The Grasshopper Read online

  “No. That developed within me over time. I cannot tell you the exact moment… Somewhere half way through university, I guess. That’s when I understood that the urge to kill would overpower sexual urge.”

  “Eros and Thanatos?”

  “Eros, yes, but only as libido. Everything around it is noise. As far as Thanatos is concerned, I agree that we can call it the primal instinct of death, but solely at the collective level.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “At the level of mankind. As humanity’s unique urge for self-destruction. At the individual level Thanatos is the drive to kill other people. It doesn’t represent man’s desire to return to inorganic matter, but to transform another living being into the non-living state. Our aggression does not appear because Eros has pushed Thanatos out of us and directed it towards other people. Our drive to kill is primal, seminal, basic. When we cannot satisfy it, when we are not in a situation to kill, that is when self-destruction emerges, the desire for one’s own death. As the just punishment for our incompetence, our failure.”

  “This could be argued…”

  “Certainly. But all that doesn’t matter, that was in the days when I was a student. It simply seemed to me that the urge to kill was so strong that it couldn’t be only the reflection of the urge for self-destruction. It was precisely then,” the Grasshopper continued, “as a young man, that I thought about the causes. But actually I haven’t been interested in them for a long time. I’m only dealing with the consequences. Just as you said, Dr. Palladino. You aren’t interested in whether the killer had an unhappy childhood.”

  “I understand. Let’s go back to the beginning. You said that you understood that the urge to kill would overpower the libido.”

  “Yes. The sexual act leads to the creation of new life. And killing represents the act of ending an existing life. People consider the satisfying of both urges to be immoral and sinful. The difference is that sex, unlike murder, is not persecuted and punished. This is why it took only one excuse for people to have sex: the birth of their progeny and survival of the species, so that…”

  “Excuse me. I have to interrupt you…” said Dr. Palladino.

  “Yes?”

  “In your opinion, why is murder punished and sex isn’t?”

  “Because of morals, ethics, God’s commandments…”

  “And where did people get all that, if the killing instinct is so strong?”

  “The Eros in people came up with that. It is that noise around the libido that I mentioned. It is the result of people’s fear that they will be killed. Fear for their own lives. And that fear was the only thing postponing the inevitable end of all life.”

  Chapter 126

  Lucky was jumping manically, spinning around, falling down and getting up, all over the children’s sleeping bodies. Until a tear of his fell on the face of each child. Brandon was the first to awake.

  “Hey! It’s Lucky!” he shouted all glowing. “Wake up!” Brandon called out to his friends, shaking the one nearest to him. “Lucky’s here!”

  “And Mr. Sayash!” said Melek, who was now also awake.

  “Lucky! Lucky!” the other children shouted, while waking up.

  “Do you see what you did, Lucky? You woke the children!” Sayash was worried.

  He waved his finger angrily, standing on the side and watching the children’s hands jostling to pet Lucky.

  And Lucky… he was all warm with pleasure.

  “It’s OK if he woke us, Mr. Sayash,” Gala said. “Don’t be angry at Lucky.”

  “How can I not be? He doesn’t listen to a thing I say…” Sayash answered, with a smile.

  “It was time to get up, wasn’t it?” asked Kimo, winking at his friends.

  “It was! It was!” They all answered at the same time.

  “And why was it time? You have to go to school, do you?” Sayash wanted to know everything.

  “No, no…” Kimo was confused.

  “We don’t have to, Mr. Sayash, it’s recess!” said Sara, who got a hold of Lucky and held him in her hands.

  “Recess, is it?” Sayash looked at them suspiciously. “So where are you snacks?”

  “We ate them!” said Matic. “That’s why we were sleepy.”

  “Aha! So you had your snack, you had a nap… That means that recess is almost over. Doesn’t it?” Sayash asked.

  All the children fell silent for a moment, disarmed by Sayash’s ironclad logic.

  “Actually, it isn’t…” Tai stuttered.

  “What do you mean ‘it isn’t’? Don’t dilly-dally!” Sayash said angrily.

  “Well… it’s not recess. I mean, it’s over…” Tai continued, frantically looking for a solution.

  “Of course its over! Who knows when it was over?! Its all clear to Mr. Sayash! You got on that truck and skipped school!”

  Chapter 127

  “At this moment it is all insignificant,” the Grasshopper continued. “I want to talk about consequences, about these moments, about the end.”

  “Forgive me. I won’t interrupt you any more. Please, continue,” Dr. Palladino said.

  “I will. It is important to understand that people had to find various excuses in order to kill with impunity.”

  “Yes. You said that the excuse for having sex was the survival of the species.”

  “Exactly. But in the case of killing, people had to be much more creative in finding excuses. All ideologies in history were created only as an excuse for killing. Certain ideas, membership in a certain group, are placed above human life and serves as the excuse for killing with impunity. You saw the conversations between Erivan and me, and you saw what Erivan did…”

  “Yes. I watched your satire live on the Capital City stage. You were the screenplay writer, director and prompter for the main actor.”

