The Wood From The Trees
One Man’s Dilemma
Mr Digby Reeves, librarian, aged 29, unkempt appearance, cold, frightened and unaccustomed to the harsh surroundings of a snowy vista. On the run, seeking desperately for respite from the curse of being, the masquerade and illusion of reality. Mr Digby Reeves, a desperate man, weakened, reduced, his very essence blackened, slowly, imperceptibly by an existence marked by the sort of petty compromises that throttle the life out of a man. Through virgin snow, glistening, white, he now scampers, tramps and trudges, no longer knowing or caring for his destination, for here, in this very moment, he no longer has capacity to see the wood for the trees.
“I’ve had it. I can do this no more, not one more day, hour or minute.” He recalls the final, simple, yet personally apocalyptic words, that just two weeks earlier, he had screeched with lunatic rage at the cafe owner, the masked, compliant drone, who had demanded that he, Mr Digby Reeves, librarian, aged 29, also remain masked should he wish to sup upon his Government allocated early morning Medium Neo-Latte, crafted from one teaspoon of chicory extract, two tablespoons of Nettle Milk and sweetened with a cube of reclaimed biscuit crumbs. A tormenting rage, bilious and angry, had at that moment gurgled and snarled within some unidentified, deep, dark recess within Mr Digby Reeves. A cascade of wordless, primordial grunts and groans, of angst, broke the dam of civilised restraint, and gushed forth, from the back of his throat, at the madness, at the hordes of compliant fools. His delicate inner equilibrium had tilted finally off its precariously balanced axis. He had, in common parlance, snapped.
Stretching out, across the shop counter, Mr Digby Reeves, had first grappled with the Cafe owner, a cookie dough splodge of a man, before plucking a sizeable bread knife from amongst the meagre, mouldy, crustless remains of what was likely the last three loaves of bread in town. A small, emaciated rat scurried away from its easy meal, and with something resembling almost perfect symmetry the Cafe owner likewise beat a hasty retreat in the same direction. Possession of a large knife, now accompanying the rapid fracturing of the remains of his sanity, had dislodged all and any impediment to his sudden lunge towards and through the front door. Mr Digby Reeves had disentangled himself from the cafe, the city, the facade of existence and headed, eventually, a few days later, to a small port on the English East coast. Hungry, crumpled and disheveled, he here found favour with the crew of an empty medium sized cargo ship preparing for a return journey across the North Sea to Scandinavia. Once there Mr Digby Reeves would thumb lifts, beg food and shelter, and drag himself towards the howling wastelands of frozen winter in a former Soviet Gulag. A whisper through the illegal underground social media had reached his ear that here lay several of the final refuges of non vaccinated Europeans, fragmentary, scattered encampments of the last of true humanity, who scrimp, scratch and survive as they eek out the end of their days, owning nothing and not amused to do so.
“I’ve had it. I can do this no more, not one more day, hour or minute.” His own familiar words swirled, swooped and surged again, silently this time, across his fatigued and fading consciousness. Five days now he had trudged across barren, bleak wastelands, hungry, cold and wretchedly uncertain of ever again finding human companionship. He looked up and spotted a small copse of trees ahead, perhaps three hundred yards in the distance, and reasoned within himself that these would provide him brief shelter from the piercing winds that vexed and bedeviled him. He could take some moments to rest his painfully sore legs, that were burned, stung and seared by days of uninterrupted exposure to sub zero temperatures. Minutes later, leaning against a tree trunk, he reached into his small rucksack, hoping perhaps to find a minuscule morsel of bread, even of the crustless, rat infested vintage occasionally available in the cafes of the new smart cities. He found nothing of the sort, but amongst his very meagre belongings he fingered a folded piece of paper, a page from a book, that must have become dislodged whilst returning it to the library. He contemplated allocating a little time to peruse the page, but his eyes were ponderously heavy with tiredness, and his body screamed for the blissful rest of sleep. He placed the folded page back within his rucksack and closed his eyes, shuttering himself away from the ravages of the outside world. Mr Digby Reeves slid slowly down the tree trunk, resting at its snow covered base, and settled into a front row seat in the theatre of his fuddled and fatigued mind.
He was neither awake nor asleep, his mind drifting to the writings of his favourite authors past and long past, of the heroic characters who inhabited his favourite literature. Of a hypochondriacal, repentant murderer ensconced in a second class prison on the banks of a Russian river. Of a man, an outsider, a surveyor by trade, seeking simple employment at the castle in a cliqued town. Of a small man, eight centimetres short of the standard Alpha height, and of epsilon minus semi morons. Of an early morning, old fashioned gun duel between two men of different generations, on account of honour lost. Of a forbidden room, of clocks striking thirteen and the smell of boiled cabbage. Of a travelling salesman, who awoke one morning, transformed, unexpectedly into a small arthropod. Of a man, arrested, summoned to give account although he had done nothing wrong. Digby Reeves imagined he heard a bell, an early morning bell, but his fevered aching body, demanded sleep. He reasoned that he could sleep awhile and later call in sick. Yet he would miss breakfast and the guards would hound him. He shook, involuntarily, and realised he had been asleep, dreaming.
