The Monkey Link (21 page)

You drank it!
 
…
Without me?
—M
OZART
AND
S
ALIERI

… 
with a baby chick on my right foot

I had hardly put the final period
 
…

…
 
when
HE
shook the baby chick off his foot, and before I could think of any such thing he had fetched the white jeans I hadn’t worn even once, and jumped into them so swiftly and boldly—I would never have thought it possible
—-jumped
into them, with both lower extremities at once, not one foot first and then the other, awkwardly dancing and losing his balance in his haste, but both feet at once. And
zip!
they fitted him like a glove. Fitted even too well, being tight below and binding the male equipage that had lain so long unclaimed. And possibly they could have been shortened a trifle
 
…

In the end, I didn’t protest. I had harassed and bedeviled
HIM
enough, just letting him eat a little, sleep late, and stroll down to the sea once a day for a swim. I had not permitted him one drop of alcohol or even one thought of the fair sex
 
…
I had likewise not permitted him too much time petting all the various local children, pups, and piglets, to prevent the development of what I suspected was his tendency to pedophilia. And this for a whole month!

The only way we could keep it up was by
establishing
ourselves, immediately. As soon as we appeared in Tamysh and were greeted by the populace, a sedate and eager throng who came streaming from the nearby farms and kissed our shoulders in natural expectation of the tradition-hallowed feast—right then, I declared that no, I was writing, we didn’t drink. Which, I should mention, plunged them into
 
…
And if it hadn’t been for the prospect of a funeral repast on the other side of the village that very day, I don’t know how this would have ended. At any rate, our neighbor Aslan later assured me that it might have ended badly indeed, if men like Alyosha and Badz hadn’t stood up for us.

But the next day and again the next, the villagers’ manly and unshaven faces seemed to have been wedged between our fence pickets since the day before. Their patiently welcoming gaze expressed confidence that today we would change our minds. But—no, no! we’re working, I declared brazenly. Though how could there be any question of work, when
HE
was so depressed by all this “willpower”! I hid in the house like a prisoner, shamed by the honesty of their gaze. The entire village, all to a man, pitied
HIM
.

Every other day, for literally five minutes, Aslan checked on my condition. This most worthy young man had early been left fatherless and now bore responsibility for the entire farm and his mother and sisters. Precocious maturity was perhaps his distinguishing characteristic. An invincible, boyish rosiness colored his already knightly features. He would tell us something about his troubles and invite us, without urging, to drop in and try the
chacha
he had just distilled
{29}
or a joint from the new stash of grass he had just received. He thought it had turned out well, he thought it was good
 
…
He didn’t insist.

Aslan was probably coming to see
HIM
, not me.

One day he arrived extraordinarily excited and pale. Apparently addressing himself this time to me alone, he asked me, as a man he held in such esteem, to keep an eye on his younger brother, who had recently begun to cause him some anxiety—in token of which he apprehensively sniffed his hands. I had already heard something from Aslan about the brother, but I had thought he was older: he was strong and rich and had shops in Gagra. Aslan was obviously proud of him, as if he dreamed of coming to resemble him in time. But how could I look after him from here, a hundred kilometers away?

The trouble was, he said, he had dreamed of a different fate for his brother, a fate in no way similar to his own. What could he do, they had been orphaned early, all the money had gone for the funeral, all the responsibility had fallen to the eldest, and he’d had to pull a job (and he sniffed his hands again)
 
…
Just now he’d succeeded in knocking over a train and would have to hide, he had a safe haven where they wouldn’t find him. The important thing was that his younger brother shouldn’t follow the same path, because he was still immature, a romantic, he could take a notion to do anything. He knew the boy carried a blade, but now he was messing with his six-shooter, too! Maybe he’d even carried it!

I thought Aslan was stoned and playing a trick on me, but it turned out there was no mystery. This was not Aslan. It was Aslan’s fifteen-minutes-older brother Astamur, who at this moment wasn’t so much running his shop, which was being tended by trustworthy people, as doing time in jail. Taking advantage of their extraordinary resemblance, he had swapped places with Aslan during a visit, in order to go and pull the job. Everything had worked out very successfully: the watchman hadn’t been killed, just wounded. But by now Astamur was in a great hurry to let Aslan out of the cell before the changing of the guard—a more trustworthy guard for one less trustworthy. His hands reeked of kerosene because he had just buried his TT army pistol in the vegetable patch, in a well-tended row of weapons, and he had to douse them with kerosene to keep them from rusting. Thus engaged in unaccustomed farm work, he had discovered that Aslan, too, had been digging in that row, whereas he had so hoped that Aslan would go to the agricultural college and remain a true peasant, and now he was so relying on me
 
…

And Astamur (if this was not Aslan) ran off to his safe haven where no one would look for him—ran “home” to the darkness and to prison.

The prison was not far away, literally twenty kilometers, next door to a great rarity in our territory, a Christian church built by that “friend of the Abkhazian people” the Emperor Justinian, in the Romanesque style, naturally, in the sixth or seventh century, though of course it hadn’t functioned for the past sixty years. We will yet have sad occasion to tell about it
 
…

Aslan showed up the next day, apparently with no inkling as yet that his brother and I had talked. He was highly excited and therefore rosier than ever. Aslan invited me point-blank to go pull a job with him. They had to move fast, but Million Tomatoes had copped out at the last minute, and Senyok (this was a drifter who was working in the village that summer) wouldn’t do, he had started boozing at the cemetery with the inconsolables. About the great man nicknamed Million Tomatoes, later. About Senyok, later, too. But just now there was no way I could cope, either with Aslan or with
HIM
, for although
HE
had been dozing he immediately woke with a start, dying to get in on this affair that was none of his business. Only with difficulty did I succeed in thwarting their instant rapport—and if I hadn’t talked with Astamur the day before, I don’t know how I would have restrained the two of them.

