Well, which way do I go in here? To the right, to the left? Ah yes, sorry . . . All right, then. First, about greatness, he thought, heading for a completely dark corridor. Now this is more like it—a carpet. They got that right! Only they didn’t think to put in torches. That’s always the way with them: they might put in torches, or even floodlights, but then there won’t be any carpet. Or the other way around, like now . . . So—greatness . . .
In speaking of greatness, we recall the so-called great names. Archimedes. Very good! Syracuse, “Eureka,” the bathhouse . . . bathtubs, that is. Naked. Next. Attila! The doge of Venice. I beg your pardon, Othello was the doge of Venice. Attila was the king of the Huns. Riding along. As silent and somber as the grave . . . But we don’t need to look so for examples! Peter! Greatness. Peter the Great, the First. Peter the Second and Peter the Third weren’t great. And very possibly that’s because they weren’t the first. It’s extraordinary how often “great” and “first” are effectively synonyms. Althooough. Catherine the Second, the Great. The second, but nevertheless the great. It is important to note this exception. We shall often encounter exceptions of this kind, which merely serve, as it were, to confirm the rule . . .
He firmly clasped his hands together behind his back, tucked his chin into his chest, and strode to and fro several times, each time elegantly skirting around his stool. Then he pulled his stool out with his foot, braced his fingers on the table, knitted his brows together, and looked over the heads of his audience.
The table, clad in gray zinc, was completely bare, and it stretched out in front of him like a major highway. He couldn’t see the far end of it. Down there little candle flames blinked though a yellow mist as they fluttered in the draft, and Andrei thought with fleeting annoyance that damn it all, it was indecent, at least he ought to be able to see who was down there, at the far end of the table. It was far more important to see him than these . . . But then, that’s none of my concern . . .
He examined the rows of “these” with indifferent condescension. Meekly seated along both sides of the table, with their attentive faces turned toward him—faces of stone, cast iron, copper, gold, bronze, plaster, jasper . . . and whatever other kinds of faces they could have. Silver, for instance. Or jade, say . . . Their unseeing eyes were repellent, and anyway, what could possibly be attractive about those ponderous carcasses, with their knees jutting up a meter, or even two, above the tabletop? At least they were keeping quiet and sitting still. At this moment any movement would have been unbearable. Andrei listened in delight, with a pleasure that was almost sensual, as the final drops of his brilliantly executed pause drained away.
“But what is the rule? Of what does it consist? What is the nature of its intrinsic essence, intrinsic exclusively to this and not to any other substantive predication? In this regard I’m afraid I shall have to talk about things that you are not accustomed to hearing about, things you will not find pleasant to hear . . . Greatness. Ah, how much has been said, painted, danced, and sung about it! What would the human race be without the category of greatness? A gang of naked monkeys that would make even Hnoipek look like the apex of civilization, would it not? After all, no specific, individual Hnoipek knows the proper measure of things—‘modus in rebus.’ Nature has taught him only how to digest and reproduce. Any other action performed by the aforesaid Hnoipek cannot be independently evaluated by him as being either good or bad or useful, nor as being either futile or harmful—and precisely as a consequence of this very situation, other things being equal, sooner or later each specific, individual Hnoipek finds himself facing a field court martial, and this court decides how to deal with him . . . Thus, the absence of any internal court that passes judgement is naturally compensated, I would even say fated to be compensated, by the presence of an external court, for instance a field court martial . . . However, gentlemen, a society consisting of Hnoipeks and also, without a doubt, of Skanks, is simply not capable of devoting such a huge amount of attention to the external court—it matters not if it be a military court martial or a jury court, a secret inquisition court or a lynching court, a Vehmic court or a so-called honor court. Not to mention comrades’ courts and other such instances . . . It became necessary to find a form for organizing the chaos consisting of the sexual and digestive organs of both Hnoipeks and Skanks, a form for this shambolic universal bedlam, such that at least some of the functions of the aforementioned external courts could be transferred to an internal court. And that was when the category of greatness became both necessary and serviceable! The point being, gentlemen, that in the vast and entirely amorphous horde of Hnoipeks, in the vast and even more amorphous horde of Skanks, from time to time individuals appear for whom the meaning of life is by no means primarily or entirely limited to the digestive and sexual functions. There is, if you will, a third need! This individual is not content merely to digest something