Across the bleak icy wastelands a lone figure approached, seemingly drifting across the ground towards him. The air was still, and light snow fell, like feathers, silently around him. The female figure, closer now, was cloaked with a long black calf length robe, of excellent quality material, adorned with an oversized hood, lined with red silk, that covered her head, obscuring partially the delicate features of her face. She wore thin black silk gloves, and knee high black leather boots. Digby Reeves peered intently at her, allured by her elegant demeanour. She was very beautiful, Slavic in appearance, with startling deep, dark brown eyes, high cheekbones and a pale complexion which contrasted with her full red lips, and the framing of her face by luscious raven black shoulder length hair. Digby Reeves rose to his feet and greeted the mysterious figure.
“I am Veroshka Svetlana Ulitskaya. Here, you must drink this.” She reached inside her robe and produced a small flask of strong black coffee, bitter and unsweetened. “This will revive you from your slumber. You must not sleep here.” Digby Reeves took the flask, unscrewed the lid, poured a small amount of coffee into the lid and sipped gratefully at the steaming hot brew.
“Thank you, Vero, Verosh..”
“Veroshka Svetlana” she corrected him.
“Ah, yes, sorry. Thank you Veroshka Svetlana this is so very kind of you. Veroshka Svetlana, yes, Veroshka Svetlana” he replied, bending his tongue around what for him was an unusual pronunciation. He was grateful for both the coffee and the correction of his errant attempt at mouthing her name.They stood together for a few moments, silently, eyeing each other with great curiosity, forming first impressions, as Digby Reeves drank first one cupful and then a second.
“Mr Digby Reeves, permit me to ask, Why are you here? And where are you going?”
“How do you know my name, Veroshka Svetlana?”
“Never mind that, please be so good as to answer my question to you.”
Digby Reeves peered into Veroshka Svetlana’s engaging dark brown eyes, and, perhaps on account of his stomach being freshly warmed with coffee, he noticed that his heart was similarly warmed and he had acquired a pleasant yet curious capacity to trust his new acquaintance.
“Well, I am running. Away. From civilisation, such as it is. I had a disagreement and an altercation with a shop owner, a cafe to be precise, and as a consequence my life should no longer be worth living amongst the sclerotic, social creditised ranks of that Neo-quotidian post-human society. I have left it behind. I seek fellowship and some warmth, in spite of this bitterly cold Arctic aspect, amongst true humans. Word has reached me that such folk may be found at rebuilt former Soviet Gulags scattered around this area. How ironic.”
“And you would traverse snowy landscapes and sub zero temperatures, lack of food, shelter and sleep, perhaps even death, to do so?” Veroshka Svetlana, raised an eyebrow. An expression of admiration lit up her face. The flurry of snow had ended, and the sun emerged, from over Digby’ Reeves’ left shoulder, illuminating gently, momentarily, Veroshka Svetlana’s face. She was radiant, kind and flawless.
“Yes, I simply must. I can face it no longer, nor continue living as I did, submerged and drowning in an ocean of bureaucratic obstinacy; being monitored and made to mask my ugly mug wherever I tread. I should rather be dead”, he replied.
Veroshka Svetlana raised her right hand to shield her face from the sudden glare of the sun, paused pensively for a moment, and fixed Digby with a wistful stare. “There are many who have died.” she whispered, taking his hand in hers. “There are many yet to die. There are many still alive yet are dead. There is always a dead man, or a dead woman, ensconced behind an office desk, a shop counter or an administrative divide, seeking to display the insolence of position and to render doubly dead those who would live, breathe and take pleasure from the simple things in life.”
“Yes, that is true”, he replied, his eyes averted towards the ground as he tried, in vain, to suppress a rueful look from breaking across his face. He was tired, his head hurt and whilst he appreciated the sudden, unexpected company of the beautiful Veroshka Svetlana, and the offering of a flask of coffee, Digby Reeves was in no mood to contemplate the difficulties and impediments of his former life.
