From this height, the forest looked like dappled, fluffy foam; like a gigantic, world-encompassing porous sponge; like an animal that had once lain hidden in wait, then had dozed off, becoming overgrown with coarse moss. Like a shapeless mask, hiding a face no one had ever seen.
Peretz threw off his sandals and sat down, dangling his bare feet into the abyss. It seemed to him that his heels immediately became damp, as if he had actually dipped them into the warm lilac fog that accumulated in the shadow beneath the cliff. He took the stones that he’d gathered out of his pocket and carefully arranged them next to him, then chose the smallest one and gently tossed it down into that living silence, to be swallowed forever by its sleeping, indifferent maw. The white spark went out, but nothing happened—nobody blinked, no one’s eyes opened to take a look. Then he threw another stone.
If you threw a stone every minute and a half; and if the one-legged cook nicknamed Cazalunya had been telling the truth; and if Madame Bardot, the head of the Assistance to the Locals Team, had guessed right; and if truck driver Randy and L’Estrange from the Penetration Through Engineering Team, whispering together in the cafeteria, had gotten it wrong; and if human intuition was worth a damn; and if, for once in your life, wishes were granted—then on the seventh stone, the bushes behind you would rustle and part, and the Director would emerge onto the clearing: shirtless, wearing gray gabardine pants with purple piping, breathing loudly, glistening with sweat, yellowish-pink and hairy. Then, paying no attention to anything, neither the forest beneath him nor the sky above him, he would begin to bend, sinking his broad palms into the grass, and unbend, creating a breeze with each swing of those broad palms, and every single time, the mighty crease in his stomach would roll over his pants, and a stream of air, saturated with nicotine and carbon dioxide, would shoot out his mouth, hissing and gurgling. Like a submarine flushing out its air tanks. Like a sulfur geyser on Paramushir Island . . .
The bushes behind him rustled and parted. Peretz glanced cautiously over his shoulder, but it wasn’t the Director, it was his acquaintance Claudius Octavian Bootlicherson from the Eradication Team. He approached slowly and stopped two paces away, staring down at Peretz with his dark eyes. He knew or suspected something, something very important, and this knowledge or suspicion immobilized his long face, the transfixed face of a man who had brought here, to this precipice, strange, disquieting news; no one had heard this news yet—but it was already clear that everything had changed, that the past had ceased to matter, and that everyone would finally be asked to contribute according to his or her abilities.
“Whose shoes are these?” he asked, and looked around.
“These are not shoes,” Peretz said. “They are sandals.”
“Oh yes?” Bootlicherson smiled sardonically and pulled a large notebook out of his pocket. “Sandals? Excellent. But whose sandals are they?” He approached the precipice, cautiously looked down, and immediately stepped back. “A man sits by a precipice,” he said, “a pair of sandals by his side. The question inevitably arises: Whose sandals are they, and where is their owner?”
“These are my sandals,” Peretz said.
“Yours?” Bootlicherson looked at his large notebook with uncertainty. “So you’re sitting barefoot? Why?” He decisively put the large notebook away and extracted a small notebook from a back pocket.
“It’s the only way,” explained Peretz. “Yesterday, my right shoe fell in, and I decided that from now on I will always sit barefoot.” He bent over and looked between his parted knees. “There it is. Let me just take aim . . .”
“Wait a minute!” Bootlicherson nimbly caught his arm and took the stone away. “I concede, it’s just a stone,” he said. “But for now, that makes no difference. I don’t understand why you’d lie to me, Peretz. After all, you can’t see the shoe from here—that is, if it actually is down there, and we’ll have to come back to that, that’s a separate discussion—and since you can’t see the shoe, you therefore can’t expect to hit it with the stone, even if your aim were sufficiently good and your one and only goal were to hit it . . . But we’re about to sort this all out.” He stuffed the small notebook into his breast pocket and took the large notebook out again. Then he hitched up his pants and crouched down. “So we conclude that you also came here yesterday,” he said. “What for? Why have you repeatedly come to a precipice that the other employees of the Administration, not to mention the visiting experts, never come to except maybe to relieve themselves?”
Peretz shrank back. This is just ignorance, he thought. No, no, he isn’t trying to provoke me, he isn’t being malicious, and I shouldn’t take it seriously. It’s nothing but ignorance. There’s no reason to take ignorance seriously; no one ever takes ignorance seriously. Ignorance defecates on the forest. Ignorance always defecates on something or another, and as a rule, it’s not taken seriously. Ignorance never takes ignorance seriously . . .
“You probably like to sit here,” Bootlicherson continued silkily. “You probably really love the forest. Do you love it? Answer me!”
“What about you?” Peretz asked.
