The Grasshopper Page 28

  “How dare you?!” Manami shouted.

  “…sighs,” Pascal finished his sentence.

  “You can’t talk to me like that, Pascal! I won’t let you!”

  “You’ll let me, you’ll let me. And you want me to. I’m just trying to enhance your excitement, my love.”

  “There’s no need to try. It can’t get any greater. I’m going mad, Pascal!”

  “Well, alright… so we lock ourselves behind four doors, and what then?”

  “Don’t fantasize too much, Pascal!” said Manami, going toward the door to Pascal’s quarters. “You won’t get anything out of it! When I tell Julius how much I love you and that I want a divorce, when I am free, that is when I will give myself to you. And nothing before then! That’s how I was raised! I’m the only daughter of an Inspectorate general, sir! A long-standing head of the Inspectorate Academy! The only daughter of the famous general…”

  “I understand, selfish ma’am. Who cares about me? But what will we do about you? We have to find a solution,” Pascal approached her.

  They stood in front of his closed door.

  “You will… We won’t even lie on any bed. Don’t you dare think of pushing me on the bed… or anything similar.”

  “You mean - pick you up in my arms, and gently place you on the bed?”

  “Stop already! Don’t you say another word!”

  “Alright, I won’t. I’m silent. I’m just looking at you. Do you see how I’m looking at you?”

  “You’re impossible! Impossible!”

  “Alright. We won’t lay down. So we’ll sit down. Probably on one of the chairs.”

  “Don’t provoke me! We’ll stand.”

  “Stand?”

  “Yes, stand! And you won’t hug me or kiss me. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, of course. The two of us standing, without hugging, without kissing, and all that until we drop out of exhaustion.”

  “Well that does it! No one has ever mocked me like that! I’m going to bed. Good night, Pascal.”

  “Good night, my love.”

  Manami didn’t move. Pascal only grinned and consumed her with his eyes.

  “Good night, my love,” he repeated, already laughing out loud.

  “You’ll pay for this!” Manami screamed.

  “But not now?”

  “Take me to your room already!”

  “I can’t, Manami, until you tell me what we will do. Because if you don’t define that clearly, then I will decide. And if I decide…”

  “Shut up! I’m going to go insane! Well, like this… and don’t interrupt me any more.”

  “I won’t.”

  “You will stand away from me…”

  “Away?”

  “No, not away… you won’t hold me. Just with your hand stretched out… and I will lean against the wall… in that place… You understand?”

  “No.”

  “What do you mean ‘no’? With one hand, stretched out, you’ll touch that place. Are we clear? Don’t pretend…”

  “It’s clear to me what you want, but what’s not clear…”

  “What?”

  “Well… you can do that on your own. What do you need me for?”

  “On my own?! How dare you think of me like that?!”

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Pascal laughed.

  “But only that place. So only outside, not inside… Clear?”

  “Clear, clear. I didn’t think…”

  “You didn’t think?... Who am I trusting? Who am I giving myself to? Manami, Manami, why are you doing this?”

  “You need it? A lot?”

  “A lot!”

  “And what will I do with my other hand?”

  “On the side, Pascal. I mean, at your side.”

  “And what will you do with your hands?”

  “Also at the side.”

  “Also at my side?”

  “No! My side! And stop torturing me!”

  “And the gold kimono? I mean, what is our interpretation of this? Is it making love or… .”

  “What kimono now?!”

  “Alright, alright, no kimono… But Manami…?

  “What is it now? Take me in!”

  “Alright, immediately. Just one more question.”

  “What?”

  “How long will this last? Because I won’t be able to stay long in such a silly pose.”

  “Just a fraction of a second. As soon as you touch me…” said Manami, while opening the door herself.

  Chapter 139

  “Mr. Grasshopper, can we go back to Pascal Alexander? You said that he didn’t offer anything new, that he only wanted to restore something that had existed previously?” Dr. Palladino asked.

  “Yes. He wanted to restore the human community which would offer every person equal opportunities. A society that in his opinion had the most correct value system.”

  “What values are those?”

  “Freedom, human rights, democracy, free entrepreneurship, progress, success, material prosperity… work, efficiency… scientific development. He believed that such a society is capable of once again finding itself and moving forward after each development phase, after each cycle. In his opinion such a society would represent an ecosystem, an incubator, which would produce the Third Renaissance.”

  “The Third Renaissance? I didn’t know that there had been two,” Dr. Palladino was surprised.

  “Mr. Alexander claimed that there were. He claimed that the first renaissance was created after the Dark Ages in Tuscany, and that the second renaissance was after the even darker first half of the twentieth century, in Northern California.”

  “In Northern California?”

