Authors: Andrei Bitov
Eine kleine Papierosen
Nicht spazieren nach zurück!
The doctor pricks up his ears. “What, were you in the Occupation, too?”
“In the Occupation, no, but I was a prisoner,” Pavel Petrovich says carelessly. “But you don’t have to believe me, Doctor.”
With his eyes still closed, he offers him his home-rolled cigarette.
“What’s this?”
“Happy hour, Doctor.
Nicht spazieren
…
Tell me, Doctor, what population-regulating mechanisms (I learn fast, don’t I?), apart from Condom and Malthus, does
Homo sapiens
have? War?”
“War, too. All the ones that other species have, plus. The human species works only on this one thing, you might say—the development of these mechanisms. And even with these he’s a failure. Because man, if you please, has ‘tamed’ nature. How can you tame her? when you’re part of her? It’s a form of suicide. Lopping off the bough you’re sitting on. ‘Tamed’ nature has replied by depriving him, first of all, of his natural regulation mechanisms. They continue to operate, of course, but weakly. Without the implacability of law. They’ve shifted to the status of ‘factors.’ We used to get a lot of help from epidemics, wholesale deaths of all kinds: plague, cholera
…
They’d wipe out half of Europe at one go. Our valiant medicine interfered with that
…
And of course there’s war. But even war no longer copes, however highly developed the means of annihilation. Meanwhile, there have also been other factors at work. Do you know that the automobile, quietly and slowly but without respite, has killed as many people as both world wars? But fertilizers, and medicines
…
Our society’s effort at ‘creation’
”—the doctor puts very heavy quotation marks around this word—“has become a much more effective war than war itself. War as a method has begun to be obsolete, as is manifested by the invention of the atomic bomb. The unusable weapon. It has buried war. War has become pointless—it can’t be won, it can’t be ended. For the moment, the only thing working right is the growth of the megalopolises.”
Pavel Petrovich throws him a satisfied glance. “But you’re a humanist. Doctor.”
“And
…
and
…
” The doctor actually chokes with laughter. “And
…
a pacifist!”
“I envy you,” Pavel Petrovich says, watching the doctor roll around in a fit of laughter. “What a high you’ve caught!”
Doctor D. stoops, freezes, and does not fall. “Hear that?”
“Regrettably, no.”
Doctor D. presses his ear to the grass near the empty bottle. “Napoleon’s losing something again,” he reports.
“That’s the grass talking
…
”
“No, the bottle! The grass just goes bss-bss-bss, bss-bss-bss.”
“Grass always speaks softly.”
“Sh-h-h! I hear it
…
Lovingly, like so: you? me? here? yes? .. ”
“Stop!” Pavel Petrovich commands. “Watch out, don’t put yourself under a mantra!”
“Why interrupt!” Doctor D. says resentfully.
“Enough’s enough, that’s all,” Pavel Petrovich says, with great sadness. “I haven’t caught my high.”
How strangely they have switched roles! Pavel Petrovich has suddenly become the Joey and Doctor D. the August. The sea is their circus ring and carpet.
Doctor D. leaps around the carpet like a monkey, his hands nimbly catching something invisible to us, perhaps a butterfly, perhaps a housefly, perhaps one of his little birds
…
Pavel Petrovich watches him with affectionate sorrow.
“To catch
…
” Choking with laughter, the doctor continues to catch air in his hands. “A high
…
I caught it!” Slowly, one finger at a time, the doctor opens his fist. “It flew away, flew away!” the doctor chortles.
And he catches it again.
“D-d
…
D-d
…
” Pavel Petrovich, his eyes half closed, is moaning in great distress. “D-d
…
”
“What?” Doctor D. suddenly wakes up. “You don’t want me to laugh so hard?” He is still emitting spurts of laughter, like a boiling teakettle that has just been turned off.
“De
…
de
…
”
“Death?” the doctor guesses, and stops gurgling. But his nose is still spouting steam. “What’s the matter, Pavel Petrovich?”
“De
…
de
…
”
{53}
The doctor shakes Pavel Petrovich, trying to bring him to his senses.