and derive pleasure from the physical charms of others. In addition to this, you see, he wants to create something remarkable and out of the ordinary, something that never existed before. For example, some multileveled or, let’s say, hierarchical structure. Or some kind of wild mountain goat on a wall. With balls. Or he wants to write a myth about Aphrodite . . . What the hell he needs all this for, he himself doesn’t really understand. And indeed, what would Hnoipek want with Aphrodite born of the sea foam, or that wild mountain goat on a wall. With balls. Hypotheses do exist, of course—there are quite a few of them! After all, a wild mountain goat is a great deal of meat, isn’t it? I won’t even go into the subject of Aphrodite. However, if we are to be entirely honest and frank, the origin of this third need remains a mystery for our materialistic science as yet. But at the present moment this should not be of any interest to us. What is important to us at the present moment, my friends? The sudden appearance in the gray common herd of an individual who is not content with crud like oatmeal porridge or a filthy Skank whose legs are a mass of red blotches; he’s not content with the universally accessible realism but starts idealizing and abstracting, the lousy pest; he starts mentally transforming oatmeal porridge into a juicy wild mountain goat covered in garlic sauce and transforming a Skank into a voluptuous, well-washed creature with hips—she came out of the ocean, he says. Out of the water . . . Why, heavens above! A man like that is invaluable! A man like that should be set upon a high place and the Hnoipeks and Skanks should be led out to him by the battalion, in order to teach the parasites to know their place. Hey there, you crummy bastards, can you do what he can? Hey there, you lousy redheaded jerk, can you paint a burger that looks so juicy, it makes you want to gobble it down on the spot? Or make up a little joke at least? You can’t? Then what makes you think you can set yourself on the same level as him? Go and work, work, work your asses off. Catch fish, gather mussels!”
Andrei pushed himself back from the table and walked to and fro again, exultantly rubbing his hands together. It had all turned out just great. Magnificent! Without any synopses. And all these tedious old fogies had listened with bated breath. Not a single one had moved. Oh yeah, that’s me! Of course, I’m not Katzman, I keep quiet most of the time, but if they wind me up, if they ask me, dammit . . .
Uh oh, looks like someone else has started up down there at the invisible end of the table. Some Jew or other. Maybe Katzman crept in after all? Well, we’ll see who comes off best.
“And so, greatness as a category arose out of creativity, for only he who creates is great, only he who creates something new, previously unheard of. But let us ask ourselves, dear sirs: In that case who’s going to stick their noses in the shit? Who’s going to say to them, where are you going, scumbag, who do you think you are? Who will be, so to speak, the creative individual’s high priest?—I’m not afraid to use that term. The one who will be his priest, dearest gentlemen, is the individual who can’t paint the aforementioned burger or Aphrodite, say, but no way does he want to gather mussels—the creative organizer, the creative liner-up in ranks, the creative extorter of gifts and lik
ewise distributor thereof! And this brings us face-to-face with the question of the role of God and the Devil in history. A question that is, quite frankly, a highly complex, knotty tangle, a question concerning which everyone has piled lie upon lie . . . After all, even a babe in arms with no religion knows that God is a good person, and the Devil, conversely, is a bad person. But this is driveling gibberish, gentlemen! What do we really know about them? That God set about chaos and organized it, while the Devil, on the contrary, strives every day and every hour to demolish this organization, this structure, and return it to chaos. This is true, is it not? But on the other hand, the whole of history teaches us that man as an individual aspires precisely to chaos. He wants to exist on his own terms. He wants to do what he feels like doing. He constantly clamors about how he is free from nature. And we don’t have to look far for examples—take our notorious Hnoipek yet again! You understand, I hope, what I’m driving at? What, let me ask you, has been the stock-in-trade of the most savage tyrants throughout history? They have all, without exception, striven to take the aforementioned chaos, intrinsic to man, that selfsame chaotic, amorphous hnoipekoskankness, and arrange it in decorous order, organize it, institutionalize it, neatly line it up—preferably in a single column—aim it at a single point, and generally clamp down on it. Or, to put it more simply, to do it in. And by the way, as a general rule, they have succeeded! Although, it’s true, not for very long, and only at the cost of spilling a lot of blood. So I ask you: Who is really the good person here? The one who aspires to allow the free play of chaos—a.k.a. freedom, equality, and brotherhood—or the one who aspires to reduce this hnoipekoskankness (read as ‘social entropy’!) to the minimum? Who? And that’s the whole point!”
