Arkady Strugatsky - Tale of the Troika

“I doubt it,” I said.

“You see,” Eddie said, “the theory of positive humanization states that any creature that has at least an iota of reason can be made into a decent creature. It’s another matter that every case needs special methods. So we’ll look for the right approach. Everything will be all right.”

We went out into the street. Snowman Fedya was waiting for us. He got up from the bench and the three of us went down First of May Street arm in arm.

“Was it difficult?” Fedya asked.

“Terrible,” said Eddie. “I’m tired of talking, tired of listening, and on top of that, I think I’ve become decidedly stupider. Fedya, is it noticeable that I’m stupider?”

“Not yet,” Fedya replied shyly. “It’s usually apparent an hour or so later.”

I said: “I’m hungry. I want to forget. Let’s go somewhere and forget. Drink some wine. Have some ice cream.”

Eddie was all for it, and Fedya had no objections, but he did apologize for not drinking wine and having no taste for ice cream.

The streets were crowded, but there was nobody just hanging around the way they do on summer evenings in big cities. The descendants of Oleg’s armies and Peter’s grenadiers sat quietly and culturedly on their stoops shelling seeds in silence. They ate watermelon seeds, sunflower seeds, and pumpkin seeds. They sat on carved stoops with patterns, carved ones with figures, and carved ones with balustrades or on stoops made of simple smooth boards. But they were marvelous stoops, and some were of museum quality, hundreds of years old; those had been taken under government custody and therefore disfigured by metal supports. Somewhere in the background an accordion was playing.

Eddie, looking around with interest, was asking Fedya about life in the mountains. Fedya had developed an abiding love for Eddie and answered readily.

“The worst thing,” Fedya was saying, “are the mountain climbers with guitars. You can’t imagine how terrible it is, Eddie, when in your own quiet mountains, where the only sound comes from avalanches, and then only occasionally, you suddenly hear someone start strumming away and singing about some guy whose love is lost in the misty mountains. It’s a disaster, Eddie. Some of us get sick from this, and the weaker ones actually die.”

“At home I have a clavichord,” he continued dreamily. “Up on the peak I have a clavichord, on top of the glacier. I like to play it on moonlit nights, when it’s quiet and there’s no wind at all. Then the dogs in the valley can hear me and they howl along. Really, Eddie, tears come to my eyes when I think how beautiful it is and how sad. The moon, the music resounding in the distance, and the dogs howling, far far away.”

“How do your friends feel about that?” Eddie asked.

“They’re not there at that time of night. Only one boy usually stays, but he doesn’t disturb me. He’s lame. But this must be boring you.”

“On the contrary, it’s fascinating.”

“No. But you might like to know where I got the clavichord. Can you imagine, it was brought up by mountain climbers. They were setting some record or other, and they had to bring a clavichord up there. We’ve got a lot of strange things up on the peak. Some guy will decide to climb up there on a motorcycle—so we have a motorcycle, even if it’s damaged. We’ve got guitars, bicycles, various statues, antiaircraft guns. One record nut decided to climb to the top in a tractor, but he couldn’t find one. So he tried with a steamroller. You should have seen him struggling. So much effort! But he failed. He couldn’t get it up to the snow level. Five or ten more yards, and we would have had a steamroller, too. Ah, here’s Gabby, I’ll introduce you.”

We had reached a café. On the brightly lit steps of the imposing stone entrance, right by the turnstile, Gabby the Bedbug was struggling. He was dying to get in, but the doorman would not let him. Gabby was having a fit, and consequently exuding an odor strongly reminiscent of Courvoisier cognac. Fedya quickly introduced us, put Gabby in a matchbox, and ordered him to sit still and be quiet. And the bedbug was quiet, but when we got into the café and sat down at an empty table, he lounged in his chair and beat his fist on the table, demanding a waiter. Naturally, he himself could not eat or drink anything in a café, but he demanded justice and a complete correspondence between the work of the waiters’ brigade and the lofty calling that the brigade was striving for. Besides, he was obviously showing off for Eddie. He already knew that Eddie had come to Tmuskorpion specifically to see him and offer him employment. Eddie and I ordered a home-style omelet, shrimp salad, and a bottle of dry wine. They knew Fedya well in the café, and they brought him a plate of grated raw potatoes, carrot tops, and cabbage stumps. Gabby got a plate of stuffed tomatoes, which he had ordered on principle.

Having eaten the salad, I realized that I was insulted and injured, dog-tired, that my tongue refused to function, and that I had no desire to do anything. Besides that, I was jumpy, because in the crowd I could hear the squeaky “I’ll wash your feet and drink the water!” and “the thinker is insade it!” But old Gabby was in fine fettle and was enjoying showing Eddie his philosophical turn of mind, independent opinions, and tendency to universalize.

“What senseless and unpleasant creatures!” he said, looking around the café with a superior air. “Truly, only such clumsy, cud-chewing animals are capable of creating the myth, born out of their inferiority complex, that they are the rulers of the earth. I ask you: How did this myth come about? For instance, we insects consider ourselves the rulers of the earth, and rightly so. We are numerous and ubiquitous, we multiply plentifully but do not waste precious time on senseless worries about posterity. We have sensory organs that you humans can only dream of. We can fall into anabiosis for centuries without any harm to ourselves. The more intelligent representatives of our class are famous as great mathematicians, architects, and sociologists. We have discovered the ideal system of society, we control gigantic territories, and we establish ourselves anywhere we want. Let us put the question this way: What can you humans—by the way, the most highly developed of the mammals—what can you do that we might want to do but can’t? You brag a lot about your ability to create tools and use them. Forgive me, but that is laughable! You’re like cripples who brag about their crutches. You build yourselves dwellings, tortuously, with such expenditures of effort, using unnatural forces like fire and steam, you’ve been building them for thousands of years, and never the same way twice, and still you can’t find a comfortable and rational form of dwelling. Even the pathetic ants, whom I truly despise for their crudeness and glorification of brute strength, solved that simple problem a hundred million years ago—and solved it once and for all. You brag that you are constantly developing, and without limit. We can only laugh. You are searching for something that has been found, patented, and in use since time immemorial, namely: a rational social order and a meaningful existence.”

Eddie was listening with professional attention, and Fedya, chewing on a cabbage stump with his excellent teeth, spoke:

“I’m a weak dialectician, of course, but I was brought up to believe that the human mind is nature’s greatest achievement. We in the mountains are used to fearing human wisdom and bowing down before it, and now that I have been educated to a certain degree, I never cease being amazed by the boldness and cleverness with which man has created and continues to create a second nature. The human mind is … is …” He shook his head and stopped talking.