The Slynx

ZHIVETE

Benedikt is moody, he knows that himself. No two days are ever the same. Some mornings he's full of boundless energy, every muscle is ready to spring into action. Feels like turning half the world upside down. That's when he wants to work with his hands. In that kind of mood you look for something to do: chop or plane logs, or fix something at home, make an ax or a jug, maybe hollow out a bucket. Once, in a mood like that he smoothed out a dozen planks for the roof. Honest! A whole dozen! Well, maybe not a dozen, but three for sure. That's a lot too. At times like that you feel like singing. Loud.

Sometimes the doldrums get him. Usually in the evening. Especially in autumn, and almost every day in winter. But it happens in summer too.

In the evening, when the sun starts to set beyond the wavy fields, beyond the blue mountains, beyond the far woods where no one walks-as soon as the long shadows fall and the silence comes down, that's when it happens. You're sitting on the porch, smoking, arguing with your neighbors. Gnats are swarming in the air. All the birds, all the forest scaries have settled down. Like someone walked by and wagged a finger at them. Then they start up again suddenly, but with different voices, night voices. From the groves you hear a rustling, a coo-booing, a squelching, and sometimes something whirtles or meows in a nasty way.

The neighbors say: "It's a mermaid, damn it."

And others: "Yeah, sure. It's a woodsucker, she has a nest over there."

Then some stupid woman will croak: "Maybe it's a blindlie bird."

Everyone yells at her: "What an idiot! A blindlie. A blindlie doesn't have a voice, that's why he's a blindlie!"

The silly woman opens her mouth again: "Maybe he's blind, but he has a voice like a horn, I can hear it, I'm not deaf."

Everyone: "He can see blind better than you can! He sees what he needs to see! His claws are where he's strong, not his voice!"

The man of the house-the woman's husband-says to her: "All right, woman, you've had your gabble-go on, now. Go cook something. You've started thinking too much."

Everything's like always: people are chattering, speaking their minds, discussifying about nature. And Benedikt suddenly feels queasy. Like somewhere here, in the middle, heartburn is fixing to bubble up hot. Around it, like a ring, there's a kind of cold. And there's an unease in his back. And a pulling on his ears. And his spit's bitter.

If you complain, they say: "That's the Slynx staring at your back."

No. Not likely. Couldn't be. It's something slinking around on the inside, or maybe, like Nikita Ivanich says, it's feelosophy.

You look at people-men, women-like you're seeing them for the first time, like you're a different creature, or you just came out of the forest, or the other way around, you just walked into the forest. And everything seems strange, sad and strange. Take that woman. You think: What's she for? She's got cheeks, a stomach, she bats her eyes, she's talking about something. Turning her head, smacking her lips, and what's inside her? A meaty darkness, squeaking bones, strings of guts, and nothing else. She laughs, she's scared, she frowns-but does she really have any feelings? Thoughts? What if she's just pretending to be a woman and she's really a swamp monster? Like the ones that hoot in the bushes, crackle the old leaves, creak the branches, but never show themselves. What if you went over to check? You could set your fingers like horns and poke her in the eyes. What would happen? Plunk. She'd fall, right?

You wouldn't get away without a fuss, the men would give you a thrashing, they wouldn't care that you're a government Scribe, an official Golubchik-they'd beat you black and blue, and if some Lesser Murza started asking questions, they'd swear up and down that that's how you were, that your blue face was just a plain old Consequence, that your parents had the same ugly mugs, and your grandmother too.

Today, for instance, toward evening, right at work, who knows why, feelosophy suddenly churned up inside Benedikt. Dimly, like a shadow under the water, something in his heart started to turn, to torment and call him. But where? Hard to say. There was a tingling in his back, and he felt tears rise. It was either like you were fixing to get good and mad, or wanted to fly. Or get married.

He couldn't get the Gingerbread Man out of his head. What a scary story. He sang and sang… He ran and he ran and he ran… You can't catch him, he's the Gingerbread Man… And then he got caught. Snap.

It was Varvara Lukinishna with all her vague talk too. She's gotta know what "steed" means. Discontent, that one. Who knows what Fyodor Kuzmich, Glorybe, might do in poems. That's what poems are for, so you don't understand a thing. And if Fyodor Kuzmich, Glorybe, is speaking in different voices, well, that's just… Everybody does that. Take Benedikt: this morning he left home, walking in the sunshine, the snow squeaking underfoot, lots of pleasant thoughts swirling in his head, not a care in the world. But now, with night coming, it was like he was someone else: weak, scared, and it was so dark out that going out on the street was like wearing a boot over your head-but he had to. And Olenka wasn't there, and it was even more miserable in the izba without her.

The clapper clunked: work's over.