Bootlicherson sniffed. “That’s not called for,” he said huffily, and opened his notebook. “You know very well whom I work for. I work for the Eradication Team, and therefore your question, or rather your counterquestion, is absolutely meaningless. You are well aware that my attitude toward the forest is determined by my official duty, whereas I’m not at all sure what determines your attitude. This is not right, Peretz. Give it some serious thought—this advice is for your benefit, not my own. It’s wrong to be so mysterious. Sitting by a precipice, barefoot, throwing stones . . . Why, I ask? If I were you, I’d tell me everything. To set the record straight. You never know, there may be mitigating factors and you may ultimately have nothing to fear. Well, Peretz? After all, you’re a grown man, and you must appreciate that ambiguity is unacceptable.” He closed the notebook and thought for a bit. “For example, consider a stone. Lying still, it’s simplicity itself; it inspires no doubts. But now a hand picks it up and throws it. You see?”
“No,” Peretz replied. “I mean, yes, of course.”
“There you go. It’s no longer the least bit simple. ‘Whose hand was it?’ we ask. ‘Where did it throw it? Did it throw it to someone? Did it throw it at someone? And why?’ . . . And how can you bear sitting so close to the edge? Did it come naturally, or did you have to practice? Personally, I can’t bear sitting so close to the edge. And I shudder to think what could make me practice. I get dizzy. And that’s as it should be. There’s no reason for a man to sit close to the edge, anyway. Especially a man without a forest pass. Please show me your pass, Peretz.”
“I don’t have a pass.”
“Ah. You don’t have one. And why not?”
“I don’t know . . . They won’t give me one.”
“That’s right, they won’t give you one. We know this. But why won’t they give you one? I got one, she got one, he and his grandmother got one, but for some reason, they won’t give you one.”
Peretz glanced at him cautiously. Bootlicherson’s long, thin nose was twitching; his eyes were blinking rapidly. “It’s probably because I’m an outsider,” Peretz suggested. “That’s probably why.”
“And I’m not the only one taking an interest in you,” Bootlicherson confided. “If only it were just me! Higher-ups are taking an interest, too . . . Listen, Peretz, could you move farther away from the edge so we can continue? I get dizzy looking at you.”
Peretz got up. “That’s because you’re neurotic,” he said. “Let’s not continue. We should get to the cafeteria or we’ll be late.”
Bootlicherson looked at his watch. “You’re right, we should,” he said. “I got carried away today. There’s something about you, Peretz, that always makes me . . . I don’t even know how to put it.”
Peretz began to hop on one foot, pulling on his sandal.
“Oh, do get away from the edge!” Bootlicherson shrieked in anguish, waving his notebook at Peretz. “One of these days, your shenanigans will give me a heart attack!”
“I’m all done,” Peretz said, stamping his foot. “I won’t do it again. Shall we?”
“Let’s go,” Bootlicherson said. “But I must observe that you haven’t answered a single one of my questions. I’m very disappointed in you, Peretz. Is that any way to act?” He took a look at his large notebook and, shrugging, tucked it under his arm. “It’s almost strange. Not a single impression, never mind any information. A complete lack of clarity.”
“What’s there to say?” said Peretz. “I just came here to talk to the Director.”
Bootlicherson froze, as if he had gotten caught in the bushes. “Oh, so that’s how you do it,” he said in a new voice.
“Do what? I don’t do anything.”
“No, no,” Bootlicherson whispered, glancing around. “Hold your tongue. No need for words. I understand. You were right.”
“What do you mean, you understand? What am I right about?”
“No, no, I don’t understand anything. I don’t understand, and that’s the end of it. You may rest assured. I don’t understand, that’s final. And anyway, I wasn’t here and didn’t see you. If you really want to know, I spent the whole morning sitting on this bench. Lots of people will confirm it. I’ll talk to them, I’ll ask them.”
They passed the bench, climbed the weathered stairs, turned into a tree-lined walk strewn with fine red sand, and entered the gates leading to the territory of the Administration.
“Complete clarity can only exist on a certain level,” Bootlicherson was saying. “And everyone should be aware of what they can pretend to. I pretended to clarity on my level—that was my right—and I have exhausted it. And where rights end, responsibilities begin, and let me assure you that I know my responsibilities just as well my rights.”
They walked past the two-story villas with tulle curtains in the windows, each one subdivided into ten apartments, passed the garage with its corrugated iron roof, and crossed the athletic field, where a torn volleyball net hung abandoned between the poles. They continued past the warehouses, where the riggers were dragging a huge red container from a truck, and past the hotel, whose manager—pasty, with staring, bulging eyes—was standing in the doorway and holding a briefcase. Then they walked along a long fence, hearing the metallic grinding sounds of the machines on the other side; they walked faster and faster, because there wasn’t much time left, and Bootlicherson wasn’t talking anymore but only wheezing and gasping, and then they began to run. And despite all that, when they burst into the cafeteria, it was already late and all the seats were taken, and the only table that wasn’t full was the attendant’s table at the back, which had two empty seats. The third seat was occupied by truck driver Randy, and Randy, noticing them hovering indecisively by the door, waved them over with a fork.