Noticing his brevity of response, Veroshka Svetlana unclasped her hand from his, removed her gloves and placed them in her pocket. Her hands were soft and elegant. She raised in front of his face her perfectly manicured ruby red nails, clicked her middle finger against her thumb and simultaneously posed a simple, shocking and throughly unexpected question to Digby Reeves. “What if I possessed the power of metamorphosis?” Veroshka Svetlana, paused momentarily, permitting her words to caress gently the ears of Digby Reeves and to present themselves to the welcoming committee of his conscious understanding. She pressed upon him further, “What if I held the capacity to transform you into an animal, a disease carrying animal, a rat, perhaps, with capacity to spread a fatal Hantavirus? What if I were able to do that and send you straight back to the society from whence you came? You could snarl, bite and infect the obstinate and the compliant. You could infest post-human society with a real malady, one that would spread amongst them and obliterate them, their towns and their cities. Social creditised living would become but a bad memory; mandated masks, pills, potions and protective vaccines rendered as a fading nightmare. Post-human society would collapse and your vengeance would be full.”
Digby Reeves, staggered backwards, one, perhaps two steps, turned slightly to face her straight on, and addressed her with tones of astonishment, “Veroshka Svetlana! With what dizzyingly wild notions are you now trying to fill my head?”
“Digby, think upon it!” she implored, “The cities are filled with high rise tower blocks, lined up, neatly, repeatedly, like rows of crammed, overfilled office filing cabinets, functioning only to contain and administrate the post-human rat race. And do you know? Even should a man or woman win that rat race, they will not long celebrate their triumph, for they soon learn that in spite of their success they remain forever a rat, a quasi-post-human rat.”
Digby Reeves felt a spinning sensation in his head. It was cold, he was hungry and tired, but most of all, he was by now thoroughly disorientated at the proposition put before him. He took a moment, then collecting himself together, cleared his throat and spoke. “But I, I,.. Veroshka Svetlana, I am headed to a Gulag. I hope to meet former friends, family and acquaintances from the old world, a time before we were all deceived on account of the first false pandemic.”
Veroshka Svetlana again raised her hand, this time grasping him lightly by his left elbow. She looked intently at him, “Think upon it Digby Reeves. Think upon what I am offering you. A chance to avenge all of the folk you love and regard so dearly, the friends and family driven out of society and reduced now to no more than a brutal and meagre existence. Are they really even living at all?”
“But, Veroshka Svetlana, even were it possible, it would be wrong to do so. I, I, I simply couldn’t bite and tear at human flesh, even post-human flesh. I couldn’t in all good conscience spread plague and be the cause of death.” Digby Reeves, shook his head, as if to emphasise his decision “No, Veroshka Svetlana, thank you for your kindness here today, for which I am much grateful, but I simply cannot accept your proposal.”
“Digby, you are tired, hungry and desperate for human company. You are not thinking straight. Here, eat this.” Veroshka Svetlana produced from her pocket a small chunk of bread, and offered it to him. He took it, and ate it. She continued speaking to him as he chewed the morsel,“Consider further my proposal to you. I offer you a metamorphosis. I offer you to become a rat. By its very nature a rat has no qualms about biting and tearing at flesh, for it has no conscience, and cares not about acting by that which its very nature demands.”
Digby Reeves swallowed the bread and conceded, “I see your point, yes, I see it. Yet, Veroshka Svetlana, murder is wrong, is it not?”
Veroshka Svetlana shook her head ruefully, and spoke slowly and gently to him, ensuring he understood fully her counter point, “Digby Reeves, it would not be murder, for one does not place before a court of law any animal who stalks and kills its prey. If you were to accept my proposal then any loss of life would carry no moral prohibition whatsoever.”
“Hmm. I see.” Digby Reeves paused, closed his eyes and lifted the index finger of his right hand to his lips. He contemplated for a moment how to reply to this woman. “Veroshka Svetlana, right now a moral choice is very much required of me. To contemplate and to accept your proposal is in fact to make that moral choice, right here, right now, is it not? Veroshka Svetlana, I am no more convinced now than when we commenced this conversation.”
Veroshka Svetlana swung open her arms, gesticulating gently, inviting him to ponder a wider point, “Digby, consider if you will a veritable rogues gallery of authoritarian governmental thugs, even just of the Twentieth Century.”
“What of them, Veroshka Svetlana?”, he replied with quite some curiosity.
“Given the opportunity, not to be transformed into a rat, but perhaps instead to return to a time and place before the rise to dominance of any of those dictatorial monsters, would you not permit yourself the occasion to extinguish their lives, thus saving millions of others?”
“Veroshka Svetlana, you offer convincing argument” he nodded, “and almost persuade me of the value of extinguishing the life of the few on behalf of the many”.
