+++ /dev/null
-
- <i>There is but one problem --
- the only one in the world --
- to restore to men a spiritual
- content, spiritual concerns....</i>
- <b>-- A de St. Exupery</b>
-
-
- The customs inspector had a round smooth face which
-registered the most benevolent of attitudes. He was
-respectfully cordial and solicitous.
- "Welcome," he murmured. "How do you like our sunshine?" He
-glanced at the passport in my hand. "Beautiful morning, isn't
-it?"
- I proffered him my passport and stood the suitcase on the
-white counter. The inspector rapidly leafed through it with his
-long careful fingers. He was dressed in a white uniform with
-silver buttons and silver braid on the shoulders. He laid the
-passport aside and touched the suitcase with the tips of his
-fingers.
- "Curious," he said. "The case has not yet dried. It is
-difficult to imagine that somewhere the weather can be bad."
- "Yes," I said with a sigh, "we are already well into the
-autumn," and opened the suitcase.
- The inspector smiled sympathetically and glanced at it
-absent-mindedly. "It's impossible amid our sunshine to
-visualize an autumn. Thank you, that will be quite all
-right.... Rain, wet roofs, wind...
- "And what if I have something hidden under the linen?" I
-asked -- I don't appreciate conversations about the weather. He
-laughed heartily.
- "Just an empty formality," he said. "Tradition. A
-conditioned reflex of all customs inspectors, if you will." He
-handed me a sheet of heavy paper. "And here is another
-conditioned reflex. Please read it -- it's rather unusual. And
-sign it if you don't mind."
- I read. It was a law concerning immigration, printed in
-elegant type on heavy paper and in four languages. Immigration
-was absolutely forbidden. The customs man regarded me steadily.
- "Curious, isn't it?" he asked.
- "In any case it's intriguing," I replied, drawing my
-fountain pen. "Where do I sign?"
- "Where and how you please," said the customs man. "Just
-across will do."
- I signed under the Russian text over the line "I have been
-informed on the immigration laws."
- 'Thank you," said the customs man, filing the paper away
-in his desk, 'Now you know practically all our laws. And during
-your entire stay -- How long will you be staying with us?"
- I shrugged my shoulders.
- "It's difficult to say in advance. Depends on how the work
-will go."
- "Shall we say a month?"
- 'That would be about it. Let's say a month."
- "And during this whole month," he bent over the passport
-making some notation, "during this entire month you won't need
-any other laws." He handed me my passport. "I shouldn't even
-have to mention that you can prolong your stay with us to any
-reasonable extent. But in the meantime, let it be thirty days.
-If you find it desirable to stay longer, visit the police
-station on the 16th of May and pay one dollar... You have
-dollars?"
- "Yes."
- "That's fine. By the way, it is not at all necessary to
-have exclusively a dollar. We accept any currency. Rubles,
-pounds, cruzeiros."
- "I don't have cruzeiros," I said. 'I have only dollars,
-rubles, and some English pounds. Will that suit you?"
- "Undoubtedly. By the way, so as not to forget, would you
-please deposit ninety dollars and seventy-two cents."
- "With pleasure," I said, "but why?"
- "It's customary. To guarantee the minimum needs. We have
-never had anyone with us who did not have some needs."
- I counted out ninety-one dollars, and without sitting
-down, he proceeded to write out a receipt. His neck grew red
-from the awkward position. I looked around. The white counter
-stretched along the entire pavilion. On the other side of the
-barrier, customs inspectors in white smiled cordially, laughed,
-explained things in a confidential manner. On this side,
-brightly clad tourists shuffled impatiently, snapped suitcase
-locks, and gaped excitedly. While they waited they feverishly
-thumbed through advertising brochures, loudly devised all kinds
-of plans, secretly and openly anticipated happy days ahead, and
-now thirsted to surmount the white counter as quickly as
-possible. Sedate London clerks and their athletic-looking
-brides, pushy Oklahoma farmers in bright shirts hanging outside
-Bermuda shorts and sandals over bare feet, Turin workers with
-their well-rouged wives and numerous children, small-time
-Catholic bosses from Spain, Finnish lumbermen with their pipes
-considerately banked, Hungarian basketball players, Iranian
-students, union organizers from Zambia...
- The customs man gave me my receipt and counted out
-twenty-eight cents change.
- "Well -- there is all the formality. I hope I haven't
-detained you too long. May I wish you a pleasant stay!"
- "Thank you," I said and took my suitcase.
- He regarded me with his head slightly bent sideways,
-smiling out of his bland, smooth face.
- "Through this turnstile, please. <i>Au revoir.</i> May I
-once more wish you the best."
- I went out on the plaza following an Italian pair with
-four kids and two robot redcaps.
- The sun stood high over mauve mountains. Everything in the
-plaza was bright and shiny and colorful. A bit too bright and
-colorful, as it usually is in resort towns. Gleaming
-orange-and-red buses surrounded by tourist crowds, shiny and
-polished green of the vegetation in the squares with white,
-blue, yellow, and gold pavilions, kiosks, and tents. Mirrorlike
-surfaces, vertical, horizontal, and inclined, which flared with
-sunbursts. Smooth matte hexagons underfoot and under the wheels
--- red, black, and gray, just slightly springy and smothering
-the sound of footsteps. I put down the suitcase and donned
-sunglasses.
- Out of all the sunny towns it has been my luck to visit,
-this was without a doubt the sunniest. And that was all wrong.
-It would have been much easier if the day had been gray, if
-there had been dirt and mud, if the pavilion had also been gray
-with concrete walls, and if on that wet concrete was scratched
-something obscene, tired, and pointless, born of boredom. Then
-I would probably feel like working at once. I am positive of
-this because such things are irritating and demand action. It's
-still hard to get used to the idea that poverty can be wealthy.
-And so the urge is lacking and there is no desire to begin
-immediately, but rather to take one of these buses, like the
-red-and-blue one, and take off to the beach, do a little scuba
-diving, get a tan, play some ball, or find Peck, stretch out on
-the floor in some cool room and reminisce on all the good stuff
-so that he could ask about Bykov, about the Trans-Pluto
-expedition, about the new ships on which I too am behind the
-times, but still know better than he, and so that he could
-recollect the uprising and boast of his scars and his high
-social position.... It would be most convenient if Peck did
-have a high social position. It would be well if he were, for
-example, a mayor....
- A small darkish rotund individual in a white suit and a
-round white hat set at a rakish angle approached deliberately,
-wiping his lips with a dainty handkerchief. The hat was
-equipped with a transparent green shade and a green ribbon on
-which was stamped "Welcome." On his right earlobe glistened a
-pendant radio.
- "Welcome aboard," said the man.
- "Hello," said I.
- "A pleasure to have you with us. My name is Ahmad."
- "And my name is Ivan," said I. "Pleased to make your
-acquaintance."
- We nodded to each other and regarded the tourists entering
-the buses. They were happily noisy and the warm wind rolled
-their discarded butts and crumpled candy wrappers along the
-square. Ahmad's face bore a green tint from the light filtering
-through his cap visor.
- "Vacationers," he said. "Carefree and loud. Now they will
-be taken to their hotels and will immediately rush off to the
-beaches."
- "I wouldn't mind a run on water skis," I observed.
- "Really? I never would have guessed. There's nothing you
-look less like than a vacationer."
- "So be it," I said. "In fact I did come to work"
- "To work? Well, that happens too, some do come to work
-here. Two years back Jonathan Kreis came here to paint a
-picture." He laughed. "Later there was an assault-and-battery
-case in Rome, some papal nuncio was involved, can't remember
-his name."
- "Because of the picture?"
- "No, hardly. He didn't paint a thing here. The casino was
-where you could find him day or night. Shall we go have a
-drink?"
- "Let's. You can give me a few pointers."
- "It's my pleasurable duty -- to give advice," said Ahmad.
- We bent down simultaneously and both of us took hold of
-the suitcase handle.
- "It's okay -- I'll manage."
- "No," countered Ahmad, "you are the guest and I the host.
-Let's go to yonder bar. It's quiet there at this time."
- We went in under a blue awning. Ahmad seated me at a
-table, put my suitcase on a vacant chair, and went to the
-counter. It was cool and an air conditioner sighed in the
-background. Ahmad returned with a tray. There were tall glasses
-and flat plates with butter-gold tidbits.
- "Not very strong," said Ahmad, "but really cold to make up
-for that."
- "I don't like it strong in the morning either," I said.
- I quaffed the glass. The stuff was good.
- "A swallow -- a bite," counseled Ahmad, "Like this: a
-swallow, a bite."
- The tidbits crunched and melted in the mouth. In my view,
-they were unnecessary. We were silent for some time, watching
-the square from under the marquee. gently purring, the buses
-pulled out one after another into their respective tree-lined
-avenues. They looked ponderous yet strangely elegant in their
-clumsiness.
- "It would be too noisy there," said Ahmad. "Fine cottages,
-lots of women -- to suit any taste -- and right on the water,
-but no privacy. I don't think it's for you."
- "Yes," I agreed. "The noise would bother me. Anyway, I
-don't like vacationers, Ahmad. Can't stand it when people work
-at having fun."
- Ahmad nodded and carefully placed the next tidbit in his
-mouth. I watched him chew. There was something professional and
-concentrated in the movement of his lower jaw. Having
-swallowed, he said, "No, the synthetic will never compare with
-the natural product. Not the same bouquet." He flexed his lips,
-smacked them gently, and continued, "There are two excellent
-hotels in the center of town, but, in my view..."
- "Yes, that won't do either," I said. "A hotel places
-certain obligations on you. I never heard that anything
-worthwhile has ever been written in a hotel."
- "Well, that's not quite true," retorted Ahmad, critically
-studying the last tidbit. "I read one book and in it they said
-that it was in fact written in a hotel -- the Hotel Florida."
- "Aah," I said, "you are correct. But then your city is not
-being shelled by cannons."
- "Cannons? Of course not. Not as a rule, anyway."
- "Just as I thought. But, as a matter of fact, it has been
-noted that something worthwhile can be written only in a hotel
-which is under bombardment."
- Ahmad took the last tidbit after all.
- 'That would be difficult to arrange," he said. "In our
-times it's hard to obtain a cannon. Besides, it's very
-expensive; the hotel could lose its clientele."
- "Hotel Florida also lost its clients in its time.
-Hemingway lived in it alone."
- "Who?"
- "Hemingway."
- "Ah... but that was so long ago, in the fascist times. But
-times have changed, Ivan."
- "Yes," said I, "and therefore in our times there is no
-point in writing in hotels."
- "To blazes with hotels then," said Ahmad. "I know what you
-need. You need a boarding house." He took out a notebook.
-"State your requirements and we'll try to match them up."
- "Boarding house," I said. "I don't know. I don't think so,
-Ahmad. Do understand that I don't want to meet people whom I
-don't want to know. That's to begin with. And in the second
-place, who lives in private boarding houses? These same
-vacationers who don't have enough money for a cottage. They too
-work hard at having fun. They concoct picnics, meets, and song
-fests. At night they play the banjo. On top of which they grab
-anyone they can get hold of and make them participate in
-contests for the longest uninterrupted kiss. Most important of
-all, they are all transients. But I am interested in your
-country, Ahmad. In your townspeople. I'll tell you what I need:
-I need a quiet house with a garden. Not too far from downtown.
-A relaxed family, with a respectable housewife. An attractive
-young daughter. You get the picture, Ahmad?"
- Ahmad took the empty glasses, went over to the counter,
-and returned with full ones. Now they contained a colorless
-transparent liquid and the small plates were stacked with tiny
-multistoried sandwiches.
- "I know of such a cozy house," declared Ahmad. "The widow
-is forty-five and the daughter twenty. The son is eleven. Let's
-finish the drinks and we'll be on our way. I think you'll like
-it. The rent is standard, but of course it's more than in a
-hoarding house. You have come to stay for a long time?"
- "For a month."
- "Good Lord! Just a month?"
- "I don't know how my affairs will go. Perhaps I may tarry
-awhile."
- "By all means, you will," said Ahmad. "I can see that you
-have totally failed to grasp just where you have arrived. You
-simply don't understand what a good time you can have here and
-how you don't have to think about a thing."
- We finished our drinks, got up, and went across the square
-under the hot sun to the parking area. Ahmad walked with a
-rapid, slightly rolling gait, with the green visor of his cap
-set low over his eyes, swinging the suitcase in a debonair
-manner. The next batch of tourists was being discharged
-broadcast from the customs house.
- "Would you like me to... Frankly?" said Ahmad suddenly.
- "Yes, I would like you to," said I. What else could I say?
-Forty years I have lived in this world and have yet to learn to
-deflect this unpleasant question.
- "You won't write a thing here," said Ahmad. "It's mighty
-hard to write in our town."
- "It's always hard to write anything. However, fortunately
-I am not a writer."
- "I accept this gladly. But in that case, it is slightly
-impossible here. At least for a transient."
- "You frighten me."
- "It's not a case of being frightened. You simply won't
-want to work. You won't be able to stay at the typewriter.
-You'll feel annoyed by the typewriter. Do you know what the joy
-of living is?"
- "How shall I say?"
- "You don't know anything, Ivan. So far you still don't
-know anything about it. You are bound to traverse the twelve
-circles of paradise. It's funny, of course, but I envy you."
- We stopped by a long open car. Ahmad threw the suitcase
-into the back seat and flung the door open for me.
- "Please," he said.
- "Presumably you have already passed through them?" I
-asked, sliding into the seat.
- He got in behind the wheel and started the engine.
- "What exactly do you mean?"
- "The twelve circles of paradise."
- "As for me, Ivan, a long time ago I selected my favorite
-circle," said Ahmad. The car began to roll noiselessly through
-the square. "The others haven't existed for me for quite a
-while. Unfortunately. It's like old age, with all its
-privileges and deficiencies."
- The car rushed through a park and sped along a shaded,
-straight thoroughfare. I kept looking around with great
-interest but couldn't recognize a thing. It was stupid to
-expect to. We had been landed at night, in a torrential rain;
-seven thousand exhausted tourists stood on the pier looking at
-the burning liner. We hadn't seen the city -- in its place was
-a black, wet emptiness dotted with red flashes. It had rattled,
-boomed, and screeched as though being rent asunder. "We'll be
-slaughtered in the dark, like rabbits," Robert had said, and I
-immediately had sent him back to the barge to unload the
-armored car. The gangway had collapsed and the car had fallen
-into the water, and when Peck had pulled Robert out, all blue
-from the cold, he had come over to me and said through
-chattering teeth, "Didn't I tell you it was dark?"
- Ahmad said suddenly, "When I was a boy, we lived near the
-port and we used to come out here to beat up the factory kids.
-Many of them had brass knuckles, and that got me a broken nose.
-Half of my life I put up with a crooked nose until I had it
-fixed last year. I sure loved to scrap when I was young. I used
-to have a hunk of lead pipe, and once I had to sit in jail for
-six months, but that didn't help."
- He stopped, grinning. I waited awhile, then said, "You
-can't find a good lead pipe these days. Now rubber truncheons
-are in fashion: you buy them used from the police."
- "Exactly," said Ahmad. "Or else you buy a dumbbell, cut
-off one ball and there you are, ready to go. But the guys are
-not what they used to be. Now you get deported for such stuff."
- "Yes. And what else did you occupy yourself with in your
-youth?"
- "And you?"
- "I planned on joining the interplanetary force and trained
-to withstand overstress. We also played at who could dive the
-deepest."
- "We too," said Ahmad. "We went down ten meters for
-automatics and whiskey. Over by the piers they lay on the
-seabed by the case. I used to get nosebleeds. But when the fire
-fights started, we began to find corpses with weights around
-their necks, so we quit that game."
- "It's a very unpleasant sight, a corpse under water --
-especially if there is a current," said I.
- Ahmad chuckled "I've seen worse. I had occasion to work
-with the police."
- "This was after the fracas?"
- "Much later. When the anti-gangster laws were passed."
- 'They were called gangsters here too?"
- "What else would you call them? Not brigands, certainly.
-'A group of brigands, armed with flame throwers and gas bombs,
-have laid siege to the municipal buildings,' " he pronounced
-expressively. "It doesn't sound right, you can feel that. A
-brigand is an ax, a bludgeon, a mustache up to the ears, a
-cleaver --"
- "A lead pipe," I offered.
- Ahmad gurgled.
- "What are you doing tonight?" he asked.
- "Going for a walk."
- "You have friends here?"
- "Yes. Why?"
- "Well... then it's different."
- "How come?"
- "Well, I was going to suggest something to you, but since
-you have friends..."
- "By the way, " I said, "who is your mayor?"
- "Mayor? The devil knows, I don't remember. Somebody was
-elected."
- "Not Peck Xenai, by any chance?"
- "I don't know." He sounded regretful. "I wouldn't want to
-mislead you."
- "Would you know the man anyway?"
- "Xenai... Peck Xenai... No, I don't knew him; haven't
-heard of him. What is he to you -- a friend?"
- "Yes, an old friend. I have some others here, but they are
-all visitors."
- "Well," said Ahmad, "if you should get bored and all kinds
-of thoughts begin to enter your head, come on over for a visit.
-Every single day from seven o'clock on I am at the Chez
-Gourmet. Do you like good eating?"
- "Quite," said I.
- "Stomach in good shape?"
- "Like an ostrich's."
- "Well, then, why don't you come by? We'll have a fine
-time, and it won't be necessary to think about a thing."
- Ahmad braked and turned cautiously into a driveway with an
-iron gate, which silently swung open before us. The car rolled
-into the yard.
- "We have arrived," announced Ahmad. "Here is your home."
- The house was two-storied, white with blue trim. The
-windows were draped on the inside. A clean, deserted patio with
-multi-colored flagstones was surrounded by a fruit-tree garden,
-with apple branches touching the walls.
- "And where is the widow?" I said.
- "Let's go inside," said Ahmad.
- He went up the steps, leafing through his notebook I was
-following him while looking around. I liked the mini-orchard.
-Ahmad found the right page and set up the combination on the
-small disc by the doorbell. The door opened. Cool, fresh air
-flowed out of the house. It was dark inside, but as soon as we
-stepped into the hall, it lit up with concealed illumination.
-Putting away his notebook, Ahmad said, "To the right is the
-landlord's half, to the left is yours. Please come in. Here is
-the living room, and there is the bar. In a minute we'll have a
-drink. And now here is your study. Do you have a phonor?"
- "No."
- "It's just as well. You have everything you need right
-here. Come on over here. This is the bedroom. There is the
-control board for acoustic defense. You know how to use it?"
- "I'll figure it out."
- "Good. The defense is triple, you can have it quiet as a
-tomb or turn the place into a bordello, whatever you like...
-Here's the air-conditioning control, which, incidentally, is
-not too convenient, as you can only operate it from the
-bedroom."
- "I'll manage," I said.
- "What? Well, okay. Here is the bathroom and powder room."
- "I am interested in the widow," I said, "and the
-daughter."
- "All in good time. Shall I open the drapes?"
- "What for?"
- "Right you are, for no reason. Let's go have a drink."
- We returned to the living room and Ahmad disappeared up to
-his waist in the bar.
- "You want it on the strong side?" he asked.
- "You have it backwards."
- "Would you like an omelette? Sandwiches?"
- "How about nothing?"
- "No," said Ahmad, "an omelette it shall be -- with
-tomatoes." He rummaged in the bar. "I don't know what does it,
-but this autocooker makes an altogether astonishingly good
-omelette with tomatoes. While we are at it, I will also have a
-bite."
- He extracted a tray from the bar and placed it on a low
-table by a semicircular couch. We sat down.
- "Now about the widow," I reminded him. "I would like to .
-present myself."
- "You like the rooms?"
- "They'll do."
- "Well, the widow is quite all right, too. And the daughter
-is not bad either."
- He extracted a flat case from an inside pocket. Like a
-cartridge clip it was stacked with a row of ampoules filled
-with colored liquids. Ahmad ran his index finger over them,
-smelled the omelette, hesitated, and finally selected one with
-a green fluid, broke it carefully, and dripped a few drops on
-the tomatoes. An aroma pervaded the room. The smell was not
-unpleasant, but, to my taste, bore no particular relation to
-the food.
- "Right now," continued Ahmad, "they are still asleep." His
-gaze turned abstracted. "They sleep and see dreams."
- I looked at my watch.
- "Well, well!"
- Ahmad was enjoying his food.
- "Ten-thirty!" I said.
- Ahmad was enjoying his food. His cap was pushed back on
-his head, and the green visor stuck up vertically like the
-crest of an aroused mimicrodon. His eyes were half-closed. I
-regarded him with interest.
- Having swallowed the last bit of tomato, he broke off a
-piece of the crust of white bread and carefully wiped the pan
-with it. His gaze cleared.
- "What were you saying?" he asked. "Ten-thirty? Tomorrow
-you too will get up at ten-thirty or maybe even at twelve. I,
-for one, will get up at twelve."
- He got up and stretched luxuriously, cracking his joints.
- "Well," he said, "it's time to go home, finally. Here's my
-card, Ivan. Put it in your desk, and don't throw it out until
-your very last day here." He went over to the flat box and
-inserted another card into its slot. There was a loud click.
- "Now this one," he said, examining the card against the
-light. "Please pass on to the widow with my very best
-compliments."
- "And then what will happen?" said I.
- "Money will happen. I trust you are not a devotee of
-haggling, Ivan? The widow will name a figure, Ivan, and you
-shouldn't haggle over it. It's not done."
- "I will try not to haggle," I said, "although it would be
-amusing to try it."
- Ahmad raised his eyebrows.
- "Well, if you really want to so much, then why not try it?
-Always do what you want to do. Then you will have excellent
-digestion. I will get your suitcase now."
- "I need prospects," I said. "I need guidebooks. I am a
-writer, Ahmad. I will require brochures on the economic
-situation of the masses, statistical references. Where can I
-get all that? And when?"
- "I will give you a guidebook," said Ahmad. "It has
-statistics, addresses, telephone numbers, and so on. As far as
-the masses are concerned, I don't think we publish any such
-nonsense. Of course, you can send an inquiry to UNESCO, but
-what would you want with it? You'll see everything for
-yourself. Just hold on a minute. I'll get the suitcase and the
-guidebook."
- He went out and quickly returned with my suitcase in one
-hand and a fat bluish-looking little tome in the other.
- I stood up.
- "Judging by the look on your face," he announced, smiling,
-"you are debating whether it's proper to tip me or not."
- "I confess," I said.
- "Well then, would you like to do it or not?"
- "No, I must admit."
- "You have a healthy, strong character," Ahmad approved.
-"Don't do it. Don't tip anybody. You could collect one in the
-face, especially from the girls. But, on the other hand, don't
-haggle either. You could walk into one that way too. Anyway,
-that's all a lot of rot. For all I know you may like to have
-your face slapped, like that Jonathan Kreis. Farewell, Ivan,
-have fun, and come to Chez Gourmet. Any evening at seven. But
-most important of all, don't think about a thing."
- He waved his hand and left. I picked up the mixture in the
-dewy glass and sat down with the guidebook.
-
-
-<ul><a name=2></a><h2>Chapter TWO</h2></ul>
-
- The guidebook was printed on bond paper with a gilt edge.
-Interspersed with gorgeous photographs, it contained some
-curious information. In the city there were fifty thousand
-people, fifteen hundred cats, twenty thousand pigeons, and two
-thousand dogs (including seven hundred winners of medals). The
-city had fifteen thousand passenger cars, five thousand helis,
-a thousand taxis (with and without chauffeurs), nine hundred
-automatic garbage collectors, four hundred permanent bars,
-cafes, and snack bars, eleven restaurants, and four first-class
-hotels, and was a tourist establishment which served over one
-hundred thousand visitors every year. The city had sixty
-thousand TV sets, fifty movie theaters, eight amusement parks,
-two Happy Mood salons, sixteen beauty parlors, forty libraries,
-and one hundred and eighty automated barber shops. Eighty
-percent of the population were engaged in services, and the
-rest worked in two syntho-bakeries and one government shipyard.
-There were six schools and one university housed in an old
-castle once the home of crusader Ulrich da Casa. In the city
-there were also eight active civilian societies, among them the
-Society of Diligent Tasters, the Society of Connoisseurs and
-Appraisers, and the Society for the Good Old Country Against
-Evil Influences. In addition, fifteen hundred citizens were
-members of seven hundred and one groups where they sang,
-learned to act, to arrange furniture, to breast-feed, and to
-medicate cats. As to per-capita consumption of alcoholic
-beverages, natural meat, and liquid oxygen, the city was sixth,
-twelfth, and thirteenth highest in Europe respectively. The
-city had seven men's clubs and five women's clubs, as well as
-sport clubs named the Bulls and Rhinos. By a majority of
-forty-six votes, someone by the name of Flim Gao had been
-elected mayor. Peck was not among the municipal officials.
- I put the guidebook aside, took off my jacket, and made a
-thorough examination of my domain. I approved of the living
-room. It was done in blue, and I like that color. The bar was
-full of bottled and refrigerated victuals so that I could at a
-moment's notice entertain a dozen starving guests.
- I went into the study. There was a large table in front of
-the window and a comfortable chair. The walls were lined with
-shelves tightly filled with collected works. The clean bright
-bindings were arranged with great skill so that they formed a
-colorful and appealing layout. The top shelf was occupied by
-the fifty-volume encyclopedia of UNESCO. Lower shelves were
-kaleidoscopic with the shiny wrappers of detective novels.
- As soon as I saw the telephone on the table, I dialed
-Rimeyer's number, perching on the chair arm. The receiver
-sounded with prolonged honkings and I waited, twirling a small
-dictaphone which someone had left on the table. Rimeyer did not
-answer. I hung up and inspected the dictaphone. The tape was
-half-used-up, and after rewinding, I punched the playback
-button.
- "Greetings and more greetings," said a merry male voice.
-"I clasp your hand heartily or kiss you on the cheek, depending
-on your sex and age. I have lived here two months and bear
-witness that it was most enjoyable. Allow me a few points of
-advice. The best institution in town is the Hoity Toity in the
-Park of Dreams. The best girl in town is Basi in the House of
-Models. The best guy in town is me, but I have already left. On
-television just watch Program Nine; everything else is chaff.
-Don't get involved with Intels, and give the Rhinos a wide
-berth. Don't buy anything on credit -- there'll be no end to
-the runaround. The widow is a good woman but loves to talk and
-in general... As for Vousi, I didn't get to meet her, as she
-had left the country to visit her grandmother. In my opinion
-she is sweet, and there was a photograph of her in the widow's
-album, but I took it. There's more: I expect to come back next
-March, so be a pal, if you decide to return, pick another time.
-Have a --"
- Music followed abruptly. I listened awhile and turned off
-the machine.
- There wasn't a single tome I could extract from the
-shelves, so well were they stuck in, or maybe even glued on,
-and as there was nothing else of interest in the study, I went
-into the bedroom.
- Here it was especially cool and cozy. I have always wanted
-just such a bedroom, but somehow never had the time to get
-around to setting one up. The bed was big and low. On the night
-table stood an elegant phonor and a tiny remote-control box for
-the TV. The screen stood at the foot of the bed, while at the
-head the widow had hung a very natural-looking picture of field
-flowers in a crystal vase. The picture was painted with
-luminous paints and the dewdrops glistened in the darkened
-room.
- I punched the TV control at random and stretched out on
-the bed. It was soft yet somehow firm. The TV roared loudly. An
-inebriated-looking man launched himself out of the screen,
-crashed through some sort of railing, and fell from a great
-height into a colossal fuming vat. There was a loud splash and
-the phonor exuded a smell. The man disappeared in the bubbling
-liquid and then reappeared, holding in his teeth something
-reminiscent of a well-boiled boot. The unseen audience broke
-out in a storm of horse laughs. Fade out... soft lyrical music.
-A white horse pulling a phaeton appeared out of green woods and
-advanced toward me. A pretty girl in a bathing suit sat in the
-carriage. I turned off the TV, got up, and went to look at the
-bathroom.
- There was a piny smell and flickering of germicidal lamps.
-I undressed, threw the underwear into the hopper, and climbed
-into the shower. Taking my time, I dressed in front of the
-mirror, combed my hair, and shaved. The shelves were loaded
-with rows of vials, hygienic devices, antiseptics, and tubes
-with pastes and greases. At the edge of one shelf there was a
-pile of flat colorful boxes with the logo "Devon." I switched
-off the razor and took one of the boxes. A germicidal lamp
-flickered in the mirror, just as it did that day in Vienna,
-when I stood just like this studiously regarding just such a
-little box, because I did not want to go out to the bedroom,
-where Raffy Reisman loudly argued about something with the
-doctor; while the green oily liquid still oscillated in the
-bath, over which hung the steamy vapor and a screeching radio
-receiver, attached to a porcelain hook for towels, howled,
-hooted, and snorted until Raffy turned it off in irritation.
-That was in Vienna, and just as here, it was very strange to
-see in a bathroom a box of Devon -- a popular repellent which
-did an excellent job of chasing mosquitoes, chiggers, gnats,
-and other bloodsucking insects which were long forgotten in
-Vienna and here in a seaside resort town. Only in Vienna there
-had been an overlay of fear.
- The box which I held in my hand was almost empty, with
-only one tablet remaining. The rest of the boxes were still
-scaled. I finished shaving and returned to the bedroom. I felt
-like calling Rimeyer again, but abruptly the house came to
-life. The pleated drapes flew open with a soft whine, the
-windowpanes slid away in their frames, and the bedroom was
-flooded with warm air, laden with the scent of apples. Someone
-was talking somewhere, light footsteps sounded overhead, and a
-severe-sounding female voice said, "Vousi -- at least eat some
-cake, do you hear?"
- Thereupon I imparted a certain air of disorder to my
-clothes (in accordance with the current style), smoothed my
-temples, and went into the hall, taking one of Ahmad's cards
-from the living room.
- The widow turned out to be a youthful plump woman,
-somewhat languid, with a pleasant fresh face.
- "How nice!" she said, seeing me. "You are up already?
-Hello, my name is Vaina Tuur, but you can call me Vaina."
- "My pleasure," I said, shuddering fashionably. "My name is
-Ivan."
- "How nice," said Aunt Vaina. "What an original
-soft-sounding name! Have you had breakfast, Ivan?"
- "With your permission, I intended to have breakfast in
-town," I said, and proffered her the card.
- "Ah," said Aunt Vaina, looking through the card at the
-light. "That nice Ahmad, if you only knew what a nice
-responsible fellow he is. But I see you did not have breakfast.
-Lunch you can have in town, but now I will treat you to some of
-my croutons. The major general always said that nowhere else in
-the world could you have such wonderful croutons."
- "With pleasure," said I, shuddering for the second time.
- The door behind Aunt Vaina was flung open and a very
-pretty young girl in a short blue skirt and an open white
-blouse flew in on clicking high heels. In her hand she held a
-piece of cake, which she munched while humming a currently
-popular song. Seeing me, she stopped, flung her pocketbook on
-its long strap over her shoulder with a show of abandon, and
-swallowed, bending down her head.
- "Vousi!" said Aunt Vaina, compressing her lips. "Vousi,
-this is Ivan."
- "Not bad!" said Vousi. "Greetings."
- "Vousi," reproached Aunt Vaina.
- "You came with your wife?" said Vousi, extending her hand.
- "No," said I. Her fingers were soft and cool. "I am
-alone."
- In that case, I'll show you all there is to see," she
-said. "Till tonight. I must run now, but we'll go out this
-evening."
- "Vousi!" reproached Aunt Vaina.
- Vousi pushed the rest of the cake into her mouth, bussed
-her mother on the cheek, and ran toward the door. She had
-smooth sunburned legs, long and slender, and a close-cropped
-back of the head.
- "Ach, Ivan," said Aunt Vaina, who was also looking at the
-retreating girl, "in our times it is so difficult to deal with
-young girls. They develop so early and leave us so soon. Ever
-since she started working in that salon..."
- "She is a dressmaker?" I inquired.
- "Oh no! She works in the Happy Mood Salon, in the old
-ladies' department. And do you know, they value her highly. But
-last year she was late once and now she has to be very careful.
-As you can see she could not even have a decent conversation
-with you, but it's possible that a client is even now waiting
-for her. You might not believe this, but she already has a
-permanent clientele. Anyway, why are we standing here? The
-croutons will get cold."
- We entered the landlord's side. I tried with all my might
-to conduct myself correctly, although I was a bit foggy as to
-what exactly was correct. Aunt Vaina sat me down at a table,
-excused herself, and left. I looked around. The room was an
-exact copy of mine, except that the walls were rose instead of
-blue, and beyond the window, in place of the sea was a small
-yard with a low fence dividing it from the street. Aunt Vaina
-came back with a tray bearing boiled cream and a plate of
-croutons..
- "You know," she said, "I think I will have some breakfast
-too. My doctor does not recommend breakfast, especially with
-boiled cream. But we became so accustomed... it was the
-general's favorite breakfast. Do you know, I try to have only
-men boarders. That nice Ahmad understands me very well. He
-understands how much I need to sit just like this, now and
-then, just as we are sitting, and have a cup of boiled cream."
- "Your cream is wonderfully good," said I, not insincerely.
- "Ach, Ivan." Aunt Vaina put down her cup and fluttered her
-hands. "But you said that almost exactly like the major
-general... Strange, you even look like him. Except that his
-face was a bit narrower and he always had breakfast in his
-uniform."
- "Yes," I said with regret, "I don't have a uniform."
- "But there was one once," said she coyly, shaking a finger
-at me. "Of course! I can see it. It's so senseless! People
-nowadays have to be ashamed of their military past. Isn't that
-silly? But they are always betrayed by their bearing, that very
-special manly carriage. You cannot hide it, Ivan!"
- I made a very elaborate non-committal gesture, said, "Mm
--- yes," and took another crouton.
- "It's all so out of place, isn't that right?" continued
-Aunt Vaina with great animation. "How can you confuse such two
-opposite concepts -- war and the army? We all detest war. War
-is awful. My mother described it to me, she was only a girl,
-but she remembers everything. Suddenly, without warning, there
-they are -- the soldiers, crude, alien, speaking a foreign
-tongue, belching; and the officers, without any manners,
-laughing loudly, annoying the chambermaids, and smelling --
-forgive me; and that senseless commander's meeting hour... that
-is war and it deserves every condemnation! But the army! That's
-an altogether different affair! Surely you remember, Ivan, the
-troops lined up by battalion, the perfection of the line, the
-manliness of the faces under the helmets, shiny arms, sparkling
-decorations, and then the commanding officer riding in a
-special staff car and addressing the battalions, which respond
-willingly and briefly like one man."
- "No doubt," said I, "this has impressed many people."
- "Yes! Very much indeed. We have always said that it is
-necessary to disarm, but did we really need to destroy the
-army? It is the last refuge of manhood in our time of
-widespread moral collapse. It's weird and ridiculous -- a
-government without an army...."
- "It is funny," I agreed. "You may not believe it, but I
-have been smiling ever since they signed the Pact."
- "Yes, I can understand that," said Aunt Vaina. "There was
-nothing else for us to do, but to smile sarcastically. The
-Major General Tuur" -- she extricated a handkerchief -- "passed
-away with just such a sarcastic smile on his face." She applied
-the handkerchief to her eyes. "He said to us: 'My friends, I
-still hope to live to the day when everything will fall apart.'