Everyone was drinking buttermilk, and Peretz also got some, so there was now a row of six bottles on the worn-out tablecloth; and when Peretz wiggled his feet under the table, trying to get comfortable on his chair, which was missing its seat, there was a sound of clinking glass, and an empty brandy bottle rolled out into the space between the tables. Truck driver Randy promptly grabbed it and stuffed it back under the table, and there was again a sound of clinking glass.
“Watch your feet,” he said.
“It was an accident,” Peretz said. “I didn’t know.”
“Think I did?” Randy retorted. “There are four of ’em down there—good luck proving later they aren’t yours. They can prove that two plus two makes five if they’ve got a mind to.”
“Well, I, for one, don’t drink,” Bootlicherson said with dignity. “So this doesn’t apply to me.”
“Don’t drink, huh?” said Randy. “Guess I don’t drink myself, then.”
“But I have liver disease!” Bootlicherson started to sound worried. “How could you? Here’s a doctor’s note, take a look . . .”
He conjured up a wrinkled piece of paper with a triangular seal and waved it in Peretz’s face. This really was an official note, written in a doctor’s illegible handwriting. Peretz could only make out a single word, “Disulfiram,” and when he became interested and tried to take the paper, Bootlicherson didn’t let him have it and waved it in Randy’s face.
“That’s the most recent note,” he said. “I also have notes for last year and the year before, except they are in my safe.”
Truck driver Randy didn’t look at the note. He said “Cheers,” slowly drained a full glass of buttermilk, and belched. Then, tearing up, he said in a hoarser voice, “Say, know what else is in the forest? Trees.” He wiped his eyes with his sleeve. “But they don’t stay put, they jump, OK?”
“Yeah?” Peretz said eagerly. “How do they jump?”
“Like this. It starts off standing still. Like a normal tree. Then it wriggles, it squirms, and BOOOOM! Crash, bang, everything’s topsy-turvy. Jumps about thirty feet. Bangs up my cab. And it’s standing still again.”
“Why?” Peretz asked. He could imagine this very clearly. But of course, it didn’t wriggle or squirm; it trembled when approached and tried to get away. Maybe it was squeamish. Maybe it was scared. “Why does it jump?” he asked.
“That’s what it’s called, a jumping tree,” Randy explained, pouring himself some buttermilk.
“We got a new shipment of power saws yesterday,” Bootlicherson informed them, licking his lips. “They are phenomenally effective. I would venture to say that these are not merely saws but sawing engines. Our sawing engines of eradication.”
Meanwhile, everyone around them was drinking buttermilk—out of glasses, out of tin mugs, out of coffee cups, out of rolled-up paper bags, and straight from the bottle. Everyone had their feet tucked under their chairs. And everyone could probably show doctor’s notes about diseases of the liver, stomach, or duodenum. Notes for this year, and for previous years, too.
“And then the garage foreman sends for me,” Randy continued in a loud voice, “and asks why my cab is dented. ‘You bastard, have you been smuggling things again?’ he says. Now you, Signor Peretz, you play chess with him—put in a good word for me. He respects you, he talks about you all the time . . . Peretz, he says, is a real man! ‘I won’t let Peretz use a car,’ he says, ‘don’t even ask. Can’t let a man like that go. You gotta understand, morons,’ he says, ‘we’ll miss him.’ So put in a good word for me, huh?”
“A-All right,” Peretz said dejectedly. “I’ll try. But what’s this about a car?”
“I can talk to the garage foreman,” said Bootlicherson. “We were in the military together: I was a captain, and he was my lieutenant. To this day, he greets me with a military salute.”
“There are also mermaids,” Randy said, his glass of buttermilk in midair. “In big clear lakes. They lie there, OK? Naked.”
“That’s all the buttermilk making you see things, Randall,” said Bootlicherson.
“Never saw ’em myself,” Randy objected, bringing the glass to his lips. “But water in these lakes isn’t good to drink.”
“You haven’t seen them because they don’t exist,” Bootlicherson said. “Mermaids are a myth.”
“Your mom’s a myth,” Randy said, wiping his eyes with his sleeve.
“Wait,” Peretz said. “Wait. Randy, you say they lie there . . . What else do they do? They can’t just lie there and that’s all.” Maybe they live underwater and swim to the surface, like we go out onto a balcony from smoke-filled rooms into the moonlit night, closing our eyes and letting the cool air wash over our faces—then maybe they just lie there. Just lie there, and that’s all. Relaxing. And talking languidly and smiling at each other . . .
