Authors: Andrei Bitov
“Committed suicide? How could a beast, God’s creature, not want to live? That’s unscientific, Doctor. As you say, it’s built into him—the undeniable desire to live. Only man can fail to want to live. You yourself curse anthropomorphism, and yet you yourself are lapsing into it.”
“No, it’s not I but you who are lapsing into anthropomorphism, Pavel Petrovich. You so dramatically express your dissatisfaction with the human species (I mean in the biological, not the social sense, as you are aware), and in spite of myself I have to agree with you in many respects, yet all you’re doing is magnifying man. Suicide is actually very prevalent in the animal world. Mass suicide, moreover. We, meaning
Homo sapiens
, are the ones who see suicide as an individual act. For the self-replicating systems called living organisms, the termination of the individual—that is, death—is merely an evolved characteristic: they are merely links in an unbroken chain of descent
…
Their purpose is not their own life but the continuation of the genus and species. After fulfilling their purpose they have nothing to do in this life. Not only the very noble scorpions you saw in the desert, my dear Pavel Petrovich, and not only the males, whose purpose, as you yourself say, is briefer, and not only the humpback salmon you caught on Kamchatka. The mechanisms for regulating the population of a species are extremely diverse and quite unknown. Unfortunately, we make our own monstrous correction in them.”
Against his will, Pavel Petrovich is curious.
“Let’s suppose there’s prosperity. They’ve had good weather, a lot of food, few predators. All the progeny have survived, the flock has grown large. On the return trip, during the autumn migration, the young ones seem to become foolhardy. They perish from all sorts of causes—bump into high-voltage wires in flight, let themselves be eaten by anyone who feels like it. Just as many arrive as the last time, as many as permissible and necessary, because it’s by no means certain that the same accidentally favorable circumstances await them there, and an extra mouth may prove, as before, to be no earthly use. Now let’s suppose there’s poverty. The flock has multiplied according to its normal tendencies. But they’ve had bad weather, little food, many predators. The loss of each individual becomes super-important for the existence of the whole flock. Remarkable things happen. The individual becomes strong, wary, bold, and ready to sacrifice himself for the sake of his neighbor. Yes, his very self-sacrifice is a sign of the desire to live. Man’s activity destroys these regulation mechanisms. Then the animals simply can’t live, they develop depression, and yes, they commit suicide. Fling themselves up on shore, like whales.”
“You think he committed suicide?”
“It’s conceivable.”
“Inconceivable! You yourself say he was too young.”
“Don’t young people commit suicide?”
“He lacked a library, that’s what!” Pavel Petrovich declares decisively. “A great-grandpa, that is. After all, what’s the remarkable thing about the dolphin family? Why did they, as a community close to us and possessing far more resources than monkeys, fail to take our path? They’re not a family but a floating library, with the experience of four generations on one shelf! Great-grandfather! Great-grandfather is what man has always lacked! Have you ever noticed that a man’s lifetime, even if full-length, is exactly one generation short of a century? From this comes our whole misfortune; from this grows man’s ungovernable history, like rust. A century is a natural measure of history, but we never equal the century, never have time to be either a great-grandson or a great-grandfather, and therefore never see how an affair began or how it ended. We participate only in the process or the result, we witness either birth without death or death without birth. We, it turns out, are those ‘individuals’ of yours, whose death is a matter of indifference to life. We do not know the sole measure of time:
justice!
But the dolphins know.”
“Great-grandpa told them?”
“Yes! Exactly! Your human irony is misplaced. Among dolphins, a century swims as one family! And all are witness to each other. Among dolphins, the history of the family doesn’t diverge from the history of the species, as it does among men. There exists but
one
justice—the sole measure of time. But among men there is a constant arrhythmia of family and species. The history of mankind is separate, and hostile to man. Hence
history
, may it be damned!”
Pavel Petrovich puts a great deal of venom into his pronunciation of the word “history.”
“Justice is too subjective a concept.” (The doctor’s words.)