-A broken man, who has lost the meaning of life... he could not
-stand the emptiness in his heart." Suddenly she perked up.
-"Here, let me show you, Ivan."
- She bustled into the next room and returned with a heavy
-old-fashioned photo album.
- I looked at my watch at once, but Aunt Vaina did not take
-any notice, and sitting herself down at my side, opened the
-album at the very first page.
- "Here is the major general."
- The major general looked quite the eagle. He had a narrow
-bony face and translucent eyes. His long body was spangled with
-medals. The biggest, a multi-pointed starburst framed in a
-laurel wreath, sparkled in the region of the appendix. In his
-left hand the general tightly pressed a pair of gloves, and his
-right hand rested on the hilt of a ceremonial poniard. A high
-collar with gold embroidery propped up his lower jaw.
- "And here is the major general on maneuvers."
- Here again the general looked the eagle. He was issuing
-instructions to his officers, who were bent over a map spread
-on the frontal armor of a gigantic tank. By the shape of the
-treads and the streamlined appearance of the turret, I
-recognized it as one of the Mammoth heavy storm vehicles, which
-were designed for pushing through nuclear strike zones and now
-are successfully employed by deep-sea exploration teams.
- "And here is the general on his fiftieth birthday."
- Here too, the general looked the eagle. He stood by a
-well-set table with a wineglass in his hand, listening to a
-toast in his honor. The lower left corner was occupied by a
-halo of light from a shiny pate; and to his side, gazing up at
-him with admiration, sat a very young and very pretty Aunt
-Vaina. I tried surreptitiously to gauge the thickness of the
-album by feel.
- "Ah, here is the general on vacation."
- Even on vacation, the general remained an eagle. With his
-feet planted well apart, he stood an the beach sporting
-tiger-stripe trunks, as he scanned the misty horizon through a
-pair of binoculars. At his feet a child of three or four was
-digging in the sand. The general was wiry and muscular.
-Croutons and cream did not spoil his figure. I started to wind
-my watch noisily.
- "And here..." began Aunt Vaina, turning the page, but at
-this point, a short portly man entered the room without
-knocking. His face and in particular his dress seemed strangely
-familiar.
- "Good morning," he enunciated, bending his smooth smiling
-face slightly sideways.
- It was my erstwhile customs man, still in the same white
-uniform with the silver buttons and the silver braid on the
-shoulders.
- "Ah! Pete!" said Aunt Vaina. "Here you are already.
-Please, let me introduce you. Ivan, this is Pete, a friend of
-the family."
- The customs man turned toward me without recognition,
-briefly inclined his head, and clicked his heels. Aunt Vaina
-laid the album in my lap and got up.
- "Have a seat, Pete," she said. "I will bring some cream."
- Pete clicked his heels once more and sat down by me.
- "This should interest you," I said, transferring the album
-to his lap. "Here is Major General Tuur. In mufti." A strange
-expression appeared on the face of the customs man. "And here
-is the major general on maneuvers. You see? And here --"
- "Thank you," said the customs man raggedly. "Don't exert
-yourself, because --"
- Aunt Vaina returned with cream and croutons. From as far
-back as the doorway, she said, "How nice to see a man in
-uniform! Isn't that right, Ivan?"
- The cream for Pete was in a special cup with the monogram
-"T" surrounded by four stars.
- "It rained last night, so it must have been cloudy. I
-know, because I woke up, and now there is not a cloud in the
-sky. Another cup, Ivan?"
- I got up.
- 'Thank you, I'm quite full. If you'll excuse me, I must
-take my leave. I have a business appointment,"
- Carefully closing the door behind me, I heard the widow
-say, "Don't you find an extraordinary resemblance between him
-and Staff Major Polom?"
- In the bedroom, I unpacked the suitcase and transferred
-the clothing to the wall closet, and again rang Rimeyer. Again
-no one answered. So I sat down at the desk and set to exploring
-the drawers. One contained a portable typewriter, another a set
-of writing paper and an empty bottle of grease for arrhythmic
-motors. The rest was empty, if you didn't count bundles of
-crumpled receipts, a broken fountain pen, and a carelessly
-folded sheet of paper, decorated with doodled faces. I unfolded
-the sheet. Apparently it was the draft of a telegram.
- "Green died while with the Fishers receive body Sunday
-with condolences Hugger Martha boys." I read the writing twice,
-turned the sheet over and studied the faces, and read for the
-third time. Obviously Hugger and Martha were not informed that
-normal people notifying of death first of all tell how and why
-a person died and not whom he was with when he died. I would
-have written, "Green drowned while fishing." Probably in a
-drunken stupor. By the way, what address did I have now?
- I returned to the hall. A small boy in short pants
-squatted in the doorway to the landlord's half. Clamping a long
-silvery tube under an armpit, he was panting and wheezing and
-hurriedly unwinding a tangle of string. I went up to him and
-said, "Hi."
- My reflexes are not what they used to be, but still I
-managed to duck a long black stream which whizzed by my ear and
-splashed against the wall. I regarded the boy with astonishment
-while he stared at me, lying on his side and holding the tube
-in front of him. His face was damp and his mouth twisted and
-open. I turned to look at the wall. The stuff was oozing down.
-I looked at the boy again. He was getting up slowly, without
-lowering the tube.
- "Well, well, brother, you are nervous!" said I.
- "Stand where you are," said the boy in a hoarse voice." I
-did not say your name."
- "To say the least," said I. "You did not even mention
-yours, and you fire at me like I was a dummy."
- "Stand where you are," repeated the boy, "and don't move."
-He backed and suddenly blurted in rapid fire, "Hence from my
-hair, hence from my bones, hence from my flesh."
- "I cannot," I said. I was still trying to understand
-whether he was playing or was really afraid of me.
- "Why not?" said the boy. "I am saying everything right."
- "I can't go without moving," I said. "I am standing where
-I am."
- His mouth fell open again.
- "Hugger: I say to you -- Hugger -- begone!" he said
-uncertainly.
- "Why Hugger?" I said. "My name is Ivan; you confuse me
-with somebody else."
- The boy closed his eyes and advanced upon me, holding the
-tube in front of him.
- "I surrender," I warned. "Be careful not to fire."
- When the tube dented my midriff he stopped and, dropping
-it, suddenly went limp, letting his hands fall. I bent over and
-looked him in the face. Now he was brick-red. I picked up the
-tube. It was something like a toy rifle, with a convenient
-checkered grip and a flat rectangular flask which was inserted
-from below, like a clip.
- "What kind of gadget is this?" I asked.
- "A splotcher," he said gloomily. "Give it back."
- I gave him back the toy.
- "A splotcher," I said, "with which you splotch. And what
-if you had hit me?" I looked at the wall. "Fine thing. Now you
-won't get it off inside of a year. You'll have to get the wall
-changed."
- The boy looked up at me suspiciously. "But it's Splotchy,"
-he said.
- "Really -- and I thought it was lemonade."
- His face finally acquired a normal hue and demonstrated an
-obvious resemblance to the manly features of Major General
-Tuur.
- "No, no, it's Splotchy."
- "So?"
- "It will dry up."
- "And then it's really hopeless?"
- "Of course not. There will simply be nothing left."
- "Hmm," said I, with reservation. "However, you know best.
-Let us hope so. But I am still glad that there will be nothing
-left on the wall instead of on my face. What's your name?"
- "Siegfried."
- "And after you give it some thought?"
- He gave me a long look.
- "Lucifer."
- "What?"
- "Lucifer."
- "Lucifer," said I. "Belial, Ahriman, Beelzebub, and
-Azrael. How about something a little shorter? It's very
-inconvenient to call for help to someone with a name like
-Lucifer."
- "But the doors are closed," he said and backed one step.
-His face paled again.
- "So what?"
- He did not respond but continued to back until he reached
-the wall and began to sidle along it without taking his eyes
-off me. It finally dawned on me that he took me for a murderer
-or a thief and. that he wanted to escape. But for some reason
-he did not call for help and went by his mother's door,
-continuing toward the house exit.
- "Siegfried," said I, "Siegfried, Lucifer, you are a
-terrible coward. Who do you think I am?" I didn't move but only
-Turned to keep facing him. "I am your new boarder; your mother
-has just fed me croutons and cream and you go and fire at me
-and almost splotched me, and now you are afraid of me. It is I
-who should be afraid of you."
- All this was very much reminiscent of a scene in the
-boarding school in Anyudinsk, when they brought me a boy just
-like this one, the son of a sect member. Hell's bells, do I
-really look so much the gangster?
- "You remind me of Chuchundra the Muskrat," I said, "who
-spent his life crying because he could not come out into the
-middle of the room. Your nose is blue from fear, your ears are
-freezing, and your pants are wet so that you are trailing a
-small stream...."
- In such cases it makes absolutely no difference what is
-said. It is important to speak calmly and not to make sudden
-movements. The expression on his face did not change, but when
-I spoke about the stream, he moved his eyes momentarily to take
-a look. But only for a second. Then he jumped toward the door,
-fluttering for a second at the latch, and flew outside, dirty
-bottoms of his sandals flying. I went out after him.
- He stood in the lilac bush, so that all I could see was
-his pale face. Like a fleeing cat looking momentarily over its
-shoulder.
- "Okay, okay," said I. "Would you please explain to me what
-I must do? I have to send home my new address. The address of
-this house where I am now living." He regarded me in silence.
-"I don't feel right going to your mother -- in the first place,
-she has guests, and in the second--"
- "Seventy-eight, Second Waterway," he said.
- Slowly I sat down on the steps. There was a distance of
-some ten meters between us.
- 'That's quite a voice you have," I said confidentially.
-"Just like my friend the barman's at Mirza-Charles."
- "When did you arrive?" said he.
- "Well, let's see." I looked at my watch, "About an hour
-and a half ago."
- "Before you there was another one," he said, looking
-sideways. "He was a rat-fink. He gave me striped swimming
-trunks, and when I went in the water, they melted away."
- "Ouch!" I said. "That is really a monster of some sort and
-not a human -- he should have been drowned in Splotchy."
- "Didn't have time -- I was going to, but he went away."
- "Was it that same Hugger with Martha and the boys?"
- "No -- where did you get that idea? Hugger came later."
- "Also a rat-fink?"
- He didn't answer. I leaned back against the wall and
-contemplated the street. A car jerkily backed out of the
-opposite driveway, back and forthed, and roared off.
-Immediately it was followed by another just such a car. There
-was the pungent smell of gasoline. Then cars followed one after
-another, until my eyes blurred. Several helis appeared in the
-sky. They were the so-called silent helis, but they flew
-relatively low, and while they flew, it was difficult to talk.
-In any case, the boy was apparently not going to talk. But he
-wasn't going to leave, either. He was doing something with his
-splotcher in the bushes and was glancing at me now and then. I
-was hoping he wasn't going to splotch me again. The helis kept
-going and going, and the cars kept swishing and swishing, as
-though all the fifteen thousand cars were speeding by on Second
-Waterway, and all the five hundred helis were hung over Number
-78. The whole thing lasted about ten minutes, and the boy
-seemed to cease paying attention to me while I sat and wondered
-what questions I should ask of Rimeyer. Then everything
-returned to its previous state, the smell of exhaust was gone,
-the sky was cleared.
- "Where are they all going -- all at once?" I asked.
- "Don't you know?"
- "How would I know?"
- "I don't know either, but somehow you knew about Hugger."
- "About Hugger," I said. "I know about Hugger quite
-accidentally. And about you I know nothing at all... how you
-live and what you do. For instance, what are you doing now?"
- "The safeguard is broken."
- "Well then, give it to me, I'll fix it. Why are you afraid
-of me? Do I look like a rat-fink?"
- "They all drove off to work," he said.
- "You sure go to work late. It's practically dinnertime
-already. Do you know the Hotel Olympic?"
- "Of course I know."
- "Would you walk me there?"
- He hesitated.
- "No."
- "Why not?" I asked.
- "School is about to end -- I must be going home."
- "Aha! So that's the way of it," said I. "You are playing
-hookey, or ditching it, as we used to say. What grade are you
-in?"
- "Third."
- "I used to be in third grade, too," I said.
- He came a bit out of the bushes.
- "And then?"
- "Then I was in the fourth." I got up. "Well, okay. Talk
-you won't, go for a walk you won't, and your pants are wet, so
-I am going back in. You won't even tell me your name."
- He looked at me in silence and breathed heavily through
-his mouth. I went back to my quarters. The cream-colored hall
-was irreparably disfigured, it seemed to me. The huge black
-clot was not drying. Somebody is going to get it today, I
-thought. A ball of string was underfoot. I picked it up. The
-end of the string was tied to the landlady's half-doorknob. So,
-I thought, this too is clear. I untied the string and put the
-ball in my pocket.
- In the study, I got a clean sheet of paper from the desk
-and composed a telegram to Matia. "Arrived safely, 78 Second
-Waterway. Kisses. Ivan." I telephoned it to the local PT&T and
-again dialed Rimeyer's number. Again there was no answer. I put
-on my jacket, looked in the mirror, counted my money, and was
-about to set out when I saw that the door to the living room
-was open and an eye was visible through the crack. Naturally, I
-gave no sign. I carefully completed the inspection of my
-clothing, returned to the bathroom, and vacuumed myself for a
-while, whistling away merrily. When I returned to the study,
-the mouse-eared head sticking through the half-open door
-immediately vanished. Only the silvery tube of the splotcher
-continued to protrude. Sitting down in the chair, I opened and
-closed all the twelve drawers, including the secret one, and
-only then looked at the door. The boy stood framed in it.
- "My name is Len," he announced.
- "Greetings, Len," I said absent-mindedly. "I am called
-Ivan. Come on in -- although I was going out to have dinner.
-You haven't had dinner yet?"
- "No."
- "That's good. Go ask your mother's permission and we'll be
-off "
- "It's too early," he said.
- "What's too early? To have dinner?"
- "No, to go. School doesn't end for another twenty
-minutes." He was silent again. "Besides, there's that fat fink
-with the braid."
- "He's a bad one?' I asked.
- "Yeah," said Len. "Are you really leaving now?"
- "Yes, I am," I said, and took the ball of string from my
-pocket. "Here, take it. And what if Mother comes out first?"
- He shrugged.
- "If you are really leaving," he said, "would it be all
-right if I stayed in your place?"
- "Go ahead, stay."
- "There's nobody else here?"
- "Nobody."
- He still didn't come to me to take the string, but let me
-come to him, and even allowed me to take his ear. It was indeed
-cold. I ruffled his head lightly and pushed him toward the
-table.
- "Go sit all you want. I won't be back soon."
- "I'll take a snooze," said Len.
-
-<ul><a name=3></a><h2>Chapter THREE</h2></ul>
-
- The Hotel Olympic was a fifteen-story red-and-black
-structure. Half the plaza in front of it was covered with cars,
-and in its center stood a monument surrounded by a small
-flowerbed. It represented a man with a proudly raised head.
-Detouring the monument, I suddenly realized that I knew the
-man. In puzzlement I stopped and examined it more thoroughly.
-There was no doubt about it. There in front of Hotel Olympic,
-in a funny old-fashioned suit with his hand resting on an
-incomprehensible apparatus which I almost took for the
-extension of the abstract-styled base, and with his eyes
-staring at infinity through contemptuously squinting lids, was
-none other than Vladimir Sergeyevitch Yurkovsky. Carved in gold
-letters on the base was the legend "Vladimir Yurkovsky,
-December 5, Year of the Scales."
- I couldn't believe it, because they do not raise monuments
-to Yurkovskys. While they live, they are appointed to more or
-less responsible positions, they are honored at jubilees, they
-are elected to membership in academies. They are rewarded with
-medals and are honored with international prizes, and when they
-die or perish; they are the subjects of books, quotations,
-references, but always less and less often as time passes, and
-finally they are forgotten altogether. They depart the halls of
-memory and linger on only in books. Vladimir Sergeyevitch was a
-general of the sciences and a remarkable man. But it is not
-possible to erect monuments to all generals and all remarkable
-men, especially in countries to which they had no direct
-relationship and in cities where if they did visit, it was only
-temporarily. In any case, in that Year of the Scales, which is
-of significance only to them, he was not even a general. In
-March he was, jointly with Dauge, completing the investigation
-of the Amorphous Spot on Uranus. That was when the sounding
-probe blew up and we all got a dose in the work section -- and
-when we got back to the Planet in September, he was all spotted
-with lilac blotches, mad at the world, promising himself that
-he would take time out to swim and get sunburned and then get
-right back to the design of a new probe because the old one was
-trash.... I looked at the hotel again to reassure myself. The
-only out was to assume that the life of the town was in some
-mysterious and potent manner highly dependent on the Amorphous
-Spot on Uranus. Yurkovsky continued to smile with snobbish
-superiority. Generally, the sculpture was quite good, but I
-could not figure out what it was he was leaning on. The
-apparatus didn't look like the probe.
- Something hissed by my ear. I turned and involuntarily
-sprang back. Beside me, staring dully at the monument base, was
-a tall gaunt individual closely encased from head to foot in
-some sort of gray scaly material and with a bulky cubical
-helmet around his head. The face was obscured behind a glass
-plate with holes, from which smoke issued in synchronism with
-his breathing. The wasted visage behind the plate was covered
-with perspiration and the cheeks twitched in frantic tempo. At
-first I took him for a Wanderer, then I thought that he was a
-tourist executing a curative routine, and only finally did I
-realize that I was looking at an Arter.
- "Excuse me," I said "Could you please tell me what sort of
-monument this is?"
- The damp face contorted more desperately. "What?" came the
-dull response from inside the helmet.
- I bent down.
- "I am inquiring: what is this monument?"
- The man glared at the statue. The smoke came thicker out
-of the holes. There was more powerful hissing.
- "Vladimir Yurkovsky," he read, "Fifth of December, Year of
-the Scales... aha... December... so -- it must be some German."
- "And who put up the monument?"
- "I don't know," said the man. "But it's written down right
-there. What's it to you?"
- "I was an acquaintance of his," I explained.
- "Well then, why do you ask? Ask the man himself."
- "He is dead."
- "Aah... Maybe they buried him here?"
- "No," I said, "he is buried far away."
- "Where?"
- "Far away. What's that thing he is holding?"
- "What thing? It's an eroula."
- "What?"
- "I said, an eroula. An electronic roulette."-
- My eyes popped.
- "What's a roulette doing here?"
- "Where?"
- "Here, on the statue."
- "I don't know," said the man after some thought. "Maybe
-your friend invented it?"
- "Hardly," said I. "He worked in a different field."
- "What was that?"
- "He was a planetologist and an interplanetary pilot."
- "Aah... well, if he invented it, that was bully for him.
-It's a useful thing. I should remember it: Yurkovsky, Vladimir.
-He must have been a brainy German."
- "I doubt he invented it," I said. "I repeat -- he was an
-interplanetary pilot."
- The man stared at me.
- "Well, if he didn't invent it, then why is he standing
-with it?"
- "That's the point," I said. "I am amazed myself."
- "You are a damn liar," said the man suddenly. "You lie and
-you don't even know why you are lying. It's early morning, and
-he is stoned already.... Alcoholic!"
- He turned away and shuffled off, dragging his thin legs
-and hissing loudly. I shrugged my shoulders, took a last look
-at Vladimir Sergeyevitch, and set off toward the hotel, across
-the huge plaza.
- The gigantic doorman swung the door open for me and
-sounded an energetic welcome.
- I stopped.
- "Would you be so kind," said I. "Do you know what that
-monument is?"
- The doorman looked toward the plaza over my head. His face
-registered confusion.
- "Isn't that written on it?"
- "There is a legend," I said. "But who put it up and why?"
- The doorman shuffled his feet.
- "I beg your pardon," he said guiltily, "I just can't
-answer
- your question. The monument has been there a long time,
-while I came here very recently. I don't wish to misinform you.
-Maybe the porter..."
- I sighed.
- "Well, don't worry about it. Where is a telephone?"
- "To your right, if you please," he said looking delighted.
- A porter started out in my direction, but I shook my head
-and picked up the receiver and dialed Rimeyer's number. This
-time I got a busy signal. I went to the elevator and up to the
-ninth floor.
- Rimeyer, looking untypically fleshy, met me in a dressing
-gown, out of which stuck legs in pants and with shoes on. The
-room stank of cigarette smoke and the ashtray was full of
-butts. There was a general air of chaos in the whole suite. One
-of the armchairs was knocked over, a woman's slip was lying
-crumpled on the couch, and a whole battery of empty bottles
-glinted under the table.
- "What can I do for you?" asked Rimeyer with a touch of
-hostility, looking at my chin. Apparently he was recently out
-of his bathroom, and his sparse colorless hair was wet against
-his long skull. I handed him my card in silence. Rimeyer read
-it slowly and attentively, shoved it in his pocket, and
-continuing to look at my chin, said, "Sit down."
- I sat.
- "It is most unfortunate. I am devilishly busy and don't
-have a minute's time."
- "I called you several times today," said I.
- "I just got back. What's your name?"
- "Ivan."
- "And your last name?"
- "Zhilin."
- "You see, Zhilin, to make it short, I have to get dressed
-and leave again." He was silent awhile, rubbing his flabby
-cheeks. "Anyway there's not much to talk about.... However, if
-you wish, you can sit here and wait for me. If I don't return
-in an hour, come back tomorrow at twelve. And leave your
-telephone number and address, write it down right on the table
-there...."
- He threw off the bathrobe, and dragging it along, walked
-off into the adjoining room.
- "In the meantime," he continued, "you can see the town,
-and a miserable little town it is.... But you'll have to do it
-in any case. As for me, I am sick to my stomach of it."
- He returned adjusting his tie. His hands were trembling,
-and the skin on his face looked gray and wilted. Suddenly I
-felt that I did not trust him -- the sight of him was
-repellent, like that of a neglected sick man.
- "You look poorly," I said. "You have changed a great
-deal."
- For the first time he looked me in the eyes.
- "And how would you know what I was like before?"
- "I saw you at Matia's. You smoke a lot, Rimeyer, and
-tobacco is saturated regularly with all kinds of trash
-nowadays."
- "Tobacco -- that's a lot of nonsense," he said with sudden
-irritation. "Here everything is saturated with all kinds of
-tripe.... But perhaps you may be right, probably I should
-quit." He pulled on his jacket slowly; "Time to quit, and in
-any case, I shouldn't have started."
- "How is the work coming along?"
- "It could be worse. And unusually absorbing work it is."
-He smiled in a peculiar unpleasant way. "I am going now, as
-they are waiting for me and I am late. So, till an hour from
-now, or until tomorrow at twelve."
- He nodded to me and left.
- I wrote my address and telephone number on the table, and
-as my foot plowed into the mass of bottles underneath, I
-couldn't help but think that the work was indeed absorbing. I
-called room service and requested a chambermaid to clean up the
-room. The most polite of voices replied that the occupant of
-the suite categorically forbade service personnel to enter his
-room during his absence and had repeated the prohibition just
-now on leaving the hotel. "Aha," I said, and hung up. This
-didn't sit well with me. For myself, I never issue such
-directions and have never hidden even my notebooks, not from
-anyone. It's stupid to work at deception and much better to
-drink less. I picked up the overturned armchair, sat down, and
-prepared for a long wait, trying to overcome a sense of
-displeasure and disappointment.
- I didn't have to wait for long. After some ten minutes,
-the door opened a crack and a pretty face protruded into the
-room.
- "Hey there," it pronounced huskily. "Is Rimeyer in?"
- "Rimeyer is not in, but you can come in anyway."
- She hesitated, examining me. Apparently she had no
-intention of coming in, but was just saying hello, in passing.
- "Come in, come in," said I. "I have nothing to do."
- She entered with a light dancing gait, and putting her
-arms akimbo, stood in front of me. She had a short turned-up
-nose and a disheveled boyish hairdo. The hair was red, the
-shorts crimson, and the blouse a bright yolk yellow. A colorful
-woman and quite attractive. She must have been about
-twenty-five.
- "You wait -- right?"
- Her eyes were unnaturally bright and she smelled of wine,
-tobacco, and perfume.
- She collapsed on the hassock and flung her legs up on the
-telephone table.
- "Throw a cigarette to a working girl," she said. "It's
-five hours since I had one."
- "I don't smoke. Shall I ring for some?"
- "Good Lord, another sad sack! Never mind the phone .. or
-that dame will show up again. Rummage around in the ashtray and
-find me a good long butt."
- The ashtray did have a lot of long butts.
- 'They all have lipstick on them," said I.
- "That's all right; it's my lipstick. What's your name?"
- "Ivan."
- She snapped a lighter and lit up.
- "And mine is Ilina. Are you a foreigner, too? All you
-foreigners seem so wide. What are you doing here?"'
- "Waiting for Rimeyer."
- "I don't mean that! What brought you here, are you
-escaping from your wife?"
- "I am not married," I said quietly. "I came to write a
-book."
- "A book? Some friends this Rimeyer has. He came to write a
-book. <i>Sex Problems of Impotent Sportsmen</i>. How's your
-situation with the sex problem?"
- "It is not a problem to me," I said mildly. "And how about
-you?"
- She lowered her legs from the table.
- "That's a no-no. Take it slow. This isn't Paris, you know.
-All in good time. Anyway, you should have your locks cut --
-sitting there like a perch."
- "Like a who?" I was very patient as I had another
-forty-five minutes to wait.
- "Like a perch. You know the type." She made vague motions
-around her ears.
- "I don't know about that," I said. "I don't know anything
-yet as I have just arrived. Tell me about it, it sounds
-interesting."
- "Oh no! Not I! We don't chatter. Our bit is a small one --
-serve, clean up, flash your teeth, and keep quiet. Professional
-secret. Have you heard of such an animal?"
- "I've heard," I said. "But who's 'we' -- an association of
-doctors?
- For some reason, she thought this was hilarious.
- "Doctors! Imagine that." She laughed. "Well, wise guy,
-you're all right -- quite a tongue. We have one in the once
-like you. One word, and we're all rolling in the aisles.
-Whenever we cater to the Fishers, he always gets the job, they
-like a good laugh."
- "Who doesn't?" said I.
- "Well, you are wrong. The Intels, for instance, chased him
-out. 'Take the fool away,' they said. Or also recently those
-pregnant males."
- "Who?"'
- "The sad ones. Well, I can see you don't understand a
-thing. Where in heaven's name did you come from?"
- "From Vienna."
- "So -- don't you have the sad ones in Vienna?"
- "You couldn't imagine what we don't have in Vienna."
- "Could be you don't even have irregular meetings?"
- "No, we don't have them. All our meetings are regular,
-like a bus schedule."
- She was having a good time.
- "Perhaps you don't have waitresses either?"
- "Waitresses we do have, and you can find some excellent
-examples. Are you a waitress then?"
- She jumped up abruptly.
- "That won't do at all," she cried. "I've had enough sad
-ones for today. Now you're going to have a loving cup with me
-like a good fellow...." She began to search furiously among the
-bottles by the window. "Damn him, they're all empty! Could be
-you're a teetotaler? Aha, here's a little vermouth. You drink
-that, or shall we order whiskey?"
- "Let's begin with the vermouth," said I.
- She banged the bottle on the table and took two glasses
-from the window sill.
- "Have to wash them. Hold on a minute, everything's full of
-garbage." She went into the bathroom and continued to speak
-from there. "If you turned out to be a teetotaler on top of
-everything else. I don't know what I would do with you.... What
-a pigsty he's got in his bathroom -- I love it! Where are you
-staying? Here too?"
- "No, in town," I replied. "On Second Waterway."
- She came back with the glasses.
- "Straight or with water?"
- "Straight, I guess."
- "All foreigners take it straight. But we have it with
-water for some reason." She sat on my armchair and put her arms
-around my shoulders. We drank and kissed without any feeling.
-Her lips were heavily lipsticked, and her eyelids were heavy
-from lack of sleep and fatigue. She put down her glass,
-searched out another butt in the ashtray, and returned to the
-hassock.
- "Where is that Rimeyer?" she said. "After all, how long
-can you wait for him? Have you known him a long time?"
- "No, not very."
- "I think maybe he is a louse," she said with sudden ire.
-"He's dug everything out of me, and now he plays hard to get.
-He doesn't open his door, the animal, and you can't get through
-to him by phone. Say, he wouldn't be a spy, would he?"
- "What do you mean, a spy?"
- "Oh, there's loads of them.... From the Association for
-Sobriety and Morality.... The Connoisseurs and Appraisers are
-also a bad lot...."
- "No, Rimeyer is a decent sort," I said with some effort.
- "Decent... you are all decent. In the beginning, Rimeyer
-too was decent, so good-natured and full of fun... and now he
-looks at you like a croc."
- "Poor fellow," I said. "He must have remembered his family
-and become ashamed of himself."
- "He doesn't have a family. Anyway, the heck with him! Have
-another drink?"
- We had another drink. She lay down and put her hands over
-her head. Finally she spoke.
- "Don't let it get to you. Spit on it! Wine we have enough
-of, we'll dance, go to the shivers. Tomorrow there's a football
-game, we'll bet on the Bulls."
- "I am not letting it get to me. If you want to bet on the
-Bulls, we'd bet on the Bulls."
- "Oh those Bulls! They are some boys! I could watch them
-forever, arms like iron, snuggling up against them is just like
-snuggling against a tree trunk, really!"
- There was a knock on the door.
- "Come in!" yelled Ilina.
- A man entered and stopped at once. He was tall and bony,
-of middle age, with a brush mustache and light protruding eyes.
- "I beg your pardon, I was looking for Rimeyer," he said.
- "Everyone here wants to see Rimeyer," said Ilina. "Have a
-chair and we'll all wait together."
- The stranger bowed his head and sat down by the table,
-crossing his legs.
- Apparently he had been here before. He did not look
-around, but stared at the wall directly in front of him.
-However, perhaps he just was not a curious type. In any case,
-it was clear that neither I nor Ilina was of any interest to
-him. This seemed unnatural to me, since I felt that such a pair
-as myself and Ilina should arouse interest in any normal
-person. Ilina raised up on her elbow and scrutinized him in
-detail.
- "I have seen you somewhere," she said.
- "Really?" said the stranger coldly.
- "What's your name?"
- "Oscar. I am Rimeyer's friend."
- "That's fine," said Ilina. She was obviously irritated by
-the stranger's indifference, but she kept herself in check.
-"He's also a friend of Rimeyer." She stuck her finger at me.
-"You know each other?"
- "No," said. Oscar, continuing to look at the wall.
- "My name is Ivan," said I. "And this is Rimeyer's friend,
-Ilina. We just drank to our fraternal friendship."
- Oscar glanced indifferently in Ilina's direction and
-nodded his head politely. Ilina picked up the bottle without
-taking her eyes off him.
- "There's still a little left here," she said. "Would you
-like a drink, Oscar?"
- "No, thank you," he said, coldly.
- "To fraternal friendship!" said Ilina. "No? You don't want
-to? Too bad!"
- She splashed some wine in my glass, poured the rest in
-hers, and downed it at once.
- "Never in my life would I have thought that Rimeyer could
-have friends who refuse a drink. Still, I have seen you
-somewhere before."
- Oscar shrugged his shoulders.
- "I doubt it," he said.
- Ilina was visibly becoming enraged.
- "Some sort of a fink," she said to me loudly. "Say there,
-Oscar, you wouldn't be an Intel?"
- "No."
- "What do you mean, no?" said Ilina. "You're the one who
-had a set-to with that baldy Leiz at the Weasel, broke a
-mirror, and had your face slapped by Mody."
- The stone visage of Oscar grew a shade pinker.
- "I assure you," he said courteously, "I am not an Intel
-and have never in my life been in the Weasel."
- "Are you saying that I'm a liar?" said Ilina
- At this point I took the bottle off the table and put it
-under my armchair, just in case.
- "I am a visitor," said Oscar. "A tourist."
- "When did you arrive?" I said to discharge the tension.
- "Very recently," replied Oscar. He continued to gaze at
-the wall. Obviously here was a man with iron discipline.
- "Oh, oh!" said Ilina suddenly. "Now I remember! I got it
-all mixed up."
- She burst out laughing, "Of course you're no Intel! You
-were at our office the day before last. You're the salesman who
-offered our manager some junk like... 'Dugong' or 'Dupont..."
- "Devon," I prompted. "There is a repellent called Devon."
- Oscar smiled for the first time.
- "You are quite right, of course," he said. "But I am not a
-salesman. I was only doing a favor for a relative."
- "That's different," said Ilina and jumped up. "You should
-have said so. Ivan, we all need to drink to a pledge of
-friendship. I'll call... no, I'll go get it myself. You two can
-have a talk, I'll be right back."
- She ran out of the room, banging the door.
- "A fun girl," said I.
- "Yes, extremely. You live here?"
- "No, I'm a traveler, too.... What a strange idea your
-relative had!"
- "What do you have in mind?"
- "Who needs Devon in a resort town?"
- Oscar shrugged.
- "It's hard for me to judge; I'm no chemist. But you will
-agree that it's hard for us to comprehend the actions of our
-fellow men, much less their fancies.... So Devon turns out to
-be - What did you call it, a res...?"
- "Repellent," I said.
- "That would be for mosquitoes?"
- "Not so much for as against."
- "I can see you are quite well up on it," said Oscar.
- "I had occasion to use it."
- "Well, well."
- What the devil, thought I. What is he getting at? He was
-no longer staring at the wall He was looking me straight in the
-eyes and smiling. But if he was going to say something, it was
-already said.
- He got up.
- "I don't think I'll wait any longer," he pronounced. "It
-looks like I'll have to drink another pledge. But I didn't come
-here to drink, I came here to get well. Please tell Rimeyer
-that I will call him again tonight. You won't forget?"
- "No," I said, "I won't forget. If I tell him that Oscar
-was in to see him, he will know whom I am talking about?"
- "Yes, of course. It's my real name."
- He bowed, and walked out at a deliberate pace,
-ramrod-straight and somehow unnatural-looking. I dipped my hand
-in the ashtray, found a butt without lipstick, and inhaled
-several times. I didn't like the taste and put out the stub. I
-didn't like Oscar, either. Nor Ilina. And especially Rimeyer --
-I didn't like him at all. I pawed through the bottles, but they
-were all empty.
-
-<ul><a name=4></a><h2>Chapter FOUR</h2></ul>
-
- In the end I didn't wait long enough to see Rimeyer. Ilina
-never came back. Finally I got tired of sitting in the smoky,
-stale atmosphere of the room and went down to the lobby. I
-intended to have dinner and stopped to look around for a
-restaurant. A porter immediately materialized at my side.
- "At your service," he murmured discreetly. "An auto? Bar?
-Restaurant? Salon?"
- "What kind of salon?" I asked, my curiosity piqued.
- "A hair-styling salon." He looked at my hairdo with
-delicate concern. "Master Gaoway is receiving today. I
-recommend him most strenuously."
- I recollected that Ilina had called me a disheveled perch
-and said, "Well, all right."
- "Please follow me," said the porter.
- Crossing the lobby, he opened a wide low door and said
-into the spacious interior, "Excuse me, Master, you have a
-client."
