The Snail on the Slope

  “We’ll make it to the Clay Meadow,” Candide agreed. “But what do we do after that?”

  “After that?”

  “We have to go through the swamp, where the lakes used to be. Remember, you told me about the stone road?”

  “Which road would that be? The road to the Clay Meadow? That’s just what I’ve been telling you: turn left, go until the field, past the stones . . .”

  Candide let him finish and said, “I now know the way to the Clay Meadow. We’ll get there. But as you know, I need to go farther than that. I have to get to the City, and you promised to show me the way.”

  Crookleg shook his head in sympathy. “The Ciiity! . . . That’s where you’re heading, eh? I remember, I remember . . . But, Silent Man, there’s no way to get to the City. If you wanted to go to the Clay Meadow, say, that’s no problem: go past the stones, through the mushroomy village, through the kook village, and the Clay Meadow will be right there, on your right. Or if you wanted to go to the Reeds, say, that’s easy. When you go out, turn right, go through the open wood, past the Bread Puddle, then just follow the sun. Wherever the sun goes, you go. It’ll take three days, but since you really need to go, we’ll go. We used to look for pots there, before we planted our own hereabouts. You should have told me right away that you want to go to the Reeds. No point waiting for the day after tomorrow, we’ll head out tomorrow morning, and we don’t have to bring food, as the Bread Puddle’s on the way . . . Silent Man, you talk too quick: I start to bend an ear and you’ve closed your mouth already. But we’ll get to the Reeds. We’ll go tomorrow morning . . .”

  Candide heard him out and said, “You see, Crookleg, I don’t need to go to the Reeds. The Reeds aren’t where I need to go. They aren’t where I need to go, the Reeds.” Crookleg was listening attentively and nodding. “Where I need to go is the City,” continued Candide. “You and I have been talking about it for a long time. I told you yesterday I need to go to the City. The day before yesterday, I told you I need to go to the City. A week ago, I told you I need to go to the City. You said you know the way to the City. You said that yesterday. And the day before yesterday, you said you know the way to the City. Not the way to the Reeds, the way to the City.” Just don’t let me get confused, he thought. Maybe I always get confused. Not the Reeds, the City. The City, not the Reeds. “The City, not the Reeds,” he repeated out loud. “Do you understand? Tell me the way to the City. Or even better—let’s go to the City together. Let’s not go to the Reeds together, let’s go to the City together.”

  He paused. Crookleg started patting his bad knee again. “Silent Man, maybe when they cut your head off, they messed something up inside. It’s like my leg. It used to just be a leg, a normal leg, then one night, I was walking through the Anthills, carrying the ant queen, and this leg here got stuck in a hole, and now it’s bent. Why it’s bent, no one knows, but it doesn’t walk well. But I can make it to the Anthills. I’ll make it there myself, and I’ll take you there, too. The only thing I don’t understand is why you told me to get food ready for the road, the Anthills, they’re a hop and a jump away.” He looked at Candide, got embarrassed, and opened his mouth. “But you aren’t going to the Anthills,” he said. “Where are you going? You’re going to the Reeds. But I can’t go to the Reeds, I won’t make it. My leg’s bent, see? Hey, Silent Man, what do you have against the Anthills, anyways? Let’s go to the Anthills, eh? I haven’t been there once since that time, maybe they are gone, the Anthills. We’ll look for that hole, eh?”

  He’s about to confuse me, thought Candide. He leaned to one side and rolled a pot toward him. “This is a very nice pot,” he said. “I can’t remember when I’ve last seen such a nice pot . . . So you’ll take me to the City? You told me no one but you knows the way to the City. Let’s go to the City, Crookleg. Can we make it to the City, you think?”

  “Of course we can! The City? No problem! By the way, you’ve seen pots like these before, and I know where. It’s the kooks who have pots like these. They don’t grow them, you see, they make them out of clay, the Clay Meadow’s right around the corner, like I’ve been telling you: go out and turn left, go past the stones, until you get to the mushroomy village. Not a soul in the place nowadays, no point going there. Have we never seen a mushroom before or something? When my leg was strong, I never went to the mushroomy village, I just knew that the kooks lived past it, two ravines away. Yeah. We could even leave tomorrow . . . Yeah . . . Hey, Silent Man, how about we don’t go there, eh? Those mushrooms, I don’t like them. See, the mushrooms in our forest, they’re one thing—we can eat them, they taste good, they do. But the mushrooms there, in that village, they are kind of greenish, and they smell bad. Why go there? Might even bring spores back. We’d better go to the City. That’d be much nicer. But we can’t leave tomorrow, then. Have to save up some food, have to ask around, find out the way. Or do you know the way? If you know the way, I won’t ask around, as I can’t think who to ask. Maybe we should ask the village head, what do you think?”

