The Great Wall of China Page 16

  ADVOCATES

  I WAS not at all certain whether I had any advocates, I could not find out anything definite about it, every face was unfriendly, most people who came towards me and whom I kept meeting in the corridors looked like fat old women; they had huge blue and white striped aprons covering their entire bodies, kept stroking their stomachs and turning awkwardly to and fro. I could not even find out whether we were in a lawcourt. Some facts spoke for it, others against. What reminded me of a lawcourt more than all the details was a droning noise which could be heard incessantly in the distance; one could not tell from which direction it came, it filled every room to such an extent that one could assume it came from everywhere or, what seemed more likely, that just the place where one happened to be standing was the very place where the droning originated, but this was doubtless an illusion, for it came from a distance. These corridors, narrow and austerely vaulted, turning in gradual curves with high, sparsely decorated doors, seemed in fact to have been designed for profound silence; they were the corridors of a museum or a library. Yet if it were not a lawcourt, why was I searching for an advocate here? Because I was searching for an advocate everywhere, he is needed everywhere, if anything less in court than elsewhere, for a court passes judgement according to the law; if one were to assume that this was being done unfairly or frivolously, then life would not be possible; one must have confidence that the court allows the majesty of the law its full scope, for this is its sole duty; but within the law itself all is accusation, advocacy, and verdict, and any interference by an individual here would be a crime. It is different, however, with the evidence that leads to the verdict; this rests on inquiries, on inquiries made here and there, from relatives and strangers, from friends and enemies, in the family and public life, in town and village – in short, everywhere. Here it is most urgently necessary to have advocates, advocates galore, preferably advocates in close formation, a living wall, for advocates are by nature ponderous creatures; the plaintiffs, however, those sly foxes, those nimble weasels, those invisible mice, they slip through the tiniest gaps, scuttle through the legs of the advocates. So look out! That’s why I am here, I’m collecting advocates. But I have not found any as yet, only those old women keep on coming and going; if I were not on my search it would put me to sleep. I’m not in the right place –alas, I cannot rid myself of the feeling that I’m not in the right place. I ought to be in a place where all kinds of people meet, from various parts of the country, from every class, every profession, of all ages; I ought to have an opportunity of choosing carefully out of a crowd those who are suitable, those who are friendly, those who have an eye for me. Perhaps the most suitable place for this would be a huge fairground. Instead of which I am hanging about in these corridors where only these old women are to be seen, and not even many of them, and always the same ones, and even those few will not let themselves be cornered, despite their slowness; they slip away from me, float about like rain clouds, and are completely absorbed by unknown activities. Why is it then that I run headlong into a house without reading the sign over the door, promptly find myself in these corridors, and settle here with such obstinacy that I cannot even remember ever having been in front of the house, ever having run up the stairs! But back I cannot go, this waste of time, this admission of having been on the wrong track would be unbearable for me. What? Run downstairs in this brief, hurried life, accompanied as it is by that impatient droning? Impossible. The time allotted to you is so short that if you lose one second you have already lost your whole life; for your life is always just as long as the time you lose, never longer. So if you have started out on a walk, continue it whatever happens; you can only gain, you run no risk; perhaps in the end you may fall, but had you turned back after the first steps and run downstairs you would have fallen at once – and not perhaps, but for certain. So if you find nothing here in the corridors, open the doors; if you find nothing behind these doors, there are further storeys; if you find nothing up there, no matter, go leaping on up further flights; as long as you don’t stop climbing, the stairs will never end, under your climbing feet they will go on growing upwards.