- "Come in," replied a quiet voice.
- I entered. The salon was light and airy and smelled
-pleasantly. Everything in it shone -- the chrome, the mirrors,
-the antique parquet floor. Shiny half-domes hung from the
-ceiling on glistening rods. In the center stood a huge white
-barber chair. The Master was advancing to meet me. He had
-penetrating immobile eyes, a hooked nose, and a gray Van Dyke.
-More than anything else he reminded me of a mature, experienced
-surgeon. I greeted him with some timidity, He nodded and,
-surveying me from head to foot, began to circle around me. I
-began to feel uncomfortable.
- "I would like you to bring me up to the current fashion,"
-said I, trying not to let him out of my field of view.
- But he restrained me gently by my sleeve and. stood
-breathing softly behind my back for a few seconds. "No doubt!
-No doubt at all", he murmured, then touched me lightly on my
-shoulder. "Please," he said sternly, "take a few steps forward
--- five or six -- then turn abruptly to face me."
- I obeyed. He regarded me pensively, pulling on his beard.
-I thought he was hesitating.
- "On the other hand," he said, "sit down."
- "Where?" I said.
- "In the chair, in the chair."
- I lowered myself into its softness and watched him
-approach me slowly. His intelligent face was suddenly suffused
-with a look of profound chagrin.
- "But how is such a thing possible?" he said. "It's
-absolutely awful."
- I couldn't find anything to say.
- "Gross disharmony," he muttered. "Repulsive... repulsive."
- "Is it really that bad?" I asked.
- "I don't understand why you came to me," he said, "since
-you obviously don't place any value at all on your appearance."
- "I am beginning to, from this day on," I said.
- He waved his hand.
- "Never mind... I will work on you, but..." He shook his
-head, turned impulsively, and went to a high table covered with
-shiny devices. The back of the chair depressed smoothly, and I
-found myself in a half-reclining position. A big hemisphere
-descended toward me from above, radiating warmth, while
-hundreds of tiny needles seemed to sink into the nape of my
-neck, eliciting a strange combination of simultaneous pain and
-pleasure.
- "Is it gone yet?" he asked.
- The sensation abated.
- "It's gone," I said.
- "Your skin is good," growled the Master with a certain
-satisfaction.
- He returned with an assortment of the most unlikely
-instruments and proceeded to palpate my cheeks.
- "And still Mirosa married him," he said suddenly. "I
-expected anything and everything, except that. After all that
-Levant had done for her. Do you remember that moment when they
-were both weeping over the dying Pina? You could have bet
-anything that they would be together forever. And now, imagine,
-she is being wed to that literary fellow."
- I have a rule: to pick up and sustain any conversation
-that comes along. When you don't know what it's all about, this
-can even be interesting.
- "Not for long," I said with assurance. "Literary types are
-very inconstant, I can assure you, being one myself."
- For a moment his hands paused on my temples.
- "That didn't enter my head," he admitted. "Still, it's
-wedlock, even though only a civil one.... I must remember to
-call my wife. She was very upset."
- "I can sympathize with her," I said. "But it did always
-seem to me that Levant was in love with that... Pina."
- "In love?" exclaimed the Master, coming around from my
-other side. "Of course he loved her! Madly! As only a lonely,
-rejected-by-all man can love."
- "And so it was quite natural that after the death of Pina,
-he sought consolation with her best friend."
- "Her bosom friend, yes," said the Master approvingly,
-while tickling me behind the ear. "Mirosa adored Pina! It's a
-very accurate term -- bosom friend! One senses a literary man
-in you at once! And Pina, too, adored Mirosa."
- "But, you notice," I picked up, "that. right from the
-beginning Pina suspected that Mirosa was infatuated with
-Levant."
- "Well, of course! They are extremely sensitive about such
-things. This was clear to everyone -- my wife noticed it at
-once. I recollect that she would nudge me with her elbow each
-time Pina alighted on Mirosa's tousled head, and so coyly and
-expectantly looked at Levant."
- This time I kept my peace.
- "In general, I am profoundly convinced," he continued,
-"that birds feel no less sensitively than people."
- Aha, thought I, and said, "I don't know about birds in
-general, but Pina was a lot more sensitive than let's say even
-you or I."
- Something bummed briefly over my head, and there was a
-soft clink of metal.
- "You speak like my wife, word for word," observed the
-Master, "so you most probably must like Dan. I was overcome
-when he was able to construct a bunkin for that Japanese
-noblewoman... can't think of her name. After all, not one
-person believed Dan. The Japanese king, himself..."
- "I beg your pardon," I said. "A bunkin?"
- "Yes, of course, you are not a specialist.... You remember
-that moment when the Japanese noblewoman comes out of prison.
-Her hair, in a high roller of blond hair, is ornamented with
-precious combs..."
- "Aah," I guessed. "It's a coiffure."
- "Yes, it even became fashionable for a time last year.
-Although a true bunkin could be made by a very few... even as a
-real chignon, by the way. And, of course, no one could believe
-that Dan, with his burned hands and half-blind .. Do you
-remember how he was blinded?"
- "It was overpowering," I said.
- "Oh yes, Dan was a true Master. To make a bunkin without
-electro-preparation, without biodevelopment... You know, I just
-had a thought," he continued, and there was a note of
-excitement in his voice. "It just struck me that Mirosa, after
-she parts with that literary guy, should marry Dan and not
-Levant. She will be wheeling him out on the veranda in his
-chair, and they will be listening to the singing nightingales
-in the moonlight -- the two of them together."
- "And crying quietly out of sheer happiness," I said.
- "Yes," the voice of the Master broke, "that would be only
-right. Otherwise I just don't know, I just don't understand,
-what all our struggles are for. No... we must insist. I'll go
-to the union this very day...."
- I kept quiet, again. The Master was breathing uneasily by
-my ear.
- "Let them go and shave at the automates," he said suddenly
-in a vengeful tone, "let them look like plucked geese. We let
-them have a taste once before of what it's like; now we'll see
-how they appreciate it."
- "I am afraid it won't be simple," I said cautiously, not
--- having the vaguest idea of what this was about.
- "We Masters are used to the complicated. It's not all that
-simple -- when a fat and sweaty stuffed shirt comes to you, and
-you have to make a human being out of him, or at the very best,
-something which under normal circumstances does not differ too
-much from a human being... is that simple? Remember what Dan
-said: 'Woman gives birth to a human being once in nine months,
-but we Masters have to do it every day.' Aren't those
-magnificent words?"
- "Dan was talking about barbers?" I said, just in case.
- "Dan was talking about Masters. 'The beauty of the world
-rests on our shoulders,' he would say. And again, do you
-remember: 'In order to make a man out of an ape, Darwin had to
-be an excellent Master.'"
- I decided to capitulate and confess.
- "This I don't remember."
- "How long have you been watching 'Rose of the Salon'?"
- "Well, I have arrived just recently."
- "Aah, then you have missed a lot. My wife and I have been
-watching the program for seven years, every Tuesday. We missed
-only one show; I had an attack and lost consciousness. But in
-the whole town there is only one man who hasn't missed even one
-show -- Master Mille at the Central Salon."
- He moved off a few paces, turned various colored lights on
-and off, and resumed his work.
- "The seventh year," he repeated. "And now -- can you
-imagine -- the year before last they kill off Mirosa and throw
-Levant into a Japanese prison for life, while Dan is burned at
-the stake. Can you visualize that?"
- "It's impossible," I said. "Dan? At the stake? Although
-it's true that they burned Bruno at the stake, too."
- "It's possible," he said with impatience. "In any case, it
-became clear to us that they want to fold up the program fast.
-But we didn't put up with that. We declared a strike and
-struggled for three weeks. Mille and I picketed the barber
-automates. And let me tell you that quite a lot of the
-townspeople sympathized with us."
- "I should think so," I said. "And what happened? Did you
-win?
- "As you see. They grasped very well what was involved, and
-now the TV center knows with whom they are dealing. We didn't
-give one step, and if need be, we won't. Anyway we can rest on
-Tuesdays now just like in the old days -- for real."
- "And the other days?"
- "The other days we wait for Tuesday and try to guess what
-is awaiting us and what you literary fellows will do for us. We
-guess and make bets -- although we Masters don't have much
-leisure."
- "You have a large clientele?"
- "No, that's not it. I mean homework. It's not difficult to
-become a Master, it's difficult to remain one. There is a mass
-of literature, lots of new methods, new applications, and you
-have to keep up with it all and constantly experiment,
-investigate and keep track of allied fields -- bionics, plastic
-medicine, organic medicine. And with time, you accumulate
-experience, and you get the urge to share your knowledge. So
-Mille and I are writing our second book, and practically every
-month, we have to update the manuscript. Everything becomes
-obsolete right before your eyes. I am now completing a treatise
-on a little-known characteristic of the naturally straight
-nonplastic hair; and do you know I have practically no chance
-of being the first? In our country alone, I know of three
-Masters who are occupied with the same subject. It's only to be
-expected -- the naturally straight nonplastic hair is a real
-problem. It's considered to be absolutely
-nonaestheticizable.... However, this may not be of interest to
-you? You are a writer?"
- "Yes," I said.
- "Well, you know, during the strike, I had a chance to run
-through a novel. That would not be yours, by any chance?"
- "I don't know," I said, "What was it about?"
- "Well, I couldn't say exactly.... Son quarrels with
-father. He has a friend, an unpleasant fellow with a strange
-name. He occupies himself by cutting up frogs."
- "Can't remember," I lied -- poor Ivan Sergeyevitch.
- "I can't remember either. It was some sort of nonsense. I
-have a son, but he never quarrels with me, and he never
-tortures animals -- except perhaps when he was a child"
- He backed away again and made a slow circuit around me.
-His eyes were burning; he seemed to be very pleased.
- "It looks as though we can stop here," he said.
- I got out of the chair. "Not bad. Not bad at all,"
-murmured the Master. I approached the mirror. He turned on
-spotlights, which illuminated me from all sides so that there
-were no shadows on my face.
- In the first instant I did not notice anything unusual
-about myself. It was my usual self. Then I felt that it was not
-I at all. That it was something much better than I. A whole lot
-better. Better looking than I. More benevolent than I.
-Appreciably more significant than I. I experienced a sense of
-shame, as though I were deliberately passing myself off as a
-man to whom I couldn't hold a candle.
- "How did you do this thing?" I said in a strangled tone.
- "It's nothing," said the Master, smiling in a very special
-way. "You turned out to be a fairly easy client, albeit quite
-neglected."
- I stood before the mirror like Narcissus and couldn't tear
-myself away. Suddenly, I felt awed. The Master was a magician,
-and an evil one at that, although he probably didn't realize it
-himself. The mirror reflected an extremely attractive lie. An
-intelligent, good-looking, monumental vapidity. Well, perhaps
-not a total vacuum, for after all I didn't have that low an
-opinion of myself. But the contrast was too great. All of my
-inner world, everything I valued in myself -- all that could
-just as well have not existed. It was no longer needed. I
-looked at the Master. He was smiling.
- "You have many clients?" I asked.
- He did not grasp my meaning, but after all, I didn't
-really want him to understand me.
- "Don't worry," he replied, "I'll always work on you with
-pleasure. The rawest material is the most intriguing."
- "Thank you," said I, lowering my eyes so as not to see his
-smile. "Thank you. Goodbye."
- "Just don't forget to pay," he said placidly. "We Masters
-value our work very highly."
- "Yes, of course," I caught myself. "Naturally. How much do
-I owe you?"
- He stated how much I owed.
- 'What?" said I regaining my equilibrium.
- He repeated with satisfaction.
- "Madness", I said forthrightly.
- "Such is the price of beauty," he explained. "You came
-here as an ordinary tourist, and you are leaving a king of this
-domain."
- "An impersonator is what I am leaving as," I muttered,
-extracting the money.
- "No, no, not that bad!" he said confidentially. "Even I
-don't know that for sure. And even you are not convinced of it
-entirely.... Two more dollars, please. Thank you. Here is 50
-pfennigs change. You don't mind pfennigs?"
- I had nothing against pfennigs. I wanted to leave as fast
-as possible.
- I stood in the lobby for a while, becoming myself again,
-and gazing at the metallic figure of Vladimir Sergeyevitch.
-After all, all this is not new. After all, millions of people
-are not what they pass themselves for. But the damnable barber
-had made me over into an empiriocritic. Reality was masked with
-gorgeous hieroglyphics. I no longer believed what I saw in this
-city. The plaza covered with stereo-plastic was probably in
-reality not beautiful at all. Under the elegant contours of the
-autos lurked ominous and ugly shapes. And that beautiful
-charming woman is no doubt in fact a repulsive malodorous
-hyena, a promiscuous dull-witted sow. I closed my eyes and
-shook my head. The old devil!
- Two meticulously groomed oldsters stopped nearby and began
-to debate heatedly the relative merits of baked pheasant
-compared with pheasant broiled with feathers. They argued,
-drooling saliva, smacking their lips and choking, snapping
-their bony fingers under each other's noses. No Master could
-help these two. They were Masters themselves and they made no
-bones about it. At any rate, they restored my materialist
-viewpoint. I went to a porter and inquired about a restaurant.
- "Right in front of you," said he and smiled at the arguing
-oldsters. "Any cuisine in the world."
- I could have mistaken the entrance to the restaurant for
-the gates to a botanical garden. I entered, parting the
-branches of exotic trees, stepping alternately on soft grass
-and coral flagstones. Unseen birds twittered in the luxuriant
-greenery, and the discreet clatter of utensils was mixed with
-the sound of conversation and laughter. A golden bird flew
-right in front of my nose, barely able to carry the load of a
-caviar tartine in its beak.
- "I am at your service," said the deep velvety voice.
- An imposing giant of a man with epaulettes stepped toward
-me cut of a thicket.
- "Dinner," I said curtly. I don't like maitres-d'hotel.
- "Dinner," he said significantly. "In company? Separate
-table?"'
- "Separate table. On second thought..."
- A notebook instantaneously appeared in his hand.
- "A man of your age would be welcome at the table of
- Mrs. and Miss Hamilton-Rey."
- "Go on," I said.
- "Father Geoffrois..."
- "I would prefer an aborigine."
- He turned the page.
- "Opir, doctor of philosophy, just now has sat down at his
-table."
- "That's a possibility," said I.
- He put away the book and led me along a path paved with
-limestone slabs. Somewhere around us there were people eating,
-talking, swishing seltzer. Hummingbirds darted like
-multicolored bees in the leaves. The maitre-d'hotel inquired
-respectfully, "How would you like to be introduced?"
- "Ivan. Tourist and litterateur."
- Doctor Opir was about fifty. I liked him at once because
-he immediately and without any ceremony sent the maitre-d'hotel
-packing after a waiter. He was pink and plump, and moved and
-talked incessantly.
- "Don't trouble yourself," he said when I reached. for the
-menu. "It's all set already. Vodka, anchovies under egg -- we
-call them pacifunties -- potato soup..."
- "With sour cream," I interjected.
- "Of course!... steamed sturgeon a la Astrakhan... a patty
-of veal..."
- "I would prefer pheasant baked in feathers."
- "No -- don't; it's not the season... a slice of beef, eel
-in sweet marinade."
- "Coffee," I said.
- "Cognac," he retorted.
- "Coffee with cognac."
- "All right, cognac and coffee with cognac. Some pale wine
-with the fish and a good natural cigar."
- Dinner with Doctor Opir turned out to be most congenial.
-It was possible to eat, drink, and listen. Or not to listen.
-Doctor Opir did not need a conversation. He required a
-listener. I did not have to participate in the talking, I
-didn't even supply any commentaries, while he orated with
-enthusiastic delight, almost without interruption, waving his
-fork, while plates and dishes nonetheless became empty in front
-of him with mystifying speed. Never in my life have I met a man
-who was so skilled in conversation while his mouth was so fully
-packed and so busy masticating.
- "Science! Her Majesty!" he exclaimed. "She matured long
-and painfully, but her fruits turned out to be abundant and
-sweet. Stop, Moment, you are beautiful! Hundreds of generations
-were born, suffered, and died, and not one was impelled to
-pronounce this incantation. We are singularly fortunate. We
-were born in the greatest of epochs, the Epoch of the
-Satisfaction of Desires. It may be that not everybody
-understands this as yet, but ninety-nine percent of my fellow
-citizens are already living in a world where, for all practical
-purposes, a man can have all he can think of. O, Science! You
-have finally freed mankind. You have given us and will
-henceforth provide for us everything -- food -- wonderful food
--- clothing of the best quality and in any quantity, and to
-suit any taste! -- shelter -- magnificent shelter. Love, joy,
-satisfaction, and for those desiring it, for those who are
-fatigued by happiness -- tears, sweet tears, little saving
-sorrows, pleasant consoling worries which lend us significance
-in our own eyes.... Yes, we philosophers have maligned science
-long and angrily. We called forth Luddites, to break up
-machines, we cursed Einstein, who changed our whole universe,
-we vilified Wiener, who impugned our godlike essence. Well, so
-we really lost that godlike substance. Science robbed us of it.
-But in return! In return, it launched men to the feasting
-tables of Olympus. Aha! Here is the potato soup, that heavenly
-porridge. No, no, do as I do... take this spoon, a touch of
-vinegar... a dash of pepper... with the other spoon, this one
-here, dip some sour cream and... no, no... gently, gently mix
-it.... This too is a science, one of the most ancient, older in
-any cue than the ubiquitous synthetic.... By the way, don't
-fail to visit our synthesizers, Amalthea's Horn, Inc. You
-wouldn't be a chemist? Oh yes, you are a litterateur! You
-should write about it, the greatest mystery of our times,
-beefsteaks out of thin air, asparagus from clay, truffles from
-sawdust.... What a pity that Malthus is dead'! The whole world
-would be laughing at him! Of course, he had certain reasons for
-his pessimism. I am prepared to agree with those who consider
-him a genius. But he was too ill-informed, he completely missed
-the possibilities in the natural sciences. He was one of those
-unlucky geniuses who discover laws of social development
-precisely at that moment when these laws cease to operate. I am
-genuinely sorry for him. The whole of humanity was but billions
-of hungrily gaping mouths to him. He must have lost sleep from
-the sheer horror of it. It is a truly monstrous nightmare -- a
-billion gaping maws and not one head. I turned back and see
-with bitterness how blind they were, the shakers of souls and
-the masters of the minds of the recent past. Their awareness
-was dimmed by unbroken horror. Social Darwinists! They saw only
-the press of the struggle for survival: mobs of hunger-crazed
-people, tearing each other to pieces for a place in the sun, as
-though there was only that one single place, as though the sun
-wasn't sufficient for all! And Nietzsche... maybe he was
-suitable for the hungry slaves of the Pharaohs' times, with his
-ominous sermons about the master race, with his supermen beyond
-good and evil... who needs to be beyond now? It's not so bad on
-this side, don't you suppose? There were, of course, Marx and
-Freud. Marx, for example, was the first to understand that it
-all depended on economics. He understood that to rip the
-economics out of the hands of greedy nincompoops and
-fetishists, to make it part of the state, to develop it
-limitlessly, was the very way to lay the foundations of a
-Golden Age. And Freud showed us for what, after all, we needed
-this Golden Age. Recollect the source of all human misery.
-Unsatisfied instincts, unrequited love, and unsated hunger --
-isn't that right? But here comes Her Majesty, Science, and
-presents us with satisfactions. And how rapidly all this has
-come to pass! The names of gloomy prognosticators are not yet
-forgotten, and already... How do you like the sturgeon? I am
-under the impression that the sauce is synthetic. Do you see
-the pinkish tint? Yes, it is synthetic. In a restaurant we
-should be able to expect natural sauce. Waiter! On second
-thought -- the devil take it, let's not be so finicky. Go on,
-go on... Now what was I saying? Yes! Love and hunger. Satisfy
-love and hunger, and you'll see a happy man. On condition, of
-course, that your man is secure about the next day. All the
-utopias of all times are based on this simplest of
-considerations. Free a man of the worry about his daily bread
-and about the morrow, and he will become truly free and happy.
-I am deeply convinced that children, yes, precisely the
-children, are man's ideal. I see the most profound meaning in
-the remarkable similarity between a child and the carefree man
-who is the object of utopia. Carefree means happy -- and we are
-so close to that ideal! Another few decades, or maybe just a
-few more years, and we will attain the automated plenty, we
-will discard science as a healed man discards his crutches, and
-the whole of mankind will become one huge happy family of
-children. The adults will be distinguished from the children
-only by their ability to love, and this ability will, again
-with the help of science, become the source of new and
-unheard-of joys and pleasures.... Excuse me, what is your name?
-Ivan? So, you must be from Russia. Communist? Aha... well,
-everything is different there I know.... And here is the
-coffee! Mm, not bad. But where is the cognac? Well, thank you!
-By the way, I hear that the Great Wine Taster has retired. The
-most grandiose scandal befell at the Brussels contest of
-cognacs, which was suppressed only with the greatest of
-difficulties. The Grand Prix is awarded to the White Centaur
-brand. The jury is delighted! It is something totally
-unprecedented! Such a phenomenal extravaganza of sensations!
-The declaratory packet is opened, and, oh horrors, it's a
-synthetic! The Great Wine Taster turned as white as a sheet of
-paper and was physically ill. By the way, I had an opportunity
-to try this cognac, and it's really superb, but they run it
-from crude and it doesn't even have a proper name. H ex
-eighteen naphtha fraction and it's cheaper than hydrolyzed
-alcohol.... Have a cigar. Nonsense, what do you mean you don't
-smoke? It's not right not to have a cigar after a dinner like
-this.... I love this restaurant. Every time I come here to
-lecture at the university, I dine at the Olympic. And before
-returning, I invariably visit the Tavern. True, they don't have
-the greenery, nor the tropical birds, and it's a bit stuffy and
-warm and smells of smoke, but they have a genuine, inimitable
-cuisine. The Assiduous Tasters gather nowhere but there -- at
-the Gourmet. In that place you do nothing but eat. You can't
-talk, you can't laugh, it's totally nonsensical to go there
-with a woman -- you only eat there! Slowly, thoughtfully..."
- Doctor Opir finally ran down, leaned back in his chair,
-and inhaled deeply with total enjoyment. I sucked on the mighty
-cigar and contemplated the man. I had him well pegged, this
-doctor of philosophy. Always and in all times there have been
-such men, absolutely pleased with their situation in society
-and therefore absolutely satisfied with the condition of that
-society. A marvelously well-geared tongue and a lively pen,
-magnificent teeth and faultless innards, and a well-employed
-sexual apparatus.
- "And so the world is beautiful, Doctor?"
- "Yes," said the doctor with feeling, "it is finally
-beautiful."
- "You are a gigantic optimist," said I.
- "Our time is the time of optimists. Pessimists go to the
-Good Mood Salon, void the gall from their subconscious, and
-become optimists. The time of pessimists has passed, just as
-the time of tuberculars, of sexual maniacs, and of the military
-has passed. Pessimism, as an intellectual emotion, is being
-extirpated by that self-same science. And that not indirectly
-through the creation of affluence, but concretely by way of
-invasion of the dark world of the subcortex. Let's take the
-dream generator, currently the most popular diversion of the
-masses. It is completely harmless, unusually well adopted to
-general use, and is structurally simple. Or consider the
-neurostimulators...."
- I attempted to steer him into the desired channel.
- "Doesn't it seem to you that right there in the
-pharmaceutical field science is overdoing it a bit sometimes?"
- Doctor Opir smiled condescendingly and sniffed at his
-cigar.
- "Science has always moved by trial and error," he said
-weightily. "And I am inclined to believe that the so-called
-errors are always the result of criminal application. We
-haven't yet entered the Golden Age, we are just in the process
-of doing so, and all kinds of throwbacks, mobsters, and just
-plain dirt are under foot. So all kinds of drugs are put out
-which are health-destroying, but which are created, as you
-know, from the best of motives; all kinds of aromatics ... or
-this... well, that doesn't suit a dinner conversation." He
-cackled suddenly and obscenely "You can guess my meaning -- we
-are mature people! What was I saying? Oh yes, all this
-shouldn't disturb you. It will pass just like the atom bombs."
- "I only wanted to emphasize," I remarked, "that there is
-still the problem of alcoholism, and the problem of narcotics."
- Doctor Opir's interest in the conversation was visibly
-ebbing. Apparently he imagined that I challenged his thesis
-that science is a boon. To conduct an argument on this basis
-naturally bored him, as though, for instance, he had been
-affirming the salubriousness of ocean swimming and I was
-contradicting him on the basis that I had almost drowned last
-year.
- "Well, of course..." he mumbled, studying his watch, "we
-can't have it all at once.... You must admit, after all, that
-it is the basic trend which is the most important.... Waiter!"
- Doctor Opir had eaten well, had a good conversation --
-professing progressive philosophy -- felt well-satisfied, and I
-decided not to press the matter, especially as I really didn't
-give a hang about his progressive philosophy, while in the
-matters which interested me the most, he probably would not be
-concretely informed at all in the final analysis.
- We paid up and went out of the restaurant. I inquired, "Do
-you ]mow, Doctor, whose monument that is? Over there on the
-plaza."
- Doctor Opir gazed absent-mindedly. "Sure enough, it's a
-monument," he said. "Somehow I overlooked it before.... Shall I
-drop you somewhere?"
- "Thank you, I prefer to walk."
- "In that case, goodbye. It was a pleasure to meet you....
-Of course it's hard to expect to convince you." He grimaced,
-shifting a toothpick around his mouth. "But it would be
-interesting to try. Perhaps you will attend my lecture? I begin
-tomorrow at ten."
- "Thank you," I said. "What is your topic?"
- "Neo-optimist Philosophy. I will be sure to touch upon a
-series of questions which we have so pithily discussed today."
- "Thank you," I said again. "Most assuredly."
- I watched as he went to his long automobile, collapsed in
-the seat, puttered with the auto-driver control, fell back
-against the seat back, and apparently dozed off instantly. The
-car began to roll cautiously across the plaza and disappeared
-in the shade and greenery of a side street.
- Neo-optimism... Neo-hedonism... Neo-cretinism...
-Neo-capitalism... "No evil without good," said the fox. So, I
-have landed in the Country of the Boobs. It should he recorded
-that the ratio of congenital fools does not vary as a function
-of time. It should be interesting to determine what is
-happening to the percentage of fools by conviction. Curious --
-who assigned the title of Doctor to him? He is not the only
-one! There must have been a whole flock of doctors who
-ceremoniously granted that title to Neo-optimist Opir. However,
-this occurs not only among philosophers.
- I saw Rimeyer come into the hall and forgot Doctor Opir at
-once. The suit hung on Rimeyer like a sack. Rimeyer stooped,
-and his face was flabby. I thought he wavered in his walk. He
-approached the elevator and I caught him by the sleeve there.
- He jumped violently and turned on me.
- "What in hell?" he said. He was clearly unhappy to see me.
- "Why are you still here?"
- "I waited for you."
- "Didn't I tell you to come tomorrow at noon?"
- "What's the difference?" I said. "Why waste time?"
- He looked at me, breathing laboriously.
- "I am expected. A man is waiting for me in my room, and he
-must not see you with me. Do you understand?"
- "Don't shout," I said. "People are noticing."
- Rimeyer glanced sideways with watery eyes.
- "Go in the elevator," he said.
- We entered and he pressed the button for the fifteenth
-floor.
- "Get on with your business quickly," he said.
- The order was startlingly stupid, so that I was
-momentarily disoriented.
- "You mean to say that you don't know why I am here?"
- He rubbed his forehead, and then said, "Hell, everything's
-mixed up.... Listen, I forgot, what is your name?"
- "Zhilin."
- "Listen, Zhilin, I have nothing new for you. I didn't have
-time to attend to that business. It's all a dream, do you
-understand? Matia's inventions. They sit there, writing papers,
-and invent. They should all be pitched the hell out."
- We arrived at the fifteenth floor and he pressed the
-button for the first.
- "Devil take it," he said. "Five more minutes and he'll
-leave.... In general I am convinced of one thing, there is
-nothing to it. Not in this town, in any case." He looked at me
-surreptitiously, and turned his eyes away. "Here is something I
-can tell you. Look in at the Fishers. Just like that, to clear
-your conscience."
- "The Fishers? What Fishers?"
- "You'll find out for yourself," he said impatiently. "But
-don't get tricky with them. Do everything they ask." Then, as
-though defending himself, he added, "I don't want any
-preconceptions, you understand."
- The elevator stopped at the first floor and he signaled
-for the ninth.
- "That's it," he said. "Then we'll meet and talk in detail.
-Let's say tomorrow at noon."
- "All right," I said slowly. He obviously did not want to
-talk to me. Maybe he didn't trust me. Well, it happens!
- "By the way," I said, "you have been visited by a certain
-Oscar."
- It seemed to me that he started.
- "Did he see you?"
- "Naturally. He asked me to tell you that he will be
-calling tonight."
- "That's bad, devil take it, bad...." muttered Rimeyer.
-"Listen... damn, what is your name?"
- "Zhilin."
- The elevator stopped.
- "Listen, Zhilin, it's very bad that he has seen you....
-However, what the hell is the difference. I must go now." Re
-opened the elevator door, "Tomorrow we'll have a real good
-talk, okay? Tomorrow... and you look in on the Fishers. Is that
-a deal?"
- He slammed the door with all his strength.
- "Where will I look for them?" I asked.
- I stood awhile, looking after him. He was almost running,
-receding down the corridor with erratic steps.
-
-<ul><a name=5></a><h2>Chapter FIVE</h2></ul>
-
- I walked slowly, keeping to the shade of the trees. Now
-and then a car rolled by. One of these stopped and the driver
-threw open the door, leaned out, and vomited on the pavement.
-He cursed weakly, wiped his mouth with his palm, slammed the
-door, and drove off. He was on the elderly side, red-faced,
-wearing a loud shirt with nothing under it.
- Rimeyer apparently had turned into a drunkard. This
-happens fairly often: a man tries hard, works hard, is
-considered a valuable contributor, he is listened to and made
-out as a model, but just when he is needed for a concrete task,
-it suddenly turns out that he has grown puffy and flabby, that
-wenches are running in and out of his place, and that he smells
-of vodka from early morning.... Your business does not interest
-him, while at the same time, he is frightfully busy, is
-constantly meeting someone, talks confusingly and murkily, and
-is of no help whatsoever. And then he turns up in the alcoholic
-ward, or a mental clinic, or is involved in a legal process. Or
-he gets married unexpectedly -- strangely and ineptly -- and
-this marriage smells strongly of blackmail. ... One can only
-comment: "Physician, heal thyself."
- It would still be nice to hunt up Peck. Peck is hard as
-flint, honest, and he always knows everything. You haven't even
-finished the rundown on the tech control, and haven't had a
-chance to get off the ship, before he is buddy-buddy with the
-cook, is already fully informed and involved in the
-investigation of the dispute between the Commander of the
-Pathfinders and the chief engineer, who didn't settle the
-matter of some prize; the technicians are already planning an
-evening in his honor, and the deputy director is listening to
-his advice in a quiet corner... Priceless Peck! He was born in
-this city and has spent a third of his life here.
- I found a telephone booth, and rang information for Peck
-Xenai's number and address. I was asked to wait. As usual, the
-booth smelled of cats. The plastic shelf was covered with
-telephone numbers and obscene images. Someone had carved quite
-deeply, as with a knife, the strange word "SLUG." I opened the
-door, to lighten the string atmosphere, and watched the
-opposite shady side of the street, where a barman stood in
-front of his establishment in a white jacket with rolled-up
-sleeves, smoking a cigarette. Then I was told that according to
-the data at the beginning of the year, Peck resided at No. 31
-Liberty Street, number 11-331. I thanked the operator and
-dialed the number at once. A strange voice told me that I had a
-wrong number. Yes, the number was correct, and so was the
-address, but no Peck lived there, and if he had, they didn't
-know when he left or where he had gone. I hung up, left the
-booth, and crossed the street to the shady side.
- Catching my eye, the barman came to life and said from
-afar, "Come in, why don't you?"
- "Don't know that I'd like to," I said.
- "So you won't be friendly, eh?" he said. "Come in anyway.
-We'll have a talk. I feel bored."
- I stopped.
- "Tomorrow morning," I said, "at ten o'clock, at the
-university, there will be a philosophy lecture on Neo-optimism.
-It will be given by the renowned Doctor Opir from the capital.
- The barman listened with avid interest -- he even stopped
-inhaling.
- "How do you like that!" he said. "So they have come to
-that! The day before yesterday, they chased all the girls out
-of a night club, and now they'll be having lectures. We'll show
-them lectures!"
- "It's about time," I said.
- "I don't let them in," he continued, getting more
-animated. "I have a sharp eye for them. A guy could be just
-approaching the door, when I can spot him for an Intel
-'Fellows,' I say, 'an Intel is coming.' And the boys are all
-well picked; Dodd himself is here every night after training.
-So, he gets up and meets this Intel at the door, and I don't
-even know what goes on between them, but be passes him on
-elsewhere. Although it's true that sometimes they travel in
-bunches. In that case, so there wouldn't be a to-do, we lock
-the door -- let them knock. That's the right way, isn't it?"
- 'That's okay by me," I said. I had had enough of him.
-There are people who pall unusually quickly. "Let them."
- "What do you mean -- let them?"
- "Let them knock. In other words, knock on any door."
- The barman looked at me with growing alertness.
- "What say you move on," he said.
- "How about a quick one," I offered.
- "Move along, move along," he said. "You won't get served
-here."
- We looked at each other awhile,, then he growled
-something, backed up, and slid the glass door in front of him.
- "I am no Intel," I said. "I am a poor tourist. A rich
-one."
- He looked at me with his nose flattened against the glass.
-I made a motion as though knocking a drink back. Re mumbled
-something and went back into the darkness of the place -- I
-could see him wandering aimlessly among empty tables. The place
-was called the Smile. I smiled and went on.
- Around the corner was a wide main thoroughfare. A huge
-van, plastered with advertisements, was parked by the curb. Its
-back was swung down for a counter, on which were piled
-mountains of cans, bottles, toys, and stacks of
-cellophane-wrapped clothing and underwear. Two teenage girls
-twittered some sort of nonsense while selecting blouses.
-"Pho-o-ny," squeaked one. The other, turning the blouse this
-way and that, replied, "Spangles, spangles and not phony."
-"Here by the neck it phonies." "Spangles." "Even the star
-doesn't glimmer."
- The driver of the van, a gaunt man with huge, horn-rimmed
-dark glasses, sat on the step of the advertising rotunda. His
-eyes were not visible, but, judging by his relaxed mouth and
-sweat-beaded nose, he was asleep. I approached the counter. The
-girls stopped talking and stared at me with parted mouths. They
-must have been about sixteen, and their eyes were vacant and
-blue, like those of young kittens.
- "Spangles," I said. "No phonying and lots of sparkle."
- "And around the neck?" asked the one who was trying on the
-blouse.
- "Around the neck it's practically a masterpiece."
- "Spangles," said the other uncertainly.
- "OK, let's look at another one," offered the first
-peacefully. "This one here."
- "This one is better, the silvery one with the frame."