Now that was a fine passage . . . Lean and precise, but at the same time not without a certain passion . . . Just what is he droning about, down there at the other end? Son of a bitch, what a rude bastard! Interfering with my work, and basically—
Andrei suddenly noticed with an ominous feeling that several heads in the neat rows of listeners were turned with their backs toward him. He looked more closely. There was no doubt about it—the backs of several heads. One, two . . . six of them! He cleared his throat as forcefully as he could and gravely rapped his knuckles on the zinc-clad tabletop. It didn’t do any good. Well, just you wait, he thought menacingly. I’ll get you now! What would that be in Latin?
“Quos ego!” he barked. “It seems like you’ve gotten it into your heads that you mean something? We’re made of stone, and you’re just putrefying flesh? We’re from everlasting to everlasting, and you’re ephemeral trash? Here, take that!” He gave them the fig sign. “Who remembers you anyway? You were all erected in memory of some jerks or other who were forgotten long ago . . . Archimedes—big deal! Sure, I know there was someone called that who ran naked through the streets—absolutely shameless . . . And so what? At the appropriate level of civilization they would have ripped his balls off for that. To teach him not to run around that way. ‘Eureka’—know what I mean? Or that Peter the Great. So, OK, he was the czar, the Emperor of All Russia . . . We’ve seen plenty of his kind. But what was his surname? Eh? You don’t know? All those monuments that have been erected! All those works that have been written! But just ask a student at his examination—you’ll be lucky if one out of ten remembers what his surname was. That’s ‘great’ for you! And it’s the same with all of you, isn’t it? Either no one remembers you at all, they just gape and bat their eyelids, or, let’s say, they do remember the first name but not the surname. And vice versa too: they remember the surname—the Kalinga Prize—but as for the first name . . . Who gives a damn about the first name? Who was he anyway? Maybe he was some kind of writer, or maybe he speculated in wool . . . Who wants to know, anyway, judge for yourself. Remembering all of you would make a man forget the price of vodka.”
Now he could see the backs of more than ten heads in front of him. It was offensive. And down at the other end Katzman was getting louder and louder, pushier and pushier, but his droning was still as unintelligible as ever.
“A lure!” Andrei yelled with all his might. “That’s what your much-vaunted greatness is! A lure! Hnoipek looks at you and thinks, well, would you ever, what tremendous people have lived in the world. Right, I’ll give up drinking, I’ll give up smoking, I’ll stop tumbling my Skank around in the bushes, I’ll go and join a library, and I’ll achieve all this too . . . That is, that’s what he’s supposed to think! But that’s not what he really thinks when he looks at you, no way! And if they don’t post sentries around you and fence you in, he’ll crap great big heaps all around you, write words on you with chalk, and go back to his Skank, feeling very pleased with himself. So much for your educational function! So much for the memory of mankind! And what the hell would Hnoipek want with memory anyway? Why the hell should he remember you, pray tell? Admittedly, there have been times when remembering all of you was considered good form. So what could people do—they committed you to memory. Alexander the Great, the king of Macedonia, that is, born on this date, died on that date. A conqueror. Bucephalus. ‘Countess, your Bucephalus is rather tired, and by the way, how would you like to sleep with me?’ Polite, eloquent, genteel . . . You have to cram stuff at school now too, of course. Born on this date, died on that date, member of the ruling oligarchical clique. Exploiter. And it’s absolutely impossible to understand who needs all that. We just used to pass the exam then wash our hands of the whole business. ‘Alexander the Great was a great general too, but why go smashing stools?’ That was this film. Chapaev. Have you seen it? ‘My brother Mika’s dying, he’s asking for fish broth . . .’ And that’s all your Alexander the Great is good for.”
