Authors: Andrei Bitov
“Hurry! Hurry!” Dragamashchenka muezzined again. The drummer and I had stepped aside, away from Givivovich, and were chatting about ecumenism. For convincing effect, Dragamashchenka strolled along the huts and shook the padlocks. It’s still warm now, we’ll open them toward winter, he said apologetically, catching my glance. So that I would believe him, he opened one of the padlocks, took a handful of something like—as he explained—“granules” from an empty sack, and scattered them on the monkeys’ empty bar with a generous gesture. Then he thought a moment and scattered another small handful. “Is that enough?” I asked. “Enough for now,” he said. “For the time being, pasturage has to suffice them.”
The drummer had found places on the rail that he could hit for three notes and was picking out a monkey variation on the “Dog Waltz.”
By now people were calling from the other bank.
“They must have gone too far,” Dragamashchenka said apologetically.
“It’s probably not worth waiting for them any longer,” Givivovich agreed.
“No, let’s wait,” I declared firmly, and started off to meet the monkeys.
“Stop! You can’t go there!” Dragamashchenka shouted. “Without me, they’ll tear you to pieces!”
“Who will?” I could restrain myself no longer.
“Why, the monkeys! You’ve no idea how strong they are. You mustn’t go one step closer to them than the alpha male does.”
“Where do you see any monkeys?” I continued.
“Why, they could appear at any moment!”
“You don’t say?
…
”
I took another step and froze. Something stopped me. I began to listen. Nothing. Or so it seemed. But something hung in the air, like yet another silence. It tensed, tautened like an invisible barrier, and sagged in my direction. I peered into the thinning foliage of the small oaks that ran uphill, and in the configurations of the branches I spied a monkey, as in the Nabokovian picture riddle of my childhood: Find the sailor and the little boy. I saw them outlined, first there, then there, suspended in uncomfortable poses, waiting, perhaps, for us to leave. We were waiting for them, they for us. By now there was a monkey hiding behind every tree trunk. But how they could wait! Not a twig stirred, not a leaf crackled. The whole slope was strewn with these shrilling leaves—you couldn’t set foot here without a deafening rustle. How had they sneaked up?
…
I wasn’t going anywhere. Period. Not until they came. And since they would never come now, since Givivovich and the fake alpha male were displaying the crudeness of their scheme with increasing urgency, openly inviting me to play their game, since there was no sign of any monkeys—all the more would I see them come! All the more! I wasn’t going anywhere, ever! Again I wanted to die, as a way to live. Right here!
And this was the third temple in which
…
The closed church without Tornike, the hole-riddled church with the old lady, and this one. In the end, on this very day, for the second time in my life, I was without sin! And how was this any less than a temple, when
…
When around me—here was the all.
The all!
Whether you understand or not, it’s
all!
…
Just everyone go away. Everyone go away, for Christ’s sake! In Christ’s name I beg you, for the last time:
go away!
leave me alone! eat and drink on the other bank, if you’re impatient
…
Vanish, scatter
…
Get thee hence!
O Lord, with what gold Thou hast showered my last step! What Dutchmen painted this landscape for me, in colors instantly three hundred years old, in paint not yet dry! how this brown dusk shines! Hallowed be Thy Name! What silence Thou hast draped upon these branches! Yes, Thy Kingdom come! Oh, shut up, you bastard, forget words! pray, you bastard! Hurry, hurry! Pray, you son of a bitch! Weep, laugh, sob, exult, you senseless pig
…
Thy will be done!
The silence was swollen and saturated with expectation, like a sponge. What downpour would be disgorged from this invisible storm cloud of silence?
…
And I heard the silence break, with a distinct minus-sound, giving birth to the next, still riper silence.
I waited. Soon now. Just a little longer. Hurry, hurry!
