The Monkey Link (34 page)

Gloomily he takes a drink himself and passes the bottle to the doctor. By now there is something familial in his gestures. As though the two men were sitting in the kitchen.

“But how catastrophic!” (“Caataastro-o-ophic,” he declaims.) “A fart below, shit above. Imagine how it’s all going to blow up someday!”

The doctor stares dimly into the marine distance.

“Let me explain. You yourself got me scared that the hydrogen sulfide was all the way up. Hydrogen sulfide is the same as a fart. And a fart burns. Didn’t you ever set one on fire?”

“You mean everyone did it?” the doctor asks in surprise. “The whole sea will flame up at once, can you imagine? Whaaat a torch that will be! A pillar of fiiire—that’s what it will be.”

The doctor giggles. “
 
‘The dark blue sea is burning bright, / From the sea the whale takes flight.’
 
”

“Who wrote that?” Pavel Petrovich says, suddenly jealous. “You?”

“Grandpa Chukovsky.”
{55}

“Wise. Deep. So he, too, foresaw.”

“It’s for children.”

“Who else! You can’t explain this to adults. They’ve already failed to understand. Do you know what we’re all going to die of?” This is spoken so meaningfully that the doctor decides not to answer. He waits.

“We’re going to drown in our own crap!” Pavel Petrovich endures a pause. “And do you know why we’re going to drown?”

“Because we
are
crap?” the doctor says gleefully.

“Wrong! You’re a misanthrope, Doctor Doctorovich! You’ve grown quite antisocial there at home in Germany. People may not be quite such turds as you think.”

“What, even bigger?”

“Why, no, my friend. Wrong again. For the time being, smaller. We won’t even have time to develop that far. We’ll drown in it because we don’t know how to use it.”

“In principle, it’s hard to disagree with your metaphor.”

“This isn’t a metaphor. Let me explain. What is soil?”

“So you mean fertilizers,” Doctor D. says, disappointed.

“Let me amplify. What is coal? You’re silent. Then what is oil?”

“That’s a correct series. I understand you. Except that the crap we have nowadays is something else. The crap we have nowadays is not shit. It’s chemical, imperishable. The littoral zone is the gills of the sea. It no longer breathes—the surf has wrapped this zone in such a quantity of plastic.”

“That, too,” Pavel Petrovich says. “We have to create a pig. Before it’s too late.”

They have another small drink, and Pavel Petrovich initiates the doctor into certain details of his plan for transforming the world.

“As you realize, the pig here is meant not in the literal—although why not? also in the literal sense of the word. It’s a prototype and symbol. The logo, so to speak, of the project. Project Pig: Retrofitting the World. Sound good?”

“Sounds good!” Doctor D. joins in enthusiastically.

“First of all
 
…
I don’t know what’s the first of all, because everything’s first of all. Perhaps the hardest thing is to choose what’s first of all. That will be our firstmost problem, Doctor: where to begin. But that comes later
 
…
This won’t be easy without a half liter—this won’t make sense without God. It’s harder to prove that He doesn’t exist than that He does. The act of Creation is as provable as a crime. The Creator is caught red-handed, snared at every step. Otherwise, how will you explain the constant ruptures in the chain of evolution, the disappearance of the links that you scientists need in your research? Each time, after all, the key item is the very one missing: logically, here’s where it should be, but it has vanished somewhere. Catastrophes, you say? But why did they happen at the very point you have marked? Yes, exactly: the whole thing is crudely basted together, it barely holds. And lo, the thread is alive! And someone sewed it! What, has to be created is not the crystal lattice but the atom, not life but water, not the elephant but the living cell. And then evolution will suffice, at least up to man. Man can also be produced from the monkey, but in that case it’s hard to make man the sole recipient of virginity—merely for the sake of the idea of original sin and immaculate conception. The German is sly. He invented the monkey. But then he had to invent, not man, but virginity! The Lord hung padlocks on the very places where one thing didn’t tally with another. Which means He was
present
, He was
meddling
in his own laws. He is always there as a
lawbreaker.
And you wrack your brains over the secrets of the universe. Wherever there’s a secret, there’s a lock. A divine secret! And we try to pick the lock. Our knowledge has become a jimmy, and we’re forcing the very locks with which Creation was locked against us, for your own good. We are all imperialists, colonizers. Not America, not Russia, the human species itself is the colonizer of Creation. By the way, man’s calling was to be His Pig. To pick up, clean up, eat up
 
…
 
”

Doctor D. brightens. “Bravo!” he says, rubbing his hands. “And to admire! To admire the work of His hands!”