“Don’t argue with me,” Randy said, staring at Bootlicherson. “Have you ever been in the forest? Never been in the forest, and you run your mouth.”
“That’s silly,” Bootlicherson said. “What would I do in your forest? I have a pass for your forest. Whereas you, Randall, have no pass. Please show me your pass, Randall.”
“I never saw these mermaids myself,” Randy repeated, addressing Peretz. “But I do believe in them. Because the boys talk about them. Even Candide talked about them. And Candide, now, he knew everything about the forest. He walked through the forest like he was going on a date—he knew everything in there by feel. And he died in there, in his forest.”
“If he did die,” Bootlicherson said meaningfully.
“No ifs about it. A man takes off in a helicopter, and there’s no word for three years. There was an obituary in the paper, there was a wake—what else do you want? Candide got smashed up, of course.”
“We know too little,” Bootlicherson said, “to assert anything with any degree of certainty.”
Randy spat and went up to the counter to get another bottle of buttermilk. Bootlicherson bent down to Peretz’s ear and, glancing around cautiously, whispered, “You should be aware that there were classified instructions regarding Candide. I consider it my prerogative to inform you, since you’re an outsider . . .”
“What instructions?”
“That he’s to be presumed alive,” Bootlicherson said in an audible whisper, and moved away. “Nice, fresh buttermilk today,” he pronounced loudly.
The cafeteria filled with noise. People who were done with breakfast were getting up, moving their chairs out of the way, and heading to the exit; they spoke loudly, lit cigarettes, and threw the matches onto the floor. Bootlicherson kept looking around balefully, and addressed everyone who walked past with “What odd behavior, ladies and gentlemen, as you can see, we’re having a conversation . . .”
When Randy returned with a bottle, Peretz said, “Did the garage foreman actually say that he wouldn’t let me use a car? He was probably just kidding?”
“Why would he be kidding? He’s very fond of you, Signor Peretz. He’ll miss you, and what’s in it for him? Say he does let you go, what good does that do him? He wasn’t kidding.”
Peretz bit his lip. “Then how can I leave? There’s nothing left for me to do here. And my visa is ending. And then I’m simply ready to leave.”
“You know,” said Randy, “get written up three times and you’ll be out on your ass in no time. They’ll get you a special bus, wake the driver up in the middle of the night—you won’t even have time to pack your stuff. Know how the boys do it? First time they get written up, they get demoted. Second time they get written up, they get sent into the forest for their sins. And the third time they get written up—good-bye and good riddance. Say I wanted to quit, I’d down half a bottle and punch this guy in the face.” He pointed to Bootlicherson. “Now they take my bonuses away and I’m driving a manure truck. Then I do what? I down another half a bottle, and punch him in the face again. Then they take me off the manure truck and send me to the biological research station to chase microbes. But I don’t go to the biological research station, I down another half a bottle and punch him for the third time. And that’s it for me. I’m fired for hooliganism and I get sent off within twenty-four hours.”
Bootlicherson wagged a finger at Randy. “You’re spreading misinformation, Randall, you’re spreading misinformation. First of all, there has to be at least a month between the incidents, otherwise all of the aforementioned behavior will be treated as a single episode, and the offender will simply be incarcerated, with no case being initiated within the Administration. Second of all, after the second offense, the guilty party would immediately get sent into the forest accompanied by a guard, so they would be denied the opportunity to commit the third offense at their discretion. Don’t listen to him, Peretz, he doesn’t understand these things.”
Randy drank some buttermilk, grimaced and grunted. “That’s true,” he admitted. “I screwed up . . . It wouldn’t do. My mistake, Signor Peretz.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Peretz said sadly. “I can’t assault a man for no reason, anyway.”
“Well, you don’t have to, errr . . . assault him,” said Randy. “You could, say, give him a light kick in the, err . . . rear. Or just shove him.”
“No, I can’t do it,” Peretz said.
“That’s too bad,” said Randy. “Then you’re in trouble, Signor Peretz. Here’s what we’ll do. Come to the garage tomorrow morning around seven, get into my cab, and wait for me. I’ll drive you.”
“Really?” Peretz cheered up.
“Sure thing. I gotta haul scrap metal to the Mainland tomorrow. We’ll go together.”
Suddenly someone in the corner shrieked in a horrible voice, “Look what you’ve done! You’ve spilled my soup!”
“People should be easy to understand,” said Bootlicherson. “I can’t figure out why you want to leave, Peretz. No one wants to leave but you.”
“That’s how it always is with me,” Peretz said. “I always do things backwards. And anyway, why should people be easy to understand?”