After delivering a measured lecture that almost put even me to sleep, I decided that it was already too late to sit down to work before swimming, and headed for the sea. I was still having trouble restraining
HIM
, for he continued to try and break away from me to Aslan, in his instant thirst to go pull a job, knock over a train. I allowed him to peek even longer than usual at a conjugal pair of pigs, who at this hour were always screwing by the Fifth Zantarias’ barnyard fence. Everyone in our village, I should mention, was named Zantaria or Anua, with just a sprinkling of Gadlias. The spectacle of the businesslike lovemaking of the pigs, for whom he had always cherished a sympathy I could not explain, was a distraction for him but also an excessive attraction, in my view. I dragged him on, trying to divert him with the more moderate and elevated scenes that appeared along our path, in the gaps between the leaves and the clear blue sky, day in and day out, at a definite hour and minute, like clockwork, tireless, rejoicing in the repetition like children. At exactly 4:15 a gigantic mulberry tree in the Gadlias’ farmyard would begin to chirp—the birds were announcing sunset, for, although the sun was still beating down full force, according to their information it was already sinking. At exactly 4:30 a cow who had become separated from the herd and felt homesick would return to the Thirteenth Zantarias’ barnyard, locate a familiar break in the fence overgrown with “asparilla” briers (about which we will also have occasion to tell a story, this time a cheerful one), and squeeze into the cornfield, where her mistress, by this hour, was already waiting for her
 
…
The cow, however, paying exactly no attention to the beating, would manage to snatch two or three ears of corn—and then a fourth and a fifth, while her mistress selected a replacement for her broken stick. And at exactly 4:45, in the last yard, a clean little old lady in mourning clothes would emerge carrying a towel-covered
khachapuri
in the outstretched dry branches of her arms, to place it in the oven (thoroughly heated up by this hour) that stood at the edge of the lawn. Why a stove on the lawn?
 
…
Carefully affixed to the facade there was a large, institutional-looking glass sign, apparently made on special order in the capital, Sukhum, in the workshop of one of the Zantarias, who dealt in signs for banks, schools, and scientific institutes.

“1880-1983”

was inscribed on the sign, without a name, because payment was per character, and everyone here knew anyway who had died. And 1880 was also the birth year of the poet who said, “Ever more often I see death, and smile
 
…
 
”
{30}
The deceased had been the mother-in-law of the old lady who at this very moment was putting the sheet of
khachapuri
in the oven. But then how old was the living lady? No less than seventy-five, to look at her, but no more than a hundred and fifty, either. Walking past—for the umpteenth time!—neither
HE
nor I wearied of picturing Alexander Alexandrovich Blok at a hundred and three, for he found more poetry in awaiting his mortal hour, dozing in the sun, than he did in his immortal poem “The Twelve”
 
…
But already, out there beyond the old lady who was Blok’s contemporary, the farmyards ended and the sea lay open to view, separated from the village by a marshy strip of black mud in which a buffalo, also black, lay enjoying himself
 
…

So every day we went out to the beach, and
HE
wouldn’t go in the water for anything. Then, just as stubbornly, he wouldn’t come out, knowing that after we swam it was over—work would begin. In the water I indulged to my heart’s content in something categorically forbidden
HIM
: I tossed back a few drinks with Pavel Petrovich.

Therefore I couldn’t be any too critical today when
HE
pulled my trousers on without asking and charged straight across the cemetery—where, toward morning, the inconsolable friends of the deceased were still drinking on one of the graves—in order to get there in time (he had figured this correctly and clearly) to grab one little drink with them
in memoriam,
and one more till the store opened. But now the wives began driving the cows out to pasture and herding the farmers home, and he and I just made the first bus into Sukhum.

H
E
sat impatiently in my brand-new snug-fitting white jeans, on the front seat as if on horseback, it seemed, urging the bus onward. But the bus, since it was the first, made long stops everywhere, waiting for its regular clients with their grunting sacks. And even when the client wouldn’t be going today, because the Seventeenth Zantaria’s brother-in-law’s friend Valiko had promised to pick him up in his car—this, too, took no less time than if the client had boarded and come along, especially since he might nevertheless change his mind about going with Valiko and load his grunting ears of corn into our bus after all.

And while
HE
wriggled and fidgeted, I, still on the momentum of nocturnal inspiration, noticed a few things with my peripheral vision, though it was swimming from the two drinks. Peaceful, non-dusty, daybreak scenes. Nature has no hangover
 
…
But someone had stretched out at the roadside so freely, so limply, in the still-cold sunlight: red shirt, and tangled light brown curls that somehow seemed so Russian
 
…
there was something Russian even in his pose. The bus departed at last, and for some reason I began to worry about this man. What was wrong with him?
 
…
Now I would never know—I was on my way. And he was back there, left behind. He looked like Senyok, our drifter,
{31}
who earned his keep around the farmyards by helping to harvest the corn
 
…
worked on our farm, too, taciturn, bony, always smiling affectionately, a sinking, sunset smile. No, it wasn’t Senyok after all
 
…
And besides, was there really anyone there? In the end, he just flashed by like a bloodstain at the side of the road—the bus was already leaving, I didn’t get a good look. But as we pulled away my anxiety kept growing, as though stretching taut the single thread that still bound me to life
 
…
I could—I could still stop the bus, run back, help him, even save him
 
…
The terror of the unnoticed event was strangely familiar, strangely comparable with the inexplicable ecstasy of an approaching inspiration—a line from a poem never written by anyone floated up from a tearful fog, my eyes grew wet—