  “Yes. He was delighted by the fact that some young men created companies in their garages, which in turn changed the world; that by teaching people to think differently, one young man created a company that had the largest market value in the world; that something created only using gray cells and sand from the Californian coast, was more valuable than even the largest energy company at the time.

  “When the man died, his President and First Lady said that he not only changed the world, but was one of the rare persons who changed people’s views of the world. Mr. Alexander was fascinated by the story of two young men who created a machine for searching the Internet. He was excited by the fact that it was possible to get uncensored search results.”

  “Uncensored?”

  “Yes. There is very little information about all that. The Kaellas hid that part of history. Because the Internet was free. The regimes couldn’t lie to people for very long through controlled media. And not only that. There was an Internet encyclopedia which people continuously created and updated, in all languages. The story is that there was even a social network with free communication. With communication that no one controlled. The users on this network were mainly young people. But they were from all across the planet.

  “According to Mr. Alexander, a new generation of youths was growing up throughout the world, under the influence of the second renaissance. This was a generation that didn’t hate and wasn’t evil. A generation with open hearts, Mr. Alexander called them.

  “But it wasn’t given an opportunity to take the world in the direction that it wanted to. They were remembered as the lost generation. What Mr. Alexander felt worst about was Kaella’s bragging that the ultimate result of the False Balance was the lost generation.”

  “Why was that generation lost?” Dr. Palladino asked.

  “You didn’t watch Kaella’s interview. Babe explained everything very nicely. These young people lost their future.

  “They had finished school, but they couldn’t find jobs. They didn’t have any income, they didn’t get married, have children or create families. In certain groups of people their unemployment exceeded fifty percent even before the over-indebted states collapsed.

  “Their parents had taken away their future, by providing leisurely and carefree lives for themselves through
decades of loans and by destroying the planet’s ecosystem. And they extinguished their children’s second renaissance.”

  “And this Third Renaissance? What will that be?”

  “Mr. Alexander didn’t know that. Nor did he claim that he knew. He believed that when he restored democracy and free market, the Third Renaissance would come on its own; that its time will come because that is the nature of historical cycles. That this is what must come after the darkest of all centuries. After Kaella’s century. That is why he believed that the Third Renaissance would be the most magnificent. That it would bring about something that we cannot even imagine today.”

  “Of course, you don’t agree with that.”

  “No.”

  “Will you tell me why?”

  “Dr. Palladino, you fail to find arguments against my theses and you want Mr. Alexander and I to cross swords in front of you. It seems that he is your last hope. And the same goes for these people on Earth. Have you seen what people do?”

  “I have.”

  “They pray to him, asking him to return to Earth from heaven, and to save them. They are improvising his temples. At the very end mankind is summoning a new messiah. Like always when people realize that they are only victims and nothing else. That’s when they turn to religion, to God. They swore to him that they would not sin, that they would respect His commandments. And during periods when they were powerful, when they had the opportunity to kill their victims, then they did exactly that – and in his name.”

  “I agree. I admit that I can’t find any argumentation against your claims. I want to hear your comment about Pascal’s thinking. I admit that it is my last hope. Will you tell me, please?” Dr. Palladino asked the Grasshopper.

  “I will. Even if Mr. Alexander is right,” the Grasshopper explained. “even if this third, most magnificent renaissance occurs, if something that we cannot imagine were to be created, even then the collective ancient urge to kill would use it to its advantage.

  “The achievements of the human mind always created newer and more effect deadly weapons. That is how this command desk, the one that I am sitting at, was created. If it didn’t exist, the Third Renaissance would only postpone the agony.

  “Think about it. What did the second renaissance create? It created technologies that the Kaellas used for their information systems, systems that control every person, from birth to death. At every moment they know where each person is, who is communicating with whom, what they are looking up on the Internet, what their affinities are, what they could additionally sell them… They erase and change people’s identities, biographies…

  “And that was all made possible by the technologies from Northern California, Dr. Palladino.”

  Chapter 140

  “Dr. Palladino, it was precisely Mr. Alexander, and especially the unstoppable growth of his movement, that finally confirmed to me that I’m right,” the Grasshopper said.

  “How is that?” Dr. Palladino asked.

  “Because he wanted to restore democracy. He often repeated Churchill’s thought that democracy is the worst form of government, with the exception of all those other forms that have been tried from time to time. He claimed that this was valid in Churchill’s time and that it’s also valid today.”

  “And you agree with this?”

  “I don’t know whether one form of government is better than another. I don’t know the criteria based on which I would make this assessment. But I do know that democracy is certainly the most deadly form of all forms of government that we have learned about so far.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Dr. Palladino.

  “I’ll explain it to you. In all other non-democratic social communities the rulers, dictators and a few people around them had the opportunity to act on their instincts to kill. During the entire duration of the regime, both in war and in peace. Their subjects could act on their instincts with impunity only during wars.”

