Ахмед Рушди - Quichotte - A Novel

Follow your spirit, he told himself.

Then the talking cricket, Grillo Parlante, was on the bench beside him, buzzing with annoyance. “There are persons who are undeserving of what has been done for them,” it said. “Unworthy persons. Immeritevoli. Non degni. I am sorry to discover that you yourself are a person of this sort.”

“You’re back,” Sancho said. “I thought you were gone for good.”

“Anche io,” said the cricket. “I also thought this. But your descent toward a moral abyss has obliged me to return. I am unhappy about this but eccomi qui. I am here because there are things that must now be said.”

“Spare me the lecture,” Sancho said. “I know what I did and I don’t need to be scolded. Also, you’re a cricket. I could squash you with my thumb.”

“The question to be answered,” the cricket said, “is not, what is it to be a cricket, but what is it to be a man, and have you passed that examination?”

At the Port Authority in the middle of the night a man sitting on a piss-drenched bench talking to himself was not only not unusual, it was actually conventional, so the few other nightcrawlers moving past Sancho did not even trouble to turn their heads as the thief raised his voice. “Look at me,” he said. “Flesh and blood. I live and breathe and think and feel. What more do you want? You’re the one who told me I even have an insula, and that means I’m a genuine human person. You told me that.”

“Without a conscience,” said the cricket, “you’re not even a genuine chimpanzee.”

“I’ve only been around for a short time,” Sancho said, “but in that period I have noticed that conscience isn’t a major requirement in human affairs. Ruthlessness, narcissism, dishonesty, greed, bigotry, violence, yes.”

“It would not be prudente to make such a judgment based on the TV news,” said the cricket. “Many people remain who know the difference between good and evil, and who let their conscience be their guide. This is the warning I give to you. Lascia che la tua coscienza sia la tua guida. If you choose that other path—spietatezza, narcisismo, disonestà, avidità, bigotteria, violenza—it will not go well for you. Also, to pursue a woman who is a stranger to you, be aware that that may not look like love to her. That may appear to her as molestie sessuali. As we say, lo stalking.”

“Did I mention,” Sancho said insolently, “that I don’t understand Italian? Also, I don’t speak cricket. We may be experiencing a failure to communicate.”

“Yes,” said the cricket. “Incidentalmente, regarding that matter of squashing me with your thumb, I have a brief demonstration for you. Guarda.”

A cricket can jump quite a distance when it wants to, and before Sancho could do anything about it the insect was on his head. There followed a sensation of immense pressure and pain, as if a giant invisible mountain were crushing him beneath its weight, and Sancho fell back and slipped down to the floor. The cricket jumped off and was back in its place on the bench. “Do not make the mistake,” it said, speaking perfect English, “of equating size with power. Or you might find a cricket squashing you under its thumb.”

Sancho climbed back onto the bench, twisting his neck. “That hurt,” he said.

“So the first question of Sancho,” said the cricket, “is, can he become a human being before it is too late?”

“Oh, there’s more than one question now,” Sancho grumbled, still rubbing his head, neck, and shoulders.

“The second question is, who is Sancho without Quichotte?”

“Sancho is Sancho,” Sancho mumbled, with a slight note of defiance.

“You say this,” the cricket replied. “But who is Hardy without Laurel? Who, without Groucho, are Chico and Harpo? Who is Garfunkel without Simon? Capisc’? You are now riding alone on a bicycle built for two. Not so easy! You remember how it was in the beginning? If you moved too far away from him you felt yourself breaking up? Now you want to move very far away. It remains to be seen if you can have any prolonged existence without him at such a distance. A solo career? Resta da vedere. Now I must go.”

Sancho gathered his strength for one last sally. “Anyway,” he said, “I didn’t think that the life expectancy of a cricket was this long. I Googled it. Three months. Aren’t you past your sell-by date?”

“Conscience never dies,” the cricket said. “There will always be a cricket for those who deserve, who are worthy. But for those who are non degni, no. Addio.”

ON THE BUS HE BEGAN to see things again, the things he hated to call visions. It was dark outside the windows; the streetlamps flashed by, their little lights barely touching the black heart of the night, and every so often a gas station, a highway interchange, a little burst of convenience stores. Mostly, however, nothing, except what he was seeing out there. The night sky like a huge jigsaw puzzle. The edges of the interlocking pieces visible, like a crazy grid system. And yes, there were missing pieces. Absence did not look the same as night. Night was something. Absence was nothing. In the blackness of the rushing night he saw absences passing by.

The bus itself contained more problematic sights. Was he turning into—revealing himself to be—Quichotte’s true offspring, as obsessed as he with the unreal real? If not then why were there long-fanged vampires here, and members of the tribes of the walking dead? Why men with the hairy paws of wolves protruding unshod from the cuffed bottoms of their pants? America, what happened to your optimism, your new frontiers, your simple Rockwell dreams? I’m plunging into your night, America, pushing myself deep into your heart like a knife, but the blade of my weapon is hope. Recapture yourself, America, shed these werewolf hides and zombie shells. Here comes Sancho, holding on to love.

He closed his eyes. The last time he had seen the masks slipping and the truth about people becoming visible, the broken-leashed who-let-the-dogs-out truth, he had been kicked and beaten within an inch of his life. Before I open my eyes, he begged, put your masks back on, and let’s pretend. I won’t tell anyone who you are if you’ll just let me live.

He opened his eyes. Everything was normal. The lady across the aisle, blond, Nordic, and almost two seats wide, wearing a shapeless long blue sweater over a shapeless long blue dress, was offering him a sandwich. He was grateful for this glimpse of human kindliness but he was afraid that she might be concealing a terrifying, monstrous identity beneath her close-to-bag-lady mask. He saw a tiny bright blue flame flickering in her eyeball and that unnerved him. He politely refused the sandwich.

I am new to the human race, he thought, but it seems to me that this species is mistaken, or perhaps deluded, about its own nature. It has become so accustomed to wearing its masks that it has grown blind to what lies beneath. Here in this bus I’m being given a glimpse of reality, which is more fantastic, more dreadful, more to be feared than my poor words can express. Tonight we are a capsule containing evidence of human life and intelligence, sent hurtling into the black depths of the universe to tell anyone who might be listening, here we are. This is us. We are the golden record aboard the Voyager, containing memories of the sounds of the Earth. We are the map of the Earth engraved on the Keo spacecraft, the drop of blood in the diamond. We are the Hydra-headed Representative of Planet Three, the many melded into one. Maybe we are the Last Photographs in the time capsule satellite orbiting the Earth, which, long after we have extinguished the last traces of ourselves, will tell arriving aliens who we once were.