“Objective! And the death of the individual is by no means a matter of indifference! No, I can’t
…
” Pavel Petrovich lets out a sob. “Surely you understand that the mother no longer has her son, the grandfather his grandson? That his dolphin death has indeed broken your famous chain?! And his lone death may signify that we have already destroyed all the dolphins! We poisoned the sea, and the first to perish was the weakest—the great-grandfather. He failed to survive. We’ve reduced their family by the greatgrandfather. Now that they have three generations, like us, they will no longer be able to live. You and I have just seen the great-grandson perish. Perhaps, being illiterate, he intended to come up on dry land, like us? Without his great-grandfather, the great-grandson not only has perished but will not become a father, either! Dear God! what ni-i-i-ight!” Pavel Petrovich cries, rocking as if from toothache. “What did he see, when we looked at him?”
“He saw nothing.”
“I understand. He’s dead. Like everyone else, you don’t even believe in the soul: that it’s still nearby and gazing at itself from above
…
But the dead, too, look at me. They themselves don’t seem to want to look, or to see me, but I feel myself behind their closed eyelids
…
And such darkness presses down on me, hems me in! After all, we
live
in darkness! We have simply been illuminated. From outside. By the sun. By the source of light. The tiny lantern
…
Imagine how dark it is inside you. In your stomach, your brains, your innards
…
your heart! Like in a tree, in a stone. What do they see? They exist in primordial night.”
“Well, but trees see in their own way. They not only sense warmth, they also feed on light.”
“Oh, that’s obvious. A blind man sees, too, in some such sense. If only with other organs. I mean something different
…
I can’t explain it even to myself, let alone to you. My point is that we exist in darkness as in death, and in death as in darkness. We don’t see objects—we see the way the light falls on them. We ourselves, on earth, where we exist, among our own selves, live in darkness. And being dead is a more real state than being alive. Because the dead man doesn’t see the objects surrounding him: he himself is an object, merely illuminated from the outside. He doesn’t see the way the light falls; for him, the source has been switched off. Does he see the light itself? Isn’t he made of absolute darkness, in his own mind? Isn’t it the dead man who’s a particle of light, while we are merely a clot of darkness? In death we become a habitat, a homogeneous one, like water or air, but even more homogeneous: light. In life we are separated from one another by opacity, life is not homogeneous, it is scattered like peas. Oh, if only life were a habitat! There would be no death. So our habitat is death, not life. Non-existence is homogeneous. And life doesn’t end with death, we live in it, in death. Death isn’t separate—it is the habitat of life. Like water for fish, like air for your birds.”
“Good heavens, Pavel Petrovich,” the doctor exclaims. “Are you saying this to me, or did I think it? Brilliant! Well then, is a fish or a bird more dead than we are?”
“Ah, how precisely you’ve captured the thought! Bravo, Doctor! Yes, the bird is more dead. She is dead when flying. Not in vain is she death’s herald among all peoples. What do we know of her sensations in flight? Now, you. Doctor—you know all about birds. What does she feel in flight? Is she not swimming in death? And later she will alight—to live alongside us a while, to catch her breath. Incidentally, is the phoenix a man or a bird?”
Doctor D. considers at length. “More likely a bird …”
“What would you say as an ornithologist: might the phoenix perhaps be a species that has its biological niche (I use your terminology) at the boundary of two habitats, death and life? That is, not
on
but
in
the boundary.”
“A boundary is a line,” the doctor objects. “A line, in a mathematical sense, has one dimension. That is, there’s no way it can be a niche.”
“You won’t muddle me, Doctor! The phoenix is a man in the form of a bird.”
“No, it’s a bird in the form of a man!”
“Neither. Our phoenix is merely a representation of the phoenix, it’s a phoenix in the form of a man.”
“Now, that’s more exact. But then he’s a phoenix in the form of a bird.”
“You’re somewhat muddled, Doctor.”
“You’re
trying
to muddle me! Let’s sort out who said what to whom—”
“You’ll never sort it out now.” Pavel Petrovich is pleased with something.
“It’s nothing but a metaphor. Unscientific,” the doctor says crossly. “The main point is that the phoenix burns and is reborn in the fire. In a physical and chemical sense, life
is
combustion.”