  “Don’t you know anything about the way to the City?” Candide asked. “You know a lot about it. You even almost made it to the City once, but you got scared of the deadlings, scared you couldn’t fight them off alone—”

  “I’m not scared of deadlings and never was,” Crookleg objected. “I’ll tell you what scares me: walking there, just the two of us, that’s what scares me. Are you going to stay silent the whole way? I can’t do that, I don’t know how. And there’s another thing I’m scared of . . . Now don’t you get mad at me, Silent Man, you just tell me, and if you don’t want to say it loudly, say it quietly, or maybe just nod, and if even a nod won’t do, then your eye, say, it’s in the shade, and you don’t need to do anything but close it, I’ll be the only one that sees it. Here’s my question: are you maybe actually a bit of a deadling? I can’t stand deadlings, you know, they give me the shakes, I can’t help it.”

  “No, Crookleg, I’m no deadling,” said Candide. “I hate them myself. And if you’re scared I’ll stay silent, I told you, it won’t be just us two. Big Fist is coming, and Tagalong, and two guys from the Settlement.”

  “I won’t go with Big Fist,” Crookleg said firmly. “Big Fist, he took my daughter, and didn’t keep her safe. Stole my daughter from him, they did. I’m not sorry he took her, I’m sorry he didn’t keep her safe. They were walking to the Settlement, the two of them, the thieves ambushed them and took my daughter, and he let them take her. I looked and looked for her afterward with your Nava, but we never did find her. No, Silent Man, best take no chances with the thieves. If you and I go to the City, the thieves will give us no peace. Now the Reeds, that’s another story, we could go to the Reeds without a second thought. We’ll go tomorrow.”

  “The day after tomorrow,” Candide said. “It’ll be you, me, Big Fist, Tagalong, and two guys from the Settlement. And we’ll make it all the way to the City.”

  “The six of us will make it,” Crookleg said confidently. “I couldn’t make it there alone, of course, but the six of us will make it. The six of us could even make it to the Devil’s Mountains, but I don’t know the way. Say, maybe that’s where we should go, the Devil’s Mountains? It’s a long way away, but the six of us will make it. Or do you not need to go to the Devil’s Mountains? Hey, Silent Man, let’s get to the City, then we’ll see. Let’s just pack us plenty of food.”

  “All right,” said Candide, getting up. “So we’re leaving for the City the day after tomorrow. I’ll go to the Settlement tomorrow, then I’ll drop by and remind you one more time.”

  “Drop on by,” said Crookleg. “I’d drop by and see you myself, except my leg, it hurts real bad. But drop on by, do. We’ll talk. I know, it’s not all folks that like talking to you, it’s very hard to talk to you, Silent Man, but me, I’m not like that. I’m used to it now, I even like it. Drop by yourself, and bring your Nava, too, she’s nice, your Nava, too bad she has no kids, but she’ll have some one day, she’s still young . . .”
r />   Outside, Candide wiped the sweat off with his hands again. The visit had a sequel. Someone giggled and coughed nearby. Candide turned around. The old man got up out of the grass, shook a gnarled finger at him, and said, “So it is the City you are going to. An interesting plan, only no one has ever made it to the City alive, and it is wrong to go. Even if your head does not belong to your body, that is something you must understand . . .”

  Candide turned right and walked down the street. The old man trailed behind him for a while, getting tangled in the grass and muttering, “If a thing is wrong, then it is always wrong, in one sense or another. For example, it is wrong to have no village head and no meetings, while on the other hand, it is right to have a village head and meetings, but again, not in every possible sense . . .” Candide walked as fast as the oppressive heat and humidity allowed, and the old man gradually fell behind.