  INVESTIGATIONS OF A DOG

  HOW much my life has changed, and yet how unchanged it has remained at bottom! If I cast my mind back today and recall the time when I was still living in the midst of the dog community, taking part in all its concerns, a dog among dogs, I soon find on closer examination that something was not quite right from the very beginning; there was always a little discrepancy somewhere, a slight discomfort would overtake me in the middle of the most solemn public functions, occasionally even in a gathering of friends; no, it was not occasionally, it was very often; the mere sight of some fellow dog dear to me, this mere sight caught somehow afresh, would embarrass me, alarm me, fill me with helplessness and even despair. I tried to soothe myself as best I could; friends to whom I confessed my trouble helped me; there was a return of more peaceful times, times in which such surprises were indeed not lacking, but were accepted more calmly, were fitted into the pattern of my life more calmly; they may have induced a certain sadness and weariness, but apart from that they did not prevent me from holding my own with the others, as an admittedly somewhat cold, reserved, timid and calculating, but all things considered normal enough dog. How indeed, without these intervals for recuperation, could I have attained the age that I enjoy at present, how could I have struggled my way through to the serenity with which I view the terrors of my youth and endure the terrors of age, how could I have got to the stage of drawing the consequences from my admittedly unfortunate, or to put it more cautiously, not very fortunate disposition, and of living accordingly as far as my strength allows? Withdrawn, isolated, occupied solely with my little investigations, amateurish, hopeless investigations which are, however, indispensable to me, and so presumably they do afford some secret hope after all – such is the life I lead; but all the same I still manage to keep my people in view from the distance, news of them sometimes penetrates to me, though it is indeed becoming gradually more infrequent, and occasionally I let them hear from me as well. The others treat me with deference, they cannot understand my way of life but they do not hold it against me, and even young dogs whom I sometimes see passing in the distance, a new generation of whose childhood I have scarcely a vague memory, never refuse me their respectful greeting.

  For one should not neglect the fact that despite my peculiarities, which lie open to view, I am by no means completely different from the rest of my species. Indeed, when I think about it – and I have the time and the wish and the ability to do so – the dog community as a whole has its peculiar features. Apart from us dogs there are many kinds of creatures about, poor inferior speechless beings whose utterance is restricted to a few cries; many of us dogs study them, have given them names, try to help them, to educate them, to refine them, and so on; for my part I am indifferent to them, unless for instance they try to disturb me or unless there is a chance of their supplying a tasty mouthful (in our region that rarely happens); I confuse them with one another, I ignore them; but one thing is too obvious to have escaped even me, namely how little by comparison with us dogs they stick together, how they pass one another by as strangers, silently and with a secret hostility, how only the most obvious common interest can forge a little superficial unity amongst them and how even this common interest often gives rise to hatred and conflict. We dogs on the other hand! It may well be said that we all live literally in one great crowd, all of us, however much we may otherwise differ owing to the many and profound distinctions that have arisen in the course of time. All in one great crowd! We feel the urge to draw together, and nothing can prevent us from expressing it continually; all our laws and institutions, the few that I still know and the countless number that I have forgotten or never discovered, have their roots in this longing for the greatest bliss we are capable of, the warmth of communal life. But now the other side of the picture. No kind of creature to my knowledge lives so widely disper
sed as we dogs, none has such a baffling profusion of distinctions in its classes and varieties and occupations. We, who want to stick together – and again and again we manage to do so in spite of everything, even if it is only in a small way, and even this only in moments of exuberance – we are precisely the ones who live widely separated from one another, engaged in our peculiar avocations that are often incomprehensible even to our nearest dog neighbour, obeying regulations that are not those of the dog community as a whole, indeed if anything opposed to them.

  What difficult matters these are, matters that one might do better to leave alone – that is a point of view I can well understand, I understand it better than my own – and yet they are matters by which I am utterly absorbed. Why do I not as the others do, live in harmony with my people and quietly accept whatever disturbs that harmony; ignore it as a small error in the great account, and keep my eyes ever fixed on what binds us happily together, not on what draws us – with a power that is admittedly so often irresistible – out of the circle of our kin?