Andrei stopped talking. All this talk was pointless. No one was listening to him. Now the backs of all the heads were turned toward him—cast iron, stone, iron, jade . . . shaved, bald, curly, with little braids, chipped and dented, or else completely concealed under chain mail, helmets, three-cornered hats. They don’t like it, he thought. The truth is hard to swallow. They’re used to anthems and odes. Exegi monumentum . . . But what did I say that was so upsetting? Well, of course, I didn’t lie, I didn’t grovel to you—I just said what I thought. I’ve got nothing against greatness. Pushkin. Lenin. Einstein . . . I don’t like idolatry. Deeds should be worshipped, not statues. And maybe not even deeds should be worshipped. Because everyone only does what he’s capable of doing. One makes a revolution, another makes a tin whistle. Maybe I only have enough strength for a tin whistle—so now does that mean I’m shit?
But the voice from behind the yellow fog kept droning on, and now he could hear separate words: “. . . unprecedented and exceptional . . . from a catastrophic situation . . . only you . . . merits eternal gratitude and eternal glory . . .” Now that’s what I really can’t stand, thought Andrei. I absolutely hate it when someone juggles with eternalities. Brothers for all eternity. Eternal friendship. Together for eternity. Eternal glory . . . Where do they get all that from? What can they see that’s eternal?
“Stop lying!” he shouted down the table. “Have you no shame?”
No one took any notice of him. He turned around and plodded back the way he came, feeling the draft chilling him to the bone—the stinking draft, saturated with the fetid vapors of the crypt, rust and tarnished copper . . . It wasn’t Izya jabbering there, was it, he listlessly thought. Izya has never spoken words like that in his entire life. I shouldn’t have blamed him . . . I shouldn’t have come here. Why the hell did I come here anyway? Probably I thought I’d understood something. After all, I’m over thirty now, it’s time to be figuring out what’s what. What sort of crazy idea is that—trying to persuade monuments that no one needs them? You might as well try to persuade people that no one needs them . . . Maybe that’s the way it is, but who’s going to believe it?
Something’s happened to me in the last few years, he thought. I’ve lost something . . . I’ve lost my sense of a goal, that’s what. About five y
ears ago, I knew for certain why I had to take one course of action or another. But now—I don’t know. I know that Hnoipek should be put up against the wall, but I don’t understand what for. I mean, I understand that it would make my job a whole lot easier, but is that all it’s needed for—to make my job easier? I’m the only one who needs that. For myself. That’s probably right. No one else is going to live my life for me, I’ll have to take care of that for myself. But it’s boring, depressing, I don’t have the strength . . . And I don’t have any choice either, he thought. That’s what I’ve understood. A man can’t do anything; he doesn’t know how to do anything. The only thing he can do and knows how to do is live for himself. He even gritted his teeth at the hopeless clarity and certitude of this thought.
Walking out of the crypt into the shade of the columns, he screwed up his eyes. The yellow, sweltering square, studded with empty pediments, lay stretched out before him. The heat from it surged over him, like a blast from a furnace. Heat, thirst, exhaustion . . . This was the world in which he had to live and also, therefore, to act.
Izya was sleeping, stretched out on the stone slabs in the shade, with his forehead nestling in an open book. A jagged tear gaped open in the back of his trousers and his feet in down-at-heel shoes were unnaturally turned out. And in addition he stank from a mile away. The Mute was right there—squatting on his haunches with his eyes closed, leaning back against a column, with the automatic lying on his knees.