The Golubchiks jumped up, tossed their writing sticks down, pinched the candle flames, hurried to pull on their coats and crowded around the door. Jackal Demianich, a Lesser Murza, made the rounds of the tables, put the finished scrolls in a box, stuffed the empty ink pots in a basket, and wiped the writing sticks with a rag. He grumbled that we're using up a lot of rusht, that you can't keep enough sticks on hand, and that's what a Murza does, he grumbles and gripes at people, and Jackal Demianich is given that power over us because he's a Veteran of the Ice Battle. What sort of Battle it was, and when, and just who Jackal Demianich fought, and whether he struck down a lot of Golubchiks with a cudgel or a bludgeon, we don't know, and don't want to know-and even if someone told us we'd forget.

So the day's over, it's gone, burned itself out. And night has fallen on the town, and Olenka sweetie disappeared somewhere in the winding streets, in the snowy expanses, like a vision, and his fleeting friend the Gingerbread Man was gobbled up, and now Benedikt hurried home, making his way over the hills and drifts, tripping and falling, shoveling the snow with his sleeve, and feeling a path through the winter, parting the winter with his hands.

What is winter, after all? What is it? It's when you come into the izba from the cold, stomping your felt boots to knock off the snow, shaking it off your coat and slapping your frozen hat against the door jamb; you turn your head, and your whole cheek listens to the warmth of the stove, to the weak current from the room. Has the stove gone out? God forbid. Undressing, you go all wobbly in the warmth, like you're thanking someone; you hurry to blow on the fire, to feed it with old, dry rusht, with wood chips and sticks, you pull the still warm pot of mouse soup out of the swaddle of rags. Fumbling in the hiding space behind the stove, you grab the bundle with the spoon and fork and feel grateful: everything's in order, they didn't steal it, there weren't any thieves, and if there were, they didn't find anything.

You gulp down the usual thin soup, spitting the claws out into your palm, and start thinking, looking at the feeble, bluish flame of the candle, listening to the scuttering and scurrying under the floor, the crackle in the stove, the wail just outside the window, begging to be let in; something white, heavy, cold, unseen. You suddenly imagine your izba far off and tiny, like you're looking down at it from a treetop, and you imagine the whole town from afar, like it was dropped in a snowdrift, and the empty fields around, where the blizzard rages in white columns like someone being dragged under the arms with his head arched back. You imagine the northern forests, deserted, dark, impassable; the branches rock in the northern trees, and on the branches, swaying up and down, is the invisible Slynx-it kneads its paws, stretches its neck, presses its invisible ears back against its flat, invisible head, and it cries a hungry cry, and reaches, reaches for the hearth, for the warm blood pounding in people's necks: SSSLYYYNNXXX!

Fear touches your heart like a cold draft or a small paw, and you shudder, shake yourself and look around, as if you don't know who or where you are. Who am I?

Who am I?

Ay. Ugh. This is me. I just let things get out of hand for a moment, I almost dropped myself, just barely caught hold… Ugh… That's what it does, that Slynx, that's what it does with you even from afar, it sniffs you out, senses you, fumbles for you through the distance, through the snowstorm, through the fat log walls. And what if it happened to be nearby?

No, no, I shouldn't think about it, to hell with it, scare it off, I should start laughing or dance a squatting dance like on the May holidays. Sing a loud, happy song.

Ay, tra-la-la, tra-la-la. Ay, tra-la-la-la la! Tra la-la la la! Faldi-rol-fiddle dee faddle. Hey diddle diddle dum dee!

There you go. That's better… Fyodor Kuzmich, Glorybe, teaches us that art elevates us. But art for art's sake-that's no good, he says. Art should be connected to life. "My life, or are you just a dream?…" Maybe… I don't know.

What do we really know about life? Even if you think hard about it. Who told it to be? Life, that is. Why does the sun roll across the sky, why does the mouse scuttle and scurry, the tree stretch upward, the mermaid splash in the river, the wind smell of flowers? Why do people hit each other over the head with sticks? Why is it that sometimes you don't feel like hitting, but want to go off somewhere in the summer, without roads, without paths, toward the sunrise, where the greengrass grows all around, shoulder high, where the blue rivers play, and above the rivers the golden flies swarm, the branches of unknown trees hang down to the water, and on those branches, white as white can be, sits the Princess Bird. And her eyes take up half her face, and her mouth is human, red. And she's so beautiful, that fancy Princess Bird, that she can't get over herself. Her body's covered with lavish, delicate white feathers, and she's got a tail seven yards wide that hangs like a braided net, like lacy goosefoot. The Princess Bird turns her head this way and that, admiring herself, kissing her lovely self all over. And no one in his life has ever been harmed by that white bird. And no one ever will be. Amen.