“Oh yes, decomposition. I, too, went to sixth grade, Doctor! In the sixth grade I was still going to school, it was the seventh I didn’t go to. For man, it’s first life, then death. But for the phoenix, it’s the reverse: first death, then life. The phoenix is simply a man in reverse.”
“Simply?
…
Then he’s in the form of a bird.”
“That doesn’t matter anymore. Tell me, which is more important, the head or the wings?”
“More important?
…
The distinguishing feature.”
“Which is?”
“In man, the head. In a bird, the wings.”
“That’s all?”
“Yes, and that settles it. No either/or. The phoenix is both a man and a bird.”
“Neither. He was a woman.”
“Oh yes, the tits.” The doctor laughs. “Is the sphinx a woman, too, in your opinion?”
“That’s your thesis, Doctor, about the distinguishing feature. But the distinguishing feature of a woman is hardly her tits.”
“You’ve caught me again, Pavel Petrovich
…
Another thing I’ve been trying to guess, ever since childhood: how does the mermaid make the transition to a tail? In all the illustrations, the artists skillfully avoid answering
…
”
“Bravo, Doctor! I’m downright delighted what an unspoiled person you really are, even though a scientist. You actually seek an answer in art? Well, you don’t know and we don’t show—not because we don’t know, but because we avoid showing.”
“But why do ‘you’ try so hard to avoid it?” the doctor says ironically.
“For aesthetic reasons.”
“Ah.”
“Tut-tut! Again, you have only one thing on your mind, Doctor
…
I was thinking of the more ethical side of the aesthetic.”
“Pavel Petrovich! Have mercy on a fool. What does ethics have to do with this!”
“A lot indeed, young man! Why should it be, do you think, that in the phoenix, the sphinx, the centaur, and the mermaid, the human part is the head and breast, while the privates, excuse me, are not human?”
“Oh, so that’s your ethics! Anthropomorphism again
…
again, apartheid for the animal world! But if it’s the other way around? The body human, but head of an animal?”
“That doesn’t happen.”
“It does, it does!” the doctor exults. “Even in that same ancient Egypt, if you recall
…
Don’t you remember, what’s his name, with the bird’s head?”
Pavel Petrovich becomes sad and very silent. With relish, the ironic doctor develops his theme—everything he can possibly recall. The sphinx, he says, is nevertheless male, and the mermaid is not a fish, and certainly the centaur is male, because he has a beard, although there are also women with beards, but if you just look under the centaur’s tail he’s male both ways, both as a man and as a horse
…
that being the case, it would be interesting to know which he prefers, mares or
…
No, the doctor shouldn’t carouse like this!
‘‘Prefers! Women, of course,” Pavel Petrovich states, with knowledge of the issue, and just then an idea strikes him. He rises up vertically, like a swallow. “De-e-e
…
de-e-e
…
de-e
…
” he bleats. ‘‘But there was such a god of death, and his name was Ptah. And he was from
over there,
but the ones you’re always looking at under the tail, they’re from
here
, from you and me. That’s where ethics comes in! There’s a boundary, but no such thing as a
distinguishing
feature! Your distinguishing feature doesn’t exist—that’s what! So death doesn’t have one, either.”
“What, may I ask, are we arguing about?” the doctor puts in. Better he hadn’t. Pavel Petrovich falls upon him, diving not like a swallow but like a hawk, like a kite.
“We are not arguing—we’re educating. To argue alone is even more harmful than to drink alone.
A
is for alcoholism, and
O
is for
…
?”
The doctor frowns. “Pavel Petrovich, you poeticize everything. You’ve convinced yourself that poetry is accurate. But poetry is the very greatest inaccuracy. It’s a pack of inaccuracies, poetry is. Masterfully inaccurate, if you will. And as for the bird, she’s supported not by an element but by an object, the air that she compresses with her wing stroke. Through the air column she’s supported by the earth, the
earth.,
like you and me. She doesn’t hover in an element, in death, she wants to live—that is, to eat—so she flies. That she alights to live a while outside her airy death, as you choose to put it, is complete nonsense, since many birds even screw—that is, they ‘
live
,’ as we politely express it—right in the air.”