“Dessert!” Pavel Petrovich says clearly, at last, fixing his eyes on the doctor. “Doctor, you’re a teakettle.”
At last he, too, has succeeded in laughing. The doctor looks around distractedly, as if for dessert or the teakettle, not understanding how he came to be here.
“Forgive me, Doctor, I’m a bad man.”
“What did you slip me?!”
“Grass, Doctor, grass.”
“Why didn’t you warn me? That really wasn’t nice, it wasn’t comradely—”
“Without it you wouldn’t have caught your high. It
was
comradely.”
“Why dessert? Why a teakettle?” The doctor is hurt, like a child.
“Forgive me, Doctor, truly. I didn’t mean it that way. Forgive me. For spoiling your high. It made me envious.” Pavel Petrovich stands up. “Let’s go, Doctor.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“A nation deprived of beer—” Pavel Petrovich intones darkly.
“Stop bullshitting me!”
“A nation deprived of beer is unworthy of the name of nation!” Pavel Petrovich concludes.
And they set off. Northward. Past the relict grove. Without a glance at the sea. Deprived of beer.
Moreover, Doctor D. somehow preserves his profile, as before, stepping along the water’s edge as if on fine sand, while Pavel Petrovich, face on, crunches rudely over the coarse, already scorching pebbles.
The sun beats down full force. Doctor D., in profile, wears his visor. Pavel Petrovich, face on, wears a leaf on his cantankerous nose.
They are essentially silent. To the limit of their ability to keep their mouths shut.
“I’m afraid we won’t overtake them now.”
“Your colleagues? Don’t you imagine you’ve already outstripped them?”
“You’re a devil, Pavel Petrovich.”
“I thought we’d already distributed the roles. So far, everything’s going according to script. You’re Faust, I’m Mephistopheles. I, too, have lost a day’s work, by the way. I came out to do some drawing and forgot my sketchbook.”
“But you’re a sculptor.”
“Sculptors also draw. Sketches.”
“Do you plan to sculpt the sea?”
“Very insightful, Doctor. That’s exactly what I plan. It’s my secret dream—to raise a monument to the sea.”
“In what form, I wonder?”
“in the form of a cow.”
“?!”
“But you saw the dolphin
…
It almost got me all mixed up. They call it a sea cow.”
“The sea cow is a completely different creature.”
“I know that. Surely you couldn’t think I’d sculpt a cow, I mean, the sea
…
I mean a cow
…
sym
bol
ically! I’m a realist! The sea
…
in the form of a dolphin! Pah!! Any mediocrity could do that.”
“I don’t understand.’
“You will yet,” Pavel Petrovich declares darkly. “You will see. Better you didn’t.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Not everyone can endure it.”
“I don’t know much about art. I’m a rank-and-file scientist. I assume that being a sculptor is a calling. But how did you discover it? How is it possible to be born a poet, a painter, a violinist?”
“People deprived of childhood
…
” Pavel Petrovich says darkly.
“Who?”
“Violinists, I say.”
“I’m talking about you. How did you guess that you were a sculptor, specifically?”
“And how did you think to catch birds?”
“It’s not the same. But strangely enough, I do remember how it all began. I mean, I don’t even remember, Mama told me—”
“You were born and caught a bird?”
“Exactly! I was just barely walking, everyone was playing in the sand, and I kept walking around a water barrel where the birds occasionally came and drank. And finally I thought to set the lid on the barrel in such a way that the lid slammed shut when a bird lighted on the edge to drink. And I caught one!”
“Well, there you are. And you ask how to become a sculptor
…
According to spiritual affinity. That’s not my definition, it’s my teacher’s.”
“You were a sculptor’s apprentice? Like in the Middle Ages?”
“Bravo, Doctor! Exactly like in the Middle Ages—our best age, believe it or not. I’m an apprentice of Grigory Skovoroda.
{54}
He maintained, in particular, that men were unhappy because they didn’t find themselves occupations according to their spiritual affinity. He divided all mankind into three parts and came up with the clergy, the military, and the peasantry. He advised us to keep a close eye on the infant. If he joins in the chorus—to the seminary. If he reaches for the saber—be a soldier. If he amuses himself with worms—then plow. When everyone finds himself an occupation according to his affinity, that’s happiness for you.”