  My own sense of disquiet, a disquiet that can never be wholly assuaged, first began after a number of earlier indications with one particular incident in my youth. At that time I was in one of those blissful inexplicable states of excitement which probably everyone must experience as a child; I was still a very young dog, roughly at the end of my boyhood; everything pleased me, everything was my concern; I believed that great things were going on round me of which I was the leader and to which I must lend my voice; things that it was my duty to chase after and jump for, for else they would be left lying about wretchedly on the ground; well, these were childish fancies that fade with the years, but at that time their power was very great, I was completely under their spell, and then indeed something exceptional really did happen which seemed to justify my wild expectations. In itself it was nothing so very exceptional – I have seen many such things, and even far more remarkable ones, often enough since – but at the time it struck me strongly with the force of a first, indelible, decisive impression.

  What happened was that I met a small company of dogs, or rather I did not meet them, they came up on me. At that time I had been running for a long time through the darkness with a premonition of great things to come – not a very dependable premonition, it is true, for I had it always – I had been running through the darkness for a long time, this way and that, blind and deaf to everything, led on by nothing but my vague desire; suddenly I stopped with the feeling that this was the right place, I looked up and it was the brightest daylight, with everything full of blending and intoxicating smells, I greeted the morning excitedly with confused sounds, and then – as if in response to my summons – from some dark corner seven dogs stepped forth into the light, producing a terrible clamour the like of which I had never heard before.

  If I had not clearly seen that they were dogs, and that they brought this clamour with them, though I failed to understand how they produced it, I would have run away at once; but as it was I stayed. At that time I knew next to nothing of that creative musical gift with which the dog species is alone endowed; till then it had escaped my powers of observation, which were only just slowly beginning to develop; naturally music had surrounded me ever since infancy as an unquestionable and indispensable element of life, but nothing had impelled me to distinguish it from the rest of my experience; only by such hints as were suitable to a childish understanding had my elders tried to draw my attention to it; all the more surprising to me therefore, indeed positively devastating, were these seven great musicians.

  They did not speak, they did not sing, for the most part they kept almost stubbornly silent, but from the empty air they conjured music. All was music. The way they lifted and set down their feet, certain turns of the head, their running and their standing still, the positions they took up in relation to one another, the dance-like patterns they formed, as when one of them supported his front paws on another’s back and they then arranged themselves so that the first dog, standing upright, took the weight of all the rest, or when they described complicated figures by slithering in and out with their bodies close to the ground, and always faultlessly; not even the last dog made a mistake, though he was a little unsure, not always finding his link with the others right away, hesitating sometimes as it were at the first note of the tune, but he was only unsure by comparison with the magnificent sureness of the others, and he could have been far more unsure, infinitely unsure, without spoiling anything, since the others – these great masters – kept such imperturbable time.

  But the truth is that one hardly saw them, one hardly took any of them in. They had appeared, and one had inwardly welcomed them as dogs; the clamour that accompanied them was indeed most confusing, but after all they were dogs, dogs like you and me; one observed them in the accustomed way, like dogs one meets in the street, one wanted to go up to them and exchange greetings, for they were indeed quite close; they were much older dogs than me, certainly, and not of my own woolly long-haired kind, yet neither were they particularly strange in their size and shape, indeed they seemed quite familiar, for I had come across many of their type or something like it before; but while one was still engrossed in such reflections the music gradually took over, it positively seized one, it swept one away from these real little dogs, and quite against one’s will, resisting with all one’s might, howling as if in pain, one was forced to attend solely to the music, this music that came from all sides, from the heights, from the depths, from everywhere, carrying the listener along with it, overwhelming him, crushing him, and blaring still – so close that it seemed far away and barely audible – blaring its fanfares over his shattered being. And then one was given a respite, being by now too exhausted, too shattered, too weak to hear any more, one was given a respite from the noise and saw the seven little dogs performing their movements, making their leaps, one longed to call out to them despite their aloofness, to beg them for enlightenment, to ask them what they were doing – I was a child and thought I could ask anybody about anything – but hardly had I got ready to speak, hardly had I begun to feel that good, familiar, doggish sense of fellowship with the seven, when back came their music again, robbed me of my senses, whirled me round in circles, as if I myself were one of the musicians and not merely their victim, flung me to and fro, however much I begged for mercy, and finally rescued me from its own violence by driving me into a tangled thicket which grew up round that spot, though I had not noticed it before, and which now held me fast, forced my head down low, and gave me a chance to draw breath despite the music that still thundered in the open.