“People should be nondrinkers,” Randy announced, belching. “Don’t you agree?”
“I don’t drink,” Bootlicherson said. “And the reason I don’t drink is very easy to understand: I have liver disease. So you can’t trap me, Randall.”
“The most surprising thing in the forest,” said Randy, “is the swamps. They are hot, OK? I can’t stand them. Just can’t get used to them. I skid off the road, get stuck, then I sit there in my cab and can’t get out. It’s like hot cabbage soup. Steam comes off it, and it smells like cabbage soup, I’ve even tried it, but it didn’t taste good—maybe it wasn’t salty enough. No, people don’t belong in the forest. And what the hell is the point, anyway? They keep going through machines like they’re throwing them in a lake—they sink, they get more, they sink, they get more . . .”
A wealth of fragrant greenery. A wealth of colors, a wealth of smells. A wealth of life. And it’s all alien. It’s not completely unfamiliar, it’s recognizable, but it’s genuinely alien. That’s probably the most difficult thing to accept—that it manages to be alien and familiar at the same time. That it’s a product of our world, the flesh of our flesh, but that it has cut ties with us and doesn’t want to know us. That’s how a Homo erectus would probably feel about us, his descendants—bitter and afraid.
“When the order comes,” Bootlicherson proclaimed, “we won’t send in your crappy bulldozers and ATVs, we’ll send in something real, and in two months, we’ll turn it all into, um . . . a smooth, flat paved lot.”
“You would,” Randy said. “You’d turn your own dear dad into a paved lot if you had half a chance. To keep things simple.”
There was a loud buzzing noise. Windows rattled in their frames, and at the same time, an earsplitting bell rang above the door, the lights on the wall began to flicker, and a large neon sign saying IT’S TIME TO GO! lit up above the counter. Bootlicherson rose hurriedly, reset his watch, and ran off without saying a word.
“Well, I’m off,” Peretz said. “Time to work.”
“It sure is,” Randy agreed. “High time.” He took off his jacket, carefully rolled it up, pushed the chairs together, and lay down, putting the jacket under his head.
“So tomorrow morning at seven, then?” Peretz said.
“What?” Randy asked sleepily.
“I’ll come by tomorrow morning at seven.”
“Come by where?” Randy asked, tossing and turning on the chairs. “Damn things slide apart,” he muttered. “How many times do I have to tell them: get a couch . . .”
“To the garage,” Peretz said. “To your truck.”
“Ohhh . . . Sure, sure, come along, we’ll see. These things are difficult.” He pulled his knees up, crossed his arms over his chest and stuck his hands into his armpits, and began to breathe heavily. His arms were hairy, and there were tattoos visible beneath the hair. The writing said THAT WHICH DESTROYS US and NEVER LOOK BACK. Peretz walked toward the exit.
He used a wooden plank to cross a huge puddle behind the building, went around the mound of empty tin cans, squeezed through a crack in the wooden fence, and went into the Administration building through the service entrance. The hallways were cold and dark, and the place smelled of tobacco, dust, and old paper. There was no one around, and he couldn’t hear anything through the faux leather upholstered doors. Peretz walked up the narrow stairs to the second floor, holding on to the dingy walls since there was no railing, and walked up to a door beneath a flashing WASH YOUR HANDS BEFORE WORK sign. The door was adorned with a big black M. Peretz pushed the door open and felt a certain astonishment upon finding himself in his office. The office wasn’t actually his, of course—it belonged to Kim, the head of the Scientific Guard—but that was the office in which Peretz had a desk, and this desk now stood along the tiled wall on one side of the door. As usual, half of the desk was occupied by the Mercedes arithmometer, which was still beneath its cover. Meanwhile, Kim’s desk now stood by the large, clean window, and Kim himself was already working: he was sitting, hunched over, and examining a slide rule.
“I wanted to wash my hands,” Peretz said, bewildered.
“Wash away, wash away,” Kim said, nodding. “There’s the sink. This will be very convenient. Now everyone will come visit us.”
Peretz went up to the sink and began to wash his hands. He washed them with cold and hot water, two types of soap, and a special grease-absorbing paste; he scrubbed them with a loofah and with an assortment of brushes of varying stiffness. Then he turned on the electric dryer and held his damp pink hands in the whistling stream of hot air.
“At four in the morning, they announced that we were being transferred to the second floor,” Kim said. “And where have you been? With Alevtina?”
“No, I was at the precipice,” said Peretz, sitting down at his desk.
The door opened, and Proconsul rapidly walked into the room, gave a friendly wave of his suitcase, and disappeared behind the curtain. They heard the creak of the stall door and the click of the bolt. Peretz took the cover off the arithmometer, sat motionless for a moment, then walked over to the window and threw it open.