- I saw books. They were magnificent books. There was a
-Strogoff with such illustrations as I had never even heard of.
-There was <i>Change of Dream</i> with an introduction by
-Saroyan. There was a Walter Mintz in three volumes. There was
-almost an entire Faulkner, <i>The New Politics</i> by Weber,
-<i>Poles of Magnificence</i> by Ignatova, The <i>Unpublished
-Sian She-Cuey</i>, <i>History of Fascism</i> in the "Memory of
-Mankind" edition. There were current magazines, and almanacs,
-pocket Louvres, Hermitage, and Vatican. There was everything!
-"It phonies too but it has a frame." "Spangles." I grabbed the
-Mintz. Holding the two volumes under my arm, I opened the
-third. Never have I seen such a complete Mintz. There were even
-the émigré letters.
- "How much will that be?" I called.
- The girls gaped again; the driver sucked in his lips and
-sat up.
- "What?" he said huskily.
- "Who is the owner here?" I said.
- He got up and came to me.
- "What would you like?"
- "I want this Mintz. How much is it?"
- The girls giggled. He stared at me in silence, then
-removed his glasses.
- "You are a foreigner?"
- "Yes, I am a tourist."
- "It's the most complete Mintz."
- "Of course, I can see that. I was stunned when I saw it."
- "Me too," he said, "when I saw what you were after."
- "He is a tourist," twittered one of the girls. "He doesn't
-understand."
- "It's all free," said the driver. "Personal needs fund. To
-take care of personal needs."
- I looked back at the bookshelf.
- "Did you see <i>Change of Dream</i>?" asked the driver.
- "Yes, thank you, I have it."
- "About Strogoff I will not even inquire."
- "How about the <i>History of Fascism</i>?"
- "An excellent edition."
- The girls giggled again. The driver's eyes popped in
-sudden wrath.
- "Scram, snot faces," he barked.
- The girls jumped. One of them thievishly grabbed several
-blouse packages. They ran across the street, where they stopped
-and continued to gaze at us.
- "With frames!" said the driver. His thin lips twitched. "I
-should drop this whole idea. Where do you live?"
- "On Second Waterway."
- "Aha, in the thick of the mire.... Let's go -- I will drop
-you off. I have a complete Schedrin in the van, which I don't
-even exhibit; I have the entire classics library; the whole
-Golden Library, the complete Treasures of Philosophic Thought."
- "Including Doctor Opir's?"
- "Bitch tripe," said the driver. "Salacious bum! Amoeba!
-Rut do you know Sliy?"
- "Not much," I said. "I don't like him. Neo-individualism,
-as Doctor Opir would say."
- "Doctor Opir stinks," said the driver. "While Sliy is a
-real man. Of course, there is the individualism. But at least
-he says what he thinks and does what he says. I'll get some
-Sliy for you.... Listen, did you see this? And this!"
- He dug himself up to his elbows in books. He stroked them
-tenderly and his face shone with rapture.
- "And this," he kept on. "And how about this Cervantes?"
- An oldish lady of imposing bearing approached and started
-to pick over the canned goods.
- "You still don't have Danish pickles... didn't I ask you
-to get some?"
- "Go to hell," said the driver absent-mindedly.
- The woman was stunned. Her face slowly turned crimson.
- "How dare you!" she hissed.
- The driver looked at her bullishly.
- "You heard what I said. Get out of here!"
- "Don't you dare!" said the woman. "What is your number?"
- "My number is ninety-three," said the driver,
-"Ninety-three -- is that clear enough? And I spit on all of
-you. Is that clear? Any other questions?"
- "What a hooliganism!" said the woman with dignity. She
-took two cans of delicacies, scanned the counter, and with
-great precision, ripped the cover off the <i>Cosmic Man</i>
-magazine. "I'll remember you, number ninety-three! These aren't
-the old times for you." She wrapped the two cans in the cover.
-"We'll see each other in the municipal court."
- I took a firm hold on the driver's arm. His rigid muscles
-gradually relaxed.
- "The nerve!" said she majestically and departed.
- She stepped along the sidewalk, proudly carrying her
-handsome head, which was topped with a high cylindrical
-coiffure. She stopped at the corner, opened one of the cans,
-and proceeded to pick out chunks with elegant fingers.
- I released the driver's arm.
- "They ought to be shot," he said suddenly. "We ought to
-strangle them instead of dispensing pretty books to them." He
-turned toward me, and I could see his eyes were tortured.
-"Shall I deliver your books?"
- "Well, no," I said. "Where will I put them?"
- "In that case, shove off," said the driver. "Did you take
-your Mintz? Then go and wrap your dirty pantaloons in it."
- He climbed up into the cab. Something clicked and the back
-door began to rise. You could hear everything crashing and
-rolling inside the van. Several books and some shiny packets,
-boxes, and cans fell on the pavement. The rear panel had not
-yet closed completely when the driver shut his door and the van
-took off with a jerk.
- The girls had already disappeared. I stood alone on the
-empty street and watched the wind lazily turn the pages of
-History of Fascism at my feet. Later a gang of kids in striped
-shorts came around the corner. They walked by silently, hands
-stuck in their pockets. One jumped down on the pavement and
-began to kick a can of pineapple, with a slick pretty cover,
-like a football down the street.
-
-<ul><a name=6></a><h2>Chapter SIX</h2></ul>
-
- On the way home, I was overtaken by the change of shifts.
-The streets filled up with cars. Controller copters appeared
-over the intersections, and sweaty police cleared constantly
-threatening jams with roaring bull horns. The cars moved
-slowly, and the drivers stuck heads out of windows to light up
-from each other, to yell, to talk and joke while furiously
-blowing their horns. There was a instant screech of clashing
-bumpers. Everyone was happy, everyone was good-natured, and
-everyone glowed with savage glee. It seemed as though a heavy
-load had just fallen from the soul of the city, as though
-everyone was seized with an enviable anticipation. Fingers were
-pointed at me and the other pedestrians. Several times I was
-prodded with bumpers while crossing -- the girls doing it with
-the utmost good nature. One of them drove alongside me for
-quite a while, and we got acquainted. Then a line of
-demonstrators with sober faces walked by on the median,
-carrying signs. The signs appealed to people to join the
-amateur club ensemble Songs of the Fatherland, to enter the
-municipal Culinary Art groups, and to sign up for condensed
-courses in motherhood and childhood. The people with signs were
-nudged by bumpers with special enthusiasm. The drivers threw
-cigarette butts, apple cores, and paper wads at them. They
-yelled such things as "I'll subscribe at once, just wait till I
-put my galoshes on," or "Me, I'm sterile," or "Say, buddy,
-teach me motherhood." The sign carriers continued to march
-slowly in between the two solid streams of cars, unperturbed
-and sacrificial, looking straight ahead with the sad dignity of
-camels.
- Not far from my house, I was set upon by a flock of girls,
-and when I finally struggled through to Second Waterway, I had
-a white aster in my lapel and drying kisses on my cheeks, and
-it seemed I had met half the girls in town. What a barber! What
-a Master!
- Vousi, in a flaming orange blouse, was sitting in the
-chair in my study. Her long legs in pointy shoes rested on the
-table, while her slender fingers held a long slim cigarette.
-With her head thrown back, she was blowing thick streams of
-smoke at the ceiling, through her nose.
- "At long last!" she cried, seeing me. "Where have you been
-all this time? As you can see, I've been waiting for you."
- "I've been delayed," I said, trying to recollect if I had
-indeed promised to meet her.
- Wipe off the lipstick," she demanded. "You look silly!
-What's this? Books? What do you need books for?"
- "What do you mean by that?"
- "You are really quite a problem! Comes back late, hangs
-around with books. Or are those pornos?"
- "It's Mintz," I said.
- "Let me have them!" She jumped up and snatched the books
-out of my grasp. "Good God! What nonsense -- all three are
-alike. What is it? <i>History of Fascism</i>... are you a
-Fascist?"
- "How can you say that, Vousi!"
- "Then, what do you need them for? Are you really going to
-read them?"
- "Reread them."
- "I just don't understand," she said peevishly. "I liked
-you from the first. Mother says you're a writer, and I went and
-bragged to everyone, like a fool, and then you turn out to be
-the next thing to an Intel."
- "How could you, Vousi!" I said with reproach. By now I had
-realized that it was impermissible to be taken for an Intel.
-"These bookos were simply needed in my literary business,
-that's all."
- "Bookos!" she laughed. "Bookos! Look at what I can do."
-She threw back her head and blew two thick streams of smoke out
-of her nostrils. "I got it on the second try. Pretty good,
-right?"
- "Remarkable aptitude," I remarked.
- "Instead of laughing at me, you should try it yourself.
-... A lady taught me at the salon today. Slobbered all over me,
-the fat cow... Will you try it?"
- "How come she did that?"
- "Who?"
- "The cow."
- "Not normal. Or maybe a sad sack.... What's your name? I
-forgot."
- "Ivan."
- "An amusing name! You'll have to remind me again. Are you
-a Tungus?"
- "I don't think so."
- "So-o... and I went and told everyone that you are a
-Tungus. Too bad.... Say, why not have a drink?"
- "Let's."
- "Today I should have a strong drink to forget that
-slobbering cow."
- She ran out into the living room and came back with a
-tray. We had some brandy and looked at each other, not having
-anything to say. I felt ill at ease. I couldn't say why, but I
-liked her. I sensed something, something I couldn't put my
-finger on; something which distinguished her from the
-long-legged, smooth-skinned pin-up beauties, good only for the
-bed. I had the impression that she sensed something in me, too.
- "Beautiful day, today," she said, looking away.
- "A bit hot," I observed.
- She sipped some brandy; I did too. The silence stretched.
- "What do you like to do the most?" she asked.
- "It depends. And you?"
- "Same with me. In general, I like to have fun and not have
-to think about anything."
- "So do I," I said. "At least I do right now."
- She seemed to perk up a little. I understood suddenly what
-was the matter: during the whole day, I had not met a single
-truly pleasant person, and I simply had gotten tired of it.
-There was nothing to her, after all.
- "Let's go somewhere," she said.
- "We could," I said. I really didn't want to go anywhere, I
-wanted to sit and relax in the cool room for a while.
- "I can see you're not too eager," she said.
- "To be honest, I would prefer to sit around here for a
-bit."
- "Well then, amuse me."
- I considered the problem, and recounted the story of the
-traveling salesman in the upper bunk. She liked it, but I think
-she missed the point. I made a correction in my aim, and told
-her the one about the president and the old maid. She laughed a
-long time, kicking her wonderfully long legs. Then, taking
-courage from another shot of brandy, I told about the widow
-with the mushrooms growing on the wall. She slid down to the
-floor and almost knocked over the tray. I picked her up under
-the armpits, hoisted her back up in the chair, and delivered
-the story of the drunk spaceman and the college girl, at which
-point Aunt Vaina came rushing in and inquired fearfully what
-was going on with Vousi, and whether I was tickling her
-unmercifully. I poured Aunt Vaina a glass, and addressing
-myself to her personally, recounted the one about the Irishman
-who wanted to be a gardener. Vousi was completely shattered,
-but Aunt Vaina smiled sorrowfully and confided that Major
-General Tuur liked to tell the same story, when he was in a
-good mood. But in it there was, she thought, a Negro instead of
-the Irishman, and he aspired to the duties of a piano tuner and
-not a gardener. "And you know, Ivan, the story ended somehow
-differently," she added after some thought. At this point I
-noticed Len standing in the doorway, looking at us. I waved and
-smiled at him. He seemed not to notice, so I winked at him and
-beckoned for him to come in.
- "Whom are you winking at?" asked Vousi, through lingering
-laughter.
- "It's Len," I said. It was really a pleasure to watch her,
-as I love to see people laugh, especially such a one as Vousi,
-beautiful and almost a child.
- "Where's Len?" she wondered.
- There was no Len in the doorway.
- "Len isn't here," said Aunt Vaina, who was sniffing the
-brandy with approval, and did not notice a thing. "The boy went
-to the Ziroks' birthday party today. If you only knew, Ivan..."
- "But why does he say it was Len?" asked Vousi, glancing at
-the door again.
- "Len was here," I said. "I waved at him, and be ran away.
-You know, he looked a bit wild to me."
- "Ach, we have a highly nervous boy there," said Aunt
-Vaina. "He was born in a very difficult time, and they just
-don't know how to deal with a nervous child in these modern
-schools. Today I let him go visit."
- "We'll go, too, now," said Vousi. "You'll walk with me.
-I'll just fix myself up, because on account of you everything
-got smeared. In the meantime, you can put on something more
-decent."
- Aunt Vaina wouldn't have minded staying behind to tell me
-a few more things and maybe show me a photo album of Len, but
-Vousi dragged her off and I heard her ask her mother behind the
-door, "What's his name? I just can't remember it. He is a jolly
-fellow, isn't he?"
- "Vousi!" admonished Aunt Vaina.
- I laid out my entire wardrobe on the bed and tried to
-imagine what Vousi would consider a decently dressed man. Until
-now, I had thought I was dressed quite satisfactorily. Vousi's
-heels were already beating an impatient rat-a-tat on the study
-floor. Not having come up with anything, I called her in.
- "That's all you have?" she asked, wrinkling her nose.
- "It really isn't good enough?"
- "Well, it will pass. Take off the jacket and put on this
-Hawaiian shirt... or better yet, this one here. They sure have
-dressing problems in your Tungusia! Hurry up. No, no, take off
-the shirt you have on."
- "You mean, without an undershirt?"
- "You know, you really are a Tungus. Where do you think you
-are going -- to the pole or to Mars? What's this under your
-shoulder blade?"
- "A bee stung me," I said, hurriedly pulling on my shirt.
-"Let's go!"
- The street was already dark. The fluorescents shone palely
-through dark foliage.
- "Which way are we bound?" I asked.
- "Downtown, of course.... Don't grab my arm, it's hot! At
-least you know how to fight, I hope?"
- "I know how."
- "That's good. I like to watch."
- "To watch, I like, too," I said.
- There were a lot more people out in the streets than in
-the daytime. Under the trees, in the bushes, and in the
-driveways there were groups of unsettled-looking individuals.
-They furiously smoked crackling synthetic cigars, guffawed,
-spat negligently and often, and spoke in loud rough voices.
-Over each group hung the racket of radio receivers. Under one
-streetlight a banjo twanged, and two youngsters, twisting in
-weird contortions and yelling out wildly, were performing
-fling, a currently fashionable dance, a dance of great beauty
-when properly executed. The youngsters knew how. Around them
-stood a small crowd, also yelling lustily and clapping their
-hands in rhythm.
- "Shall we have a dance?" I offered.
- "But no, no..." hissed Vousi, taking me by the hand and
-increasing her pace.
- "And why not? You do fling?"
- "I'd sooner hop with alligators than this crowd."
- "Too bad," I said, "They look like regular fellows."
- "Yes, each one by himself," said Vousi, "and in the
-daytime."
- They hung around on the corners, huddled around
-streetlights, gauche, smoked to the gills, leaving the
-sidewalks behind them strewn with bits of candy paper,
-cigarette butts, and spittle. They were nervous and showy
-melancholic, yearning, constantly looking around, stooped. They
-were awfully anxious not to look like others, and at the same
-time, assiduously imitated each other and two or three popular
-movie stars. There were really not that many, but they stood
-out like sore thumbs, and it always seemed to me that every
-town and the whole world was filled with them -- perhaps
-because every city and the whole world belonged to them by
-night. And to me, they seemed full of some dark mystery, But I
-too used to stand around of evenings in the company of friends,
-until some real people turned up and took us off the streets,
-and many a time I have seen the same groups in all the cities
-of the world, where there was a lack of capable men to get rid
-of them. But I never did understand to the very end what force
-it is that turns these fellows away from good books, of which
-there are so many, from sport establishments, of which this
-town had plenty, and even from ordinary television sets, and
-drives them out in the night streets with cigarettes in their
-teeth and transistor sets in their ears, to stand and spit as
-far as possible, to guffaw as offensively as possible, and to
-do nothing. Apparently at fifteen, the most attractive of all
-the treasures in the world is the feeling of your own
-importance and ability to excite everyone's admiration, or at
-least attract attention. Everything else seems unbearably dull
-and dreary, including, perhaps above all, those avenues of
-achieving the desirable which are offered by the tired world of
-adults.
- "This is where old Rouen lives," said Vousi. "He has a new
-one with him every night. The old turnip has managed it so that
-they all come to him of their own will. During the fracas, his
-leg was blown off.... You see there is no light in his place,
-they are listening to the hi-fi. On top of which, he's ugly as
-mortal sin."
- "He lives well who has but one leg," I said
-absent-mindedly.
- Of course she had to giggle at this, and continued.
- "And here lives Seus. He is a Fisher. Now there's a man
-for you!"
- "Fisher," I said. "And what does he do, this
-Seus-Fisher?"'
- "He Fishers. That's what Fishers do -- they Fisher. Or are
-you asking where he works?"
- "No, I mean to ask where does he Fisher?"
- "In the Subway." Suddenly she stopped. "Say, you wouldn't
-be a Fisher?"
- "Me? Why, does it show?"
- "There is something about you, I noticed at once. We know
-about these bees that sting you in the back."
- "Is that right?" I said.
- She slipped her arm through mine.
- "Tell me a story," she said, cajoling. "I never had a
-Fisher among my friends. Will you tell me a story?"
- "Well now... shall I tell you about the pilot and the
-cow?"
- She tweaked my elbow.
- "No, really..."
- "What a hot evening," I said. "It's a good thing you had
-me take off my jacket!"
- "Anyway, everybody knows. Seus talks about it, and so do
-others."
- "Ah, so," I said with interest. "And what does Seus tell?"
- She let go of my arm at once.
- "I didn't hear it myself. The girls told me."
- "And what did they tell?"
- "Well, this and that.... Maybe they put it all on. Maybe,
-you know. Seus had nothing to do with it."
- "Hmmm," I said.
- "Don't think anything about Seus, he's a good guy and he
-keeps his mouth closed."
- "Why should I be thinking about Seus?" I said to quiet
-her. "I have never even laid eyes on him."
- She took my arm again and enthusiastically announced that
-we were going to have a drink now.
- "Now's the very time for us to have a drink."
- She was already using the familiar address with me. We
-turned a corner and came out on a wide thoroughfare. Here it
-was lighter than day. The lamps shone, the walls glowed, the
-display windows were lambent with multicolored fires. This was,
-apparently, one of Ahmad's circles of paradise. But I imagined
-it differently. I expected roaring bands, grimacing couples,
-half-naked and naked people. But here it was relatively quiet.
-There were lots of people, and it seemed to me that most were
-drunk, but they were all very well and differently dressed and
-all were gay. And almost all smoked. There was no wind, and
-waves of bluish smoke undulated around the lights and lanterns.
-Vousi dragged me into some establishment, found a couple of
-acquaintances, and disappeared after promising to find me
-later. The crowd was dense, and I found myself pressed against
-the bar. Before I could gather my wits, I found myself downing
-a shot. A brown middle-aged man with yellow whites of the eye
-was booming into my face.
- "Kiven hurt his leg -- right? Brush became an antique and
-is now quite useless. That makes three -- right? And on the
-right they haven't got nobody. Phinney is on the right, and
-that's worse than nobody. A waiter, that's what be is."
- "What are you drinking?" I asked.
- "I don't drink at all," replied the brown one with
-dignity, breathing strong fumes at me. "I have jaundice. Ever
-hear of it?"
- Behind me, someone fell off a stool. The noise modulated
-up and down. The brown one, sitting down next to me, was
-shouting out some story about some character who almost died of
-fresh air after breaking some pipe at work. It was hard to
-understand any part of it, as various stories were being
-shouted from all sides.
- "... Like a fool, he quieted down and left, and she called
-s taxi truck, loaded up his stuff, and had it dumped outside
-the town..."
- "... I wouldn't have your TV in my outhouse. You can't
-think of one improvement on the Omega, my neighbor is an
-engineer, and that's just what he says -- you can't think up an
-improvement on the Omega..."
- "... That's the way their honeymoon ended. When they
-returned home, his father enticed him in the garage -- and his
-father is a boxer -- and trounced him until he lost
-consciousness. They called a doctor later..."
- "... So, all right, we took enough for three... and their
-rule is, you know, take as much as you wish, but you get to
-swallow all of it... and they are watching us by now, and he is
-carried away -- and says -- let's take more... well, I says to
-myself, enough of this, time to break knuckles..."
- "... Dear child, with your bust, I wouldn't know any
-grief, such a bosom is one in a thousand, but don't think I'm
-flattering you, that's not my style..."
- A scrawny girl with bangs down to the tip of her nose
-climbed up on the vacant stool next to me and began to pound
-with puny fists on the bar, yelling, "Barman, barman, a drink."
- The din died down again, and I could hear behind me a
-tragic whisper -- "Where did he get it?" "From Buba, you know
-him, he is an engineer." "Was it real?" "It's scary, you could
-croak." "Then you need some kind of pill --" "Quiet, will you?"
-"Oh, all right, who would be listening to us? You got one?"
-"Buba gave me one package, he says any drugstore has them by
-the ton... here, look." "De... Devon -- what is it?" "Some sort
-of medicine, how would I know?" I turned around. One was
-red-faced with a shirt unbuttoned down to his navel, and with a
-hairy chest. The other was strangely haggard-looking with a
-large-pored nose. Both were looking at me.
- "Shall we have a drink?" I said.
- "Alcoholic," said the pore-nose.
- "Don't, Pete. Don't start up, please," said the red-faced
-one.
- "If you need some Devon, I've got it," I said loudly.
- They jumped back. Pore-nose began to look around
-cautiously. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see several
-faces turn toward us and grow still.
- "Let's go, Pat," said red-face. "Let's go! The hell with
-him."
- Someone put a hand on my shoulder. I turned around and saw
-a handsome sunburned man with powerful muscles.
- "Yes?" I said.
- "Friend," he said benevolently, "drop this business. Drop
-it while it's not too late. Are you a Rhinoceros?"
- "I am a hippopotamus," I joked.
- "No, don't. I'm serious. Did you get beat up, maybe?"
- "Black and blue."
- "All right, don't feel bad about it. Today it's you,
-tomorrow it's them.... As for Devon and all that -- that's
-crap, believe me. There's lots of crap in the world, but that
-is the crap of all crap."
- The girl with the bangs advised me, "Crack him in the
-teeth... what's he sticking his nose in for... lousy dick."
- "Lapping it up, and doing it up brown, aren't you?" said
-the sunburned one coolly, and turned his back on us. His back
-was huge, and studded with bulging muscles under a tight
-half-transparent shirt.
- "None of your business," said the girl at his back. Then
-she said to me, "Listen, friend, call the barman for me -- I
-can't seem to get through to him."
- I gave her my glass and asked, "What's to do?"
- "In a minute, we'll all go," replied the girl. Having
-swallowed the alcohol, she went limp all at once. "As to what
-to do -- that's up to luck. Without luck, you can't make out.
-Or you need money if you deal with promoters. You're probably a
-visitor? Nobody here drinks that dry vodka. How is it your way,
-you should tell me about it.... I'm not going anywhere today,
-I'll go to the salon instead. I feel terrible and nothing seems
-to help.... Mother says -- have a child. But that's dull too,
-what do I need one for?"
- She closed her eyes and lowered her chin on her entwined
-fingers. She looked brazen, but at the same time crestfallen. I
-attempted to rouse her but she stopped paying attention to me,
-and suddenly started shouting again, "Barman, barman, a drink!"
- I looked for Vousi. She was nowhere to be seen. The cafe
-began to empty. Everyone was in a hurry to get somewhere. I got
-off my stool, too, and left the cafe. Streams of people flowed
-down the street. They were all going in the same direction, and
-in about five minutes, I was swept out onto a big square. It
-was huge and poorly lighted, a wide gloomy space bordered by a
-ring of streetlights and store windows. It was full of people.
- They stood pressed against each other, men, women, and
-youngsters, boys and girls, shifting from foot to foot, waiting
-for I knew not what. There was almost no talking. Here and
-there cigarette tips flared, lighting hollow cheeks and
-compressed lips. Then a clock began to strike the hour, and
-over the square, gigantic luminous panels sprang into flaming
-light. There were three of them -- red, blue, and green,
-irregularly shaped rounded triangles. The crowd surged and
-stood still. Around me, cigarettes were put out with subdued
-movements. The panels went out momentarily and then started to
-flash in rotation: red-blue-green, red-blue-green... I felt a
-wave of hot air on my face, and was suddenly dizzy. They were
-astir around me. I got up on tiptoes. In the center of the
-square, the people stood motionless; I had the impression that
-they were seized rigid and did not fall only because they were
-pressed in by the crowd. Red-blue-green, red-blue-green.
-Wooden, upturned faces, blackly gaping mouths, staring, bulging
-eyes. They weren't even winking there, under the panels. A
-total quiet fell, so that I jumped when a piercing woman's
-voice nearby yelled: "Shivers!" All at once, tens of voices
-responded: "Shivers! Shivers!" People on the sidewalk on the
-square's perimeter began to clap hands in rhythm with the
-flashes, and to chant in even voices, "Shi-vers! Shi-vers!
-Shi-vers!" Somebody prodded me in the back with a sharp elbow.
-I was pressed forward to the center, toward the panels. I took
-a step and another and started through the crowd, pushing the
-stiffened bodies aside. Two youngsters, rigid as icicles,
-suddenly started thrashing wildly, grabbing at each other,
-scratching and pounding with all their strength, but their
-faces remained frozen in the direction of the flashing sky...
-red-blue-green, red-blue-green. And just as suddenly as they
-started, they grew still again.
- At this paint, finally, I understood that all this was
-extraordinarily amusing. Everyone laughed. There was lots of
-room around me and music thundered forth. I swept up a charming
-girl and we began to dance, as they used to dance, as dancing
-should be done and was done a long, long time ago, as it was
-done always with abandon, so that your head swam, and so that
-everyone admired you. We stepped out of the way, and I held on
-to her hands, and there was no need to talk about anything, and
-she agreed that the van driver was a strange man. Can't stand
-alcoholics, said Rimeyer, and pore-nose is the most genuine
-alcoholic, and what about Devon I said, how could you be
-without Devon when we have an excellent zoo, the buffaloes love
-to wallow in the mud, and bugs are constantly swarming out of
-it. Rim, I said, there are some fools who said that you are
-fifty years old -- such nonsense when I wouldn't give you over
-twenty-five -- and this is Vousi, I told her about you, but I
-am intruding on you, said Rimeyer; no one can intrude on us,
-said Vousi, as for Seus he's the best of Fishers, he grabbed
-the splotcher and got the ray right in the eye, and Hugger
-slipped and fell in the water and said -- wouldn't it be
-something for you to drown -- look your gear are melting away,
-aren't you funny, said Len, there is such a game of boy and
-gangster, you know, you remember we played with Maris... Isn't
-it wonderful, I have never felt so good in my life, what a
-pity, when it could be like this every day. Vousi, I said,
-aren't we great fellows, Vousi, people have never had such an
-important problem before, and we solved it and there remained
-only one problem, Vousi, the sole problem in the world, to
-return to people a spiritual content, and spiritual concerns,
-no, Seus, said Vousi, I love you very much, Oscar, you are very
-nice, but forgive me, would you, I want it to be Ivan, I
-embraced her and felt that it was right to kiss her and I said
-I love you...
- Boom! Boom! Boom! Something exploded in the dark night sky
-and tinkling sharp shards began to fall on us, and at once I
-felt cold and uncomfortable. There were machine guns firing!
-Again the guns rattled. "Down, Vousi," I yelled, although I
-could not yet understand what was going on, and threw her down
-on the ground and covered her with my body against the bullets,
-whereupon blows began to rain on my face.
- Bang, bang, rat-tat-tat-tat... around me people stood like
-wooden pickets. Some were coming to and rolling their eyeballs
-inanely. I was half reclining on a man's chest, which was as
-hard as a bench, and right in front of my eyes was his open
-mouth and chin glistening with saliva... Blue-green,
-blue-green, blue-green... Something was missing.
- There were piercing screams, cursing, someone thrashed and
-screeched hysterically. A mechanical roar grew louder over the
-square. I raised my head with difficulty. The panels were right
-overhead, the blue and green flashing regularly, while the red
-was extinguished and raining glass rubble. Rat-tat-tat-tat and
-the green panel broke and darkened. In the blue remaining light
-unhurried wings floated by, spewing the reddish lightning of a
-fusillade.
- Again I attempted to throw myself on the ground, but it
-was impossible, as they all stood around me like pillars.
-Something made an ugly snap quite near me, and a yellow-green
-plume rose skyward from which puffed a repulsive stench. Pow!
-Pow! Another two plumes hung over the square. The crowd howled
-and stirred. The yellow vapor was caustic like mustard, my eyes
-and mouth filled, and I began to cry and cough, and around me,
-everyone began to cry and cough and yell hoarsely: "Lousy bums!
-Scoundrels! Sock the Intels!" Again the roar of the engine
-could be heard, coming in louder and louder. The airplane was
-returning. "Down, you idiots," I yelled. Everyone around me
-flopped down all over each other. Rat-tat-tat-tat! This time
-the machine gunner missed and the string apparently got the
-building opposite us. To make up for the miss, the gas bombs
-fell again right on target. The lights around the square went
-out, and with them the blue panel, as a free-for-all started in
-the pitch-black dark.
-
-<ul><a name=7></a><h2>Chapter SEVEN</h2></ul>
-
- I'll never know how I arrived at that fountain. It must be
-that I have good instincts and ordinary cold water was exactly
-what I needed. I crawled into the water without taking off my
-clothes, and lay down, feeling better immediately. I was lying
-on my back, drops rained on my face, and this was unbelievably
-pleasant. It was quite dark here, and dim stars shone through
-the branches and the water. It was very quiet. For several
-minutes I was watching a brighter star, for some reason unknown
-to me, which was slowly moving across the sky, until I realized
-that I was watching the relay satellite Europa. How far from
-all this, I thought, how degrading and senseless to remember
-the revolting mess on the square, the disgusting foul mouthings
-and screechings, the wet phrumping of the gas bombs, and the
-putrid stench which turned your stomach and lungs inside out.
-Understanding freedom as the rapid satisfaction and
-multiplication of needs and desires, I recollected, people
-distort their natures as they engender within themselves many
-senseless and stupid desires, habits and the most unlikely
-inventions....
- Priceless Peck, he loved to quote old pundit Zosima as he
-circled around a well-laid table, rubbing his hands. We were
-snot-nosed undergrads then and ingenuously believed that such
-pronouncements, in our time, were meant only to show off
-flashes of humor and erudition.... At this point in my
-reflections, someone noisily plunged into the water some ten
-paces from me.
- At first he coughed hoarsely, spat and blew his nose, so
-that I hurried to leave the water, then he started to splash,
-finally became quiet, and suddenly discharged himself of a
-string of curses:
- "Shameless lice," he growled. "Whores, swine... on live
-people! Stinking hyenas, rotten scum... learned prostitutes,
-filthy snakes." He hawked furiously again. "It bothers them
-that people are having a good time! Stepped on my face, the
-crud!" He groaned nasally and painfully, "The hell with this
-shiver business. That will be the day when I'll go again."
- He moaned again and rose. I could hear the water running
-from his clothes. I could dimly perceive his swaying figure. He
-saw me too.
- "Hey, friend, have a smoke on you?"
- "I did," I replied.
- "Low-lifers! I didn't think to take them out. Just fell in
-with everything on." He splashed over to me and sat down
-alongside. "Some moron stepped on my cheek," he informed me.
- "They marched over me, too," I said. "The people went
-ape."
- "But, you tell me, where do they get the tear gas?" he
-said. "And machine guns?"
- "And airplanes," I added.
- "An airplane means nothing," he contradicted. "I have one
-myself. I bought it cheap for seven hundred crowns.... What do
-they want, that's what I don't understand."
- "Hoodlums," I said. "They should have their faces pulped
-properly, and that would be the end of that argument."
- He laughed bitterly.
- "Someone did! For that you get worked over good.... You
-think they didn't get beat up? And how they got beat up! But
-apparently that isn't enough.... We should have driven them
-right into the ground, together with their excrement, but we
-passed up the chance.... And now they are giving us the
-business! The people got soft, that's what, I tell you. Nobody
-gives a damn. They put their four hours in, have a drink and
-off to the shivers! And you can pot them like clay pigeons." He
-slapped his sides in desperation. "Those were the times," he
-cried. "They didn't dare open their mouths! Should one of them
-even whisper, guys in black shirts or maybe white hoods would
-pay a night visit, crunch him in the teeth, and off to the camp
-he went, so there wouldn't be a peep out of him again.... In
-the schools, my son says, everyone bad-mouths fascism: Oh dear,
-they hurt the Negroes' feelings; oh dear, the scientists were
-witch-hunted; oh dear, the camps; oh dear, the dictatorship!
-Well, it wasn't witch-hunting that was needed, but to hammer
-them into the ground, so there wouldn't be any left for
-breeding!" He drew his hand under his nose, slurping long and
-loud.
- "Tomorrow morning, I have to go to work with my face all
-out of shape.... Let's go have a drink, or we'll both catch
-cold."
- We crawled through the bushes and came out on the street.
- "The Weasel is just around the corner," he informed me.
- The Weasel was full of wet-haired half-naked people. They
-seemed depressed, somehow embarrassed, and gloomily bragging
-about their contusions and abrasions. Several young women, clad
-only in panties, clustered around the electric fireplace,
-drying their skirts. The men patted them platonically on their
-bare flesh. My companion immediately penetrated into the thick
-of the crowd, and swinging his arms and blowing his nose with
-his fingers, began to call for "hammering the bastards into the
-ground." He was getting some weak support.
- I asked for Russian vodka, and when the girls left, I took
-off my sport shirt and sat by the fireplace. The barman
-delivered my glass and returned at once to his crossword in the
-fat magazine. The public continued its conversation.
- "So, what's the shooting for? Haven't we had enough of
-shooting? Just like little boys, by God... just spoiling some
-good fun."
- "Bandits, they're worse than gangsters, but like it or not
-that shiver business is no good, too."
- "That's right. The other day mine says to me, 'Papa, I saw
-you; you were all blue like a corpse and very scary' -- and
-she's only ten. So how can I look her in the eyes? Eh?"
- "Hey anybody! What's an entertainment with four letters?"
-asked the barman without raising his head.
- "So, all right, but who dreamed all this up -- the shiver
-and the aromatics? Eh and also..."
- "If you got drenched, brandy is best."
- "We were waiting for him on the bridge, and along he comes
-with his eyeglasses and some kind of pipe with lenses in it. So
-up he goes over the rail with his eyeglasses and his pipe, and
-he kicked his legs once and that was that. And then old Snoot
-comes running, after having been revived, and he looks at the
-guy blowing bubbles. "Fellows," he says, "What the hell is the
-matter with you, are you drunk or something, that's not the guy
--- I am seeing him for the first time..."
- "I think there ought to be a law -- if you are married,
-you can't go to the shiver."
- "Hey somebody," again the bartender, "What's a literary
-work with seven letters -- a booklet, maybe?"
