Hermit and Six Toes: Part VI

In which Six Toes learns about love and observes the gods.  Written by Victor Pelevin.  Translated from the Russian by A. Baylin.  (Beginning here.)
  May 15, 2004

“You know everything, Hermit.  Tell me about love.”

“I wonder where you have picked up that word,” said Hermit.

“When they kicked me out of the socium somebody asked me if I loved as I was prescribed.  I said I didn't know.  Then One Eye told you that she loved you very much, and you replied that you loved her.”

“I see.  You know, I'm not sure if I can explain this.  Perhaps an example will help.  Imagine that you have fallen into a cask of water and are now drowning.  Can you see that?”

“Yeah.”

“Imagine that you broke the surface for a second, saw the light, gulped some air, and then something touched your hands.  You have grabbed onto this something and are holding on to it.  Now, if life is drowning—which it is—then love is what keeps you afloat.”

“Are you talking about loving the things we're prescribed to love?”

“It doesn't matter what things.  Although, come to think of it, loving what's prescribed can be done just fine underwater.  You can love anything.  It makes no difference what you grasp as long as it holds your weight.  Loving another person is the worst: they can always withdraw their hand.  Basically, love is the reason one finds himself where he is, with the possible exception of the dead.  Although—”

“I don't think I have ever loved anything,” interrupted Six Toes.

“Sure you have.  Remember how you spent a half a day crying, thinking of the one who waved at you as you were falling off the wall?  That was love.  You don't even know why he did it.  Perhaps he believed he was mocking you in a particularly cruel way.  I personally think that was the case.  So you reacted very foolishly, but at the same time beyond reproach.  Love gives meaning to our actions even though, in reality, they are meaningless.”

“So love misleads us?  Is it like a dream?”

“No.  Love is like love; a dream's a dream.  Whatever you do, you it do for love.  Otherwise you find yourself sitting on the ground and howling in terror, or in disgust.”

“But there are those who do things out of anything but love.”

“Forget about them.  Their doing comes to nothing.”

“Do you love, Hermit?”

“I do.”

“What do you love?”

“I don't know.  Something that appears to me on occasion.  It can be a thought, or a nut, or the wind.  The important thing is that I always recognize it under any guise and I welcome it with the best part of myself.”

“What's your best part?”

“Calmness.”

“You mean you're usually not calm?”

“No.  I am always calm.  And that's the best part of me, and that's what I use to welcome the thing that I love.”

“What do you think is my best part?”

“Yours?  Maybe sitting quietly in the corner without pestering people with questions.”

“Really?”

“I don't know.  Jokes aside, you can find out what your best part is by noticing what you use to welcome the things that you love.  What did you feel when you were thinking of the person who waved at you?”

“I felt sad.”

“Then sadness is your best part, and you will always welcome the things you love with it.”

Hermit stopped to listen and turned to one side.  “Do you want to see gods?” he asked suddenly.

“Not now, please!” Six Toes cried, alarmed.

“Oh, don't worry, they're dumb.  Look, there they are.”

Two giant creatures were walking briskly down the aisle along the conveyor belt.  They were incredibly tall, so that their heads disappeared somewhere in the dusk under the ceiling.  A third, similar creature followed them.  It was both shorter and thicker than the other two, and it carried in its hand a vessel shaped like a truncated cone with the tapered end turned to the ground.  The first two creatures stopped not too far from Hermit's and Six Toes' hiding place and began to make low, rumbling sounds (“This is how they talk,” Six Toes thought).  The third creature went up to the wall and put down the vessel.  It dipped a pole topped with a brush into the vessel and drew a fresh dirty grey stripe across an old dirty grey wall.  A strange smell wafted through the air.

“You told me you knew their language,” Six Toes said in a barely audible whisper.  “What are they saying?”

“Those two?  Let's see.  The first one is saying 'I wanna eat.'  The second one is saying 'Stay away from Natasha.'”

“What's 'Natasha?'”

“A country.”

“Er…  What does the first one want to eat?”

“Natasha, of course,” Hermit said after a brief pause.

“How is he going to eat a country?”

“Well, they're gods, aren't they?”

“The fat one over there, what is she saying?”

“She's not saying anything; she's singing.  It's a song about her wanting to turn into a weeping willow after she dies.  By the way, that's my favorite divine song.  I'll sing it for you sometime.  I wish I knew what a willow was?”

“Gods die?”

“Of course.  That's their main business.”

The two creatures moved on.  “So majestic!” Six Toes thought in awe.  The gods' heavy footsteps and rumbling voices died away in the distance; silence fell.  Dust swirled in the draft blowing above the floor tiles, and Six Toes imagined that he was looking from an incredibly tall mountain down over a strange stony desert, where for millions of years nothing had changed: the same wind blew and carried with it the remnants of unknown lives that from a distance looked like sticks, scraps of paper, wood chips, and other detritus.  “Some day someone will look down from this spot,” reflected Six Toes, “and he will think of me without even realizing that it's me he is thinking of.  Just like right now I am thinking about someone who had felt the same as I, God knows how long ago.  The world is full of sadness—”

“But there's something in it that justifies even the saddest of lives,” Hermit added suddenly.

“I wish to be a weeping wiiiillow when I diiiie,” the fat goddess sang quietly by a bucket filled with paint, and Six Toes, having rested his head on his elbow, felt sadness, while Hermit stayed perfectly calm as he stared into the void as if over the heads of a vast invisible crowd.

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