You couldn’t see the forest from here, but the forest was present. It was always present, although you could only see it from the cliff. If you were anywhere else in the Administration, it was obscured by something. It was obscured by the cream-colored buildings of the engineering workshops, and by the four-story garage that housed employees’ personal vehicles. It was obscured by the stockyards of the subsidiary farms, and by the clothes hanging by the laundromat, whose dryer was constantly broken. It was obscured by the park with its flower beds and pavilions, its Ferris wheel, and its alabaster statues of bathers, which were now completely covered in scribbled graffiti. It was obscured by the villas with their ivy-covered porches and their television antennae. And from here, a window on the second floor, you couldn’t see the forest because of the brick wall—as yet unfinished, but already quite tall—that was being constructed around the flat one-story building of the Penetration Through Engineering Team. You could only see the forest from the cliff, but you could only defecate on the forest from the cliff, too.
But even a person who had never in his life seen the forest, who hadn’t heard of the forest, hadn’t thought about the forest, hadn’t been afraid of it, and hadn’t fantasized about it—even a person like that could easily guess that it existed, simply because of the existence of the Administration. I, for one, have long thought about the forest, argued about the forest, and seen it in my dreams, but I never even suspected that it actually existed. And I was convinced of its existence not when I first set foot on the cliff but when I read the sign by the door: THE ADMINISTRATION FOR FOREST AFFAIRS. I was standing in front of this sign, suitcase in hand, dusty and parched after the long trip, reading and rereading it and feeling weak in the knees, because I now knew the forest existed, and therefore, everything I had hitherto thought about it was nothing but a figment of a weak imagination, a pale and feeble lie. The forest existed, and this enormous, gloomy building concerned itself with its fate . . .
“Kim,” said Peretz, “will I really never get into the forest? Because I’m leaving tomorrow.”
“And you actually want to get in there?” Kim asked distractedly.
Hot green swamps, timid, nervous trees, mermaids lying on the surface of the water in the moonlight, relaxing after their mysterious activities in the depths, cautious inscrutable natives, empty villages . . . “I don’t know,” said Peretz.
“You shouldn’t be allowed in there, Perry,” Kim said. “Only people who’ve never thought about the forest should be allowed in there. People who’ve never given a damn about it. Whereas you care about it too much. The forest is dangerous for you, because it will fool you.”
“Maybe,” Peretz said. “But I did only come here to see it.”
“Why do you want the bitter truth?” said Kim. “What are you going to do with it? And what are you going to do in the forest? Weep for a dream that has become fate? Pray for everything to be different? Or, even worse, start changing what there is into what there should be?”
“So why did I come here, then?”
“To convince yourself. Do you really not realize how important that is—convincing yourself? Others come for other reasons. To measure the number of cubic meters of firewood in the forest. Or to discover the bacteria of life. Or to write a thesis. Or to get a pass—not to go in the forest with, but just in case: it might come in handy one day, and not everybody has one. And the ultimate conceit is to shape the forest into a magnificent park, like a sculptor shapes a marble block into a statue. And then to keep pruning it. Year after year. So it doesn’t become a forest again.”
“I need to leave,” Peretz said. “There’s nothing for me here. Somebody needs to leave, either me or all of you.”
“Let’s do some multiplication,” Kim said, and Peretz sat down at his desk, found a jury-rigged power outlet, and plugged in the arithmometer. “Seven hundred ninety-three five hundred twenty-two by two hundred sixty-six zero eleven . . .”
The arithmometer started rattling and jerking. Peretz waited until it calmed down, then haltingly read out the answer.
Kim called out more numbers and Peretz entered them in, pressing the multiplication and division keys, adding, subtracting, and taking roots. Everything went on as usual.
“Twelve by ten,” Kim said. “Multiply.”
“One zero zero seven,” Peretz recited mechanically, then he caught himself and said, “Wait a minute, it’s wrong. It should be one twenty.”
“I know, I know,” Kim said impatiently. “One zero zero seven,” he repeated. “And now take the square root of ten zero seven.”
“Just a moment,” Peretz said.
The bolt behind the curtain clicked again, and Proconsul emerged looking pink, fresh, and satisfied. He started to wash his hands, simultaneously singing “Ave Maria” in a pleasant voice. Then he declared, “What a marvel the forest is, my friends! And how criminally little time we spend talking and writing about it! And yet it is worthy of being written about. It elevates us, it awakens our loftiest sentiments. It encourages progress. It is like a symbol of progress itself. And yet we still cannot curtail the spread of inappropriate stories, rumors, and jokes. We’re conducting practically no pro-forest propaganda. People say and think God knows what about the forest.”
“Seven eighty-five multiplied by four thirty-two,” Kim said.