- "So, I myself had four Intels in my squad, machine gunners
-they were. It's quite true that they fought like devils. I
-remember we were retreating from the warehouse, you know
-they're still building a factory there, and two stayed behind
-to cover us. By the way, nobody asked them, they volunteered
-entirely by themselves. Later we came back and found them
-hanging side by side from the rail crane, naked, with all their
-appurtenances ripped off with hot pincers. You understand? And
-now, I'm thinking, where were the other two today? Maybe they
-were the very same guys to treat me to some tear gas, those are
-the types that can do such things."
- "So who didn't get hung? We got hung by various places,
-too!"
- "Hammer them into the ground right up to their noses, and
-that'll be the end of that!"
- "I'm going. There is no point in hanging around here, I'm
-getting heartburn. They must have fixed everything up by now,
-back there."
- "Hey, barman, girls, let's have one last one."
- My shirt had dried, and as the cafe emptied, I pulled it
-on and went over to sit at a table and to watch. Two
-meticulously dressed gentlemen in the corner were sipping their
-drinks through straws. They called attention to themselves
-immediately -- both were in severe black suits and black ties,
-despite the very warm night. They weren't talking, and one of
-them constantly referred to his watch. After a while, I grew
-tired of observing them. Well, Doctor Opir, how do you like the
-shivers? Were you at the square? But of course you were not.
-Too bad. It would have been interesting to know what you
-thought of it. On the other hand, to the devil with you. What
-do I care what Doctor Opir thinks? What do I think about it
-myself? Well, high-grade barber's raw material, what do you
-think? It's important to get acclimatized quickly
- and not stuff the brain with induction, deduction, and
-technical procedures. The most important thing is to get
-acclimatized as rapidly as possible. To get to feel like one of
-them.... There, they all went back to the square. Despite
-everything that happened, they still went back to the square
-again. As for me, I don't have the slightest desire to go back
-there. I would, with the greatest of pleasure at this point, go
-back to my room and check out my new bed. But when would I go
-to the Fishers? Intels, Devon, and Fishers. Intels -- maybe
-they are the local version of the Golden Youth? Devon... Devon
-must be kept in mind, together with Oscar. But now the Fishers.
- "The Fishers; that's a little bit vulgar," said one of the
-black suits, not whispering, but very quietly.
- "It all depends on temperament," said the other. "As for
-me, personally I don't condemn Karagan in the slightest."
- "You see, I don't condemn him either. It's a little
-shocking that he picked up his options. A gentleman would not
-have behaved that way."
- "Forgive me, but Karagan is no gentleman. He is only a
-general manager. Hence the small-mindedness and the
-mercantilism and a certain what I might call commonness..."
- "Let's not be so hard on him. The Fishers -- that's
-something intriguing. And to be honest, I don't see any reason
-why we should not involve ourselves. The old Subway -- that's
-quite respectable. Wild is much more elegant than Nivele, but
-we don't reject Nivele on that account."
- "'You really are seriously considering?"
- "Right now, if you wish.... It's five to two, by the way.
-Shall we go?"
- They got up, said a friendly and polite goodbye to the
-bartender, and proceeded toward the exit. They looked elegant,
-calm, and condescendingly remote. This was astounding luck. I
-yawned loudly, and muttering, "Off to the square," followed
-them, pushing stools out of my way. The street was poorly
-illuminated, but I saw them immediately. They were in no hurry.
-The one on the right was the shorter, and when they passed
-under the street lights, you could see his safe, sparse hair.
-As near as I could tell, they were no longer conversing.
- They detoured the square, turned into a dark alley,
-avoided a drunk who tried to strike up a conversation, and
-suddenly, without one backward glance, turned abruptly into a
-garden in front of a large gloomy house. I heard a heavy door
-thud shut. It was a minute before two.
- I pushed off the drunk, entered the garden, and sat down
-on a silver-painted bench under a lilac bush. The wooden bench
-was situated on a sandy path which ran through the garden. A
-blue lamp illuminated the entrance of the house, and I
-discerned two caryatids supporting the balcony over the door.
-This didn't look like the entrance to the old subway, but as
-yet, I couldn't tell for sure, so I decided to wait.
- I didn't have to wait long. There was a rustle of steps
-and a dark figure in a cloak appeared on the path. It was a
-woman. I did not grasp immediately why her proudly raised head
-with a high cylindrical coiffure, in which large stones
-glistened in the starlight, seemed familiar. I arose to meet
-her, and said, trying to sound both respectful and mocking,
-"You are late, madam, it's after two."
- She was not in the least startled.
- "You don't say!" she exclaimed. "Can it be my watch is so
-slow?"
- It was the very same woman who had the altercation with
-the van driver, but of course she did not recognize me. Women
-with such disdainful-looking lower lips never remember chance
-meetings. I took her by the arm, and we mounted the wide stone
-steps. The door turned out to be as heavy as a reactor-well
-cover. There was no one in the entrance hall. The woman,
-without turning, flung the cloak on my arm and went ahead, and
-I paused for a second to look at myself in the huge mirror.
-Good man, Master Gaoway, but it still behooved me to stay in
-the shadows. We entered the ballroom.
- No, this was anything but a subway. The room was enormous
-and incredibly old-fashioned. The walls were lined with dark
-wood, and fifteen feet up, there was a gallery with a railing.
-Pink blond-curled angels smiled down with only their blue lips
-from a far-flung ceiling. Almost the entire floor of the room
-was covered with rows of soft massive chairs covered with
-embossed leather. Elegantly dressed people, mostly middle-aged
-men, sat in them in relaxed and negligent poses. They were
-looking at the far end of the room, where a brightly lit
-picture blazed against a background of black velvet.
- No one turned to look at us. The woman glided toward the
-front rows, and I sat down near the door. By now, I was almost
-sure that I had come here for nothing. There was silence and
-some coughs, and lazy streams of smoke curled upward from the
-fat cigars; many bald pates glistened under the chandeliers. My
-attention turned to the picture. I am an indifferent
-connoisseur of paintings, but it looked like a Raphael, and if
-it was not genuine, it was certainly a perfect copy.
- There was a deep brassy gong, and simultaneously a tall,
-thin man in a black mask appeared by the side of the picture. A
-black leotard covered his body from head to toe. He was
-followed by a limping, hunchbacked dwarf in a red smock. In his
-short, extended pawlike arms, he held a dully glinting sword of
-a most wicked appearance. He went to the right of the picture
-and stood still, while the masked individual stepped forward
-and spoke in a measured tone: "In accordance with the bylaws
-and directives of the Honorable Society of Patrons, and in the
-name of Art, which is holy and irreproducible, and the power
-granted me by you, I have examined the history and worth of
-this painting and now --"
- "Request a halt," sounded a curt voice behind me.
- Everyone turned around. I also turned around and saw that
-three young, obviously very powerful, and immaculately dressed
-men were looking at me full in the face. One had a monocle in
-his right eye. We studied each other for a few seconds, and the
-man with the monocle twitched his cheek and let it drop. I got
-up at once. They moved toward me together, stepping softly and
-soundlessly. I tried the chair, but it was too massive. They
-jumped me. I met them as best I could and at first everything
-went well, but very quickly it became evident that they wore
-brass knuckles, and I barely managed to evade them. I pressed
-my back against the wall and looked at them while they,
-breathing heavily, looked at me. There were still two of them
-left. There was the usual coughing in the auditorium. Four more
-were coming down the gallery steps, which squeaked and groaned
-loudly enough to reverberate in the hall. Bad business, thought
-I, and launched myself to force a breach.
- It was hard going, just like the time in Manila, but then
-there were two of us. It would have been better if they were
-armed, as I would have had a chance to expropriate a gun.
- But all six of them met me with knuckles and truncheons.
-Luckily for me it was very crowded. My left arm went out of
-commission, and then the four suddenly jumped back, while the
-fifth drenched me with a clammy liquid from a flat container.
-Simultaneously, the lights were extinguished.
- These tricks were well known to me: now they could see me,
-but I could not see them. In all probability that would have
-been the end of me, were it not that some idiot threw open the
-door and announced in a greasy basso, "I beg forgiveness, I am
-terribly late and so sorry..." I charged toward the light, over
-some bodies, mowed down the latecomer, flew across the entrance
-hall, threw open the front door, and pelted down the sandy path
-holding my left arm with my right hand. No one was pursuing me,
-but I traversed two blocks before it dawned on me to stop.
- I flung myself down on a lawn and lay for a long time in
-the short grass, grabbing lungfuls of the warm moist air. In no
-time, the curious gathered around me. They stood in a
-semicircle and ogled me avidly, not saying a word. "Take off,"
-I said, getting up finally. Hurriedly, they scooted away. I
-stood awhile, figuring out where I was, and began a stumbling
-journey homeward. I had had enough for today. I still didn't
-get it, but I had had quite enough. Whoever they were, these
-members of the Honorable Society of Art Patrons -- secret art
-worshippers, extant aristocrat-conspirators or whoever else --
-they fought cruelly and without quarter, and the biggest fool
-in that hall of theirs was still apparently none other than I.
- I passed by the square, where again the color panels
-pulsed rhythmically, and hundreds of hysterical voices
-screamed, "Shi-vers! Shi-vers!" Of this too I had had enough.
-Pleasant dreams are, of course, more attractive than unpleasant
-ones, but after all, we do not live in a dream. In the
-establishment where Vousi had taken me, I had a bottle of
-ice-cold soda water, observed with curiosity a squad of police
-peacefully camped by the bar, and went out, turning into Second
-Waterway.
- A lump the size of a tennis ball was rising behind my left
-ear. I weaved badly and walked slowly, keeping close to the
-fences. Later, I heard the tap of heels behind me and voices:
- "... Your place is in the museum, not in a cabaret."
- "Nothing of the sort, I am not drunk. Can't you
-und-derstand, only one measly bottle of wine..."
- "How disgusting! Soused and picking up a wench."
- "What's the girl got to do with it? She is a m-model!"
- "Fighting over a wench. Making us fight over her."
- "Why in hell d-do you believe them and don't believe me?"
- "Just because you're drunk! You're a bum, just like they
-all are, maybe worse...."
- "That's all right. I'll remember that scoundrel with the
-bracelet quite well.... Don't hold me! I'll walk by myself!"
- "You'll remember nothing, friend. Your glasses were
-knocked off in the first instant, and without them, you aren't
-even a man, but a blind sausage.... Stop kicking, or it will be
-the fountain for you...."
- "I'm warning you, one more stunt like that, and we'll
-throw you out. A drunken <i>kulturfuhrer</i> -- it's enough to
-make you sick."
- "Stop preaching at him, give a man a chance to sleep it
-off."
- "Fellows! There he is, the l-louse!"
- The street was empty, and the louse was clearly me. I
-could bend my left arm already, but it hurt like the devil, and
-I stepped back to let them pass. There were three of them. They
-were young, in identical caps, pushed over their eyes. One,
-thickset and low-slung, was obviously amused and held the other
-one, a tall, open-faced, loose-jointed fellow, with a powerful
-grip, restraining his violent and sporadic movements. The
-third, long and skinny, with a narrow and darkish face, was
-following at some distance with his hands behind his back. As
-he got alongside me, the loose-jointed one braked determinedly.
-The short one attempted to nudge him off the spot, but in vain.
- The long one passed by and then stopped, looking back
-impatiently over his shoulder.
- "Thought you were gonna get away, pig!" he yelled
-drunkenly, attempting to seize me by the chest with his free
-hand.
- I retreated to the fence and said, addressing myself to
-the short fellow, "I had no business with you."
- "Stop being a rowdy," said the distant one sharply.
- "I remember you very well indeed," yelled the drunk.
-"You're not going to get away from me! I'll get even with you!"
- He advanced upon me in surges, dragging the short one,
- who hung on with bulldog grimness, behind him.
- "It's not him," cajoled the low-slung one, who was still
-very merry. "That guy went off to the shivers and this one is
-sober."
- "You won't fool me."
- "I'm warning you for the last time. We are going to expel
-you."
- "Got scared, the bum! Took off his bracelet."
- "You can't even see him. You're worthless without your
-glasses."
- "I can see everything pe-erfectly!... And even if he isn't
-the one..."
- "Stop it! Enough is enough!"
- The long one finally came back and grasped the drunk from
-the other side.
- "Will you move on!" he said to me with irritation, "Why
-the devil are you stopping here! Haven't you ever seen a
-drunk?"
- "Oh, no! You aren't going to get away from me."
- I continued on my way. I had not far to go by now. The
-trio dragged along behind me noisily.
- "I can see right through him, if you please. King of
-Nature! Drunk enough to retch, and to beat up whoever comes
-along. Got beat up himself, and that's all he needs.... Let go
-of me, I'll hang a few good ones on his mug...."
- "What have you come to, we have to walk you along like a
-hood."
- "So don't walk me!... I loathe them.... Shivers, wenches,
-whiskey... brainless jelly..."
- "Sure, sure, take it easy, just don't fall."
- "Enough of your reproofs... I am sick of your hypocrisy,
-your puritanism. We should blow them up, shoot them! Raze
-everything off the face of the earth!"
- "Drunk as a coot, and I thought he was sobered up!"
- "I am sober. I remember everything... the twenty-eighth,
-right?"
- "Shut up, you fool."
- "Shh! Right you are! The enemy is on the alert....
-Fellows, there was a spy here somewhere.... Didn't I talk to
-him?... The son of a bitch took off his bracelet... but I'll
-get that dick before the twenty-eighth!"
- "Will you be quiet!"
- "Shh! And not another word. That's it! And don't worry,
-the grenade launchers are my baby."
- "I am going to kill him right now, the bum!"
- "Lay it on the enemies of civilization.... Fifteen hundred
-meters of tear gas -- personally... six sectors... awk!"
- I was already by the gate to my house. When I turned
-around to look, the burly man was lying face down, the short
-one was squatting alongside, while the long fellow stood
-rubbing the edge of his right hand.
- "Why did you do that?" said the short man. "You must have
-maimed him."
- "Enough prattle," said the long one furiously. "We can't
-seem to learn to stop prattling. We can't learn to stop
-boozing. Enough!"
- Let us be as children, Doctor Opir, thought I, slipping
-into the yard as quietly as possible. I held the latch to keep
-it from clicking into place.
- "Where did he go?" said the long one, lowering his voice.
- "Who?"
- "The guy who went ahead of us."
- "Turned off somewhere."
- "Where? Did you notice?"
- "Listen, I wasn't concerned about him."
- "Too bad. But all right, pick him up, and let's go."
- Stepping into the shadow of the apple trees, I watched
-them drag the drunk by the gate. He was wheezing horribly.
- The house was quiet. I went to my quarters, undressed, and
-took a hot shower. My shirt and shorts smelled of tear gas and
-were covered with the greasy spots of the luminous liquid. I
-threw them into the hamper. Next, I inspected myself in the
-mirror and marveled once more at how lightly I had gotten away:
-a bump behind the ear, a sizable contusion on the left
-shoulder, and some scraped ribs. Also skinned knuckles.
- On the night table, I discovered a notice which
-respectfully suggested that I deposit a sum to cover the rent
-for the apartment for the first thirty days. The sum was quite
-considerable, but tolerable. I counted out a few credits and
-stuffed them into the thoughtfully provided envelope, and then
-lay down on the bed with my hands behind my head. The sheets
-were cool and crisp, and a salty sea breeze blew in through the
-open window. The phonor susurrated cozily behind my ear. I
-intended to think awhile before falling asleep, but was too
-exhausted and quickly dozed off.
- Later, some noise in the background awakened me, and I
-grew alert and listened with eyes wide open.
- Somewhere nearby, someone either cried or sang in a thin
-childish voice. I got up cautiously and leaned out the open
-window. The thin halting voice was intoning: "... having stayed
-in the grave but a short time, they come out and live among the
-living as though alive." There was the sound of sobs. From far
-away like the keening of a mosquito came the chant "Shi-vers!
-Shi-vers!" The pitiable little voice went on -- "Blood and
-earth mixed together they can't eat." I thought that it was
-Vousi, drunk and lamenting upstairs in her room, and called out
-softly, "Vousi!" No one replied, The thin voice cried out:
-"Hence from my hair, hence from my flesh, hence from my bones,"
-and I knew who it was. I climbed over the window sill, jumped
-onto the lawn, and went to the apple grove, listening to the
-sobbing. Light appeared through the trees, and soon I came to a
-garage. The doors were cracked open and I looked in. Inside was
-a huge shiny Opel. Two candles were burning on the workbench.
-There was a smell of gasoline and hot wax.
- Under the candles, seated on a work stool, was Len,
-dressed in a full-length white gown, in bare feet, with a
-thick, well-worn book on his knees. He regarded me with
-wide-open eyes, his face completely white and frozen with
-terror.
- "What are you doing here?" I said loudly and entered.
- He continued to look at me in silence and started to
-tremble. I could hear his teeth chattering.
- "Len, old friend," I said, "I guess you didn't recognize
-me. It's me -- Ivan."
- He dropped the book and hid his hands in his armpits. As
-earlier today, in the morning, his face beaded with cold sweat.
-I sat down alongside of him and put my arm around his
-shoulders. He collapsed against me weakly. He shook all over. I
-looked at the book. A certain Doctor Neuf had blessed the human
-race with <i>An Introduction to the Science of Necrological
-Phenomena</i>. I kicked the book under the bench.
- 'Whose ear is that?" I asked loudly.
- "Mo... Mama's..."
- "A very nice Ford."
- "It's not a Ford. It's an Opel."
- "You're right -- it is an Opel... a couple of hundred
- miles per hour I would guess..."
- "Yes."
- "Where did you get the candles?"
- "I bought them."
- "Is that right! I didn't know that they sold candles in
-our time. Is your bulb burned out? I went out in the garden,
-you know, to get an apple off a tree, and then I saw the light
-in the garage."
- He moved closer to me and said, "Don't leave for a while
-yet, will you?"
- "OK. What do you say we blow out the lights and go to my
-place?"
- "No, I can't go there."
- "Where can't you go?"
- "In the house and to your place." He was talking with
-tremendous conviction. "For quite a while yet. Until they fall
-asleep."
- "Who?"
- "They."
- "Who are -- they?"
- "They -- you hear?"
- I listened. There was only the rustle of branches in the
- wind and somewhere very far away the cry of: "Shi-vers!
-Shi-vers!"'
- "I don't hear anything special," I said.
- "That's because you don't know. You are new here and
- they don't bother the new ones."
- "But who are they, after all?"
- "All of them. You've seen the fink with the buttons?"
- "Pete? Yes, I saw him. But why is he a fink? In my
- opinion, he's an entirely respectable man."
- Len jumped up.
- "Come on," he said in a whisper, "I'll show you. But be
-quiet."
- We came out of the garage, crept up to the house, and
-turned a corner. Len held my hand all the time; his palm was
-cold and wet..
- "There -- look," he said.
- Sure enough, the sight was frightening. My customs friend
-was lying on the porch with his head stuck at an unnatural
-angle through the railing. The mercury vapor light from the
-street fell on his face, which looked blue and swollen, and
-covered with dark welts. Through half-open lids, the eyes could
-be seen, crossed toward the bridge of the nose.
- 'They walk among the living, like living people in the
-daytime," murmured Len, holding on to me with both hands. "They
-bow and smile, but at night their faces are white, and blood
-seeps through their skin." I approached the veranda. The
-customs man was dressed in pajamas. He breathed noisily and
-exuded a smell of cognac. There was blood on his face, as
-though he'd fallen on his face into some broken glass.
- "He's just drunk," I said loudly. "Simply drunk and
-snoring. Very disgusting."
- Len shook his head.
- "You are a newcomer," he whispered. "You see nothing. But
-I saw." He shook again. "Many of them came. She brought them...
-and they carried her in... there was a moon... they sawed off
-the top of her head... and she screamed and screamed... and
-then they started to eat with spoons. She ate, too, and they
-all laughed when she screamed and flopped around..."
- "Who? Who was it?"
- "And then they piled on wood and burned it and danced
-around the fire... and then they buried everything in the
-garden... she went out to get the shovel in the car... I saw it
-all... do you want to see where they buried her?"
- "You know what, friend?" I said. "Let's go to my place."
- "What for?"
- "To get some sleep, that's what for. Everyone is sleeping
--- only you and I are palavering here."
- "Nobody is sleeping. You really are new. Right now no one
-is sleeping. You must not sleep now."
- "Let's go, let's go," said I, "over to my place."
- "I won't go," he said. "Don't touch me. I didn't say your
-name."
- "I am going to take a belt," I said menacingly, "and I
-will strap your behind."
- Apparently this calmed him. He clutched my hand again and
-became silent.
- "Let's go, old pal, let's go," I said. "You're going to
-sleep and I will sit alongside you. And if anything at all
-happens, I will awaken you at once."
- We climbed into my room through the window (he absolutely
-refused to enter the house by the front door), and I put him to
-bed. I intended to tell him a tale, but he fell asleep
-immediately. His face looked tortured, and every few minutes he
-quivered in his sleep. I pushed the chair by the window,
-wrapped myself in a bathrobe, and smoked a cigarette to calm my
-nerves. I attempted to think about Rimeyer and about the
-Fishers, with whom I had not met up after all; about what must
-happen on the twenty-eighth; and about the Art Patrons, but
-nothing came of it and this irritated me. It was annoying that
-I was unable to think about my business as something of
-importance. The thoughts scattered and jumbled emotions
-intruded, and I did not think so much as I felt. I felt that I
-hadn't come for nothing, but at the same time, I sensed that I
-had come for altogether the wrong reason.
- But Len slept. He did not even awake when an engine
-snorted at the gate, car doors were slammed, there were shouts,
-chokes, and howls in different voices, so that I almost decided
-that a crime was being committed in front of the house, when it
-became clear that it was just Vousi coming back. Happily
-humming, she began to undress while still in the garden,
-negligently draping her blouse, skirt, and other garments over
-the apple branches. She didn't notice me, came into the house,
-shuffled around upstairs for a while, dropped something heavy,
-and finally settled down. It was close to five o'clock. The
-glow of dawn was kindling over the sea.
-
-<ul><a name=8></a><h2>Chapter EIGHT</h2></ul>
-
- When I woke up, Len was already gone. My shoulder ached so
-badly that the pain pounded in my head, and I promised myself
-to take it easy the whole day. Grunting and feeling sick and
-forlorn, I executed a feeble attempt at set-ting-up exercises,
-approximated a wash-up, took the envelope with the money, and
-set out far Aunt Vaina, moving edge-wise through the doorway.
-In the hall, I stopped in indecision: it was quiet in the
-house, and I wasn't sure that my landlady was up. But at this
-point the door to her side of the house opened, and Pete, the
-customs man, came out into the hall. Well, well, thought I. At
-night he had looked like a drowned drunk. Now in the light of
-day, he resembled a victim of a hooligan attack. The lower part
-of his face was dark with blood. Fresh blood glistened on his
-chin, and he held a handkerchief under his jaw to keep his
-snow-white braided uniform clean. His face was strained and his
-eyes tended to cross, but in general, he held himself
-remarkably calm, as though falling face-down into broken glass
-was a most ordinary event for him. A slight misadventure, you
-know, can happen to anybody; please don't pay it any attention;
-every-thing will be all right.
- "Good morning," I mumbled.
- "Good morning," he responded, politely dabbing his chin
-cautiously and sounding a bit nasal.
- "Anything the matter? Can I help?"
- "A trifle," he said. ' The chair fell."
- He bowed courteously, and passing by me, unhurriedly left
-the house. I observed his departure with a thoroughly
-unpleasant feeling, and when I turned back toward the door, I
-found Aunt Vaina standing in front of me. She stood in the
-doorway, gracefully leaning on the jamb, all clean, rosy, and
-perfumed, and looking at me as though I was Major General Tuur
-or, at least, Staff Major Polom.
- "Good morning, early bird," she cooed. "I was puzzled --
-who would be talking at this hour?"
- "I couldn't bring myself to disturb you," I said,
-shuddering fashionably and mentally howling at the pain in my
-shoulder. "Good morning, and may I take the }liberty to hand
-you --"
- "How nice! You can tell a real gentleman right away. Major
-General Tuur used to say that a true gentleman never makes
-anyone wait. Never. Nobody..."
- I became aware that slowly but very persistently, she was
-herding me away from her door. The living room was darkened,
-with the drapes apparently drawn, and some strange sweet smell
-was wafting out of it into the hall.
- "But you did not have to be in such a rush, really..."
- She was finally in a convenient position to close the door
-with a smooth negligent gesture. "However, you can be sure that
-I will value your promptness appropriately. Vousi is still
-asleep, and it's time for me to get Len off to school. So if
-you will excuse me... By the way, we have the newspapers on the
-veranda."
- "Thank you," I said, retreating.
- "If you'll have the patience, I would like to ask you to
-join me for breakfast and a cup of cream."
- "Unfortunately, I will have to be going," I said, bowing
-out.
- As to newspapers, there were six. Two local, illustrated,
-fat as almanacs; one from the capital; two luxurious weeklies;
-and, for some reason, the Arab <i>El Gunia</i>. The last I put
-aside, and sifted through the others, accompanying the news
-with sandwiches and hot cocoa.
- In Bolivia, government troops, after stubborn fighting,
-had occupied the town of Reyes. The rebels were pushed across
-the River Beni. In Moscow, at the international meeting of
-nuclear physicists, Haggerton and Soloviev announced a project
-for a commercial installation to produce anti-matter. The
-Tretiakoff Gallery had arrived in Leopoldville, official
-opening being scheduled for tomorrow. The scheduled series of
-pilotless craft had been launched from the Staryi Vostok base
-on Pluto into the totally free flight zone; communications with
-two of the craft were temporarily disrupted. The General
-Secretary of the UN had directed an official message to
-Orolianos, in which he warned that in the event of a repetition
-of the use of atomic grenades by the extremists, UN police
-forces would be introduced into Eldorado. In Central Angola, at
-the sources of the River Kwando, an archaeological expedition
-of the Academy of Sciences of the UAR had uncovered the remains
-of a cyclopean construction, apparently dating from well before
-the ice age. A group of specialists of the United Center for
-the Investigation of Subelectronic (Ritrinitive) Structures had
-evaluated the energy reserves available to mankind as
-sufficient for three billion years. The cosmic branch of Unesco
-had announced that the relative population growth of
-extraterrestrial centers and bases now approached the
-population growth on Earth. The head of the British delegation
-to the UN had put forth a proposal, in the name of the great
-powers, for the total demilitarization, by force if need be, of
-the remaining militarized regions on the globe.
- Information about how many kilos were pressed by whom and
-about who drove how many balls through whose goal posts I did
-not bother to read. Of the local announcements, I was intrigued
-by three. The local paper, Joy of Life, reported: "Last night a
-group of evil-minded men again carried out a private plane raid
-on Star Square, which was full of citizens taking their
-leisure. The hooligans fired several machine-gun bursts and
-dropped eleven gas bombs. As a result of the ensuing panic,
-several men and women suffered severe injuries. The normal
-recreation of hundreds of respectable people was disrupted by a
-small group of bandit (excuse the term) intelligentsia with the
-obvious connivance of the police. The president of the Society
-for the Good Old Country Against Evil Influences informed our
-correspondent that the Society intended to take into its own
-hands the matter of the protection of the well-earned rest of
-fellow citizens. In no equivocal manner, the president let it
-be known whom specifically the people regarded as the source of
-the harmful infection, banditism, and militarized
-hooliganism..."
- On page twelve, the paper devoted a column to an article
-by "the outstanding proponent of the latest philosophy, the
-laureate of many literary prizes, Doctor Opir." The treatise
-was titled "World Without Worry." With beautiful words and most
-convincingly indeed, Doctor Opir established the omnipotence of
-science, called for optimism, derided gloomy skeptics and
-denigrators, and invited all "to be as children." He assigned a
-specially important role in the formation of contemporary
-(i.e., anxiety-free) psychology to electric wave
-psychotechnics. "Recollect what a wonderful charge of vigor and
-good feeling is imparted by a bright, happy, and joyful dream!"
-exclaimed this representative of the latest philosophy. "It is
-no wonder that sleep has been known for over a hundred years to
-be a curative agent for many psychic disturbances. But we are
-all a touch ill: we are sick with our worries, we are overcome
-by the trivia of daily routine, we are irritated by the rare
-but still remaining few malfunctions, the inevitable frictions
-among individuals, the normal healthy sexual unsatisfiedness,
-the dissatisfaction with self which is so common in the makeup
-of each person. ... As fragrant bath salts wash away the dust
-of travel from our tired bodies, so does a joyful dream wash
-away and purify a tired psyche. So now, we no longer have to
-fear any anxieties or malfunctions. We well know that at the
-appointed hour, the invisible radiation of the dream generator,
-which together with the public I tend to call by the familiar
-name of 'the shivers,' will heal us, fill us with optimism, and
-return to us the wonderful feeling of the joy of being alive."
-Further, Doctor Opir expounded that the shivers were absolutely
-harmless physically and psychologically, and that the attacks
-of detractors who wished to see in the shivers a resemblance to
-narcotics and who demagogically ranted about a "doped mankind,"
-could not but arouse in us a painful incomprehension, and,
-conceivably, some stronger public-spirited emotions that could
-be dangerous to the malevolently inclined citizens. In
-conclusion, Doctor Opir pronounced a happy dream to be the best
-kind of rest, vaguely hinted that the shivers constituted the
-best antidote to alcoholism and drug addiction, and insistently
-warned that the shivers should not be confused with other (not
-medically approved) methods of electric wave application.
- The weekly Golden Days informed the public that a valuable
-canvas, ascribed in the opinion of experts to the gifted band
-of Raphael, had been stolen from the National Art Galleries.
-The weekly called the attention of the authorities to the fact
-that this criminal act was the third during the past four
-months of this year, and that neither of the previously stolen
-works of art had ever been found.
- All in all, there was really nothing to read in the
-weeklies. I glanced through them quickly, and they left me with
-the most depressing impression.
- All were filled with desolate witticisms, artless
-caricatures, among which the "captionless" series stood out
-with particular imbecility, with biographies of dim
-personalities, slobbering sketches of life in various layers of
-society, nightmarish series of photos with such titles as "Your
-husband at work and at home," endless amounts of useful advice
-on how to occupy your time without, God forbid, burdening your
-head, passionately idiotic sallies against alcoholism,
-hooliganism, and debauchery, and calls to join clubs and
-choruses with which I was already familiar. There were also
-memoirs of participants in the "fracas" and in the struggle
-against organized crime, which were served up in the literary
-style of jackasses totally lacking in taste or conscience.
-These were obviously exercises of addicts of literary
-sensationalism, loaded with suffering and tears, magnificent
-feats and saccharine futures. There were endless crosswords,
-chainwords, rebuses, and puzzle pictures.
- I flung the pile of papers into the corner. What a dreary
-place they had here! The boob was coddled, the boob was
-lovingly nurtured, and the boob was cultivated; the boob had
-become the norm; a little more and he would become the ideal,
-while jubilant doctors of philosophy would exultantly dance
-attendance upon him. But the papers were in full choreographic
-swing even now. Oh, what a wonderful boob we have! Such an
-optimistic boob, and such an intelligent boob, such a healthy
-alert boob, and with such a fine sense of humor; and oh boob,
-how well and adroitly you can solve crossword puzzles! But most
-important of all, boob, don't you worry about a thing,
-everything is quite all right, everything is just dandy,
-everything is in your service, the science and the literature,
-just so you can be amused and don't have to think about a
-thing.... As for those seditious skeptics and hoodlums, boob,
-we'll take care of them! With your help, we can't help but take
-care of them! What are they complaining about, anyway? Do they
-have more needs than other people?
- Dreariness and desolation! There had to be some curse upon
-these people, some awful predilection for dangers and
-disasters. Imperialism, fascism, tens of millions of people
-killed and lives destroyed, including millions of these same
-boobs, guilty and innocent, good and bad. The last skirmishes,
-the last putsches, especially pitiless because they were the
-last. Criminals, the military driven berserk by prolonged
-uselessness, all kinds of leftover trash from intelligence and
-counterintelligence, bored by the sameness of commercial
-espionage, all slavering for power. Again we were forced to
-return from space, to come out of our laboratories and
-factories, to call back our soldiers. And we managed it again.
-The zephyr was gently turning the pages of <i>History of
-Fascism</i> by my feet. But hardly had we had the time to savor
-the cloudless horizons, when out of these same sewers of
-history crept the scum with submachine guns, homemade quantum
-pistols, gangsters, syndicates, gangster corporations, gangster
-empires. "Minor malfunctions are still encountered here and
-there," soothed and calmed Doctor Opir, while napalm bottles
-flew through university windows, cities were seized by bands of
-outlaws, and museums burned like candles.... All right.
-Brushing aside Doctor Opir and his kind, once again we came out
-of space, out of the labs and factories, recalled the soldiers,
-and once again managed the problem. And again the skies were
-clear. Once more the Opirs were out, the weeklies were purring,
-and once more filth was flowing out of the same sewers. Tons of
-heroin, cisterns of opium, and oceans of alcohol, and beyond
-all that something new, something for which we had no name....
-Again everything was hanging by a thread for them, and boobs
-were solving crosswords, dancing the fling, and desired but one
-thing: to have fun. But somewhere idiot children were being
-born, people were going insane, some were dying strangely in
-bathtubs, some were dying no less strangely with some group
-called the Fishers, while art patrons defended their passion
-for art with brass knuckles. And the weeklies were attempting
-to cover this foul-smelling bog with a crust, fragile as a
-meringue, of cloyingly sweet prattle, and this or that
-diplomaed fool glorified sweet dreams, and thousands of idiots
-surrendered with relish to dreams in lieu of drunkenness (so
-that they need not think)... and again the boobs were persuaded
-that all was well, that space was being developed at an
-unprecedented pace (which was true), and that sources of energy
-would last for billions of years (which was also true), that
-life was becoming unquestionably more interesting and varied
-(which was also undoubtedly true, but not for boobs), while
-demagogue-denigrators (real-thinking men who considered that in
-our times any drop of pus could infect the whole of mankind, as
-once upon a time a beer putsch turned into a world menace) were
-foreign to the people's interests and deserved of universal
-condemnation. Boobs and criminals, criminals and boobs.
- "Have to work at it," I said aloud. "To hell with
-melancholy! We'd show you skeptics!"
- It was time to go see Rimeyer. Although there were the
-Fishers. But all right, the Fishers could be attended to later.
-I was tired of poking around in the dark. I went out in the
-yard. I could hear Aunt Vaina feeding Len.
- "But, Mom, I don't want any!"
- "Eat, son, you must eat. You are so pale."
- "I don't want to. Disgusting lumps l"
- "What lumps? Here, let me have some myself! Mm! Delicious!
-Just try some and you'll see it's very tasty."
- "But I don't want any! I'm ill, I'm not going to school."
- "Len, what are you saying? You've skipped a lot of days as
-it is."
- "So what?"
- "What do you mean, so what? The director has already
-called me twice. We'll be fined."
- "Let them fine us!"
- "Eat, son, eat. Maybe you didn't get enough sleep?"
- "I didn't. And my stomach hurts... and my head... and my
-tooth, this one here, you see?"