“To admire
 
…
perhaps.” The doctor is on the point of agreeing, when an idea strikes him. “But do you know which is the most ancient surviving profession on earth? If you’re speaking of human callings—in Skovoroda’s terms?”

“Hunter, probably. Fisherman?”

“No. Museum worker!” Doctor D. throws Pavel Petrovich a triumphant look.

“Well, yes, he deals with antiquities
 
…
 
” Pavel Petrovich finds himself somewhat muddled, to which he is unaccustomed.

“All right, I’ll give you a hint. What is man’s most ancient tool?”

“The stick. Warrior! Warrior is the most ancient profession.”

“All animals fight. Give the stick back to Engels.
{56}
Even a monkey knows how to use a stick. Man’s very first tool
 
…
 
”

“Well?!”

“All right, I’ll give you another hint. What is the first garment?”

“An animal skin.”

“An animal skin
 
…
 
” Doctor D. scratches his nose distractedly. “Correct, I guess. I asked the question wrong. What’s the first garment in a more modern sense, down to this day?
 
…
That’s wrong
 
…
What part of his clothing?
 
…
What cut, model, pattern?
 
…
Pah! Let me have a drink.”

“Oh, don’t torture yourself. Doctor Doctorovich. Tell me and be done with it.”

“Tell you!” Doctor D. is childishly hurt. “That’s no fun. Here! What first garment did man put on, not from cold, or from the rain, or
 
…
Damn it, why put clothes on at all?!”

“A loincloth!”

“Yes. And why?”

“Wonderful!” Pavel Petrovich says gleefully. “From shame. Not from cold, but from shame! To hide the privy parts. What did I tell you!”

“But that’s
not
what it’s for! What you said about chastity was interesting, but I’m going to double-check. It may be found in some other animal. But chastity wasn’t the reason for the loincloth, not at all.”

“Well, all right, but what does your museum have to do with this?”

“Correct. The museum and the loincloth. Do you see the link? No? Now you owe me a bottle.”

“But we didn’t have a bet. Pavel Petrovich appears to be losing his temper.

“All right. Man’s first calling was gatherer. Roots, nuts
 
…
And the first tool he himself invented—which became the loincloth—was the pocket! In his passion for collecting, man’s most ancient instinct.”

“Oh! I’m a fool, a fool!”

“Made a monkey of you. didn’t I?”

“The pocket, I agree. I’ll get even with you for this. This is easy, getting something from your professional reading and then torturing a person.”

“I didn’t get it from my reading!”

“What, you thought of it yourself?”

“I did. I was collecting amber on the shore at home and thought of it. When I was stuffing the amber into my swimming trunks.”

“My compliments. Then I owe you a bottle. Although
 
…
Let’s take it further. If the first garment is the pocket, then what’s even earlier than the pocket?”

“That’s the stick, now.”

Pavel Petrovich cannot hide his glee. “Don’t take it away from Engels. I returned it to him forever. Well? It’s your own idea! How did he tie the pocket on?
 
…
A knot! When the monkey thought to tie knots—that’s when he became man. Now take it further. You answer me, now. And again, for a bottle. A question no harder than yours. And again, my own discovery. When I worked part-time at a furniture store, moving furniture, I always wondered, how did man invent such inconvenient things? So. Tell me, what was the first furniture, from which everything originated?”

“A chair? More likely, a stool?”

“No-o.”

“A bed? More likely, a hammock?”

“No-o.”

“What do you
mean
?” Doctor D. is incensed. “Why, as soon as man stood up on two legs, his backbone got tired. Osteochondrosis is an atavistic disease, by the way; did you know? So he sat down, on a stone.”

“A stone,” Pavel Petrovich says, “is not a stool. And a tree branch isn’t yet a hammock. That way I’ll write off your pocket as cheek pouches. No, you tell me, what was the first furniture he
created
?”