I waited and didn’t want them to come. I wanted to wait like this eternally, impatiently, for monkeys who weren’t even there. The main thing was, I didn’t want
…
and even now I don’t want
…
this to end as it must end, in the way that it will inevitably end, according to the design, the plot, predestination, my weakness, and his inclination. I don’t want to go to blue blazes! I want to stand solidly, right here, on these same dry leaves, and I won’t shift my weight even once, won’t turn my head, except for turning my eyes now and then to see this same
all
all over again: the hidden monkeys stock-still behind Thy tree trunks, in Thy leaves. I myself will stand like a tree. May a little monkey hide behind me, too
…
O Lord, take me at this very moment! Seize—I beg Thee, in God’s name—the moment! I don’t even ask of Thee what Goethe asked,
{96}
I don’t ask Thee to stop everything around me because, if you please, it’s beautiful, I ask Thee only and merely to stop
me
at this moment, so that I will pass when it does, if indeed it is fated to pass
…
Not eternal life—eternal death I ask, curse my tongue for saying so! “
The soul itself taketh the name of publican, because it was created pure by God but hath become defiled in the body and doth not wish to behold heaven, but, being tormented in the bosom with conscience of wicked deeds, it crieth out with heavy sighs and unceasing voice: O God, freely have mercy upon me
…
”
I peered and peered into the motionlessness of the leaves, which hung on the autumn oaks as still as in a funeral wreath. All around stood an indescribable silence: the river roared, the leaves rustled underfoot. Hurry! Hurry!” squealed the alpha male, hammering at the rail with all his might. “Hurry, hurry!” they shouted from the other bank, and the drummer beat an appropriate rhythm on the monkeys’ bar, as on a tom-tom. But suddenly, not even suddenly but within the word “suddenly,” something, or even not something but something located within the word “something”—happened, moved, occurred. The picture slid sideways as if coming unstuck, it hung by one corner, it rolled up, the heavens curled at the edges in the manner of a Chinese pagoda, the alpha male froze with the rusty bolt poised over the rail, the drummer failed to finish his rhythm, and even the river hushed. And within this very silence, and not the preceding one, was born another silence, it tensed and swelled like an immense bubble, like a vein on the Divine brow, and when it burst with a minus-sound, like a dehermeticized vacuum, it gave birth to a sound until then unprecedented in my life, alive, multiple and total, implacably nearing and growing, like a tree, like an avalanche, like a torrent, rushing at us—and nothing, well, exactly nothing changed before my eyes—nothing moved, not a leaf, but I couldn’t take my eyes off this indescribable sound
…
No words
…
…
Have we already discussed this with someone, the nature of the indescribable? It wasn’t Pavel Petrovich, was it? None other. I seem to remember talking with him
…
Now an indescribable terror grips you, now an indescribable ecstasy. You’ve taken up your pen, so write, if you’re all that much of a writer
…
But what to write about, if not the indescribable? The undescribed—anyone who happens on it will write about it. But the writer bumps against both these walls, of ecstasy and terror, as he forces his way down the narrow corridor of narration (narration is narrowtion, an Englishman once told me). We want to expand to full breadth: who has painted the sea? or the mountains? the forest? the sky? Turgenev and Bunin tested their skill a bit, back when we had time. And again, Turner (as Pavel Petrovich suggested). Again, indescribable silence: the cicadas shrilled and the surf roared unceasingly, a violin string snapped in the fog, and someone blew plaintively into a bottle
{97}
…
If it’s indescribable, we say, write it beautifully. The more indescribable, we say, the more beautifully. What, is the ugly describable? With the ugly, it simply seems permissible to write a little worse
…
All the same, the beautiful is like
…
and the ugly is like
…