  At the village square, Candide saw Hearer. He was walking around in circles, tottering and dragging his feet, splashing handfuls of brown grasskiller from a gigantic pot that hung at his stomach. The grass behind him was smoking and withering before their eyes. Hearer had to be avoided, and Candide tried to avoid him, but Hearer changed course so adroitly that when they collided, they were nose to nose.

  “Hey, Silent Man!” he yelled happily, hastily taking the strap off his neck and putting the pot down on the ground. “Where are you going, Silent Man? Heading home to your Nava, I’d think, oh, to be young again, but what you don’t know, Silent Man, is that your Nava’s in the field, I saw her going to the field with my own eyes, believe it or not . . . Of course, maybe she wasn’t going to the field, oh, to be young again, but your Nava, she went down that lane over there, Silent Man, and that lane doesn’t go anywhere but the field, and where else would she go, your Nava, I’d like to know? Unless she went looking for you, Silent Man . . .”

  Candide made another attempt to pass him, and somehow wound up nose to nose with him again.

  “Don’t you follow her to the field, Silent Man,” Hearer continued emphatically. “No need to follow her, there isn’t, as I’m about to kill the grass, then I’ll summon everyone here: the surveyor came by and told me that the village head ordered him to tell me to kill the grass in the square, as there’s going to be a meeting here, in the square. And when there’s a meeting, they all come in from the field, and your Nava will come in, too, if she went to the field, and where else could she have gone, going down that lane? Then again, now that I think about it, that lane doesn’t just go to the field, so maybe—”

  He suddenly paused and gave a shuddering sigh. His eyes closed, and his palms seemed to turn up of their own accord. His face spread into a saccharine smile, which turned into a teeth-baring grimace as his face drooped. A murky lilac cloud condensed around Hearer’s bald head, his lips trembled, and he began to speak quickly and distinctly, in a strange, carefully enunciated voice, with unusual intonations, in a manner that wasn’t of the village, possibly even in a foreign tongue, so Candide could only make out certain phrases: “On the distant periphery of the Southern Zones, new forces keep entering the battle . . . The enemy, pushed farther and farther south . . . A victorious march . . . The Big Soil Loosening in the Northern Zones is temporarily halted due to isolated and rare . . . New waterlogging techniques are creating vast new regions in which peace reigns and the troops can . . . In all the villages . . . Great victories . . . Toil and labor . . . New squads of helpmates . . . Peace and fusion, once and for all . . .”

  The old man, who had gotten there just in time, was standing behind Candide’s shoulder and explaining enthusiastically, “In all the villages, did you hear that? . . . That must also mean our village . . . Great victories! I keep telling them, it is wrong . . . Peace and fusion—they ought to understand . . . If it is in all the villages, that must mean our village as well . . . New squads of helpmates, did you hear that?”

  Hearer stopped talking and dropped to his haunches. The lilac cloud dissipated. The old man rapped Hearer’s bald pate impatiently.

  Hearer blinked and rubbed his ears. “Where were we?” he said. “Was there a broadcast or something? How’s the Surpassment? Is it coming to pass? . . . Silent Man, don’t you go to the field. You’d be following your Nava, I suppose, and your Nava, she . . .”

  Candide stepped over the pot of grasskiller and hastily walked away. He soon stopped being able to hear the old man—either he got into an argument with Hearer, or he got winded and stepped into a house to catch his breath and have a snack while he was at it.

  Big Fist’s house stood right on the edge of town. An unkempt old woman, either his aunt or mother, told him, snorting ill-naturedly, that Big Fist wasn’t home, Big Fist was in the field, and if he’d been home, there’d be no point looking for him in the field, but since he was in the field, then why should he, Silent Man, stand there for nothing?

  They were sowing in the field. The stuffy, stagnant air was filled with a powerful mix of odors: sweat, ferment, and rotting grain. The morning harvest lay next to the furrow in deep piles, and the grain was already starting to turn. Worker flies swirled and crowded around the pots of leaven, and in the very thick of this black, glistening maelstrom stood the village head, bending his head and squinting one eye, carefully studying a drop of serum on the nail of his thumb. This wasn’t an ordinary nail—it was flat, carefully polished, and scrubbed with the appropriate compounds until it gleamed. At the village head’s feet, the sowers were crawling single file in the furrow, at intervals of ten feet. They no longer sang, but the oohs and aahs still rang through the forest, and it was now clear that they weren’t echoes.

