—JACKAL’S ADVICE COLUMN,
“Because you live cooped up here. In an enclosed space. Don’t you see? Completely engrossed in yourselves and in this place, like . . . like chicks still in the shell. I think that’s the source of all your perversions.”
“Perversions?” Sphinx coughs, and smoke streams from his nostrils and between the teeth. “How’s that?”
Smoker hesitates.
“You know . . . that stuff . . .”
“Elaborate,” Sphinx suggests. “That’s a strong word,
Smoker glumly picks at a bead on his sweater. This sweater, in gray and green wool, was knitted for him by Humpback. Around the collar and the sleeves he attached glass balls with black pupils, the kind people use to ward off evil eye.
“You know,” Smoker says, looking up at Sphinx. “You know perfectly well.”
“Let’s say I do. Let’s say I just need you to spell it out.”
Smoker looks away.
“I meant your games. The Nights, the fairy tales, the fights, the wars . . . I’m sorry, I just can’t see that as something real. So I call it games. Even . . . even when they end badly.”
“Is this about Pompey again?” Sphinx scowls.
“Him too. But not only him,” Smoker adds quickly. “It could have been someone else. Well, all right, it is about him. Doesn’t it strike you as over the top—to cut someone down only because he wanted to be the coolest guy here? Here, in this tiny, moldy figment of a world . . . Sphinx, could you please not look at me that way? You know I’m right! No Leadership can possibly be worth this.”
They are alone in the canteen emptied of people. Chairs pushed away from the tables piled with dirty dishes, tablecloths spattered with sauce and sprinkled with bread crumbs. The door out into the hallway is cracked open.
Sphinx leans back in his chair.
“Smoker. Try to understand,” he says, avoiding looking directly into the flushed face of his vis-à-vis. “What for you means nothing can be everything for someone else. Why is that so hard to believe?”
“Because it’s wrong! You’re too smart to live like this, with your eyes always closed. To believe that the world begins and ends with this particular building.”
An elderly woman appears in the doors to the kitchen and stares at them, lips pursed. Sphinx stops rocking his chair, brings it closer to the table, and carefully places the cigarette end he was holding between his teeth on the edge of the plate.
“This is a question of freedom,” he says. “Which can be discussed until forever, breaking only for sleep, tea, and movable feasts. Would you like to do that? Tell me, if you please, who is more free: an elephant stomping across the savanna or an aphid sitting on the leaf of whatever plant they sit on?”
Smoker is mesmerized by the cigarette expiring sadly on the plate.
“That’s a silly example. Neither possesses consciousness. I’m talking about people.”
“An elephant doesn’t? Really?” Sphinx is surprised. “All right. Let’s leave the animal world alone, if you wish. You can put out my cigarette, by the way, if it’s annoying to you. Take a prisoner and a king . . .”
Smoker winces. “Please! Spare me. You’re not going to try and convince me that the inmate is the one who’s more free? Empty words. Do you really want to identify with a prisoner? Or an aphid?”
“I am simply trying to explain . . .” Sphinx looks past Smoker at the kitchen door. The washing lady just came out, resolutely pushing a wheeled cart in front of her. “But I see that I’m talking in a vacuum. You’re not listening. Everyone chooses his own House. It is we who make it interesting or dull, and only then does it start working trying to change us. You can choose to agree with me or disagree. It really is your choice.”
“I can choose nothing,” Smoker fumes. “It was all chosen for me. Even before I took the first step inside. They chose the group, and that automatically made me a Pheasant. No one had asked my opinion. And if I were to go to the Second, I’d have no choice but to conform to the Rats’ ways. To the idiotic image that they chose for themselves without me and long before me. Is that your idea of freedom?”
“But you didn’t make a good Pheasant, did you?”
“I sure tried!”