We can’t do without the “like.” But language isn’t comparisons, it’s words. Words are encased in the dictionary. And we are encased in words. A fly, so to speak, in amber. So which is beautiful, the amber or the fly? Words vanish from the dictionary, precipitating out as if from a supersaturated solution. The indescribable animal, the horse, has at last been described: for his every joint we have chosen, with love, a primordially Russian word. And now what? The horse is leaving the dictionary, part by part. First the cannon bone, then the gaskin, then the fetlock, then the pastern, then the coronet—all that remains is the mane and hooves, his corneous integument. Also vanishing part by part, after the horse, are the cow, the house, the songbirds, and the grasses. What kind of collectivization is this? The commissars, we say, came and removed everything from the farmyard. But no, it wasn’t the commissars alone who did it. We did. And the words that have appeared in exchange—these are anonyms, not words. What do I get from “automation” and “disaggregation”? Not a kopeck. Well, “airplane” is a good word
…
What will I see if I look out the window, not of a house, but of an airplane? Not a fence, not a hen—I’ll see an indescribable beauty, which no one ever saw before the airplane. Rosy white, unbroken, whipped up, boundless, swirling, and above it a sort of, how best to express it? a deep, deep blue, azure, sky-blue, well, just like, oh, just like
…
just like the sky. But where are you? I’m flying in the sky. So what’s indescribable about it, if it’s the sky? What are the clouds like? Like cotton
…
And they’re nothing but cotton. The Arctic, the cosmos. Well, all right: An indescribable silence. All around stood an indescribable silence, I’ll write. A good Russian construction. No, better: All around stood silence. More pregnant, somehow. Stood like a pillar—another good idiom. Better yet, let the pillar stand like a silence. More fitting for the pillar. Silence. Maybe that’s enough. Silence—and it’s all there.
Silence.
Indescribable, however.
“But silence stands in our room like a spinning wheel
…
”
{98}
Then it is, after all, describable?
But a spinning wheel? Before long, in what dictionary will you be able to look up this word?
And besides, you won’t find silence.
Until it comes over you irrevocably. Until “an elephant treads on your ear” and leaves you tone deaf.
Silence came on like an elephant
…
Is that good?
It’s not good
…
A year passed, and I literally stood on the slope of that oak mountain, waiting. The country awoke and looked around unrecognizingly: Who were these people? It had not survived 1984 after all
…
First thing in the morning it began a new life. It forbade itself to take a hair-of-the-dog, and it cut down the vineyards. There was no sense in returning to Tamysh. Hacked-up coils of pipe lay scattered on the famous lawns. The fiery heart of the farmyard had been torn out. The populace was digging its weapons and, in the same garden rows, burying its stills. At the Seventh or Fifth Zantarias’, the Fifth or Seventh Zantaria took his sawed-off shotgun, sweetly redolent of kerosene, and shot the local policeman point-blank as he dismantled the still.
It no longer made any sense to go to Tamysh, because now we could go to America. There we rested up from it all by telling all about it. What did
they
understand about this?
“Five more years have passed, / And a hundred rocket blasts”—Daur’s five-year-old son was already writing excellent verses, but I was still standing in the monkey grove, not moving from the spot. People found ways to drink, of course, but the vines had been felled and the weapons dug. History ripped the pages from my unwritten book, one after another. As soon as it became permissible to joke, people lost the desire, and little by little they began to kill each other. Only in the beginning did it seem that they had ceased to joke because hope had dawned. All my premonitions turned into reality, and I was too late with my prophecy. To tell the story of the Rafik with the Armenian and the Georgian, the Jew and the Russian, had become irrelevant. But what else did I know? My knowledge of monkeys was poor. When I remembered, I tried to close my ears. To have been acquainted briefly with the monkeys’ leader and more closely with the alpha male was obviously not enough. As the years went by, I was no longer even sure that they were specifically called hamadryas baboons, and not something else. Well, how can you write about a tribe if you don’t even know their name? They weren’t Americans
…
And why were things so bad, when they were finally going so well for me? People entered, as always, uninvited, but sober and shaven. They had used the nailbrush first thing in the morning, they smelled of made-in-Hong Kong, and they said, Everything is permissible. What was permissible they didn’t say. “Now you may write your
Monkeys
…
” But who the four-letter needed my
Monkeys
!
Better they hadn’t smiled. They entered with caressing tiger-smiles, they unlocked the cage
…
The zoo, it turned out, was not on the outside.