“Digby Reeves, I perceive that you are almost convinced,” she smiled, “yet there remains still within you a reluctance to accept my proposal.” Digby took hold of her by both elbows and answered her firmly, “Yes, damn it, woman, I could never be a rat. Who wishes to be vermin, a rat? What sort of legacy would that leave at the end of my life?” He relinquished his hold upon her arms and began to sign write above both of their heads upon an imaginary gravestone, “Here lay, Digby Reeves. Rat.” No, Veroshka Svetlana, this will not do. I simply cannot tolerate this proposal any further.”
“A dog, then.”
“What?”
“I could transform you into a dog” she suggested, “Man’s best friend, a cute and cuddly dog. Yet a dog that passes on the rabies virus. Even in the post-human new world no one would ever suspect a family pet. You could be a dog, pure black, and wander by night the smart cities, without suspicion and unencumbered by human intervention. Even the emotionally deficient post-human race still loves dogs. You would likely have food thrown to you. You would have the freedom to roam hither and thither. Heavens above, man, you may even be invited indoors to sleep on the beds of some unsuspecting family.” She smiled, realising the allure of her offer now appealed to him.
“I, I, I don’t know”, he stammered.
“Take a further moment, and think on these things”, she suggested.
There was a pause in their conversation, the sun had become obscured by light cloud, and light snow was again falling. Digby Reeves noticed small flakes of snow land upon Veroshka Svetlana’s nose and cheek. He watched as they melted, leaving her skin glistening and even more radiant than before. “So, Veroshka Svetlana, you could transform me into a dog, send me back home and I would be able to destroy post human smart cities, thus preparing for the triumphal return of true humanity?”, he asked, “ I could be as one who would have eliminated an inhumane psychopath such as Hitler, Stalin or Mao, and prevented the cruel deaths of millions of lives?”
“Yes, that is precisely what I am offering you”, she responded, acknowledging that he was now contemplating, finally, the possibility of accepting her proposition.
“And my actions would provide a path of hope for true humanity?”
“Yes, Digby Jones, yes, that is correct”, she affirmed.
He pressed her further, “And, after that? Then what? Will you visit me once more and offer me a reversal of the situation, a sort of dog to human metamorphosis?”
“No. Digby Reeves. Once you become a canine in nature, there is no return”, she countered emphatically. “You shall be fixed in your new identity for your remaining days, yet you shall have sacrificed your life and invested it on behalf of the rescue of the human race.”
There was silence between them both. Snow fell a little harder now, Veroshka Svetlana reached into her robe, retrieved her silk gloves and slipped them over her hands. Digby Reeves stood, frozen in mind and body, overwhelmed at the enormity of the situation, on account of his distance from home, the inhospitable unfamiliar surroundings, sub zero temperatures, the sudden appearance of Veroshka Svetlana and the magnitude of the proposition she had put to him. An icy wind picked up and blasted directly into his face, and he was forced to close his eyes to shield them from the snow. He opened them moments later and Veroshka Svetlana was gone.
A small amount of melted snow trickled down the back of his neck. He shook, involuntarily, and realised again, he had been asleep once more, dreaming, a dream within a dream. He sat unmoved all this time, confused and disorientated now, in the same front row seat in the theatre of his fuddled and marginally less fatigued mind. Digby Reeves hauled himself slowly to his feet, and thought on the vivid nature of his dream. He posed himself a purely hypothetical question: what if the dreamy Veroshka Svetlana’s offer were real? He looked right, across the snow covered fields, and contemplated an imaginary chain of events that could take place on account of his accepting her proposal. He thought of the obliteration of post-human society, inhumane restrictions and authoritarian control. He turned again and looked left, through the copse of trees, imagining instead the route set before him in pursuit of warmth and the comfort of human relationships, in difficult circumstances, yet with a clear conscience. Digby Reeves reached into his rucksack and retrieved the piece of paper, the page he had discovered earlier. He unfolded it and began to read. Centralised, at the top of the page he recognised the name of his favourite author. In a quiet but audible voice he commenced reading:
“He who lies to himself and listens to his own lies reaches a state in which he no longer recognizes truth either in himself or in others, and so he ceases to respect both himself and others. Having ceased to respect everyone, he stops loving, and then, in the absence of love, in order to occupy and divert himself, he abandons himself to passions and the gratification of coarse pleasures until his vices bring him down to the level of bestiality, and all on account of his being constantly false both to himself and to others”*
Digby Reeves, paused a moment, then read again, silently this time, pausing at each sentence, contemplating the profundity of each proposition. He noticed a small, barely legible handwritten note, scribed in blue ink in the bottom right hand corner of the page. He peered closely at the writing, “Romans 1:18–32”. He pledged to himself that he would look it up. Digby Reeves folded the page and placed it back in his pocket, he gazed first left and then right, paused again, then set off, with determination on his chosen pathway.
* Dostoevsky, Fyodor; “The Brothers Karamazov”; 1879.