  I must confess it was less the artistry of the seven dogs that amazed me – that was incomprehensible, but so far beyond my powers as to seem utterly remote – than their courage in exposing themselves, fully and openly, to what they were producing, and the fact that they were strong enough to endure it calmly without its breaking their very backbone. But now I noticed, as I watched them more closely from my hide-out, that it was not so much calmness as extreme tension that characterized their performance; these limbs apparently so sure in their movements trembled at every step in a perpetual anxious quivering; they gazed at one another rigidly, as if transfixed by despair, and their tongues, which they made constant efforts to control, lolled out again immediately each time. It could not be anxiety about the success of their performance that agitated them so; none who dared such things could know that kind of anxiety; of what, then, were they afraid? Who was forcing them to do what they were doing? And I could restrain myself no longer, especially since they now seemed mysteriously in need of help, and through all the clamorous din I shouted out my questions in a loud and peremptory voice. But they – incredible! incredible!–they made no reply, they behaved as if I was not there; here were dogs making no reply at all to a dog’s call, an offence against the proprieties which in any dog, however great or small, is wholly unpardonable. Could it be that these were not dogs? But how should they not be dogs, when I could actually h
ear now, on listening more closely, the subdued calls with which they spurred one another on, pointed out hazards, warned against errors; I even saw the last and smallest dog, to whom most of these calls were directed, stealing frequent glances at me as if he would dearly like to reply, but was restraining himself because it was not permitted. But why was it not permitted, why was the very thing that our laws always unconditionally require not permitted on this occasion? My heart rebelled, I almost forgot the music. These dogs before me were violating the law. Great magicians they might be, but the law was valid for them too; although I was a child I knew that quite well. And with that in mind I made some further observations. They had indeed good cause to keep silence, assuming that they kept silence out of a sense of guilt. For what an exhibition they were making of themselves, I had not noticed it till now for sheer music, they had indeed cast off all sense of shame, the miserable creatures were doing the most ridiculous and indecent thing, they were walking upright on their hind legs. Revolting! They were exposing themselves and making a blatant show of their nakedness; they were priding themselves on it, and whenever they obeyed their better instincts for a moment and lowered their front paws to the ground, they positively took fright as if they had committed an error, as if nature herself were an error, they lifted their legs again hastily, and with their eyes seemed to beg forgiveness for having had to pause briefly in their sinfulness.

  Was the world upside down? Where was I? What could have happened? For the sake of my very existence I dared hesitate now no longer, I freed myself from the thicket that enclosed me, took one leap into the open and made towards the dogs; the young pupil must now turn instructor, I had to make them grasp what they were doing, had to prevent them from continuing in sin. ‘What old dogs, what old dogs!’ I kept repeating to myself. But scarcely was I free and a mere two or three leaps away from the dogs, when the clamour was there again and had me in its power. Perhaps in my eagerness I might have managed to withstand even that, for I knew it by now well enough; against its fullness of sound, though terrifying, I might still have done battle; but out of this fullness there now rang out one clear, stern, unwavering tone, a tone that seemed to come literally unchanged from the remotest distance, perhaps the real melody at the centre of the din, and it forced me to my knees. Oh, what a bewitching music it was that these dogs made! I could go no further, I had no more wish to instruct them; let them go on spreading their legs, committing sin, and enticing others into the sin of silently regarding them; I was such a young dog, who could demand of me such a heavy task? I made myself even smaller than I was, I whimpered, and if those dogs had asked me just then what I thought of their behaviour I should probably have told them that I approved. Besides it was not long before the dogs vanished with all their clamour and all their radiance into the darkness from which they had come.