- Len's voice sounded peevish, and I immediately visualized
-his pouting lips and his swinging stockinged foot.
- I went out the gate. The day was again clear and sunny,
-full of bird twitter. It was still too early, so that on my way
-to the Olympic, I met only two people. They walked together by
-the curb, monstrously out of place in the joyful world of green
-branch and clear blue sky. One was painted vermilion and the
-other bright blue. Sweat beaded through the paint on their
-bodies. Their breaths heaved through open mouths and the
-protruding eyes were bloodshot. Unconsciously I unbuttoned all
-the buttons of my shirt and breathed with relief when this
-strange pair passed me.
- At the hotel I went right up to the ninth floor. I was in
-a very determined mood. Whether Rimeyer wanted to or not, he
-would have to tell me everything I wanted to know. As a matter
-of fact, I needed him now for other things as well. I needed a
-listener, and in this sunny bedlam I could talk openly only to
-him, so far. True, this was not the Rimeyer I had counted on,
-but this too had to be talked cut in the end....
- The red-headed Oscar stood by the door to Rimeyer's suite,
-and, seeing him, I slowed my steps. He was adjusting his tie,
-gazing pensively at the ceiling. He looked worried.
- "Greetings," I said -- I had to start somehow.
- He wiggled his eyebrows and looked me over, and I was
-aware that he remembered me. He said slowly, "How do you do."
- "You want to see Rimeyer, too?" l asked.
- "Rimeyer is not feeling well," he said. He stood hard by
-the door and apparently had no intention of letting me by.
- "A pity," I said, moving up on him. "And what is his
-problem?"
- "He is feeling very bad."
- "Oh, oh!" I said. "Someone should have a look."
- I was now right up against Oscar. It was obvious he was
-not about to give way. My shoulder responded at once with a
-flare of pain.
- "I am not sure it's all that necessary," he said.
- "What do you mean? Is it really that bad?"
- "Exactly. Very bad. And you shouldn't bother him. Not
-today, or any other day!"
- It seems I arrived in time, I thought, and hopefully not
-too late.
- "Are you a relative of his?" I asked. My attitude was most
-peaceable.
- He grinned.
- "I am his friend. His closest friend in this town. A
-childhood friend, you might say."
- 'This is most touching," I said. "But I am his relative.
-Same as a brother. Let's go in together and see what his friend
-and brother can do for poor Rimeyer."
- "Maybe his brother has already done enough for Rimeyer."
- "Really now... I only arrived yesterday."
- "You wouldn't, by any chance, have other brothers around
-here?"
- "I don't think there are any among your friends, with the
-exception of Rimeyer."
- While we were carrying on with this nonsense, I was
-studying him most carefully. He didn't look too nimble a type
--- even considering my defective shoulder. But he kept his
-hands in his pockets all the time, and although I didn't think
-he would risk shooting in the hotel, I was not of a mind to
-chance it. Especially as I had heard of quantum dischargers
-with limited range.
- I have been told critically many times that my intentions
-are always clearly readable on my face. And Oscar was
-apparently an adequately keen observer. I was coming to the
-conclusion that he obviously did not have anything there at
-all, that the hands-in-the-pocket act was a bluff. He moved
-aside and said, "Go on in."
- We entered. Rimeyer was indeed in a bad way. He lay on the
-couch covered with a torn drape, mumbling in delirium. The
-table was overturned, a broken bottle stained the middle of the
-floor, and wet clothes were strewn all over the room. I
-approached Rimeyer and sat down by him so as not to lose sight
-of Oscar, who stood by the window, half-sitting on the sill.
-Rimeyer's eyes were open. I bent over him.
- "Rimeyer," I called. "It's Ivan. Do you recognize me?"
- He regarded me dully. There was a fresh cut on his chin
-under the stubble.
- "So you got there already..." he muttered. "Don't prolong
-the Fishers... doesn't happen... don't take it so hard ...
-bothered me a lot... I can't stand..."
- It was pure delirium. I looked at Oscar. He listened with
-interest, his neck stretched out.
- "Bad when you wake up..." mumbled Rimeyer. "Nobody... wake
-up... they start... then they don't wake up..."
- I disliked Oscar more and more. I was annoyed that he
-should be hearing Rimeyer's ravings. I didn't like his being
-here ahead of me. And again, I didn't like that cut on
-Rimeyer's chin -- it was quite fresh. How can I be rid of you,
-red-haired mug, I wondered.
- "We should call a doctor," I said. "Why didn't you call a
-doctor, Oscar? I think it's delirium tremens."
- I regretted the words immediately. To my considerable
-surprise, Rimeyer did not smell of alcohol at all, and Oscar
-apparently knew it. He grinned and said, "Delirium tremens? Are
-you sure?"
- "We have to call a doctor at once," I said. "Also, get a
-nurse."
- I put my hand on the phone. He jumped up instantly and put
-his hand on mine.
- "Why should you do it?" he said. "Better let me call a
-doctor. You are new here and I know an excellent doctor."
- "Well, what kind of a doctor is he?" I objected, studying
-the cut on his knuckles -- which was also quite new.
- "An exemplary doctor. Just happens to be a specialist on
-the DT's."
- Rimeyer said suddenly, "So I commanded... <i>also
-spracht</i> Rimeyer... alone with the world..."
- We turned to look at him. He spoke haughtily, but his eyes
-were closed, and his face, draped in loose, gray skin, seemed
-pathetic. That swine Oscar, I thought, where does he get the
-gall to linger here? A sudden wild thought flashed through my
-head -- it seemed at that moment exceedingly well conceived: to
-disable Oscar with a blow to the solar plexus, tie him up, and
-force him then and there to expose everything he knew. He
-probably knew quite a lot. Possibly everything. He looked at
-me, and in his pale eyes was a blend of fear and hatred.
- "All right," I said. "Let the hotel call the doctor."
- He removed his hand and I called service. While waiting
-for the doctor, I sat by Rimeyer, and Oscar walked from corner
-to corner, stepping over the liquor puddle. I followed him out
-of the corner of my eye. Suddenly he stooped and picked up
-something off the floor. Something small and multicolored.
- "What have you got there?" I inquired indifferently.
- He hesitated a bit and then threw a small flat box with a
-polychrome sticker on my knees.
- "Ah!" I said, and looked at Oscar. "Devon."
- "Devon," he responded. "Strange that it's here rather than
-in the bathroom."
- The devil, I thought. Maybe I was still too green to
-challenge him openly. I still knew but very little of this
-whole mess.
- "Nothing strange about that," I said at random. "I believe
-you distribute that repellent. It's probably a sample which
-fell out of your pocket."
- "Out of my pocket?" He was astonished. "Oh, you think that
-I... But I finished my assignments a long time ago, and now I'm
-just taking it easy. But if you're interested, I can be of some
-help."
- That s very interesting, I said. "I will consult --"
- Unfortunately, the door flew open at this point, and a
-doctor accompanied by two nurses entered the room.
- The doctor turned out to be a decisive individual. He
-gestured me off the couch and flung the drape off Rimeyer. He
-was completely naked.
- "Well, of course," said the doctor. "Again..."
- He raised Rimeyer's eyelid, pulled down his lower lip, and
-felt his pulse. "Nurse - cordeine! And call some chambermaids
-and have them clean out these stables till they shine." He
-stood up and looked at me. "A relative?"
- "Yes," I said, while Oscar kept still.
- "You found him unconscious?"
- "He was delirious," said Oscar.
- "You carried him out here?"
- Oscar hesitated.
- "I only covered him with the drape," he said. "When I
-arrived, he was lying as he is now. I was afraid he would catch
-cold."
- The doctor regarded him for a while, and then said, "In
-any case, it is immaterial. Both of you can go. A nurse will
-stay with him. You can call this evening. Goodbye."
- "What is the matter with him, Doctor?" I asked.
- "Nothing special. Overtired, nervous exhaustion... besides
-which he apparently smokes too much. Tomorrow he can be moved,
-and you can take him home with you. It would be unhealthy for
-him to stay here with us. There are too many amusements here.
-Goodbye."
- We went out into the corridor.
- "Let's go have a drink," I said.
- "You forgot that I don't drink," corrected Oscar.
- "Too bad. This whole episode has upset me. I'd like a
-snort. Rimeyer always was such a healthy specimen."
- "Well, lately he has slipped a lot," said Oscar carefully.
- "Yes, I hardly recognized him when I saw him yesterday."
- "Same here," said Oscar. He didn't believe a word of it,
-and neither did I.
- "Where are you staying?" I asked.
- "Right here," said Oscar. "On the floor below, number
-817."
- "Too bad that you don't drink. We could go to your room
-and have a good talk."
- "Yes, that wouldn't be a bad idea. But, regretfully, I am
-in a great rush." He was silent awhile. "Let me have your
-address. Tomorrow morning, I'll be back and drop in to see you.
-About ten -- will that suit you? Or you can ring me up."
- "Why not?" I said and gave him my address. "To be honest
-with you, I am quite interested in Devon."
- "I think we'll be able to come to an understanding," said
-Oscar. "Till tomorrow!"
- He ran down the stairs. Apparently he really was in a
-hurry. I went down in the elevator and sent off a telegram to
-Matia: "Brother very ill, feeling very lonesome, but keeping up
-spirits, Ivan." I truly did feel very much alone. Rimeyer was
-out of the game again, at least for a day. The only hint he had
-given me was the advice about the Fishers. I had nothing more
-definite. There were the Fishers, who were located somewhere in
-the old subway; there was Devon, which in same peripheral way
-could have something to do with my business, but also could
-just as well have no connection with it at all; there was
-Oscar, clearly connected with Devon and Rimeyer, a player
-sufficiently ominous and repulsive, but undoubtedly only one of
-many such unpleasant types on the local cloudless horizons;
-then again there was a certain "Buba," who supplied pore-nose
-with Devon.... After all, I have been here just twenty-four
-hours, I thought. There is time. Also, I could still count on
-Rimeyer in the final analysis, and there was the possibility of
-finding Peck. Suddenly I remembered the events of the night
-before and sent a wire to Sigmund: "Amateur concert on the
-twenty-eighth, details unknown, Ivan." Then I beckoned to a
-porter and inquired as to the shortest way to the old subway.
-
-<ul><a name=9></a><h2>Chapter NINE</h2></ul>
-
- "You would do better to come at night. It's too early
-now."
- "I prefer now."
- "Can't wait, eh? Perhaps you've got the wrong address?"
- "Oh no, I haven't got it wrong."
- "You must have it now, you are sure?"
- "Yes, now and not later."
- He clicked his tongue and pulled on his lower lip. He was
- short, well knit, with a round shaved head. He spoke
-hardly moving his tongue and rolling his eyes languidly under
-the lids. I thought he had not had enough sleep. His companion,
-sitting behind the railing in an easy chair, apparently also
-had missed some. But he did not utter a word and didn't even
-look in my direction. It was a gloomy place, with stale air and
-warped panels which had sprung away from the walls. A bulb,
-dimmed with dust, hung shadeless from the ceiling on a dirty
-cable.
- "Why not come later?" said the round-head. "When everybody
-comes."
- "I just got the urge," I said diffidently.
- "Got the urge..." He searched in his table drawer. "I
-don't even have a form left. Eli, do you have some?"
- The latter, without breaking his silence, bent over and
-pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper from somewhere near the
-railing.
- The round-head said, yawning, "Guys that come at break of
-day... nobody here... no girls... they're still in bed." He
-proffered the form. "Fill it out and sign. Eli and I will sign
-as witnesses. Turn in your money. Don't worry, we keep it
-honest. Do you have any documents?"
- "None."
- "That's good, too."
- I scanned the form. "In open deposition and of my own
- free will, I, the undersigned, in the presence of
-witnesses, earnestly request to be subjected to the initiation
-trials toward the mutual quest of membership in the Society of
-VAL." There were blank spaces for signature of applicant and
-signatures of witnesses.
- "What is VAL?" I asked.
- "That's the way we are registered," answered round-head.
-He was counting my money.
- "But how do you decipher it?"
- "Who knows? That was before my time. It's VAL, that's all
-there is to it. Maybe you know, Eli?" Eli shook his bead
-lazily. "Well, really, what do you care?"
- "You are absolutely right." I inserted my name and signed.
- Round-head looked it over, signed it, and passed the form
-to Eli.
- "You look like a foreigner," he said.
- "Right."
- "In that case, add your home address. Do you have
-relatives?"
- "No."
- "Well then, you don't have to. All set, Eli? Put it in the
-folder. Shall we go?"
- He lifted up the gate in the railway and walked me over to
-a massive square door, probably left over from the days when
-the subway had been fitted out as an atomic shelter.
- "There is no choice," he said as though in self-defense.
-He pulled the slides and turned a rusty handle with
-considerable effort. "Go straight down the corridor and then
-you'll see for yourself."
- I thought that I heard Eli snickering behind him. I turned
-around. A small screen was fitted in the railing in front of
-Eli. Something was moving on the screen, but I could not see
-what it was. Round-bead put all his weight on the handle and
-swung back the door. A dusty passage became visible. For a few
-seconds he listened and then said, "Straight down this
-corridor."
- "What will I find there?" I said.
- "You'll get what you were looking for. Or have you changed
-your mind?"
- All of which was clearly not what I was looking for, but
-as is well known, nobody knows anything until he has tried it
-himself I stepped over the high sill and the door shut behind
-me with a clang. I could hear the latches screeching home.
- The corridor was lit by a few surviving lamps. It was
-damp, and mold grew an the cement walls. I stood still awhile,
-listening, but there was nothing to be heard but the infrequent
-tap of water drops. I moved forward cautiously. Cement rubble
-crunched underfoot. Soon the corridor came to an end, and I
-found myself in a vaulted, poorly lit concrete tunnel. When my
-eyes accommodated to the darkness, I discerned a set of tracks.
-The rails were badly rusted and puddles of dark water gleamed
-motionless along their length. Sagging cables hung from the
-ceiling. The dampness seeped to the marrow of my bones. A
-repulsive stench of sewer and carrion filled my nostrils. No,
-this was not what I was looking for. I was not of a mind to
-fritter away my time and thought of going back and telling them
-that I would be back some other time. But first, simply out of
-curiosity, I decided to take a short walk along the tunnel. I
-went to the right toward the light of distant bulbs. I jumped
-puddles, stumbled over the rotting ties, and got entangled in
-loose wires. Reaching a lamp, I stopped again.
- The rails had been removed. Ties were strewn along the
-walls, and holes filled with water gaped along the right of
-way. Then I saw the rails. I have never seen rails in such a
-condition. Some were twisted into corkscrews. They were
-polished to a high shine and reminded me of gigantic drill
-bits. Others were driven with titanic force into the floor and
-walls of the tunnel. A third group were tied into knots. My
-skin crawled at this sight. Some were simple knots, some with a
-single bow, some with a double bow like shoelaces. They were
-mauve and brown.
- I looked ahead into the depths of the tunnel. The smell of
-rotting carrion wafted out of it, and the dim yellow lights
-winked rhythmically as though something swayed in the draft,
-covering and uncovering them periodically. My nerves gave way.
-I felt that this was nothing more than a stupid joke, but I
-couldn't control myself. I squatted down and looked around. I
-soon found what I was looking for -- a yard-long piece of
-reinforcing rod. I stuck it under my arm and went ahead. The
-iron was wet and cold and rough with rust.
- The reflection of the winking lights glinted on slippery
-wet walls. I had noticed some time back the round,
-strange-looking marks on them, but at first did not pay them
-any attention. Then I became interested and examined them more
-closely. As far as the eye could reach, there were two sets of
-round prints on the walls at one-meter intervals. It looked as
-though an elephant had run along the wall -- and not too long
-ago at that. On the edge of one of the prints, the remains of a
-crushed centipede still struggled feebly. Enough, I thought,
-time to go back. I looked along the tunnel. Now I could plainly
-see the swaying curves of black cables under the lamps. I took
-a better grip on the rod and went ahead, holding close to the
-wall.
- The whole thing was getting through to me. The cables
-sagged under the arch of the tunnel, and on them, tied by their
-tails into hairy clusters, hung hundreds upon hundred of dead
-rats, swaying in the draft. Tiny teeth glinted horribly in the
-semi-dark, and rigid little legs stuck out in all directions.
-The clusters stretched in long obscene garlands into the
-distance. A thick, nauseating stench oozed from under the arch
-and flowed along the tunnel, as palpable as glutinous jelly.
- There was a piercing screech and a huge rat scurried
-between my feet. And then another and another. I backed up.
-They were fleeing from there, from the dark where there was not
-a single lamp. Suddenly, warm air came pulsing from the same
-direction. I felt a hollow space with my elbow and pressed
-myself into the niche. Something live squirmed and squeaked
-under my heel; I swung my iron rod without looking. I had no
-time for rats, because I could hear something running heavily
-but softly along the tunnel, splashing in the puddles. It was a
-mistake to get involved in this business, thought I. The iron
-rod seemed very light and insignificant in comparison with the
-bow-tied rails. This was no flying leech, nor a dinosaur from
-the Kongo... don't let it be a giganto-pithek, I thought,
-anything but a giganto-pithek. These donkeys would have the wit
-to catch one and let it loose in the tunnel. I was thinking
-very poorly in those few seconds. And suddenly for no reason at
-all I thought of Rimeyer. Why had he sent me here? Had he gone
-out of his mind? If only it was not a giganto-pithek!
- It raced by me so fast that I couldn't discern what it
-was.
- The tunnel boomed from its gallop. Then there was the
-despairing scream of a caught rat right close by and...
-silence. Cautiously I peeked out. He stood about ten paces away
-directly under one of the lamps, and my legs suddenly went limp
-from relief.
- "Smart-alec entrepreneurs," I said aloud, almost crying.
-'They would dream up something like this."
- He heard my voice and raising his stern legs, pronounced:
-"Our temperature is two meters, twelve inches, there is no
-humidity, and what there isn't is not there."
- "Repeat your orders," I said, approaching him.
- He let the air out of his suction cups with a loud
-whistle, twitched his legs mindlessly, and ran up on the
-ceiling.
- "Come down," I said sternly, "and answer my question."
- He hung over my head, this poor long-obsolete cyber,
-intended for work an the asteroids, pitiable and out of place,
-covered with flakes of corrosion and blobs of black underground
-dirt.
- "Get down," I barked.
- He flung the dead rat at me and sped off into the dark.
- "Basalts! Granites!" he yelled in different voices.
-"Pseudo-metamorphic types! I am over Berlin! Do you copy! Time
-to get to bed!"
- I threw away the rod and followed him. He ran as far as
-the next lamp, came down, and began to dig the concrete
-rapidly, like a dog, with his heavy work manipulators. Poor
-chap, even in better times his brain was capable of performing
-properly only in less than one one-hundredth of a G, and now he
-was altogether out of his mind. I bent over him and began to
-search for the control center under his armor. "The rotters," I
-said aloud. The controls were peened over as though battered
-with a sledge. He stopped digging and grabbed me by the leg.
- "Stop!" I shouted. "Desist!"
- He desisted, lay down on his side, and informed me in a
-basso voice, "I am deathly tired of him, Eli. Now would be the
-time for a shot of brandy."
- Contacts clicked inside him and music poured forth.
-Hissing and whistling, he gave a rendition of the "Hunters'
-March." I was looking at him and thinking how stupid and
-repulsive it all was, how ridiculous and at the same time
-frightening. If I had not been a spaceman, if I had been
-frightened and run, he would almost certainly have killed me.
-But nobody here knew I had been in space. Nobody. Not one
-person. Even Rimeyer didn't know.
- "Get up," I said.
- He buzzed and started to dig the wall, and I turned around
-and went back. All the time while I was returning to my
-turn-off I could hear him rattling and clanging in the pile of
-contorted rails, hissing with the electrowelder and ranting
-nonsense in two voices.
- The anti-atomic door was already open, and I stepped over
-the sill, swinging it shut behind me.
- "Well, how was it?" asked round-head.
- "Dumb," I replied.
- "I had no idea you were a spaceman. You have worked out on
-the planets?"
- "I have. But it's still dumb. For fools. For illiterate
-keyed-up boobs."
- "What kind?"
- "Keyed-up."
- "Well -- there you got it wrong. Lots of people like it.
-Anyway, I told you to come at night. We don't have much
-amusement for singles." He poured some whiskey and added some
-soda from the siphon. "Would you like some?"
- I took the glass and leaned on the railing. Eli gloomily
-regarded the screen, a cigarette sticking to his lip. On the
-screen careened shifting views of the glistening tunnel walls,
-twisted rails, black puddles, and flying sparks from the
-welder.
- 'That's not for me," I announced. "Let barbers and
-accountants enjoy it. Of course, I have nothing against them,
-but what I need is something the likes of which I have not seen
-in my entire life."
- "So you don't know yourself what you want," said
-roundhead. "It's a hard case. Excuse me, you aren't an Intel?"
- "Why?"
- "Well, don't take offense -- we are all equal before the
-grim reaper, you understand. What am I trying to say? That
-Intels are the most difficult clients, that's all. Isn't that
-right, Eli? If one of your barbers or bookkeepers comes here,
-he knows very well what it is he needs. He needs to get his
-blood going, to show off and be proud of himself, to get the
-girls squealing, and exhibit the punctures in his side. These
-fellows are simple, each one wants to consider himself a man.
-After all, who is he -- our client? He has no particular
-capabilities, and he doesn't need any. In earlier times, I read
-in a book, people used to be envious of each other -- the
-neighbor is rolling in luxury and I can't save up for a
-refrigerator -- how could you put up with that? They hung on
-like bulldogs to all kinds of trash, to money, to cushy jobs --
-they laid down their lives for such things. The guy with a
-foxier head or a stronger fist would wind up on top. But now
-life has become affluent and dull and there is a plenty of
-everything. What shall a man apply himself to? A man is not a
-fish, for all that, he is still a man and gets bored, but can't
-dream up something to do for himself. To do that you need
-special talents, you need to read a mountain of books, and how
-can he do that when they make him throw up. To become
-world-famous or to invent some new machine, that's something
-that wouldn't pop into his head, but even if it did, of what
-use would it be? Nobody really needs you, not even your own
-wife and children if you examine it honestly. Right, Eli? And
-you don't need anybody either. Nowadays, it seems, clever
-people think things up for you, something new like these
-aerosols, or the shivers, or a new dance. There is that new
-drink -- it's called a polecat. Wanna me knock one together for
-you? So he downs some of this polecat, his eyes crawl out of
-their sockets, and he's happy. But as long as his eyes are in
-their sockets, life is just as dull as rainwater for him. There
-is an Intel that comes here to us, and every time he complains:
-Life, he says, is dull, my friends... but I leave here a new
-man; after, say, 'bullets' or 'twelve to one,' I see myself in
-a completely new light. Right, Eli? Everything becomes sweet
-all over again, food, drink, women."
- "Yes," I said sympathetically. "I understand you very
-well. But for me it's all too stale."
- "Slug is what he needs," said Eli in his bass voice.
- "What's that again?"
- "Slug is what I said."
- Round-head puckered in distaste.
- "Aw, come on, Eli. What's with you today?"
- "I don't give a hoot for the likes of him," said Eli. "I
-just don't like these guys. Everything is insipid for him,
-nothing suits him."
- "Don't listen to him," said round-head. "He hasn't slept
-all night and is very tired."
- "Well, why not," I contradicted. "I am quite interested.
-What is this slug?"
- Round-head puckered his face again.
- "It's not decent, you understand?" he said. "Don't listen
-to Eli, he is a good enough guy, a simple fellow, but it's
-nothing for him to lambaste a man. It's a bad term. Certain
-types have taken to writing it all over the walls. Hooligans,
-that's what they are, right? The snot-noses hardly know what
-it's about, but they write anyway. See how we had to plane off
-the railing? Some son of a bitch carved into it, and if I catch
-him, I'll turn his hide inside out. We do have women coming
-here too."
- "Tell him," pronounced Eli, addressing himself to
-roundhead, "that he should get hold of a slug and quiet down.
-Let him find Buba..."
- "Will you shut up, Eli?" said round-head, now angry.
-"Don't pay any attention to him."
- Having heard the name Buba, I helped myself to another
-drink and settled more comfortably on the railing.
- "What's it all about?" I said. "Some kind of secret vice?"
- "Secret!" boomed Eli, and let out an obscene horselaugh.
- Round-head laughed, too.
- "Nothing can be a secret here," he said. "What had of
-secrets can there be when people are living it up at the age of
-fifteen? The dopes, the Intels, manufacture secrets. They'd
-like to get a fracas going on the twenty-eighth, they are all
-in a huddle, took some mine launchers out of town recently to
-hide them, like kids, honest to God! Right, Eli?"
- "Tell him," the good simple fellow Eli was persisting.
-"Tell him to be off to Hell and gone. And don't go protecting
-him. Just tell him to go to Buba at the Oasis and that's that."
- He threw my wallet and form on the railing. I finished the
-whiskey. Round-head said soberly, "Of course, it's entirely up
-to you, but my advice is to stay away from that stuff. Maybe
-we'll all come to it someday, but the later, the better. I
-can't even explain it to you, I only feel that it is like the
-grave: never too late and always too soon."
- "Thank you," I said.
- "He even thanks you." Eli let loose another horselaugh.
-"Have you seen anything like it! He thanks you!"
- "We kept three dollars," said round-head. "You can tear up
-the blank. Or let me tear it up. God forbid something should
-happen to you, the police will come looking to us."
- "To be honest with you," I said, putting the wallet away,
-"I don't understand how they haven't closed your office
-already."
- "Everything is on the up and up with us," said round-head.
-"If you don't want any, no one is forcing you. But if something
-should happen, it's your own fault."
- "No one is forcing the drug addicts either," I retorted.
- "That's some comparison! Drugs are a profiteering corrupt
-business!"
- "Well, okay, I'll be seeing you," I said. "Thanks,
-fellows. Where did you say to look for Buba?"
- "At the Oasis," boomed Eli. "It's a cafe. Beat it."
- "What a polite fellow you are, my friend," I said. "It
-gets me right in my heart."
- "Go on, beat it," repeated Eli. "Stinking Intel."
- "Don't get so excited, pal," I said, "or you'll earn
-yourself an ulcer. Save your stomach, it's your most valuable
-possession."
- Eli started to move slowly out from behind the railing,
-and I left. My shoulder had started to ache again.
- A warm, heavy rain was falling outside. The leaves on the
-trees shone wetly and joyfully, there was a smell of ozone,
-freshness and thunderstorm. I stopped a taxi and named the
-Oasis. The street ran with fresh streams, and the city was so
-pretty and comfortable that it seemed improper to think of the
-moldy and abandoned Subway.
- The rain was pelting in full swing when I jumped out of
-the car, ran across the sidewalk, and burst into the Oasis.
-There were quite a few people, most of them were eating,
-including the bartender, who was spooning some soup out of a
-dish placed among drinking glasses. Those who had finished
-eating sat smoking and abstractedly staring out of the
-streaming window at the street. I approached the bar and
-inquired in a low voice whether Buba was there. The bartender
-put down his spoon and surveyed the room.
- "Naah," he said. "Why don't you have something to eat now,
-and he'll be along soon enough."
- "How soon?"
- "Twenty minutes, half an hour maybe."
- "So!" I said. "In that case I'll have dinner, and then
-I'll come over and you can point him out to me."
- "Uhuh," said the bartender, returning to his soup.
- I picked up a tray, collected some sort of a meal, and sat
-down by the window away from the rest of the patrons. I wanted
-to think. I sensed that there was enough data to ponder the
-problem effectively. Some sort of pattern seemed to be forming.
-Boxes of Devon in the bathroom. Pore-nose spoke about Buba and
-Devon (in whispers). Eli talked of Buba and "slug." A clear
-chain of links -- bath, Devon, Buba, slug. Further: the
-sunburned fellow with the muscles cautioned that Devon was the
-worst of junk, while the roundhead saw no difference between
-slug and the grave. It all had to fit together. It seemed to be
-what we were looking for. If so, then Rimeyer had done the
-right thing to send me to the Fishers. Rimeyer, I said to
-myself, why did you send me to the Fishers? And even order me
-to do as I was told and not to fuss about it? And you didn't
-know, after all, that I was a spaceman, Rimeyer. If you did
-know, there were still the other games with bullets and "one
-against twelve," besides the demented cyber. You really took a
-dislike to me for something or other, Rimeyer. Somehow I have
-crossed you. But no, said I, this cannot be. It is simply that
-you did not trust me, Rimeyer. It is simply that there is
-something that I do not know yet. For example, I do net know
-just who this Oscar is who trades in Devon in this resort city
-and who is connected with you, Rimeyer. Most likely you have
-been meeting with Oscar before our conversation in the elevator
-... I don't want to think about that.
- There he was lying like a dead man and here I was thinking
-such things about him when he could not defend himself.
-Suddenly I felt a repulsive cold crawling feeling inside. All
-right, suppose we trapped this gang. What would change? The
-shivers would remain, lop-eared Len would be up all night as
-before, Vousi would be coming home disgustingly drunk, while
-customs inspector Pete would be smashing his face into broken
-glass. And all would be concerned about the "good of the
-people." Some would be irrigated with tear gas, some would be
-driven into the ground up to their ears, others would be
-converted from apehood into something which passes muster as
-human.... And then the shivers would go out of style and the
-people would be presented with the super-shivers, while in lieu
-of the extirpated slug a super-slug would surface. Everything
-would be for the good of the people. Have fun, Boobland, and
-don't think about a thing!
- Two men in cloaks sat down at the next table with their
-trays. One of them seemed to me in some way familiar. He had a
-haughty thoroughbred face, and were it not for a thick white
-bandage on the left side of his jaw, I was sure I would
-recognize him. The other was a ruddy man with a bald pate and
-fussy movements. They were speaking quietly, but not so as to
-be inaudible, and I could hear them quite well where I was
-sitting.
- "Understand me correctly," the ruddy one said with
-conviction while hurriedly consuming his schnitzel, "I am not
-at all against theaters and museums. But the allocation for the
-municipal theater for the past year has not been expended
-fully, while only tourists visit the museums."
- "Also picture thieves," inserted the man with the bandage.
- "Drop that, please, we don't have pictures that are worth
-the theft. Thank God, they have learned how to synthesize
-Sistine Madonnas out of sawdust. I wish to call your attention
-to the point that dissemination of culture in our time must
-occur in an entirely different manner. Culture must not be
-inculcated into the people, rather it must emanate from the
-people. Public chorister, do-it-yourself groups, mass games --
-that is what our public needs."
- "What our public needs is a good army of occupation," said
-the man with the bandage.
- "Please stop talking that way, when you actually don't
-believe what you are saying. Our coverage by the various
-associations is really at an unacceptably poor level. For
-instance, Boella complained to me last night that only one man
-attends her readings, and he apparently only does so out of
-matrimonial intentions. But we need to distract the people from
-the shivers, from alcohol, from sexual pastimes. We need to
-raise the tone --"
- The other interrupted, "What do you want from me? That I
-should defend your project against that ass, our honorable
-mayor, today? Be my guest! It is absolutely all the same to me.
-But if you would like to hear my opinion about tone and spirit,
-let me tell you it does not exist, my dear Senator; it is long
-dead! It has been smothered in belly fat! And if I were in your
-place I would take that into account and only that!"
- The ruddy man seemed to be crushed. He was silent for a
-while and then groaned suddenly, "Dear God, dear God, to think
-of what we have been driven to concern ourselves with! But I
-ask you -- is not someone flying to the stars? Somewhere meson
-reactors are being built, new learning systems are being
-devised! Dear God, I just recently grasped that we are not even
-a backwater, we are a preserve! In the eyes of the whole world
-we are a sanctuary of stupidity, ignorance, and pornocracy.
-Imagine, Professor Rubenstein has a chair in our city for the
-second year. A sociopsychologist of world renown. He is
-studying us like animals. Instinctive Sociology of Decaying
-Economic Structures -- that's the name of his work. He is
-interested in people as bearers of primeval instincts, and he
-complained to me that it was very difficult for him to gather
-data in countries where instinctive activity is distorted and
-suppressed by pedagogical systems! But with us he is in seventh
-heaven! In his own words, we don't have any activity other than
-instinctive! I was insulted, I was ashamed, but, good Lord,
-what could I say to contradict him? You must understand me! You
-are an intelligent man, my friend, I know you are a cold man,
-but I can't really believe that you are indifferent to such a
-degree."
- The man with the bandage looked at him haughtily and then,
-abruptly, his cheek twitched. I recognized him at once: he was
-the character with the monocle who had thrown the luminous slop
-all over me so deftly yesterday at the Art Patrons' hall.
- Why, you vulture, thought I. You thief. So you need an
-army of occupation! Spirit smothered in lard indeed!
- "Forgive me, Senator," he said. "I do understand it all,
-and that's precisely why it is perfectly clear to me that
-everything surrounding you is in a state of dementia. The final
-spasm! Euphoria!"
- I got up and approached their table.
- "May I join you?" I asked.
- He stared at me in astonishment. I sat down.
- "Please excuse me," I said. "I am, to be specific, a
-tourist and just a short time here; while you seem to be
-natives and even to have some connection with the municipal
-government. So I decided to inflict myself on you. I keep
-hearing about Art Patrons, Art Patrons. But what it's all about
-no one seems to know."
- The man with the bandage experienced another tie in his
-cheek. His eyes grew wide -- he too recognized me.
- "Art Patrons?" said the ruddy one. "Yes, there is such a
-barbarous organization with us here. It is very sad that such
-is the case, but it's so."
- I nodded, studying the bandage. My acquaintance had
-already regained his composure and was eating his jelly with
-his accustomed haughty look.
- "In essence they are simply modern-age vandals. I simply
-couldn't find a more appropriate word. They pool their
-resources and buy up stolen paintings, statues, manuscripts,
-unpublished literary works, patents, and destroy them. Can you
-imagine how revolting that is? They And some pathological
-delight in the destruction of examples of world culture. They
-gather in a large, well-dressed crowd and slowly, deliberately,
-orgiastically destroy them!"
- "Oh my, my, my!" I said, not taking my eyes off the
-bandage. "Such people should be hung by their legs."
- "And we are after them," said the ruddy one. "We are in
-pursuit of them on the legal level. We are unfortunately unable
-to get after the Artiques and the Perchers, who are not
-breaking any laws, but as far as the Art Patrons are concerned
---"
- "Are you finished yet, Senator?" inquired the bandaged
-one, ignoring me.
- The ruddy one caught himself.
- "Yes, yes. It's time for us to go. You will excuse us,
-please," he said, turning to me. "We have a meeting of the
-municipal council."
- "Bartender!" called the bandaged one in a metallic voice.
-"Would you call us a taxi."
- "Have you been here long?" asked the ruddy man.
- "Second day," I replied.
- "Do you like it?"
- "A beautiful city."
- "Mm -- yes," he mumbled.
- We were silent. The man with the bandage impudently
-inserted his monocle and pulled out a cigar.
- "Does it hurt?" I asked sympathetically.
- "What, exactly?"
- "The jaw," I said. "And the liver should hurt, too."
-"Nothing ever hurts me," he replied, monocle glinting. "Are you
-two acquainted?" the ruddy one asked in astonishment.