Proconsul raised his voice. His voice was loud and resonant—the arithmometer became inaudible. “‘Can’t see the forest for the trees.’ ‘A babe in the woods.’ ‘Our neck of the woods.’ That is what we must struggle against! That is what we must eradicate. Take you, Monsieur Peretz, why haven’t you joined the struggle? You could make a detailed and goal-oriented presentation about the forest to our club, but you haven’t. I’ve been watching you and waiting for a long time, to no avail. What’s the issue?”
“But I’ve never been in there,” Peretz said.
“Doesn’t matter. I’ve never been in there either, but I gave a lecture, and judging by the response I got, it was an extremely useful lecture. What matters is not whether you’ve been in the forest—what matters is peeling away the layers of mysticism and superstition from the facts, laying bare the crux of the matter by tearing off the garments in which it had been clad by the philistines and the opportunists.”
“Two times eight divided by forty-nine minus seven times seven,” said Kim.
The arithmometer started working. Proconsul raised his voice again. “I did this as a philosopher by training, and you could do it as a linguist by training. I’ll suggest some propositions, and you can expand on them in the context of the latest advances in linguistics . . . By the way, what was the subject of your thesis?”
“It was ‘The Characteristics of the Style and Rhythm of Female Prose in the Late Heian Period,’ based on Makura no sōshi,” Peretz said. “I’m afraid that—”
“Fantastic! That’s just what we need. And make sure to emphasize that there are no swamps or bogs, only magnificent mud baths; there are no jumping trees, only the products of a highly advanced science; there are no natives or savages, only an ancient civilization of men, proud and free, with noble ideas, modest yet mighty. And please, no mermaids! No lilac fog, no purple prose—excuse the bad pun . . . This will be fantastic, Mr. Peretz, this will be wonderful. And I’m very glad you know the forest, you can share your personal impressions. My lecture was also good, but I’m afraid it was a little theoretical. I used the meeting minutes as my primary source. But you, as a forest scholar—”
“I’m not a forest scholar,” Peretz said earnestly. “They won’t let me in the forest. I don’t know the forest.”
Proconsul, nodding absentmindedly, was quickly writing something on the cuff of his shirt. “Yes,” he was saying, “yes, yes. Unfortunately, that is the bitter truth. Unfortunately, we still encounter this—bureaucracy, red tape, a heuristic approach to the individual . . . You may talk about that too, by the way. You may, you may, everybody talks about it. And I’ll try to get your presentation cleared with the Board of Directors. I’m damn glad, Peretz, that you are finally getting involved in our work. I’ve been watching you closely for a long time . . . There we go, I scheduled you for next week.”
Peretz turned off the arithmometer. “I won’t be here next week. My visa’s expiring, and I’m leaving. Tomorrow.”
“Oh, we’ll figure something out. I’ll talk to the Director, he’s a member of our club himself, he’ll understand. Count on staying another week.”
“Please don’t do that,” Peretz said. “Please!”
“But I have to!” said Proconsul, looking into his eyes. “You know perfectly well, Peretz: I have to! Good-bye.” He made a military salute and left, swinging his briefcase.
“What a tangled web,” said Peretz. “Do they think I’m a fly or something? The garage foreman doesn’t want me to leave, neither does Alevtina, now here’s another one.”
“I don’t want you to leave either,” said Kim.
“But I can’t stand it here anymore!”
“Seven eighty-seven multiplied by four thirty-two . . .”
I’m still leaving, thought Peretz, pressing buttons. I’m still leaving. You don’t want me to, but I’m still leaving. I won’t play Ping-Pong with you, I won’t play chess with you, I won’t sleep with you or have tea and jam with you; I don’t want to sing you songs anymore, do calculations on your arithmometer, help mediate your disputes, and now, on top of everything, give you lectures that you won’t even understand. And I won’t think for you—think for yourself—and I’m leaving. Either way, there’s nothing I can do to make you realize that thinking isn’t a diversion, it’s a responsibility . . .
Outside, behind the unfinished wall, the pile driver was banging, the jackhammers were pounding, and bricks were clattering down. Four workers—naked from the waist up and wearing caps—were sitting side by side on top of the wall and smoking. Then a motorcycle roared and sputtered right beneath the window.
“Must be someone from the forest,” said Kim. “Quick, multiply sixteen by sixteen for me—”
A man yanked open the door and rushed into the room. He was wearing a hazmat suit, and his unfastened hood dangled at his chest on the cord of his walkie-talkie. Above the shoes and below the waist, the hazmat suit bristled with pale pink young shoots, and its right leg was ensnared by an endless orange vine that was dragging on the floor. The vine was still twitching, and Peretz imagined that it was a tentacle of the forest, and that it would soon flex and drag the man back—through the corridors of the Administration, down the stairs, across the yard, past the wall, past the cafeteria and the workshops, then down again, along the dusty street, through the park, past the statues and pavilions, toward the winding road, toward the gates, but then passing them on the outside, going toward the cliff, down, down, down . . .