“But then which are we?”
“We? We’re illegitimates.”
“…”
“Peter the Great issued this ukase: ‘Illegitimates to be registered as artists.’ You, too, are an artist,” Pavel Petrovich says, graciously issuing his own ukase. It does not sound convincing, and he adds, “In your own way
…
Aren’t you tormented by thirst? Shall we play another, perhaps?”
Doctor D. grins. Without further hesitation, he proffers the change to Pavel Petrovich. “Yes, you and I seem to have found an occupation according to our affinity.”
“It’s no joke.” Pavel Petrovich, likewise without hesitation, accepts the money. “If every man were busy with his own affairs, where would we get aggressions and depressions, which are basically one and the same thing? Instead of the pointless struggle against dissidence and alcoholism, I’d busy the psychiatrist with this: the diagnostics of vocation. The psychiatrist would write a prescription for the minister of foreign affairs: Make paper cutouts of dragons or roses. For the war minister: Straighten old nails. And so on. With retention of salary and privileges. Can you imagine how happy it would make them? Us, too, at the same time. ‘The Tale of How One Peasant Fed Two Generals’ wouldn’t be a fairy tale at all. He’d feed them! If only because they wouldn’t bother him anymore. And the main thing is, that peasant would get beer production rolling. And the nation would become a nation.”
Doctor D. frowns. “Only let’s don’t talk about Russia.”
“What else is there to talk about! It’s all we ever talk about. Doctor, you’re not a Jew, by any chance?”
“Me? I don’t think so. What does it matter?”
“But you’re an intellectual, my friend
…
It does matter, it does. In your place I wouldn’t renounce this so lightly.”
“And you yourself, Pavel Petrovich?”
“Me myself?
…
Who among us has not been a Jew?
…
We won’t make sense of this without a half liter.”
“Where are you going?” is all the doctor has time to say. And he climbs up to a shady spot. The beach is strangely empty today, he thinks. Then why is he thinking about Malthus again? Because, he thinks, it’s absurd to be divided into Jews and Russians when together we’re an ethnic minority on the earth. It’s absurd to be divided into
…
when by the year 2000 all whites will total
…
and blacks even less than that. But of course, the yellow race!
…
The Georgians and the Abkhazians—what
haven’t
they divided! It’s absurd. To be divided into
…
when for a long time humankind has faced just one common problem. It’s like people lined up to see the doctor, boasting of their diseases. Whose hurts worst. But man cannot be stopped, even though he will understand all. Should he believe in the Second Coming, perhaps? A long time ago, someone did toxic-poisoning experiments on bacteria in an overpopulated habitat, he constructed mathematical curves, and mathematically they coincided with the arms race after the Second World War
…
Asymptotically approaching universal perdition. The comparison between intelligent man and a bacterium cannot insult the biologist. Reason must still be used with reason
…
But there’s a catch: the time factor. Is he late or in time? If late, he’s already too late. If in time after all, just barely. Man must push himself even harder to jump onto the last running board
…
Perhaps it has been necessary for him to hurry so rapaciously with all this armament, for the armament is what has brought in its wake all this technical progress, and without progress, man could not solve the problems of survival he faces
…
Pavel Petrovich is right. Now is the time to switch aggression to
…
Only how to switch it?
…
This the doctor does not believe—that man will come to his senses.
And the doctor looks at the only person on the beach, an adolescent boy. The boy dives resolutely into the sea and splashes about like a happy dolphin calf.
Pavel Petrovich has hardly even been gone. As though he kept it buried somewhere nearby.
“Bulletin,” he reports, panting. “There are no people because there’s a bacillus.”
“
Vas is das
?”
“The sea is polluted. A gigantic discharge of shit.”
“We must tell the boy,” the doctor says anxiously.
“You think he doesn’t know?”
“What about us?”
“We have our own antiseptic.” Pavel Petrovich shakes the bottle. “A smaller petard, of course,” he states with disappointment.