  “I think I know what you’re trying to say. That in democracy the instincts of all people come into play equally.”

  “That’s right. The strength of one person’s instinct or that of a few people, regardless of how strong these instincts are, cannot be compared to the sum of mediocre instincts, sometimes numbering in the billions. Which, by the way, were suppressed in non-democratic regimes.

  “This is why they exploded with all their might when democracy gave them the right of vote. Then people circle the name on the ballot that told them that they were the most beautiful, smartest, most superior. The name that told them that their hour has finally come. That they are now prepared. The name that promised them that they would plunder, banish, conquer, kill the other group of people.”

  “You say that you are not interested in the causes,” said Dr. Palladino, “that you draw your conclusions from the consequences. I don’t see that democracies conducted more wars that dictatorships. On the contrary. And these were wars for defending democracy, and for freedom.”

  “Every excuse for killing is a good excuse. And you, Dr. Palladino, place pluses and minuses in front of excuses. Like every person does. In front of their convictions, in front of the values that a person believes in, they place a plus sign. And in front of the values contrary to theirs, they place a minus sign.

  “For example, you consider democracy to be positive and dictatorship negative. This means that you believe that democracy would be quite an acceptable excuse for killing.

  “Or for example… remember what the world was like for most of its existence. It consisted of a finite number of various groups of people. Now imagine a person X who was born into one of the groups, let’s say group A, and became its member by birth.

  “Person X places membership in group A above life. In this membership he finds his excuse for killing. And he places a plus sign in front of membership in group A. When group A wages war against group B, person X uses his membership in group A as an excuse for killing members of group B. Do you follow?”

  “Yes.”

  “If that same person X, coded with identical genes, or created completely identical by God, if you like, were to be born in group B, placing membership in group B above life, it would mark this with a plus sign, and would use it in that same war as an excuse for killing members of group A.

  “This applies to rulers, commanders, soldiers and civilians alike. Group membership is an excuse that is very democratically distributed.

  “People place group membership even above the lives of their progeny. Because of it they send their children to their deaths. Do you understand that?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “What I said here was not my answer to your question, why democracy is the deadliest form of government. Here I just wanted to explain the irrelevance, pointlessness of your, i.e. everyone’s, pluses and minuses that you place in front of excuses. The excuse for killing that a person will use in their life is decided by chance: the time and place of their birth. The only absolute category embedded in the foundations of every person is the primal instinct to kill. Everything else is relative.”

  “I understand. According to you all wars are the same. Tell me, what is this more deadly thing that has been carried out by the sum of a billion average instincts?”

  “This sum, which was finally made possible by democracy, actually represents the collective self-destructive instinct, the Thanatos of humanity.”

  “Give me an example from history, show me a consequence of collective self-destruction.”

  “Look around you, Dr. Palladino. Look at the ecosystem that you spent your life in. Do you know what nature used to look like?”

  “I do.”

  “The vast democratic majority, within all the previously existing groups of people, chose to kill the planet. The planet was killed by people through the sum of their deadly instincts.

  “Their collective excuse also represented the sum of small greeds for small prosperities, small envies, small lazinesses, small disinterests, the sum of small car
elessnesses, conformism and comforts… the sum of small indifferences for the future of their own progeny.

  “Mankind’s Thanatos defeated life long ago, Dr. Palladino.”

  Chapter 141

  “When did you first recognize your instinct to kill?” Dr. Palladino asked the Grasshopper the following day.

  “A day before my fifteenth birthday. At 7.10 p.m.”

  “That was a strong, impressive feeling if you so clearly recognized it and remembered the date and time.”

  “Yes, it was,” said the Grasshopper and continued. “There’s something different about you, Dr. Palladino.”

  “How did you come to that conclusion?”

  “From your question. When did I first feel the urge to kill? Isn’t that one of your usual patterns? Your usual method of operation?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “At the beginning you said that you were dropping all of that, that you were approaching me unconventionally.”

  “Yes. I am intentionally returning to traditional methods, because you fit the profile of a serial killer. I’ve had such a case. And that is why I have to thoroughly prepared for our next conversation.”

  “Do you? And how long will that take, Dr. Palladino?”

  “As long as it takes.”

  “You think that I will allow this?”

  “Yes, I do. And during that time you will switch off your deadly rays and charge the power plants on Earth that you still haven’t destroyed.”

  “The two of us are quite different, Doctor.”

  “In what way?”

  “I kill on an industrial level, efficiently. And you apparently enjoy the anguish of the victims, and you want to give them a moment of hope. Let them relax a little, have some water, eat something. Let them gain some strength for the long and painful death.”

  “I’m not listening to you. I know that you will do as we have agreed.”

  “Agreed?”

  “Yes. Tell me now, what happened on the evening before your fifteenth birthday?”