You're an Animal, Viskovitz!

Prologue So there we were on that ice floe, just the two of us, adrift in the polar night. Viskovitz turned and said, "I'd like you to get our conversation down in black and white." "It's not possible," I answered. "I'm not a typist. I'm not a writer. I'm a penguin. As far as I'm concerned, 'getting it down in black and white' means making more penguins." So instead there I was a month later, standing still with an egg under my belly, remembering . . . I was the one who had brought up the subject. How's Life Treating You, Viskovitz? There's nothing more boring than life, nothing more depressing than light, nothing more bogus than reality. For me every waking was a dying--living was being dead. Jana squeaked, "Wake up, Visko! It's May! They'll end up getting all the best acorns." With great difficulty I stretched and grudgingly opened one eye. Because in spite of everything, you have to live. "Just a minute," I croaked. "I have to thaw out." It was the end of an eight-month hibernation. I was waking up in the gray hereafter, the underworld of dormice. In the darkness of the den I made out topiform shadows tottering past piles of slumberers, heading out of this sepulcher--souls of those who had passed on, who were transmigrating into wakefulness. As was I. I rolled onto one side, and all the bones of my mortal remains creaked. I began to recognize the familiar outlines of members of my tribe--nephews, nieces, grandnephews and grandnieces, grandparents and great-grandparents, parents and parents-in-law. Some of them were catching forty more winks, curled up under their long furry tails. They were groaning as they gave themselves over to that devastating pleasure. As my metabolism got into gear I was tortured by pains in my joints, by dehydration, by the distress of every single cell. It was the agony of reawakening, of a torment that would last another four months until the next hibernation. At a time like this there's only hunger that gives you the strength to get to your feet--the knowledge that if you don't fatten up, you won't be able to get back to sleep. "Up and at 'em!" I said to myself. "At your age you can reasonably expect another three hibernations. And it would be a shame, old dormouse, to miss out on them." Like a zombie, I hoisted up my body--worn out, wooden, deprived of fats and spirit--and shoved it awkwardly in the direction of the light. My eyes watered in the glare. "You're thin as a pin, Visko," Jana shouted at me. "Come on--let's go gather acorns." For years she'd been the mate to whom I'd been faithful, not out of any monogamous inclination--which we dormice frankly do not have--but out of laziness and a desire to be bored. She was the ugliest and most depressing female of the whole community, the silliest and most tedious. I'd chosen her for exactly that. Because only a life made up of boredom and frustration leads to fulfilling and magnificent dreams. And those are the moments that count. If the hereafter--that is, wakefulness--is hell, then life--that is, dreaming--will be paradise. Not the other way around. I didn't feel like venturing out in the branches, so I spied a couple of acorns that had landed on the ground and, at a prudently slow pace, lowered myself along the trunk. I staggered up to one of the nuts, tore off the cap with my paws and sank my molars into the ripe cotyledon. I immediately felt better. My den was the former nest of a woodpecker hollowed out of a sessiliflore oak. We'd been passing it down in our family for generations. It bore the most fruit of any tree in the woods; all it took to make it to the fall was to pick it clean. My children were already working at it, idly stretched out in the branches. With paternal satisfaction I appreciatBoffa, Alessandro is the author of 'You're an Animal, Viskovitz!' with ISBN 9780375405280 and ISBN 0375405283.