  “Satire? I’m not a satirist, Dr. Palladino. I, in the role of the trustee, only took inventory of a bankrupt civilization.”

  “And you say that you were aware of this bankruptcy even as a student?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you wanted to liquidate the bankrupt firm?”

  “I asked myself why shouldn’t it be me, knowing that this room represents the tool with which I could do it.”

  “And you never wondered why the Kaellas or Erivan hadn’t done it?”

  “Because I beat them to it.”

  “What do you mean? The Kaellas could have done it half a century ago, when they completed the energy system.”

  “I’ll explain it to you. The Kaella’s didn’t find the excuse that would allow them to use the energy system as an absolute weapon. That is why they used it to sell energy to the Consumers. And while that functioned, they used a different, more selective excuse for killing.”

  “What killing?”

  “What do you mean ‘what killing’, Dr. Palladino? The killing of the old, the ill, the inappropriate, the misfits, the helpless, the homeless… The killing at Euthanasias.

  “The third Kaella saw himself as the greatest humanist, who created the Balance in human society. Just like all other rulers in history, he used his ideology as an excuse to kill.

  “He placed the Balance and Humane Capitalism above life. And he could neither create it nor maintain it without killing the sick and the elderly people, who didn’t have an income to pay the bills, and who only represented an expense for the balanced state. And his ideology didn’t permit that.”

  “That is why, in order to save the Balance and Humane Capitalism, he introduced mandatory medical checkups, with complete ideological justification. And at these checkups potential parasites were identified in a timely fashion. Following the medical checkup the information system predicted the likely course of the disease for each examined person, the costs of their treatment and the expected date when their revenue would cease to cover the costs.

  “Every morning the information system sent the tax administration a list of people for whom this critical period had started. Then the
y carefully monitored every financial transaction of such an individual. They waited for the person to sell their shares, if they had any, and to pay the bills and treatment for a while, using the money from the sale. And when that too was spent, the person would be taken to Euthanasia and put to death.

  “The descendents of the deceased would be pleased with this. The tax administration would notify them on time that their father, mother, grandmother, grandfather, uncle, brother, sister… would be left without the necessary financial sustenance within a month. They would be asked whether they wanted to take over financial responsibility for their relatives. As a rule the answer was negative.”

  “Why would people in their prime want to spend on the sick and the elderly the little money that they were left with after they paid their bills to Kaella and the mandatory purchase of goods from the new season? They too deserved to live a little, to go out to dinner, to travel, to take a ride on a submarine.”

  “I understand. It’s dreadful, what has become socially acceptable,” Dr. Palladino said.

  Chapter 128

  “We didn’t! We didn’t skip school!” the children shouted at the top of their voices.

  “We were on a fieldtrip!” it dawned on Babette.

  “On a fieldtrip? Children that small? All by themselves? I don’t believe it,” Sayash shook his head.

  “What do you mean ‘alone’, Mr. Sayash?” Enzo asked him. “We’re going on a fieldtrip with you.”

  “With whom?”

  “With you and Lucky” Enzo took Lucky from Zuri. “Isn’t that right, Lucky?” Enzo asked Lucky, holding him in front of his face and rubbing noses with him.

  It looked like Lucky was about to take off, that’s how much he was wagging his tail.

  “Oh, Lucky, you’re so gullible. You fall for it,” Sayash was still serious.

  “Our mothers and fathers told us ‘kids you can go on a fieldtrip, but only if Mr. Sayash and Lucky take you,’” Kaya said.

  “Did they, really? I don’t believe you!” said Sayash scrunching his eyebrows. He was on high on elation.

  “Really! Really, Mr. Sayash!” all the children shouted.

  “Well, alright… if that’s the way it is… What do you say, Lucky?... I do ask silly questions,” Sayash laughed while looking at Lucky, who was running around in circles with joy.

  “Alright, if your mothers and fathers said so… And what did they say, where should we take you on the fieldtrip?”

  “Where you and Lucky were headed, Mr. Sayash,” said Mona.

  “I don’t know if that’s smart…” Sayash reflected.

  “Why not?” asked Edwin.

  “Well… the two of us were on our way… we saw it in the movies. A huuugeee city, the largest in the world…”

  “Megapolis! Great! Let’s go!” the children shouted.

  Chapter 129

  “On the other hand, Prince’s greed for increasingly greater profits,” said the Grasshopper, “which he called the organic need of the economy to constantly grow, was eating away at the Balance. It was necessary to constantly increase consumption, quarter over quarter.

  “That is why they created the labor camps where they took the Non-Consumers, and carried out experiments on them, with the goal of creating a Super-Consumer, a being that would have an intensive and increasingly frequent need for new models.

  “They tried to copy the sexual drive. And in time they succeeded. The problem emerged when they realized that the Super-Consumer must have that much more income to be able to afford all the new goods that they wanted, at least three times per week. They must earn a lot more, i.e. they have to work that much more.