- "Slightly," I said. "We had an argument about art."
- The bartender called out that the taxi had arrived. The
-man with the bandage immediately got up.
- "Let's go, Senator," he said.
- The ruddy one smiled at me abstractedly and also got up.
- They set off for the exit. I followed them with my eyes
-and went to the bar.
- "Brandy?" asked the bartender.
- "Quite," I said. I shuddered with rage. "Who are those
-people I just spoke to?"
- 'The baldy is a municipal counselor, his field are
-cultural affairs. The one with the monocle is the city
-comptroller."
- "Comptroller," I said. "A scoundrel is what he is."
- "Really?" said the barman with interest.
- 'That's right, really," I said. "Is Buba here?"
- "Not yet. And how about the comptroller, what is he up
- to?"
- "A scoundrel, an embezzler, that's what he is," I said.
- The bartender thought awhile.
- "It could well be," he said. "In fact he's a baron -- that
-is, he used to be, of course. His ways, sure enough, are
-unsavory. Too bad I didn't go vote or I would have voted
-against him. What's he done to you?"
- "It's you he's done. And I've given him some back. And
-I'll give him some more in due time. Such is the situation."
- The bartender, not understanding anything, nodded and
-said, "Hit it again?"
- "Do," I said.
- He poured me more brandy and said,
- "And here is Buba, coming in."
- I turned around and barely managed to keep the glass in my
-grip. I recognized Buba.
-
-<ul><a name=10></a><h2>Chapter TEN</h2></ul>
-
- He stood by the door looking about him as though trying to
-remember where he had come and what he was to do there. His
-appearance was very unlike his old one, but I recognized him at
-once anyway, because for four years we sat next to each other
-in the lecture halls of the school, and then there were several
-years when we met almost daily.
- "Say," I addressed the bartender. "They call him Buba?"
- "Uhuh," said the bartender.
- "What is it -- a nickname?"
- "How should I know? Buba is Buba, that's what they all
-call him."
- "Peck," I cried.
- Everyone looked at me. He too slowly turned his head and
-his eyes searched for the caller. But he paid no attention to
-me. As though remembering something, he suddenly started to
-shake the water out of his cape with convulsive motions, and
-then, dragging his heels, hobbled over to the bar and climbed
-with difficulty on the stool next to mine.
- "The usual," he said to the bartender. His voice was dull
-and strangled, as though someone held him by the throat.
- "Someone has been waiting for you," said the barman,
-placing before him a glass of neat alcohol and a deep dish
-filled with granulated sugar.
- Slowly he turned his head and looked at me, saying, "Well,
-what is it you want?"
- His drooping eyelids were inflamed red, with accumulated
-slime in the corners. He breathed through his mouth as though
-suffering with adenoids.
- "Peck Xenai," I said quietly. "Undergraduate Peck Xenai,
-please return from earth to heaven."
- He continued to regard me without a change in his manner.
-Then he licked his lips and said, "A classmate, perhaps?"
- I felt numb and terrified. He turned around, picked up his
-glass, drank it down, gagging in revulsion, and began to eat
-the sugar with a large soup spoon. The bartender poured him
-another glass.
- "Peck," I said, "old friend, don't you remember me?"
- He looked me over again.
- "I wouldn't say that. I probably did see you somewhere."
- "Saw me somewhere!" I said in desperation. "I am Ivan
-Zhilin. Could it be you have completely forgotten me?"
- His hand holding the glass quivered almost imperceptibly,
-and that was all.
- "No, friend," he said, "forgive me, please, but I don't
-remember you."
- "And you don't remember the 'Tahmasib' or Iowa Smith?"
- "This heartburn has really got to me today," he informed
-the bartender. "Let me have some soda, Con."
- The bartender, who had listened with curiosity, poured him
-a soda.
- "Bad day, today, Con," he said. "Can you imagine, two
-automates failed on me today."
- The bartender shook his head and sighed.
- "The manager is bitching," continued Buba, "called me on
-the carpet and bawled me out. I am going to quit that place. I
-told him to go to hell and he fired me."
- "Complain to the union," the bartender advised.
- "To hell with them." He drank his soda and wiped his mouth
-with the palm of his hand. He did not look at me.
- I sat as though spat upon, forgetting completely what it
-was I wanted Buba for. I needed Buba, not Peck -- that is, I
-needed Peck too. But not this one. This was not Peck, this was
-some strange and repulsive Buba, and I watched in horror as he
-sucked up the second glass of alcohol and again set to
-shoveling spoonfuls of sugar into himself. His face effloresced
-with red spots, and he kept gagging and listening to the
-bartender as he animatedly recounted the latest football
-exploits. I wanted to cry out, "Peck, what has happened to you?
-Peck, you used to hate all this!" I put my hand on his shoulder
-and said imploringly, "Peck, dear friend, hear me out, please."
- He shied away.
- "What's the matter, friend?" His eyes were now completely
-unseeing. "I am not Peck, I am Buba, do you understand? You are
-confusing me with someone else, there isn't any Peck here....
-So what did the Rhinos do then, Con?"
- I reminded myself where I was, and forced myself to
-understand that there was no more Peck, and that there was a
-Buba, here, an agent of a criminal organization, and this was
-the only reality, while Peck Xenai was a mirage -- a memory
-which must be quickly extirpated if I intended to press on with
-my work.
- "Hold on, Buba," I said. "I want to talk business to you."
- He was quite drunk by now.
- "I don't talk business at the bar," he announced. "And
-anyway I am through with work. Done. I have no more business of
-any kind. You can apply to the city hall, friend. They'll help
-you out."
- "I am applying to you, not the city hall," I said. "Will
-you listen to me!"
- "You I hear all the time, as it is. To the detriment of my
-health."
- "My business is quite simple," I said. "I need a slug."
- He shuddered violently.
- "Are you out of your mind, pal?"
- "You should be ashamed," said the bartender. "Right out in
-front of people... you have lost all sense of decency."
- "Shut up," I told him.
- "You be quiet," the barman said menacingly. "It must be
-some time since you've been busted? Watch your step or you'll
-get exported."
- "I don't give a damn about the exportation," I said
-insolently. "Don't stick your snoot in other people's
-business."
- "Lousy sluggard," said the bartender.
- He was visibly incensed, but spoke in a low voice. "A slug
-he wants. I'll call an officer right now and he'll give you a
-slug."
- Buba slid off the stool and hurriedly hobbled toward the
-door.
- I left off with the bartender and hurried after him. He
-shot out into the rain, and forgetting to cover himself with
-his cape, started to look around in search of a taxi. I caught
-up with him and grasped him by the sleeve.
- "What in God's name do you want from me?" he said
-miserably. "I'll call the police."
- "Peck," I said. "Come out of it, Peck. I am Ivan Zhilin,
-and you must remember me."
- He kept looking around and wiping the streaming water from
-his face with the palm of his hand. He looked pitiful and run
-down, and I, trying to suppress my irritation, kept insisting
-to myself that this was my Peck, priceless Peck, irreplaceable
-Peck, good, intelligent, joyful Peck, kept trying to remember
-him as he was in front of the Gladiator's control console, and
-I couldn't because I couldn't imagine him anywhere except at
-the bar over a glass of alcohol.
- "Taxi," he screeched, but the car flew by, full of people.
- "Peck," I said, "come with me. I'll tell you all about
-it."
- "Leave me alone," he said, his teeth chattering. "I won't
-go anywhere with you. Leave off! I didn't bother you, I didn't
-do anything to you, leave me be, for God's sake."
- "All right," I said, "I'll let you alone. But you must
-give me a slug and also your address."
- "I don't know of any slugs," he moaned. "God, what kind of
-a day is this!"
- Favoring his left leg, he wandered off and suddenly dove
-into a basement under an elegant and restrained sign. I
-followed. We sat down at a table and a waiter immediately
-brought us hot meat and beer, although we hadn't ordered
-anything. Buba was shivering and his wet face turned blue. He
-pushed the plate away with revulsion and began to swallow the
-beer, both hands around the mug. The basement was quiet and
-empty. Over the sparkling counter hung a white sign with gold
-letters reading, "Paid Service Only."
- Buba raised his head from the beer and said pleadingly,
-"Can I go, Ivan? I can't... What's the point of all this talk?
-Let me go, please."
- I put my hand on his.
- "What's happening to you, Peck? I searched for you. There
-is no address listed anywhere. I met you quite by accident, and
-I don't understand anything. How did you get involved in this
-mess? Can I help you possibly, with anything? Maybe we could
---"
- Suddenly he jerked his hand away in a rage.
- "What an executioner," he hissed. "The devil lured me to
-that Oasis.... Stupid chatter, drivel. I have no slug, do you
-understand? I have one, but I won't give it to you. What'll I
-do then -- like Archimedes? Don't you have any conscience? Then
-don't torture me, let me go."
- "I can't let you go," I said, "until I get the slug. And
-your address. We must talk."
- "I don't want to talk to you, can't you understand? I
-don't want to talk to anyone about anything. I want to go home.
-I won't give you my slug. What am I -- a factory? Give it to
-you and then chase all over town?"
- I kept silent. It was clear that he hated me now. That if
-he thought he had the strength he would kill me and leave. But
-he knew that he did not have the strength.
- "Scum," he said in a fury. "Why can't you buy one
-yourself? Don't you have the money? Here! Here!" he began to
-search convulsively in his pockets, throwing coppers and
-crumpled bills on the table. "Take it, there's plenty."
- "Buy what? Where?"
- "There's a damned jackass! It's... what is it? Hmm... how
-do you call it... Oh hell!" he cried. "May you drop straight to
-hell!"
- He stuck his fingers into his shirt pocket and pulled out
-a flat plastic case. Inside it was a shiny metal tube, similar
-to a pocket radio local oscillator-mixer subassembly. "Here --
-get fat!" He proffered me the tube. It was quite small, less
-than an inch long and a millimeter thick.
- "Thank you," I said. "And how do I use it?"
- Peck's eyes opened wide. I think he even smiled.
- "Good God!" he said almost tenderly. "Can it be you really
-don't know?"
- "I know nothing," I said.
- "Well then, you should have said so from the start. And I
-thought you were tormenting me like a torturer. You have a
-radio? Insert it in place of the mixer, hang it, stand it
-somewhere in the bath, and go to!"
- "In the tub?"
- "Yes."
- "It must be in the bath?"
- "But yes! It is absolutely necessary that your body be
- immersed in water. In hot water. What an ass you are!"
- "And how about Devon?"
- "The Devon goes in the water. About five tablets in the
-water and one orally. The taste is awful, but you won't regret
-it later. And one more thing, be sure to add bath salts to the
-water. And before you start, have a couple of glasses of
-something strong. This is required so that... how shall I say?
--- so you can loosen up, sort of."
- "So," I said. "I got it. Now I've got everything." I
-wrapped the slug in a paper napkin and put it in my pocket. "So
-it's electric wave psychotechnics?"
- "Good Lord, now what do you care about that?"
- He was up already, pulling the hood over his head.
- "No matter," I said. "How much do I owe you?"
- "A trifle, nonsense! Let's go quickly... what the hell are
-we losing time for?"
- We went up into the street.
- "You made the right decision," said Peck. What kind of
-world is this? Are we men in it? Trash is what it is and not a
-world. Taxi!" he yelled. "Hey, taxi!"
- He shook in sudden excitement. "What possessed me to go to
-that Oasis... Oh no... from now on I'll go nowhere ...
-nowhere."
- "Let me have your address," I said.
- "What do you want with my address?"
- A taxi drew up and Buba tore at the door.
- "Address," I said, grabbing him by the shoulder.
- "What a dumbhead," said Buba.. "Sunshine Street, number
-eleven... Dumbhead!" he repeated, seating himself.
- "I'll come to see you tomorrow."
- He paid no more attention to me.
- "Sunshine," he threw at the driver. "Through downtown, and
-hurry, for God's sake."
- How simple, I thought, looking after his car. How simple
-everything turned out to be. And everything fits. The bath and
-Devon. Also the screaming radios, which irritated us so, and to
-which we never paid any attention. We simply turned them off. I
-took a taxi and set out for home.
- But what if he deceived me, I thought. Simply wanted to be
-rid of me sooner. But I would determine that soon enough. He
-doesn't look like a runner, an agent, at all, I thought. After
-all, he is Peck. However, no, he is no longer Peck. Poor Peck.
-You are no agent, you are simply a victim. You know where to
-buy this filth, but you are only a victim. I don't want to
-interrogate Peck, I don't want to shake him down like some
-punk. True, he is no longer Peck. Nonsense, what does that
-mean, that he is not Peck. He is Peck, and still I'll have
-to... Electric wave psychotechnics... But the shivers they're
-wave psychotechnics too.... Somehow, it's a bit too simple. I
-haven't passed two days here yet, while Rimeyer has been living
-here since the uprising. We left him behind, and he had gone
-native and everyone was pleased with him, although in his
-latest reports he wrote that nothing like what we were looking
-for existed here. True, he has nervous exhaustion... and Devon
-on the floor. Also there is Oscar. Further, he did not beg me
-to leave him be, but simply pointed me in the direction of the
-Fishers.
- I didn't meet anyone either in the front yard or in the
-hall.. It was almost five. I went to my rooms and called
-Rimeyer. A quiet female voice answered.
- "How is the patient?" I asked.
- "He is asleep. He shouldn't be disturbed."
- "I won't do that. Is he better?"
- "I told you he fell asleep. And don't call too often,
-please. The phone disturbs him."
- "You will be with him all the time?"
- "Till morning, at least. If you call again, I'll have the
-phone disconnected."
- "Thank you," I said. "Just, please, don't leave him till
-morning, I'll not trouble you again."
- I hung up and sat awhile in the big comfortable chair in
-front of the huge absolutely bare table. Then I took the slug
-out of my pocket and laid it in front of me. A small shiny
-tube, inconspicuous and completely harmless to all outward
-appearances, an ordinary electronic component. Such can be made
-by the millions. They should cost pennies.
- "What's that you got there?" asked Len, right next to my
- He stood alongside and regarded the slug.
- "Don't you know?" I asked.
- "It's from a radio. I have one like it in my radio and
-it's breaking all the time."
- I pulled my radio out of my pocket and extracted its mixer
-and laid it alongside the slug. The mixer looked like the slug,
-but it was not a slug.
- "They are not the same," said Len. "But I have seen one of
-those gadgets, too."
- "What gadget?"
- "Like the one you have."
- All at once, his face clouded over and he looked grim.
- "Did you remember?"
- "No, I didn't," he said. "I didn't remember anything."
- "All right, then." I picked up the slug and inserted it in
-place of the mixer in the radio. Len grabbed me by the hand.
- "Don't," he said.
- "Why not?"
- He didn't reply, eyeing the radio warily.
- "What are you afraid of?" I asked.
- "I'm not afraid of anything. Where did you get that idea?"
- "Look in the mirror," I said. "You look as though you are
-afraid for me." I put the radio in my pocket.
- "For you?" he said in astonishment.
- "Obviously for me. Not for yourself, of course, though you
-are still scared of those... necrotic phenomena."
- He looked sideways.
- "Where did you get that idea," he said. "We're just
-playing."
- I snorted in disdain.
- "I am well acquainted with these games. Rut one thing I
- don't know: where in our time do necrotic phenomena come
-from?"
- He glanced around and began backing up.
- "I'm going," he said.
- "O no," I said decisively. "Let's finish what we started.
-Man to man. Don't think that I am altogether an ignoramus."
- "What do you know?" He was already near the door and
-talking very quietly.
- "More than you," I said severely. "But I don't want to
-shout it all over the house. If you want to talk, come on over
-here. Climb up on the desk and have yourself a seat. Believe
-me, I'm not a necrotic phenomenon."
- He hesitated for a whole minute, and everything for which
-he hoped and everything of which he was afraid appeared and
-disappeared on his face. At last, he said, "Just let me close
-the door."
- He ran into the living room, closed the door to the
-hallway, returned to close the study door tight, and approached
-me. His hands were in his pockets, the face white, contrasting
-with the protruding ears, which were red but cold.
- "In the first place, you are a dope," I pronounced,
-dragging him toward me and standing him between my knees. "Once
-there was a boy who lived in such a fear that his pants never
-dried out, not even when he was on a beach, and his ears were
-as cold as though they had been left in a refrigerator
-overnight. This boy trembled constantly and so well that when
-he grew up his legs were all wiggly, and his skin became like
-that of a plucked goose."
- I was hoping that he would smile just once, but he
-listened very intently and very seriously inquired, "And what
-was he afraid of?"
- "He had an elder brother, who was a nice fellow, but a
-great one for drinking. And, as often happens, the tipsy
-brother was not at all like the sober brother. He got to look
-very wild indeed. And when he really drank a lot, he got to
-look like a dead man. So this boy..."
- A contemptuous smile appeared on Len's face.
- "He sure found something to be scared of. When they are
-drunk is when they turn good."
- "Who are they?" I asked immediately. "Mother? Vousi?"
- "That's it. Mother is just the opposite -- in the morning
-when she gets up, she's always nasty, and then she drinks
-vermouth once, then twice, and that's it. Toward evening she is
-altogether nice because night is near."
- "And at night?"
- "At night that creep comes around," Len said reluctantly.
- "We are not concerned with the creep," I said in a
-businesslike manner. "It's not from him that you run to the
-garage."
- "I don't run," he said stubbornly. "It's a game."
- "I don't know, I don't know," I said. "There are, of
-course, certain things in this world of which even I am afraid.
-For instance when a boy is crying and trembling. I can't look
-at such things, and it just turns me over inside. Or when your
-teeth hurt and it is required by circumstances that you keep on
-smiling -- that's pretty bad and there is no way of ignoring
-it. But there are also just plain stupidities. When, for
-example, some idiots help themselves, out of sheer boredom and
-surfeit, to the brain of a living monkey. That's no longer
-frightening, it's just plain disgusting. Especially as they
-didn't think it up by themselves. It was a thousand years ago
-when they thought of it first, and also out of excessive
-affluence, the fat tyrants of the Far East. And contemporary
-idiots heard and rejoiced. But they should be pitied, not
-feared."
- "Pity them?" said Len. "But they don't pity anybody. They
-do whatever they like. It's all the same to them, don't you
-see? It they are bored, then they don't care whose head they
-saw apart. Idiots... Maybe in the daytime they are idiots, but
-you don't seem to understand that at night they are not idiots,
-they are all accursed."
- "How can that be?"
- "They are cursed by the whole world They can have no
-peace, and they won't ever have it. You don't know anything.
-What's it to you? As you arrived, so you will leave... but they
-are alive at night, and in the daytime they are dead,
-corpselike."
- I went to the living room and brought him some water. He
-drank down the glass and said, "Will you leave soon?"
- "Of course not, how can you think that? I just got here,"
-I said, patting him on the shoulder.
- "Could I sleep with you?"
- "Of course."
- "At first I had a padlock, but she took it away for some
-reason. But why she took it she won't say."
- "OK," I said. "You will sleep in my living room. Do you
-want to?"
- "Yes."
- "Go ahead and lock yourself in and sleep to your heart's
-content. And I will climb into the bedroom through the window."
- He raised his head and gazed at me intently.
- "You think your doors lock? I know all about this place.
- Yours don't lock either."
- "It's for you they don't lock," I said as negligently as
-possible. "But for me they'll lock. It's only a half-hour's
-work."
- He laughed unpleasantly, like an adult.
- "You are afraid, too. All right, I was only joking. Don't
-be afraid, your locks do work"
- "You dope," I said. "Didn't I tell you I wasn't afraid of
-anything of that sort?" He looked at me questioningly. "I
-wanted to make the lock work for you in the living room, so you
-could sleep in peace, as long as you are so afraid. As for me,
-I always sleep with the window open."
- "I told you, I was joking."
- We were silent for a bit.
- "Len," I said, "what will you be when you grow up?" "What
-do you mean?" he said. He was quite astonished. "What do I
-care?"
- "Now, now -- what do you care. It's all the same to you
-whether you will be a chemist or a bartender?"
- "I told you -- we are all under a curse. You can't get
-away from it, why can't you understand that? When everybody
-knows it?"
- "So what?" I said. "There were accursed peoples before.
-And then children were born who grew up and removed the curse."
- "How?"
- "That would take a long time to explain, old friend." I
-got up. "I'll be sure to tell you all about it. For now, go on
-out and play. You do play in the daytime? Okay then, run along.
-When the sun sets, come on over, I'll make your bed."
- He stuck his hands in his pockets and went to the door.
-There he stopped and said aver his shoulder, "That gadget you'd
-better take it out of the radio. What do you think it is?"
- "A local oscillator-mixer," I said.
- "It's not a mixer at all. Take it out or it will be bad
-for you." "Why will it be bad for me?" I said.
- "Take it out," be said. "You'll hate everybody. Right now
-you are not cursed, blat you will become cursed. Who gave it to
-you? Vousi?"
- "No."
- He looked at me imploringly.
- "Ivan, take it out!"
- "So be it," I said. "I'll take it out. Run along and play.
-And never be afraid of me. Do you hear?"
- He didn't say anything and went out, leaving me sitting in
-my chair, with my hands on the desk. Soon I heard him puttering
-about in the lilacs under the windows. He rustled, stamped
-about, muttering something under his breath, and softly
-exclaimed, talking to himself, "Bring the flags and put them
-here and here... that's it... that's it... and then I got on a
-plane and flew away into the mountains." I wondered when he
-went to bed. It would be all right if it were eight o'clock or
-even nine; maybe it was a mistake to start all this business
-with him. I could have locked myself in the bathroom and in two
-hours I would know everything. But no, I couldn't refuse him --
-just imagine I was in his place, I thought. But this is not the
-way; I am catering to his fears, when I should think of
-something more clever. But try to come up with it -- this is no
-Anyudinsk boarding school.
- A boarding school this certainly is not, I thought. How
-different everything is, and what lies ahead of me now, which
-circle of paradise, I wonder? But if it tickles, I won't be
-able to stand it! Interesting -- the Fishers -- they too are a
-circle of paradise, for sure. The Art Patrons are for the
-aristocrats of the mind, and the old Subway is for the simpler
-types, although the Intels are also aristocrats of the mind and
-they get intoxicated like swine and become totally useless,
-even they are useless. There is too much bate, not enough love
--- it's easy to teach hate, but love is hard to teach. But
-then, love has been too well overdone and slobbered over so it
-has become passive. How is it that love is always passive and
-hate always active and is thus always attractive? And then it
-is said that hate is natural, while love is of the mind and
-springs from deep thought.
- It should be worthwhile to have a talk with the Intels, I
-thought. They can't all be hysterical fools, and what if I
-should succeed in finding a Man. What in fact is good in man
-that comes from nature -- a pound of gray matter. But this too
-is not always good, so that he always must start from a naked
-nothing; maybe it would be good if man could inherit social
-advances, but then again, Len would now be a small-scale major
-general. No, better not -- better to start from zero. True he
-would not now be afraid of anything, but instead he would be
-frightening others -- those who weren't major generals.
- I was startled to suddenly see Len perched in the branches
-of the apple tree regarding me fixedly. The next moment he was
-gone, leaving only the crash of branches and falling apples as
-an aftermath. He doesn't believe me in the slightest, I
-thought. He believes nobody. And whom do I believe in this
-town? I went over everyone I could recall. No, I didn't trust
-anyone. I picked up the telephone, dialed the Olympic and asked
-for number 817.
- "Hello! Yes?" said Oscar's voice.
- I kept quiet, covering the radio with my hand.
- "Hello, I'm listening," repeated Oscar irritably. "That's
-the second time," he said to someone aside. "Hello!... Of
-course not, what sort of women could I be carrying on with
-here?" He hung up.
- I picked up the Mintz volume, lay down on the couch, and
-read until twilight. I dearly love Mintz, but I couldn't
-remember a word I read that day. The evening shift roared by
-noisily. Aunt Vaina fed Len his supper, stuffing him with hot
-milk and crackers. Len whimpered and was fretful while she
-cajoled him gently and patiently. Customs inspector Pete
-propounded in a commanding yet benevolent tone, "You have to
-eat, you have to eat, if Mother says eat, you must comply."
- Two men of loose character, if one could judge by their
-voices, came around looking for Vousi and made a play for Aunt
-Vaina. I thought they were drunk. It was growing dark rapidly.
-At eight o'clock the phone in the study rang. I ran barefooted
-and grabbed the receiver, but no one spoke. As you holler, so
-it echoes. At eight-ten, there was a knock on the door. I was
-delighted, expecting Len, but it turned out to be Vousi.
- "Why don't you ever come around?" she asked indignantly
-from the doorway. She was wearing shorts decorated with
-suggestively winking faces, a tight-fitting sleeveless shirt
-exposing her navel, and a huge translucent scarf: she was fresh
-and firm as a ripe apple. To a surfeit.
- "I sit and wait for him all day, and all the time he is
-sacked out here. Does something hurt?"
- I got up and stuck my feet into my shoes.
- "Have a chair, Vousi." I patted the couch alongside me.
- "I am not going to sit by you. Imagine -- he is reading.
-You could at least offer me a drink."
- "In the bar," I said, "How is your sloppy cow?"
- "Thank God she was not around today," said Vousi,
-disappearing in the bar. "Today I drew the mayor's wife. What a
-moron. Why, she wants to know, doesn't anyone love her?... You
-want yours with water? Eyes white, face red, and a rear end as
-wide as a sofa, just like a frog, honest to God. Listen, let's
-make a polecat, nowadays everybody makes polecats."
- "I don't go for doing like everybody."
- "I can see that for myself. Everyone is out for a good
-time, and he is here -- sacked out. And reading to boot."
- "He -- is tired," I said.
- "Oh, so? Well then, I can leave!"
- "But I won't let you," I said, catching her by the scarf
-and pulling her down beside me. "Vousi, dear girl, are you a
-specialist only for ladies' good humor or in general? You
-wouldn't be able to put a lonely man whom nobody loves into a
-good humor?"
- "What's to love?" She looked me over. "Red eyes and a
-potato for a nose."
- "Like an alligator's."
- "Like a dog's. Don't go putting your arm about me, I won't
-allow it. Why didn't you come over?"
- "And why did you abandon me yesterday?"
- "How do you like that --.abandoned him!"
- "All alone in a strange town."
- "I abandoned him! Why, I locked for you all over. I told
-everyone that you are a Tungus, and you got lost -- that was a
-poor thing for you to do. No -- I won't permit that! Where were
-you last night? Fishering, no doubt. And the same thing today,
-you won't tell any stories."
- "Why shouldn't I tell?" I said. And I told her about the
-old Subway. I sensed at once that the truth would be
-inadequate, and so I spoke of men in metallic masks, of a
-terrible oath, of a wall wet with blood, of a sobbing skeleton,
-and I let her feel the bump behind my ear. She liked everything
-very well.
- "Let's go right now," she said.
- "Not for anything," I said and lay down.
- "What kind of manners is that? Get up at once and we'd go.
-Of course, no one will believe me. But you will show your bump,
-and everything will be just perfect."
- "And then we'll go to the shivers?" I wanted to know.
- "But yes! You know that turns out to he even good for your
-health."
- "And we'll drink brandy?"
- "Brandy and vermouth and a polecat and whiskey."
- "Enough, enough... and no doubt we'll also squeeze into
-cars and drive at a hundred and fifty miles per hour?...
-Listen, Vousi, why should you go there?"
- She finally understood and smiled in discomfiture.
- "And what's wrong with it? The Fishers also go."
- "There is nothing bad," I said. "But what's good about
-it?"
- "I don't know. Everybody does it. Sometimes it's a lot of
-fun... and the shivers. There everything -- all your wishes
-come true."
- "And that's it? That's all there is?"
- "Well, not everything, of course. But whatever you think
- about, whatever you would like to happen, often happens.
-Just like in a dream."
- "Well then maybe it would be better to go to bed?"
- "What's the matter with you?" she said sulkily. "In a real
-dream all kinds of things happen... as though you don't know!
-But with the shivers, only what you like!"
- "And what do you like?"
- "We-e-ll! Lots of things."'
- "Still... imagine I am a magician. And I say to you, have
-three wishes. Anything at all, whatever you wish. The most
-impossible. And I will make them come true. Well?"
- She thought very hard so that even her shoulders sagged.
-Then her face lit up.
- "Let me never grow old," she said.
- "Excellent," I said. "That's one."
- "Let me..." she began inspiredly and stopped.
- I used to enjoy tremendously asking my friends this very
-question and used to ask it at every available opportunity.
-Several times I even assigned compositions to my youngsters on
-the theme of three wishes. And it was always most amusing that
-out of a thousand men and women, oldsters and children, only
-two or three dozen figured that it is possible to wish not only
-for themselves personally, or their immediate close ones, but
-also for the world at large, for mankind as a whole. No, this
-was not witness to the ineradicable human egotism; the wishes
-were not invariably strictly selfish, and the majority in
-subsequent discussions, when reminded of missed opportunities
-and the large problems of all mankind, did a double take and in
-honest anger reproached me that I hadn't explained at the
-beginning. But one way or another they all began their reply
-along the lines of "Let me..." This was a manifestation of some
-kind of ancient subconscious conviction that your own personal
-wishes cannot change anything in the wide world, and it makes
-no difference whether you do or do not have a magic wand.
- "Let me..." began Vousi once more, and again was silent. I
-was watching her surreptitiously. She noticed this, and
-dissolving into a broad smile, said with a wave of her hand,
-"So that's your game. Some card you are!"
- "No -- no -- no," I said. "You should always be prepared
-to answer this question. Because I knew a man once who always
-asked it of everyone, and then was inconsolable -- 'Oh what an
-opportunity I missed, how could I not have figured it out?' So
-you see it's entirely in earnest. Your first wish is never to
-grow old. And then?"
- "Let's see -- what else? Of course, it would be nice to
-have a handsome fellow, whom they would all chase, but who
-would be with me only. Always."
- "Wonderful," I said. "That's two. And what else?"
- Her face showed that the game had already palled on her,
-and that any second she'd drop a bomb. And she did. All I could
-do was blink my eyes.
- "Yes," I said, "of course that, too. But that happens even
-without any magic."
- "Yes and no," she argued and began to develop the idea,
-based on the misfortunes of her clients. All of which was very
-gay and amusing to her, while I, in ignominious confusion,
-gulped brandy with lemon and tittered in embarrassment, feeling
-like a virgin wall flower. Well, if all this went on in a night
-club, I could handle it. Well, well, well... some fine
-activities go on in those salons of the Good Mood. How do you
-like these elderly ladies...
- "Enough," I said. "Vousi, you embarrass me, and anyway I
-understand it all very well now. I can see that it's really
-impossible to do without magic. It's a good thing that I am not
-a magician."
- "I really stung you well," she said happily. "And what
-would you wish for yourself, now?"
- I decided I'd reciprocate in kind.
- "I don't need anything of that sort," I said. "Anyway, I
-am not good at things like that. I'd like a good solid slug."
- She smiled gaily.
- "I don't need three wishes," I explained, "I can do with
-one."
- She was still smiling, but the smile became empty, then
-crooked, and then disappeared altogether.
- "What?" she said in a small voice.
- "Vousi!" I said, getting up. "Vousi!"
- She didn't seem to know what to do. She jumped up and then
-sat down and then jumped up again. The coffee table fell over
-with all the bottles. There were tears in her eyes, and her
-face looked pitiable, like that of a child who has been
-brutally, insolently, cruelly, tauntingly deceived. Suddenly
-she bit her lip and with all her strength slapped my face.
-While I was blinking, she, now in full tears, kicked away the
-overturned table and ran out of the room. I sat, with my mouth
-open. An engine roared into life and lights sprang up in the
-dark garden, followed by the sound of the motor traversing the
-yard and disappearing in the distance.
- I felt my face. Some joke. Never in my life have I joked
-so effectively. What an old fool I was! How do you like that
-for a slug?
- "May we?" asked Len. He stood in the door, and he was not
-alone. With him was a gloomy, freckle-faced boy with a cleanly
-shaved head.
- "This is Reg," said Len. "Could he sleep here too?"
- "Reg," I said, pensively smoothing my eyelids. "Of course
--- even two Regs would be okay. Listen, Len, why didn't you
-come ten minutes earlier!"
- "But she was here," said Len. "We were looking in the
-window, waiting for her to leave."
- "Really?" I said. "Very interesting. Reg, old chum, how
-about what your parents will say?"
- Reg didn't reply. Len said, "He doesn't have parents."
- "Well, all right," I said, feeling a bit tired. "You're
-not going to have a pillow fight?"
- "No," said Len, not smiling, "we are going to sleep."
- "Fair enough," I said. "I'll make your beds and you can
-give all this a quick clean-up."
- I made their beds on the couch and the big chair and they
-took off their clothes at once and went to bed. I locked the
-door to the hall, turned out their lights, and went into my
-bedroom, where I sat awhile listening to them whispering,
-moving furniture, and settling down. Then they were quiet.
-About eleven o'clock there was the sound of broken glass
-somewhere in the house. Aunt Vaina's voice could be heard
-singing some sort of marching song, followed by more breaking
-glass. Apparently the tireless Pete again was falling down face
-first. From the center of town came the cry of "Shivers,
-shivers." Someone was loudly sick on the street.
- I locked the window and lowered the shades. I also locked
-the door to the study. Then I went to the bathroom and turned
-on the hot water. I did everything per instructions. The radio
-went on the soap shelf, I threw several Devon tablets in the
-water, together with some salt crystals, and was about to
-swallow the tablet when I remembered that it was propitious to
-"loosen up." I didn't want to disturb the boys, but it wasn't
-necessary -- an open bottle of brandy stood in the medicine
-chest. I took a few swallows right out of the bottle, stripped
-down to the skin, climbed into the bath, and turned on the
-radio.
-
-<ul><a name=11></a><h2>Chapter ELEVEN</h2></ul>
-
- I intentionally did not set the thermo-regulator, so that
-when the water cooled off, I returned to consciousness. The
-radio was still shrieking and the sparkle of white light on the
-walls hurt my eyes. I was thoroughly chilled and covered with
-goose bumps. Switching off the radio, I turned on the hot water
-and remained in the bath, basking in the flooding warmth and a
-very strange, very novel sensation of total, cosmically
-enormous emptiness. I expected a hangover, but there wasn't
-any. I simply felt good. And there were very many memories.
-Also my thoughts flowed inordinately well, as though after a
-long rest in the mountains.
- In the middle of the last century, Olds and Miller had
-conducted experiments on brain stimulation. They inserted
-electrodes into the brains of white rats. They employed a
-primitive technology and a barbarous methodology, but having
-located pleasure centers in the rats' brains, they succeeded in
-having the animals press the lever which closed the contacts to
-the electrodes, hour after hour, producing up to eight thousand
-auto-excitations per hour. These rats did not need anything in
-the real world. They weren't in the slightest interested in
-anything but the lever. They ignored food, water, danger,
-females; they were indifferent to everything except the
-stimulation lever. Later, these experiments were tried on
-monkeys and produced the same results. Rumors were about that
-someone carried out similar experiments on criminals condemned
-to death....
