Hanu? is now fully grown, his body exactly as I know it. A new ring of eggs circles the green planet, not nearly as plentiful as during Hanu?’s birth. Along with his kin, Hanu? patrols the ring. On the horizon, a swarm appears. An army the size of an asteroid. Hanu? asks his Elders for guidance, for help, as do all the others of his tribe. For the first time, the Elders are silent.
They run, leaving the young behind. The Gorompeds crack the shells of the tribe’s future, feasting greedily on the embryos. Hanu? runs across galaxies and the swarm follows, a black hole swallowing everything in its path. The Elders are slow and falling behind, and the siblings who stay to protect them are doomed. Run, the Elders order, run and never stop, you might be the last of us, and soon Hanu? does not look back, he simply flies through the gates of the cosmos as quickly as his body allows, and the hiss of the swarm weakens along with the collective hum of his siblings, until at last he looks back and sees that no sibling remains. The world feels empty, he is alone, and so he stops and waits for the Gorompeds to find him, as there is no life without his tribe. But the Gorompeds do not come, and Hanu? sleeps from exhaustion and again wakes in a place he has not encountered before, a place known by its inhabitants as the Milky Way, and he is alive, alive though he knows the Gorompeds are bound to find him, whether tomorrow or in two million years. The certainty given to him as a birthright begins to vanish just as he hears the first echoes of voices and minds occupying planet Earth. He understands nothing.
Stay with Lenka and me, Hanu?. Only good thoughts now.
Lenka and I will always remember this moment—she slides to the floor, her back against the cool stone wall, hair tangled in her mouth, and I follow. Neither of us is concerned with the smell, the sweat covering our faces and limbs. We believe that we can fix our marriage. We know that the world operates on a whim, a system of coincidences. There are two basic coping mechanisms. One consists of dreading the chaos, fighting it and abusing oneself after losing, building a structured life of work/marriage/gym/reunions/children/depression/affair/divorce/alcoholism/recovery/heart attack, in which every decision is a reaction against the fear of the worst (make children to avoid being forgotten, fuck someone at the reunion in case the opportunity never comes again, and the Holy Grail of paradoxes: marry to combat loneliness, then plunge into that constant marital desire to be alone). This is the life that cannot be won, but it does offer the comforts of battle—the human heart is content when distracted by war.
The second mechanism is an across-the-board acceptance of the absurd all around us. Everything that exists, from consciousness to the digestive workings of the human body to sound waves and bladeless fans, is magnificently unlikely. It seems so much likelier that things would not exist at all and yet the world shows up to class every morning as the cosmos takes attendance. Why combat the unlikeliness? This is the way to survive in this world, to wake up in the morning and receive a cancer diagnosis, discover that a man has murdered forty children, discover that the milk has gone sour, and exclaim, “How unlikely! Yet here we are,” and have a laugh, and swim in the chaos, swim without fear, swim without expectation but always with an appreciation of every whim, the beauty of screwball twists and jerks that pump blood through our emaciated veins.
I want to share these thoughts with Lenka but I’m afraid of the noise of words. I am happy you can see her, Hanu?, because I could hardly describe it. She looks at me as if I am the first thing in the world she has ever seen. Is it possible I am misreading her adoration, or romanticizing a normal postcoital look of carnal satisfaction? I don’t think so. I think that at this moment Lenka’s physical capacity for love has reached its apex. Dopamine crashes its way through her frontal cortex, breaking down its membrane walls. Norepinephrine overwhelms the chamber of her cerebellum, burns it down, and feeds on the ashes. Her brain is soaked with blood, it has become a love sponge, an organ of complete biological devotion—this brain of hers, the most beautiful thing I’ve ever known to exist. I feel the same as she does. This moment will never be cheapened, as other moments are after love fades. It will always be perfect. We will always be fools.
We are more than our ability to conceive a viable fetus. We are lovers. We are the greatest contradiction of the universe. We go against it all. We live for the pleasure of living, not for the sake of evolutionary legacy. Today, at least, we’d like to think so.
And there, Hanu?, is where I want to leave you. Hold the moment. I feel you slipping away. Are you still here? Feel it, Hanu?. Feel the afternoon in May, with the sunrays peeking through and the smell of sex sharp in the air. Hanu??
How unlikely! Hanu? said. Yet here we are.
Then he was gone.
A VERY BRIEF INTERMISSION
MASTER JAN HUS did not burn to death. In fact, he spent his last days in the warm bed of a widow, his thoughts at peace with God and love.
Hanu? unearthed these truths in a long-abandoned archive sealed by the keepers of history. Thirty-two days into his imprisonment and torture, Hus received a guilty visit from King Sigismund, who offered a pardon under a simple condition. Hus would travel secretly to the edge of the Christian lands, where no one could recognize him, and live out the rest of his life in exile. At first, Hus refused. He predicted that his public death would cause the desired uprising in the Bohemian lands. This was to be his part in God’s plan for Europe’s rebellion against the Catholic Church.
Then entered the widow. She ran her fingers along the bruises and cuts on Hus’s ribs, cheeks, hands—those he had received from his tormenters. She said she saw the love of God in him. She said that one of God’s sons had already died and caused the world a great sorrow. Soon, Hus and the widow were on their way to a quiet Moldavian village. They baked bread, bathed with each other, began to sleep with each other as husband and wife. Hus no longer felt compelled to preach. The torture had broken him—after the suffering, he was ready to die or to take on another life. A simple life—one that did not force him to become a symbol.