The Goatibex Constellation

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

A certain Moscow publishing house once asked me to write an introduction for the Persian language edition of my short stories. I got to work on it, and what emerged was a story equal in length to those it was supposed to preface.

I don’t know how this happened, though I may have been somewhat influenced by the fact that the introduction was to be paid for in the usual fashion — that is, according to the number of pages.

“A strange introduction,” said the editorial assistant despondently as he took the manuscript in hand and began counting the pages. “Why, this is as much as a tenth of the whole book.”

“There’s a way to get around that,” I suggested.

“How?” he asked, brightening.

“What’s to prevent your increasing the overall size of the book, thus cutting down on the relative size of the introduction?”

“No,” he replied, for some reason offended by my proposal, “our Persian readers would never forgive us for that.”

“Well, suit yourself,” I said, and without further delay set off for the accounting office to collect my fee for the introduction.

Not long ago I learned that the same publishing house was planning to bring out another foreign-language edition of my book. When I went to volunteer my services as author of the introduction, however, I was told that the rumors regarding the publication of my book were premature — from which I can only conclude that there must also be such a thing as mature rumors. I have since been informed by certain other sources that the book is actually going to be published, but for the time being the whole business remains a tightly guarded editorial secret.

I hope that the introduction to the American edition of The Goatibex Constellation will be considerably shorter than the Persian one, all the more so since it’s length has not, as far as I know, been stipulated by the publisher.

And so, without further ado, what is a goatibex?

In one of our Abkhazian newspapers I once happened to read an article about a man who had crossed a female goat with a male ibex and produced a new animal which he called a goatibex. (Abkhazia, by the way, is my native land; it is situated on the Black Sea coast and is one of the most charming of our Soviet autonomous republics.)

According to the article, the goatibex was in good health and apparently was quite eager to overtake and even surpass the population figures of the more traditional breeds of livestock. Taking into account this and certain other unique characteristics of the hybrid (its high meat and wool yield, for example), the author of the article predicted an unprecedented leap in livestock production, all the more so since there could be no doubt as to the goatibex’s jumping ability — the latter having been inherited from his male parent, the mountain-dwelling ibex.

Along with certain other digressions from the main theme, my story contains several reminiscences of my grandfather’s house and an account of one of my childhood adventures. Why have I included these? Because in the course of writing about the mannequins of goatibexation I began to feel the need for a breath of fresh air. This need was a purely subjective one, but I decided to justify it artistically by letting these childhood memories intrude upon the main theme and overwhelm it with their poetic freshness and vigor.

The creative process is, of course, an unexplained phenomenon, and although we are able to separate some of the individual strands entering into the web of causality, these strands, taken by themselves, represent only a fraction of the whole.

On the subject of humor I also have a number of observations which I am ready to pass on free of charge. I have, to be sure, already shared these observations with my Persian readers, but after all, is it not the author’s right and even obligation to seek out the widest possible audience for his views?

In order to attain a genuine sense of humor I believe one has to descend to the depths of pessimism. And only when one has peered into the murky abyss and convinced oneself that here too there is nothing, can one make one’s way haltingly back from the abyss. The traces of this return trip will be humor— genuine humor.

Humor possesses one modest but undisputed virtue: it is always truthful. In fact, one can even go so far as to say that all humor is humorous precisely because it is truthful. Not every truth is humorous, of course, but all humor is truthful.

It is with this dubious aphorism that I should like to conclude my introduction to the American edition of The Goatibex Constellation.