He was wearing motorcycle goggles, his face was caked with dust, and Peretz didn’t immediately realize that this was Stoyan Stoyanov from the biological research station. There was a large paper package in his hand. He took a few steps along the tiled floor, along the mosaic of a showering woman, and stopped in front of Kim, hiding the paper package behind his back and jerking his head in a strange way, as if his neck was itchy.
“Kim,” he said. “It’s me.”
Kim didn’t answer. His pen was audibly scratching and ripping the paper.
“Kimmy,” Stoyan said obsequiously. “I’m begging you.”
“Get out of here,” said Kim. “Lunatic.”
“One last time,” said Stoyan. “The very last time.” He jerked his head again, and on his scrawny shaved neck, right in the groove at the nape, Peretz saw a short, pinkish shoot—very thin, sharp, already curling into a spiral, and trembling as if with greed.
“You just give it to her and say that it’s from Stoyan, that’s all. If she asks you to the movies, lie and say that you urgently have to work tonight. If she tries to give you tea, tell her you just had some. And refuse the wine, too, if she offers. Eh? Kimmy? The very lastest time!”
“Why are you squirming?” Kim asked maliciously. “Turn around!”
“Did I bring one in again?” Stoyan asked, turning around. “Ah well, it doesn’t matter. Just give this to her, nothing else matters.”
Kim, leaning across the table, was doing something to Stoyan’s neck, kneading and massaging it with his elbows splayed out, grimacing in disgust and muttering curses. Stoyan was patiently shifting from foot to foot, bending his head and arching his neck.
“Hi, Perry,” he was saying. “Haven’t seen you in ages. How are you? And here I am with another present—what can you do? . . . The very very last time.” He unfolded the paper and showed Peretz a bouquet of acid-green forest flowers. “And the smell of them! The smell!”
“Stop wriggling,” snapped Kim. “Stand still! Lunatic! Nincompoop!”
“I’m a lunatic,” Stoyan agreed ecstatically. “I’m a nincompoop. But! The very very last time!”
The pink shoots on his hazmat suit were already withering, shriveling, and falling onto the floor, onto the ruddy face of the showering woman.
“Done,” Kim said. “Now go away.” He stepped away from Stoyan and threw something writhing, half dead, and bloody into the trash can.
“I’m going away,” Stoyan said. “I’m going away this instant. You know, Rita had another funny spell, now I’m almost afraid to leave the biological research station at all. Perry, you should come visit us, talk to them, maybe—”
“As if!” said Kim. “There’s nothing for him to do there.”
“What do you mean, nothing?” Stoyan exclaimed. “Quentin’s wasting away before our eyes! You just listen: a week ago Rita ran away—well, what can you do, that’s life—and during the night she came back, wet, white, and frozen. The guard went up to her unarmed—don’t know what she did to him, but he’s still out cold. And our entire experimental plot has overgrown with grass.”
“So?” Kim said.
“And Quentin has been crying all morning—”
“I know all that,” Kim interrupted him. “What I don’t understand is what it has to do with Peretz.”
“What do you mean? What are you saying? If not Peretz, then who? I can’t do it, right? And neither can you . . . Or maybe you think we should ask Claudius Octavian Bootlicherson!”
“Enough!” Kim said, slamming a hand down on the table. “Go do your job, and don’t let me see you here again during work hours. Don’t make me angry.”
“I’m done,” Stoyan said hastily. “I’m done. I’m leaving. You’ll give this to her?”
He put the bouquet on the table and ran outside, shouting in the doorway, “And the cloaca’s working again!”
Kim took a broom and swept all the debris into a corner. “The crazy fool,” he said. “And that Rita . . . Now we have to do the calculations all over again. Damn him and his love affair.”
They heard the irritating roar of the motorcycle beneath their window, then all was quiet again, except for the pile driver behind the wall.
“Peretz,” Kim said, “why were you at the cliff this morning?”
“I was hoping to see the Director. I was told that he sometimes does his morning exercises by the cliff. I wanted to ask him to let me go, but he never came. You know, Kim, I think everyone here lies. Sometimes I think that even you lie. ”
“The Director,” Kim said pensively. “You know, that really is a thought. Good for you. A bold move.”
“I’m still leaving tomorrow,” said Peretz. “Randy will take me, he promised. I’m not going to be here tomorrow, just so you know.”
“I wouldn’t have thought it, I wouldn’t have thought it,” Kim continued, not paying attention. “A very bold move . . . Maybe we really should send you in there, to sort things out?”