  Candide walked along the furrow, leaning down and looking into the lowered faces. When he found Big Fist, he touched his shoulder, and Big Fist climbed out of the furrow without asking any questions. His beard was clumped with dirt.

  “Keep your hands to yourself, fur and fuzz it,” he rasped, looking at Candide’s feet. “One guy, fur and fuzz it, he wouldn’t keep his hands to himself, so they grabbed his arms and legs and tossed him up a tree, and he’s up there still, and when they take him down, he’ll be keeping his hands to himself, fur and fuzz it—”

  “You coming?” Candide asked curtly.

  “Of course I’m coming, fur and fuzz it, all the leaven stinks to high heaven, can’t go in the house anymore, it reeks so bad, it’s no kind of life, why wouldn’t I come? The old woman can’t stand it anymore, and I don’t even want to look at it myself. But where are we going? Yesterday, Crookleg said the Reeds, but I won’t go to the Reeds, fur and fuzz it, nobody lives in the Reeds, never mind any girls, so if you’re there and you want to grab someone by the leg and toss him up a tree, then you can’t, fur and fuzz it, and I can’t do without a girl anymore, the village head will be the death of me. Look at him standing there, staring, and he’s as blind as the heel of his foot, fur and fuzz it. One guy, he used to stand around like that, then he got socked in the eye, so he doesn’t stand around anymore, fur and fuzz it, but I won’t go to the Reeds, do as you like . . .”

  “How about the City?” Candide said.

  “The City, that’s different, I’ll go to the City, especially as they say there’s no City at all, he’s lying his head off, that old fart, comes over in the morning and eats half your pot, then he runs his mouth, fur and fuzz it: this is wrong, and that is wrong . . . I ask him: who are you to be telling me what’s wrong and what’s right, fur and fuzz it? Doesn’t answer me, he doesn’t, doesn’t know himself, mumbles about some City . . .”

  “We’re leaving the day after tomorrow,” said Candide.

  “Why wait?” Big Fist said indignantly. “Why the day after tomorrow, eh? The leaven reeks to high heaven, I can’t stand sleeping at home anymore, we should go tonight instead, one guy, he used to wait and wait, then they boxed his ears, so he stopped waiting, and never waited for anything again. The old woman keeps giving me hell, I can’t live like this, fur and fuzz it! Hey, Silent Man, let’s bring the old woman al
ong, maybe the thieves would take her, I’d let them, eh?”

  “We leave the day after tomorrow,” Candide repeated patiently. “And I’m glad you prepared lots of leaven, good work. In the Settlement—”

  He didn’t finish, because someone screamed in the field. “Deadlings! Deadlings!” bawled the village head. “Women, go home! Run home!”

  Candide looked around. The deadlings were standing between the trees at the very edge of the field—there were two blue ones a short distance away, and a yellow one farther off. Their heads, with the usual round holes for eyes and black cracks for mouths, slowly rotated from side to side, and their huge arms hung whiplike along their bodies. The earth beneath their feet was already burning, white plumes of steam mingled with the bluish smoke.

  These deadlings had been around the block, and as a result, they were being extremely cautious. The yellow one’s entire right side had been eaten away by grasskiller, and both the blue ones were covered from head to toe with ferment burns. Here and there, patches of their hides had died off, popped, and hung in tatters.

  As they stood there and watched, the women ran shrieking to the village, while the men, muttering wordy threats, huddled together with pots of grasskiller at the ready. Then the village head said, “What are we waiting for, huh? Come on, what are we waiting for?” and everyone slowly moved at the deadlings, forming a chain.

  “Get their eyes!” the village head kept shouting. “Try to splash it in their eyes! Best to aim at their eyes, it’s not much use unless you hit their eyes!” The men tried to scare them off: “Ooh ooh ooh! Shoo, scram! Aah aah aah!” No one wanted to fight.

  Big Fist walked next to Candide, ripping dried mud out of his beard, shouting louder than the others but reasoning between the shouts, “No, this is pointless, we should have stayed put, they won’t fight us, they’ll run away. Just look at them! They’re all tattered, they won’t fight us, no way. Ooh ooh ooh! Boo!” The men stopped twenty feet from the deadlings. Big Fist threw a clump of earth at the yellow one, who blocked it with extraordinary agility, knocking the clump off to the side with a broad palm.