“A table?”

“No-o.”

“Not a wardrobe!”

“All right, I’ll give you a hint. A wardrobe is getting warmer.” Doctor D. sinks into a deep reverie. Table? chair? bed? “There’s no other furniture.”

“Give up?”

“Yes.”

Pavel Petrovich solemnly reveals his secret: “A trunk!”

“Why a trunk?”

“To hide your nuts and roots! The trunk is the proto-furniture. Everything comes from it. Sit, and it’s a bench. Lie down—a bed. Put a cloth on it—a table. Stand it on end—a wardrobe.”

“Hang a lock on it—a god,” the doctor says sarcastically.

“Now don’t get all upset. We’re quits. I don’t owe you, and you don’t owe me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I say, I won back the bottle. And you needn’t speak ironically of locks. Our job now is to mend them.”

“But who’s going to do it?”

“The military-industrial complex! You yourself mention the atomic bomb. What’s left for them to do now? All these missiles and planes will become scrap metal, matter expended in vain. They already have, the military and the people just don’t know it yet. What has always brought technical progress in its wake? War. It will never bring progress again. What to do, then, with the aggressive human genius, where to find an occupation according to its affinity? Will you ever force the knight to beat his swords into plowshares, make pots and pans out of his armor? Humankind doesn’t plan to become better. It will soon have no place to hide: there’s going to be a kind of worldwide siphon, through all those holes in the sky
 
…
And our military will shift from attack to defense. They’ll busy themselves with inventing the Pig. The idea of non-polluting manufacture is as alluring in its unattainability as a flight to Mars. If something’s impossible—what more does genius need? Non-polluting manufacture is just as much of a black hole as war. That’s where we can throw all our money, all our energy, and all our talent!”

“I wasn’t expecting such optimism from such an intelligent man,” Doctor D. says. His face, as he speaks, wears a very happy expression.

“Nowadays the world has grown so vulgar that a pessimist is always wise. An optimist is either self-interested or a fool. There are no people. Only the fucking critics.”

“Dear Pavel Petrovich!’ Doctor D. is in tears. “Believe me, I am unspeakably happy! This, may I say, is the first time in my life that I have found support for everything I have left unspoken
 
…
Pavel Petrovich! Allow me to kiss you!” He attempts to lay his cheek to Pavel Petrovich’s lips, but somehow nothing comes of it. He just barely keeps his balance in this difficult new space and does not succeed in superposing the two projections. “Allow me to drink to you!”

“I allooow!” says Pavel Petrovich, pouring for Doctor D. “And to yourself, my pet, as well.”

They clink glasses.

And they set off down the shore, arms around each other, almost as one man.

“
 
…
And there’ll be compulsory military conscription!” Doctor D. is saying. “The soldiers will carry out alternative service. Plant and conserve forests! Raise animals, fish, and birds!”

“Lenin we’ll bury outside the church pale, like a suicide,” Pavel Petrovich is saying. “But the mausoleum—no, we won’t destroy it, we’ll preserve it! We’ll sink a deep shaft in it and fence it with a velvet barrier, like in a theater. People will approach, peer down into this maw, breathe the sepulchral chill, and remember the millions murdered. We won’t destroy any monuments at all, not even Kalinin’s. We’ll bury Dzerzhinsky, too. And again, we’ll sink a shaft under him and drop him in. Vertically. And roll asphalt on top. Lay out a flower bed. We’ll have the world’s first underground monument. I make this assertion as a sculptor.”

“But all the other monuments,” Doctor D. joins in, “all the boy buglers and girl athletes, the Sverdlovs and Marxes, the Lenins, Lenins, Lenins
 
…
and all the Stalins in the courtyards and cellars
 
…
and in the Lenin Hills
 
…
we’ll collect them all and cart them to some one place
 
…
and make a kind of Disneyland of our own, for hard currency
 
…
they’ll stand like Chinese soldiers
 
…
a whole army was dug up somewhere in the Gobi, not long ago
 
…
we’ll cart them off to Kara Kum and Kyzyl Kum—”

“No need to insult the desert! I know a better spot. Nothing will ever grow there anymore. There’s a spot like that near Baku, where they used to extract oil. That’s where we’ll send them.”