  “That is why at the camps they designed state-of-the-art maximally automated and robotized plants with excellent productivity and the minimal need for human labor. They trained the most successful specimen of the Super-Consumer to work and employed them at these plants. The calculation showed that their appetite for new models could be financially covered only if they worked sixteen hours per day at these most automated plants. And they worked.

  “The next problem occurred when the Super-Consumers, having seen the first pieces of the new model on the assembly line, would jump onto the conveyor, steal the piece and run around the factory with it, already trying it on. When they would change, they would see the next piece on the line. They would again steal it and take off the piece from a minute ago, even though it was the same model. But this piece was a minute newer. And so on indefinitely.

  “It turned out that the Super-Consumer was unusable, that their desired passion for consumption, which the Kaellas had finally developed, at a huge cost, prevented them from working and earning to satisfy their super-consumer needs. They shut down the labor camps and killed all the people.”

  “Dreadful.”

  “Nothing new, Dr. Palladino. It’s always the same, all throughout the existence of mankind. All the Kaellas and the Erivans of this world, regardless of the level of development of the civilization or its social organization, under the excuse of expanding its ideology, territory, wealth, power… they killed with impunity. Killing was always the only goal and death was the final outcome.

  “It was by mere chance that these historic individuals, who we are familiar with, gained the oportunity to kill. Had they not killed, someone else would have. The problem of ordinary people was that they didn’t get the opportunity. And the problem of those that had the opportunity were the instruments. They had to use one group of people as the instrument for killing a different group of people.

  “Through history the development of science and technology changed the structure of the killing instruments. In each subsequent epoch an increasingly smaller group of people were needed for killing an increasingly larger other group.

  “This was labeled the increase in the number of civilian casualties. The need for subjects or followers was decreasing. The instruments were becoming more advanced and the killing was simpler.”

  Chapter 130

  “Well, I don’t know if that’s great,” Sayash hesitated. “It’s a very large city. I’ll lose you.”

  “No, you won’t, Mr. Sayash, we promise!”

  “We won’t leave your side, or Lucky’s!” the children shouted out.

  “What grade are you anyway?” Sayash suddenly wondered.

  “First, Mr. Sayash,” Larisa said.

  “First? Well then the big city is out of the question!”

  “Why?” they shouted all at once.

  “What do you mean ‘why’? You’re too small. You don’t even know the alphabet. You’ll need to read all the signs… you know which ones… and all that…”

  “We know how to read!”

  “And write, Mr. Sayash!”

  “Aha! And how do you know?” Sayash didn’t believe the children.

  “Well, we know. We learned in preschool,” said Sib.

  “Hmm… You have an answer for everything, don’t you?” Sayash smiled, already giving in to the children.

  “What can we do - we’re smart!” Ekene smiled.

  “Well, even if we didn’t know how to read, you’ll read the signs for us, Mr. Sayash,” said Mariam.

  “Me?” Sayash was shocked. “Oh, children, you’re so naïve! You think that when you are as old as Mr. Sayash you’ll still be able to keep all the letters in your head. You won’t. They fall out… For example, the letter L is still in my head. I mean, in addition to the letter S. That’s why I named Lucky - Lucky; in case I had to sign our names somewhere. So that we are not embarrassed…”

  “So how would you read the signs in Megapolis, if you didn’t have us, Mr. Sayash?” Milan asked.

  “I wouldn’t read them. Lucky and I don’t need that. The two of us aren’t interested in where we are… or where we’re going. No… we never part…”

  “We’ll do the same, Mr. Sayash! We’ll never part from you and Lucky! We too aren’t interested in the signs. Here, the letters have already fallen out of my head!�
� Flavia said out loud.

  “Oh, you’re so nice…” Sayash was getting soft. “OK, so let’s get going. This is how we’ll do it. Now listen to me very carefully. I’ll go at the head of the group. You follow me, in pairs. And hold hands. I’ll hold Lucky in my hands, but backwards. He won’t look forward but back at you, over my shoulder. As soon as someone lets go of their pair or leaves the group, Lucky will whack me with his tail. And if I turn around…”

  “No one will, Mr. Sayash. We’ll be good. We’ll listen you!” said Nirmala.

  “And if someone did let go, Lucky wouldn’t give us up, would you, Lucky?” asked David, holding Lucky to his chest.

  “You’ve really grown close, haven’t you?” Sayash smiled.

  Chapter 131

  “I realized that the end of the epoch of Humane Capitalism was coming to a close,” said the Grasshopper. “The appearance of Mr. Alexander and the unstoppable growth of his movement had shown me that the system would collapse in my lifetime. And that entire time, up there, above all of us, the absolute killing instrument has been suspended. And I wondered, what would Kaella do when the system started to collapse, when he saw that he was losing? What do you think, Doctor? What would Kaella have done his last moments, when he realized that there were no more buyers?”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “He would think ‘if you’re not my Consumers, then you have no more reason to live.’ And Kaella would finally find his excuse to use this absolute weapon.”