—the seagulls burst into screams.
“But he may rise from the dead.”
“Don’t be a fool!” The doctor, in fright, covers his privy parts for some reason and then is embarrassed to have done this.
“I understand,” Pavel Petrovich says, with a fitting expression. “It’s a real shame
…
But I’ve been waiting for you a long time. I haven’t opened it.” He displays the bottle.
“You could have, even without me,” the doctor growls, rather rudely.
He is no less shocked by Pavel Petrovich’s return, however, than by the spectacle of another’s death.
“I could not,’ Pavel Petrovich replies. “The money was yours, after all.” And he thrusts the change into the doctor’s pocket.
“But you won?”
“I played for the bottle, not for the money,” Pavel Petrovich parries, with dignity. “Let’s go around the corner, we’ll drink to the memory of God’s servant Dolphinarium.”
“Dolphinarium? That’s not his proper name, it’s—”
“I know, I know. Anyway, let’s get out of here,” Pavel Petrovich says, nudging the doctor as if toward an exit. “I spotted a nice place—”
“Around the corner?” The doctor is still sarcastic, still resisting.
“Yes! Pavel Petrovich laughs. “Around that one over there!” He points to a small nearby cape.
“And he certainly isn’t God’s servant,” the doctor continues. He is already following submissively. “You and I are God’s servants. But he—”
“
We
are not God’s! We are uprisen servants, the worst of categories: servants, but not God’s. But he—yes, you’re right. He’s not a servant. But he’s God’s. God’s creature. What bastards we Russians are—how can we use the word ‘creature’ as an expletive? ‘Creature’ means created by God! That’s our godlessness talking! A viper spewing from our lips!”
“But creeping things are also God’s creations, you know!” the doctor protests adroitly.
“Damnation! God forgive me! The devil made me say it. How easily I bit, old fool that I am!” He is sincerely distressed. “But in truth, it’s one more proof of our irreverence toward Creation. Again, I’m right! But that, let me tell you, is a topic. That’s not so simple, the reptiles
…
This way, please
…
Right this way
…
A splendid little spot.”
They make themselves comfortable.
Pavel Petrovich is like the Magic Tablecloth. This is a fairytale spot, between the roots of a large pine. It even has sand, all strewn with needles, cones, and other charming detritus of life. So Pavel Petrovich sits himself down as if their surroundings were of his own making, produces a tumbler he has scavenged somewhere along the way, noisily pulls the cork with his teeth, and fills the glass more than halfway.
“Here.” He offers it to the doctor.
“With nothing to munch on?”
“Even the press will suffice for me.” Pavel Petrovich sniffs the paper cork expressively. “For you, however
…
” He glances around quickly and reaches for an herb of some sort. Plucks it and holds it out to the doctor. “Sniff, then drink, and then sniff. It’s a great help. You can chew it, too, no harm in that, but it’s not strictly necessary. People like it either way. A matter of taste.”
The doctor both sniffs and chews. And sniffs.
“What marvel is this?”
“I don’t know the Latin name. We call it ‘dullvein.’
”
The doctor is amused at the way Pavel Petrovich greedily catches up with him.
“So it wasn’t even corked, just plugged. Really, couldn’t you have taken a sip along the way?”
“But how could I!” Pavel Petrovich is sincerely hurt by such a suggestion. “Now, you mention the reptiles. ‘Reptile,’ in our country, has long meant a policeman, and not the noble snake. Either way it’s unfair. To both the cops and the reptiles. An insult, as you have justly noted, is always reciprocal. Infelicity in a simile is an insult! As you see, style is a vital thing. When I was—”
“What, have you found time to be a policeman, too?”
Pavel Petrovich frowns. “Why, yes. An Investigator for Especially Important Cases. An executioner. I used to shoot unfortunates in the dungeons. I’d choose the most unfortunate and shoot them.” Pavel Petrovich flickers his jaw muscles. “What do you take me for?”
“Not for a rept
…
I’m sorry, but you weren’t a snake, were you?”
“Don’t be silly! A snake
catcher.
I was a snake catcher, understand? Well, let me tell you, they’re the noblest beasts. They wouldn’t bite for the world, not for the world. Unlike you
.
.
.”
“Come now, Pavel Petrovich! Among us zoologists, the word ‘reptiles’ isn’t an insult at all. The legitimate name of an order of animals, no more. True, they certainly aren’t beasts, as you choose to call them. ‘Beast’ is a synonym of ‘mammal.’
”
“I know even that, Doctor,” Pavel Petrovich says, resentfully pouring another. “Creeping things crawl, and mammals breastfeed. And you won’t mix me up on the animal species. Better
you
tell
me:
to what species does the lancelet, for example, belong?”
“You know that, too?!” the doctor says delightedly, taking a sniff of dull vein.
“Now, you mention death
…
” Pavel Petrovich says, taking a sniff of cork. “But have you ever been in the desert? What a noble, dry death it is there! The wind blows away all those little skins, twigs, skeletons. The rustle alone remains, like a sigh. The plants—they even rot beautifully. But we? I can’t get that dolphin out of my mind
…
What do you think he died of?”
“I don’t know. Possibly of natural causes. Stupidity, an accidental wound. He was still very young.”
“How did you decide that? He was full adult size.”
“I know nothing about dolphins, but there are a number of shared attributes. In the baby lion and the baby elephant, so to speak, the mousling and the froglet, the human youngling and the unknown beastie.
{52}
Oh, the steep brow, short nose, round eyes—it’s all been programmed into our emotion so that we’ll drive ourselves to feed them, defend them, not hurt them
…
”
“Provide them with shoes, clothes
…
Well, you’re a wonder, Doctor! Not a word about love. But that’s where all the toys come from! Not
for
children, but
from
children. I hear you! So his own kind couldn’t have hurt him?”
“Not only couldn’t they have hurt him, it’s even strange that they lost him. To the best of my recollection, dolphins live as nuclear families, like people. In four generations, moreover.”
“What’s a nuclear
…
”
“Husband, wife, children. But the grandmother and grandfather, too. And they also have the great-grandfather and great-grandmother.”
“Brilliant. You’re not fictionalizing? But how did they lose him?”
“How would I know? I’m a scientist. I have to know
already
in order to infer something
more.
Well—he became engrossed in a game. Got hit by a propeller. Dived too deep, drank too much hydrogen sulfide, and suffocated
…
But most likely it was the overall environmental picture. He no longer wanted to live.”