- That was a difficult time for mankind: a time of struggle
-against atomic destruction, a time of increasing limited wars
-over the entire face of the planet, a time when the majority of
-mankind was starving, but even so, the contemporary English
-writer and critic Kingsley Amis, having learned of the
-experiments with rats, wrote: "I cannot be sure that this
-frightens me more than a Berlin or a Taiwan crisis, but it
-should, I believe, frighten me more." He feared much about the
-future, this brilliant and venomous author of <i>New Maps of
-Hell</i>, and: in particular, he foresaw the possibilities of
-brain stimulation for the creation of an illusory existence,
-just as intense as the actual, or more intense.
- By the end of the century, when the first triumphs of wave
-psychotechnology were realized, and when psychiatric wards
-began to empty, amid the chorus of exulting cries of science
-commentators, the little brochure by Krinitsky and Milanovitch
-had sounded like an irritating dissonance. In its concluding
-section the Soviet educators wrote approximately as follows: In
-the overwhelming majority of countries, the education of the
-young exists on the level of the eighteenth and nineteenth
-centuries. This ancient system of education always did and
-continues to posit as its objective, first of all and above
-all, the preparation for society of qualified but stupefied
-contributors to the production process. This system is not
-interested in all the other potentialities of the human mind,
-and for this reason, outside of the production process, man, en
-masse, remains psychologically a cave dweller, Man the
-Uneducated. The disuse of these potentialities causes the
-individuals' inability to comprehend our complex world in all
-its contradictions, to correlate psychologically incompatible
-concepts and phenomena, to obtain pleasure from the examination
-of connections and laws when these do not pertain directly to
-the satisfaction of the most primitive social instincts. In
-other words, this system of education for all practical
-purposes does not develop in man pure imagination, untrammeled
-vision, and as an immediate consequence, the sense of humor.
-The Uneducated Man perceives the world as some sort of
-essentially trivial, routine, and traditionally simple process,
-a world from which it is possible only by dint of great effort
-to extract pleasures which are, in the end, also compulsively
-routine and traditional. But even the unutilized potentialities
-remain, apparently, a hidden reality of the human brain. The
-problem for scientific education consists precisely in
-initiating the action of these possibilities, in teaching man
-to dream, in bringing the multiordinality and variety of
-psychic associations into quantitative and qualitative
-coordination with the multiordinality and variety of
-interrelationships in the world of reality. This problem is the
-one which, as is well known, must become the fundamental one
-for mankind in the coming proximate epoch. But until this
-problem is resolved, there remains some basis to fear that the
-successes of psychotechnics will lead to such methods of
-electrical stimulation as will endow man with an illusory
-existence which can exceed the real existence in intensity and
-variety by a considerable margin. And if one remembers that
-imagination allows man to be both a rational being and a
-sensual animal, and if one adds to that the fact that the
-psychic subject matter evoked by the Uneducated Man for his
-illusory life of splendor derives from the darkest, most
-primitive reflexes, then it is not hard to perceive the awful
-temptation hidden in such possibilities.
- And therefore -- slug.
- It is now understandable, I thought, why they write the
-word "slug" on fences.
- Everything is now understandable. It's odious, that I
-understand.... Better if I understood nothing, better if, upon
-regaining consciousness, I shrugged my shoulders and climbed
-out of the bath. Would it have been understandable to Strogoff
-and Einstein and Petrarch? Imagination is a priceless gift, but
-it must not be given an inward direction. Only outward, only
-outward... What a tasty worm some corrupter has dropped from
-his rod into this stagnant pool! And how accurately timed! Yes
-indeed, if I were commander of Wells' Martians, I would not
-have bothered with fighter tripods, heat rays, and other such
-nonsense. Illusory existence ... no, this is not a narcotic, a
-narcotic has a long way to go to approach it. In a. way this is
-exactly appropriate. Here. Now. To each time its own. Poppy
-seeds and hemp, the kingdom of sweet blurred shadows and peace
--- for the beggar, the worn-out, the downtrodden... But here no
-one wants peace, here no one is dying of hunger, here is simply
-a bore. A well-fed, well-heated, drunken bore. It's not that
-the world is bad, it's just plain dreary. World without
-prospects, world without promise. But in the end man is not a
-carp, he still remains a man. Yes, it is no kingdom of shades,
-it is indeed the real existence, without detraction, without
-dreary confusion. Slug is moving on the world and the world
-will not mind subjecting itself to it.
- Suddenly, for a fraction of a moment, I felt that I was
-lost. And it was cozy to be destroyed. Fortunately I grew
-angry. Splashing out water, I climbed out of the bath, cursing
-and stoking my ire, pulled my shorts and shirt over my wet
-body, and grabbed my watch. It was three o'clock, and it could
-have been three in the afternoon or three the following morning
-or three o'clock after a hundred years. Idiot, I thought,
-pulling on my trousers. Softened up and let Buba go when he was
-ready to give me the address of the gangsters' den. The
-operatives could have been there by now and we could have
-nabbed the whole accursed nest, the vile nest. The vermin nest.
-The repulsive cloaca... And at this instant against the very
-depth of my consciousness, like a dancing spot of light,
-flicked a very calm thought. But I could not fasten upon it.
- I located some Potomac in the medicine cabinet, the
-strongest stimulant which I could find in it. I started into
-the living room, but the youngsters were snoring away there, so
-I climbed out the window. The city was resting, of course.
-Guffawing louts hung around under the street lamp on Waterway,
-bawling crowds surged on the brightly lit avenues. Somewhere
-songs were shouted, somewhere they were yelling "Shivers!"
-Somewhere glass was being broken. I picked out a chauffeurless
-taxi, found the index for Sunshine Street, and dialed it on the
-control console. The car took off across town. The cab smelled
-sour and bottles rolled underfoot. At one intersection it
-almost plowed into a daisy chain of howling humanity, and at
-another there was the rhythmic flashing of colored lights --
-apparently it was possible to set up the shivers elsewhere than
-the plaza. They were resting, resting with all their might,
-these benevolent patrons from the Happy Mood Salons, these
-polite customs inspectors, clever barbers, tender mothers and
-manly fathers, innocent youths and maidens -- they all
-exchanged their diurnal aspects for the nocturnal, they all
-worked hard to have fun and so that it wouldn't be necessary to
-think about a thing....
- The taxi braked. It was the very same place. It even
-seemed as though there was that same burning smell...
- ... Peck registered a hit on the armored carrier with the
-Fulminator. It spun on a single tread, hopping in the piles of
-broken bricks, and two fascists immediately jumped out in their
-unbuttoned camouflage shirts, flung a grenade apiece in our
-direction, and sped off into the darkness. They moved knowingly
-and adeptly, and it was obvious that these were not youngsters
-from the Royal Academy or lifers from the Golden Brigade, but
-genuine full-blown tank corps officers. Robert cut them down
-point-blank with a burst from his machine gun. The carrier was
-bulging with cases of beer. It struck us that we had been
-constantly thirsty for the last two days. Iowa Smith clambered
-into the carrier and began handing out the cans. Peck opened
-them with a knife. Robert, putting the machine gun against the
-carrier, punched holes into the cans with a sharp point on the
-armor. And the Teacher, adjusting his pince-nez, tripped on the
-Fulminator straps and muttered, "Wait a minute, Smith; can't
-you see I've got my hands full?" A five-story building burned
-briskly at the end of the street, there was a thick smell of
-smoke and hot metal, and we avidly downed the warm beer, and
-were drenched through and through, and it was very hot and the
-dead officers lay on the broken and crushed bricks, with their
-legs identically flung out in their black pants, and the
-camouflage shirts bunched at their necks, and the skin still
-glistening with perspiration on their backs.
- 'They are officers," said the Teacher. "Thank God. I can't
-bear the sight of any more dead kids. Accursed politics! People
-forget God on account of it."
- "What god is that?" inquired Iowa Smith out of the
-carrier. "I've never heard of him."
- "Don't jest about that, Smith," said the Teacher. "This
-will all end soon, and from then on no one nowhere will be
-permitted to poison the souls of men with vanity."
- "And how then shall they multiply?" asked Iowa Smith. He
-bent over the beer again, and we could see the burn holes in
-his pants.
- "I am talking about politics," said the Teacher modestly.
-"The fascists must be destroyed. They are beasts. But that is
-not enough. There are many other political parties, and there
-is no place for them and all their propaganda in our land." The
-Teacher came from this town and lived within two blocks of our
-post. "Social anarchists, technocrats, communists, are of
-course -- "
- "I am a communist," announced Iowa Smith, "at least by
-conviction. I am for the commune."
- The Teacher looked at him in bewilderment.
- "Also I am a godless man," added Iowa Smith. "There is no
-god, Teacher, and there's nothing you can do about it."
- At which point we all began to say that we were all
-atheists, and Peck said that on top of that he was for
-technocracy, while Robert announced that his father was a
-social anarchist and his grandfather was a social anarchist and
-he, Robert, probably could not escape being a social anarchist,
-although he didn't know what it was all about.
- "Well now, if the beer would get ice-cold, said Peck
-pensively, "I would at once believe in God with great delight."
- Teacher smiled embarrassedly and kept wiping his glasses.
-He was a good man and we always kidded him, but he never took
-offense. From the very first night I observed that his courage
-was not great, but he never retreated without being commanded.
-We were still chattering and joking when there was a thunderous
-crash, the burning building wall collapsed, and straight out of
-the swirling flames and clouds of smoke and sparks swam a
-Mammoth attack tank, floating a yard above the pavement. This
-was a new horror, the likes of which we hadn't seen yet.
-Floating out in the middle of the street, it rotated its
-thrower as though looking around, and then, hovering on its air
-cushion, began to move in our direction, screeching and
-clanking metallically. I regained my wits only by the time I
-was behind a gate post. The tank was now considerably closer,
-and at first I couldn't see anyone at all, but then Iowa Smith
-stood up in full view out of the carrier, and propping the butt
-of the Fulminator against his stomach, took aim. I could see
-the recoil double him up. I saw a bright flash against the
-black brow of the tank. And then the street was filled with
-roar and flame, and when I raised my burned eyelids with great
-effort, the street was empty and contained only the tank. There
-was no carrier, no mounds of broken brick, no leaning kiosk by
-the neighboring house -- there was only the tank. It was as
-though the monster had come awake and was spewing waterfalls of
-flame and the street ceased being a street and became a square.
-Peck slapped me hard on the neck and I could see his glassy
-eyes right in front of my face, but there was no time to run
-toward the trench and break out the launcher.
- We both picked up the mine and started running toward the
-tank, and all I remember is looking continually at the back of
-his head, and gasping for breath and counting steps, when the
-helmet flew off Peck's head, and he fell, so I almost dropped
-the mine and fell on top of him. The tank was blown up by
-Robert and Teacher. I still don't know how they did it or when;
-it must be they were running behind us with another mine. I sat
-until morning in the middle of the street holding Peck's
-bandaged head on my knees and staring at the awesome treads of
-the tank sticking out of the asphalt lake. That same morning
-the whole bloody thing came to an end all at once. Zun Padana
-surrendered with all his staff and was shot in the street by
-some crazed woman when already a prisoner....
- This was the very same place. I even thought I smelled
-smoke and burned metal. Even the kiosk stood on the corner, and
-it too was a bit crooked in the latest style of architecture.
-The part of the street which the tank turned into a plaza
-remained a plaza, and on the site of the asphalt lake there was
-a small square in which someone was being beaten. Iowa Smith
-was an urban planner from Iowa, U.S.A., Robert Sventisky was a
-movie director form Krakow, Poland. The Teacher was a
-schoolteacher from this town. No one ever saw them again, even
-dead. And Peck was Peck, who had now become Buba
- Buba lived in the same sort of cottage as I, and its front
-door was open. I knocked, but no one responded and no one -
-came out to meet me. I entered the dark hall. The lights did
-not go on. The door to the right was locked, and I looked into
-the one on the left. In the living room a bearded man, in a
-jacket, but without pants, was sleeping on a tattered couch.
-Someone's feet stuck out from under the overturned table. There
-was a smell of brandy, tobacco smoke, and of something else,
-cloyingly sweet, like in Aunt Vaina's room the other day. In
-the door to the study, I bumped into a handsome florid woman,
-who was not in the slightest surprised to see me.
- "Good evening," I said. Please excuse me, but does Buba
-live here?"
- "Here," she said, examining me out of glistening
-oily-looking eyes.
- "Can I see him?"
- "And why not -- all you want."
- "Where is he?"
- "Funny man. Where would he be?" she laughed.
- I could guess where, but said, "In the bedroom?"
- "You are warm," she said.
- "What do you mean -- warm?"
- "What a dunce, and sober yet! Would you like a drink?"
- "No," I said, angry. "Where is he? I need him right away."
- "Your prospects are poor," she said gaily. "But search on,
-search on. As for me, I must go."
- She patted me on the cheek and went out.
- The study was empty. There was a large crystal vase on the
-table with some kind of reddish fluid in it. Everything smelled
-of that nauseatingly sweet odor. The bedroom was also empty;
-crumpled sheets and pillows were scattered about. I approached
-the bathroom door. The door was full of holes, obviously made
-by bullets shot from the inside, judging by their shape. I
-hesitated, then took hold of the handle. The door was locked.
- I opened it with considerable difficulty. Buba lay in the
-bath up to his neck in greenish water; steam rose from its
-surface. The radio howled and wheezed on the edge of the tub. I
-stood and looked at Buba. At the erstwhile cosmonaut
-experimenter, Peck Xenai. At the once-upon-a-time supple and
-well-muscled fellow, who at eighteen left his warm city by the
-warm sea, and went into space for the glory of man, and who at
-thirty returned to his country to fight the last of the
-fascists and to remain here forever. I was repelled to think
-that only an hour ago, I had looked like him. I touched his
-face and pulled his thin hair. He did not stir. Then I bent
-over him to let him sniff some Potomac, and suddenly saw that
-he was dead.
- I knocked the radio off the edge of the tub and crushed it
-under heel. There was a pistol on the floor. But Peck had not
-shot himself; it must have been simply that someone interfered
-with him and he shot through the door in order to be left
-alone. I stuck my arms in the hot water, picked him up, and
-carried him to the bed. He lay there all limp and terrible,
-with eyes sunken under his brows. If only he were not my
-friend... if only he were not such a wonderful guy... if only
-he were not such an outstanding worker...
- I called emergency aid on the phone and sat down beside
-Peck. I tried not to think of him. I tried to think about the
-business at hand. And I tried to be cold and harsh, because at
-the very bottom of my conscious mind, that flick of warm
-feeling, like a speck of light, flashed again, and this time I
-understood what the thought was.
- By the time the doctor came, I knew what I was going to
-do. I would find Eli. I would pay any sum. Maybe I would beat
-him. If necessary, I would torture him. And he would tell me,
-whence this plague flows out upon the world. He would name
-names and addresses. He would tell me all. And we would find
-these men. We would locate and burn their secret laboratories,
-and as for themselves, we would ship them out so far that they
-would never return. Whoever they might be. We would catch them
-all, we would catch all who ever tried slug and isolate them,
-too. Whoever they were. Then I would demand that I, too, be
-isolated because I knew what slug was. Because I grasped what
-sort of thought I had, because I was socially dangerous, just
-as they all are. And all that would be only the beginning. The
-beginning of all beginnings, and ahead would remain that which
-was most important: to make it so that people would never,
-never, wish to know what slug was. Probably that would be
-outlandish. Probably many would say that it was too outlandish,
-too harsh, too stupid -- but we would still have to do it if we
-wanted mankind not to stop....
- The doctor, an old gray man, put down his white case,
-leaned over Buba, looked him over, and said indifferently,
-"Hopeless."
- "Call the police," I said.
- Slowly he put away his instruments.
- "There is no need of that whatsoever," he said. "There's
-no criminal content, here. It is a neurostimulator...."
- "Yes, I know."
- "There you are -- the second case this night. They just
-don't know when to stop."
- "When did it start?"
- "Not very long ago... a few months."
- "Then why in hell do you keep it quiet?"
- "Keep it quiet? I don't understand. This is my sixth call
-tonight, young man. The second case of nervous exhaustion and
-four cases of brain fever. Are you a relative?"
- "No."
- "Well, all right, I'll send some men." He stood awhile,
-looking at Peck. "Join some choruses," he said. "Enter the
-League of Reformed Sluts..."
- He was mumbling something else as he left, an old, bent,
-uncaring man. I covered Peck with a sheet, pulled the drape,
-and went out into the living room. The drunks were snoring
-obscenely, filling the air with alcoholic fumes, and I took
-them both by the heels and dragged them out in the yard,
-leaving them in the puddle by the fountain.
- Dawn was breaking once more and the stars were dimming in
-the paling sky. I got into the taxi and dialed the old Subway
-on the console.
- It was full of people. It was impossible to get through to
-the railing, although it seemed to me that only two or three
-men were filling out the forms, while the rest were just
-looking, stretching their necks eagerly. Neither the
-round-headed man nor Eli were to be seen behind the barrier,
-and no one knew where they could be found. Below, in the
-cross-passages and tunnels, drunken, shouting, half-crazed men
-and hysterical women were milling about. There were shots,
-distant and muffled and some loud and close, the concrete
-underfoot shook with the detonations, and a mixture of smells
--- gunpowder, sweat, smoke, gasoline, perfume, and whiskey --
-coated in the air.
- Squealing and arm-waving teenagers surrounded a big fellow
-who dripped blood and whose pale face shone with a look of
-triumph. Somewhere wild beasts roared menacingly. In the halls,
-the audience was going wild in front of huge screens showing
-somebody blindfolded, firing a spray of bullets from a machine
-gun held against his belly, and someone else sat up to his
-chest in some black and heavy liquid, blue from the cold and
-smoking a crackling cigar, and another one with a
-tension-twisted face, suspended as though cast in stone in some
-sort of web of taut cords...
- Then I found out where Eli was. I saw round-head by a
-dirty room full of old sandbags. He stood in the doorway, his
-face covered with soot, smelling of burnt gunpowder, the pupils
-of his eyes fully distended. Every few seconds he bent down and
-brushed his knees, not hearing me at all, so that I had to
-shake him to make him take notice of me.
- "There is no Eli," he barked. "Gone, do you understand?
-Nothing but smoke -- get it? Twenty kilovolts, one hundred
-amperes, see? He didn't leap far enough!"
- He pushed me away vigorously and took off into the dirty
-room, jumping over the sandbags. Elbowing the curious out of
-the way, he got to a low metal door.
- "Let me through," he howled. "Let me at it once more. God
-favors a third time!"
- The door shut heavily and the mob surged away, stumbling
-and falling over the bags. I didn't wait for him to come out.
-Or not to come out. He was no longer of any use to me. There
-was only Rimeyer left. There was also Vousi, but I couldn't
-count on her. So there was really only Rimeyer. I was not going
-to wake him. I'd wait outside his room.
- The sun was already up and the filthied streets were
-empty.
- The auto-streetcleaners were coming out of their
-underground garages to do their job. All they knew was work;
-they had no potentialities to be developed, but they also had
-no primitive reflexes. Near the Olympic, I had to stop for a
-long chain of red and green men followed by a string of people
-enclosed in some sort of scales, who dragged their shuffling
-feet from one street into the next, leaving behind a stench of
-sweat and paint. I stood and waited for them to pass, while the
-sun had already lit up the huge mass of the hotel and shone
-gaily in the metallic face of Yurkovsky, who, as he had while
-alive, looked out over the heads of all men. After they passed,
-I went into the hotel. The clerk was dozing behind his counter.
-Awaking, he smiled professionally and asked in a cheery voice,
-"Would you like a room?"
- "No," I replied, "I am visiting Rimeyer."
- ' Rimeyer? Excuse me -- room 902?"
- I stopped.
- "I believe so. What's the matter?"
- "I beg your pardon, but he is not in."
- "What do you mean, not in?"
- "He checked out."
- "Can't be, he has been ill. You are not mistaken? Room
-902?"
- "Exactly right, 902, Rimeyer. Our perpetual client. It's
-an hour and a half since he left. More accurately, flew away.
-His friends helped him down and aboard a copter."
- "What friends?" I asked hopelessly.
- "Friends, as I said, but, excuse me, they were
-acquaintances. There were three of them, two of whom I really
-don't know. Just young athletic-looking men. But I do know Mr.
-Pebblebridge, he was our permanent guest. But he signed out --
-today."
- "Pebblebridge?"
- "Exactly. Lately he has been meeting Rimeyer quite often,
-so I concluded that they were quite well acquainted. He stayed
-in room 817. A fairly imposing gentleman, middle-aged,
-red-headed..."
- "Oscar!"
- "Exactly, Oscar Pebblebridge.
- 'That makes sense," I said, trying to keep a hold on
-myself. "You say they helped him?"
- "That's right. He has been very sick and they even sent a
-doctor up: to him yesterday. He was still very weak and the
-young men held him up by his elbows, and almost carried him."
- "And the nurse? He had an attendant nurse with him?"
- "Yes, there was one. But she left right after them -- they
-let her go."
- "And what is your name?"
- "Val, at your service."
- "Listen, Val," I said. "You are sure it didn't look like
-they were taking him away forcibly?"
- I looked hard at him. He blinked in confusion.
- "No," he said. "Although, now that you have mentioned
-it..."
- "All right," I said. "Give me the key to his room and come
-with me."
- Clerks are, as a rule, quite savvy types. Their sense of
-smell, at least for certain things, is quite impressive. It was
-perfectly obvious that he had guessed who I was. And maybe even
-where I came from. He called a porter, whispered something to
-him, and we went up to the ninth floor.
- "What currency did he pay in?" I asked.
- "Who? Pebblebridge?"
- "Yes."
- "I think... ah yes, marks, German marks."
- "And when did he arrive here?"
- "One minute... it will come to me... sixteen marks ...
-precisely four days ago."
- "Did he know that Rimeyer stayed with you?"
- "Excuse me, but I can't say. But the day before yesterday,
-they had dinner together. And yesterday, they had a long talk
-in the foyer. Early in the morning while everybody was still
-up."
- It was unusually clean and tidy in Rimeyer's room. I
-walked about looking over the place. Suitcases stood in the
-closet. The bed was rumpled, but I could see no signs of
-struggle. The bathroom also was clean and tidy. Boxes of Devon
-were stacked on the shelf.
- "What do you think -- should I call the police?" asked the
-clerk.
- "I don't know," I replied. "Check with your
-administration."
- "You understand that I am in doubt again. True, he didn't
-say goodbye. But it all looked completely innocent. He could
-have given me a sign, and I would have understood him -- we
-have known each other a long time. He was pleading Mr.
-Pebblebridge: 'The radio, please don't forget the radio.'"
- The radio lay under the mirror, hidden by a negligently
-thrown towel.
- "Yes?" I said. "And what did Mr. Pebblebridge say to
-that?"
- Mr. Pebblebridge was soothing him, saying, "Of course, of
-course, don't worry..."
- I took the radio, and leaving the bathroom, sat down at
-the desk. The clerk looked back and forth from the radio to me.
- So, I thought, now he knows why I came here. I turned it
-an. It moaned and howled. They all know about slug. No need for
-Eli, nor Rimeyer; you can take anyone at random. This clerk,
-for instance. Right now, for instance. I turned it off and
-said, "Please be good enough to turn on the combo."
- He ran over to it with mincing steps, turned it on, and
-eyed me questioningly.
- "Leave it on that station. A little softer. Thank you."
- "So you don't advise me to call the police?"
- "As you wish."
- "It seemed you had something quite definite in mind when
-you questioned me."
- "It only seemed so," I said coldly. "It's just that I
-dislike Mr. Pebblebridge. But that does not concern you."
- The clerk bowed.
- "I'll stay here for a while, Val," I said. "I have a
-notion that this Mr. Pebblebridge will be back. It won't be
-necessary to announce that I am here. In the meantime, you are
-free to go."
- "Yes, sir," he said.
- When he left, I rang up the service bureau and dictated a
-telegram; "Have found the meaning of life but am lonely brother
-departed unexpectedly come at once Ivan." Then I turned on the
-radio again, and again it howled and screeched. I took off the
-back and pulled out the local oscillator-mixer. It was no
-mixer. It was a slug. A beautiful precision subassembly, of
-obviously mass-produced derivation, and the more I looked at
-it, the more it seemed that somewhere, sometime, long before my
-arrival here, and more than once, I had already seen these
-components in some very familiar device. I attempted to
-recollect where I had seen them, but instead, I remembered the
-room clerk and his face with a weak smile and his
-understanding, commiserating eyes. They are all infected. No,
-they hadn't tried slug -- heaven forbid! They hadn't even seen
-one! It is so indecent! It is the worst of the worst! Not so
-loud, my dear, how can you say that in front of the boy... but
-I've been told it's something out of this world.... Me?... How
-can you think that, you must have a low opinion of me after
-all.... I don't know, they say over at the Oasis, Buba has it,
-but as for myself -- I don't know.... And why not? I am a
-moderate man -- if I feel something is not right, I'll stop....
-Let me have five packets of Devon, we have made up a fishing
-party (hee, hee!). Fifty thousand people. And their friends in
-other towns. And a hundred thousand tourists every year. The
-problem is not with the gang. That's the least of our worries,
-for what does it take to scatter them? The problem is that they
-are all ready, all eager, and there is not the slightest
-prospect of the possibility to prove to them that it is
-terribly frightening, that it is the end, that it is the last
-debasement.
- I clasped the slug in my fist, propped up my head on it,
-and stared at Rimeyer's dress jacket with the ribbon bar on it,
-hanging on the back of the chair. Just like me, he must have
-sat in this chair a few months ago, and also held the slug and
-radio for the second time, and the same warm flick of desire
-wandered through the depths of his consciousness: there is
-nothing to worry about, because now there is light in any
-darkness, sweetness in any grief, joy in any pain....
- ...There, there, said Rimeyer. Now you have got it. You
-just have to be honest with yourself. It is a little shameful
-at first, and then you begin to understand how much time you
-have lost for nothing.... ...Rimeyer, I said, I wasted time not
-for myself. This cannot be done, it simply cannot, it is
-destruction for everyone, you can't replace life with
-dreams.... ...Zhilin, said Rimeyer, when man does something, it
-is always for himself. There may be absolute egotists in this
-world, but perfect altruists are just impossible. If you are
-thinking of death in a bathtub, then, in the first place, we
-are all mortal, and in the second place, if science gave us
-slug, it will see to it that it will be rendered harmless. And
-in the meantime, all that is required is moderation. And don't
-talk to me of the substitution of reality with dreams. You are
-no novice, you know perfectly well that these dreams are also
-part of reality. They constitute an entire world. Why do you
-then call this acquisition ruin?... ...Rimeyer, I said, because
-this world is still illusory, it's all within you, not outside
-of you, and everything you do in it remains in yourself. It is
-the opposite of the real world, it is antagonistic to it.
-People who escape into this illusory world cease to exist in
-the real world. They become as dead. And when everyone enters
-the illusory world -- and you know it could end thus -- the
-history of man will terminate.... ...Zhilin, said Rimeyer,
-history is the history of people. Every man wants to live a
-life which has not been in vain, and slug gives you such a
-life.... Yes, I know that you consider your life as not having
-been in vain without slug, but, admit it, you have never lived
-so luminously, so fully as you have today in the tub. You are a
-bit ashamed to recollect it, and you wouldn't risk recounting
-it to others. Don't. They have their life, you have yours....
-...Rimeyer, I said, all that is true. But the past! Space,
-schools, the struggle with fascists, gangsters -- is all that
-for naught? Forty years for nothing? And the others -- they did
-it all for nothing, too?... ...Zhilin, said Rimeyer, nothing is
-for nothing in history. Some fought and did not live long
-enough to have slug. You fought and lived long enough....
-...Rimeyer, I said, I fear for mankind. This is really the end.
-It's the end of man interacting with nature, the end of the
-interplay of man with society, the end of liaisons among
-individuals, the end of progress, Rimeyer. AU these billions of
-people submerged in. hot water and in themselves... only in
-themselves.... ... Zhilin, said Rimeyer, it's frightening
-because it's unfamiliar. And as for progress -- it will come to
-an end only for the real society, only for the real progress.
-But each separate man will lose nothing, he will only gain,
-since his world will become infinitely brighter, his ties with
-nature, illusory though they may be, will become more
-multifaceted; and ties with society, also illusory but not so
-known to him, will become more powerful and fruitful. And you
-don't have to mourn the end of progress. You do know that
-everything comes to an end. So now comes the end of progress in
-the objective world. Heretofore, we didn't know how if, would
-end, But we know now. We hadn't had time to realize all the
-potential intensity of objective existence, it could be that we
-would have reached such knowledge in a few hundred years, but
-now it has been put in our grasp. Slug brings a gift of
-understanding of our remotest ancestors which you cannot ever
-have in real life. You are simply the prisoner of an obsolete
-ideal, but be logical, the ideal which slug offers you is just
-as beautiful. Hadn't you always dreamed of man with the
-greatest scope of fantasy and gigantic imagination....
-...Rimeyer, I replied, if you only knew how tired I am of
-arguing. All my life I have argued with myself and with others.
-I have always loved to argue, because otherwise life is not
-worth living. But I am tired right now and don't wish to argue
-over slug, of all things.... ...Then go on, Ivan, said
-Rimeyer....
- I inserted the slug into the radio. As he had then, I got
-up. As he did then, I was past thought, past belonging in this
-world, but I still heard him say: don't forget to lock the door
-tight so that you won't be disturbed.
- And then I sat down. ...So that's the way of it, Rimeyer!
-said I. So that's how it went. You surrendered. You closed the
-door tight. And then you sent lying reports to your friends
-that there wasn't any slug. And then again, after hesitating
-but a moment, you sent me to my death so that I wouldn't
-disturb you. Your ideal, Rimeyer, is offal. If man has to
-perform what is base in the name of an ideal, then the worth of
-such ideal is -- less than dross....
- I glanced at the watch and shoved the radio in my pocket.
-I was past waiting for Oscar. I was hungry. And beyond that I
-had the feeling that for once I had done something useful in
-this town. I left my phone number with the room clerk -- in
-case Oscar or Rimeyer should return -- and went out onto the
-plaza. I did not believe that Rimeyer would come back or even
-that I would ever see him again, but Oscar could hold to his
-promise, though more likely, I would have to seek him out. And
-probably not alone. And probably not here.
-
-<ul><a name=12></a><h2>Chapter TWELVE</h2></ul>
-
- There was but one visitor in the automated cafe.
-Barricaded behind bottles and hors d'oeuvres at a corner table
-sat a dark man of oriental cast, magnificently but outlandishly
-dressed. I took some yogurt and blintzes with sour cream and
-set to, glancing at him now and then. He ate and drank much and
-avidly, his face shiny with sweat, hot inside his ridiculous
-formal clothes. He sighed, leaning back in his chair and
-loosening his belt. The motion exposed a long yellow holster
-glistening in the sunlight under the clothing.
- I was on my way into the last of the blintzes when he
-hailed me: "Hello," he said. "Are you a native here?"
- "No," I said. "A tourist."
- "So that means you don't understand anything either."
- I went to the bar, threw a juice cocktail together, and
-approached him.
- "Why is it empty here?" he continued. He had a lively
-spare face and a bold gaze. "Where are the inhabitants? Why is
-everything closed up? Everyone is asleep, you can't get any
-service."
- "You just arrived?"
- "Yes."
- He pushed an empty plate away, moved up a full one, and
-gulped some light beer.
- "Where are you from?" I asked. He glared at me menacingly,
-and I added quickly, "If it's not a secret, of course."
- "No," he said, "it's not a secret," and went back to his
-eating.
- I finished the juice and got ready to leave. Then he said,
-"They live well, the dogs. Such food and as much as you want,
-and all for free."
- "Well, not quite for free," I contradicted.
- "Ninety dollars! Pennies! I'll show them how to eat ninety
-dollars within three days!" His eyes stopped roving
-momentarily, "D-dogs!" he muttered and fell to again.
- I was quite familiar with such types. They came from
-minuscule, totally milked kingdoms and prefectdoms, reduced to
-utter poverty, and greedily ate and drank, mindful of the hot
-dusty streets of their home towns, where in the niggardly
-ribbons of shade, moribund men and women lay dying and
-immobile, while children with distended bellies rummaged in the
-garbage piles of foreign consulates. They were surcharged with
-hatred and needed only two things -- food and weapons. Food for
-their own gang, which was the opposition, and weapons to fight
-the other gang, which was in power. They were the most flaming
-patriots, who spoke hotly and effusively of their love for the
-people, but resolutely refused all help from without, because
-they loved nothing but their power and no one but themselves,
-and were ready in the name of the people and the victory of
-high principles to mortify the same people, right down to the
-last man, if necessary, with hunger and machine gun.
-Microhitlers!
- "Weapons? Food?" I asked.
- He grew wary.
- "Yes," he said. "Food and weapons. Only without any silly
-conditions. And as free as possible. Or on credit. True
-patriots never have any money. While the ruling clique drowns
-in luxury...."
- "Famine?" I asked.
- "Anything you want. While you here swim in luxury." He
-gazed at me with hatred. "The whole world is drowning in wealth
-and we alone are starving. But your hopes are in vain! The
-revolution cannot be stopped!"
- "Yes," I said. "And whom is the revolution against?"
- "We are fighting the blood leeches of Boadshah! We are
-against corruption and debauchery of the ruling top layer, we
-are for freedom and true democracy. The people are with us, but
-they have to be fed. And you tell us that you'll give us food
-only after we disarm. And even threaten intervention.... What
-filthy, lying demagogy! What deception of the revolutionary
-masses! To disarm in the face of those bloodsuckers -- that
-means to throw a hangman's noose over the heads of all the true
-freedom fighters! We answer you -- no! You will not deceive the
-people. Let Boadshah and his brutes disarm! Then we shall see
-what needs doing!"
- "Yes," I said. "But Boadshah also, in all probability,
-does not wish a noose thrown over his neck."
- He put the beer down savagely, and his hand moved toward
-the holster in a habitual gesture. But then he quickly caught
-himself.
- "I should have known you don't understand a damn thing,"
-he said. "You who are well fed have grown drowsy from a full
-stomach, you are too conceited to understand us. You wouldn't
-have dared to talk to me like that in the jungle."
- In the jungle, I would have talked differently to you,
-bandit, I thought, and said:
- "I really don't understand many things. For instance, I
-don't understand what will happen when you gain the upper hand.
-Let us imagine that you have won, Boadshah has been hanged, if
-be, in his turn, hasn't fled to seek food and weapons --"
- "He won't get away. He'll get his just deserts. The
-revolutionary people will tear him to shreds. That's when we'll
-go to work. We will regain the territory seized from us by
-affluent neighbors, we will carry out the entire program which
-the lying Boadshah constantly shouts about to deceive the
-people.... I'll show them how to strike! They'll learn about
-strikes with me on top -- there'll be no strikes! They'll all
-go under arms and forward march! We will win and then..."
- He shut his eyes and moaned a bit, shaking his head.
- "And then you will be well fed, you will swim in luxury
-and sleep till noon?"
- He laughed.
- "I deserve that. The people deserve it. No one will dare
-reproach us. We will eat and drink as much as we wish, we will
-live in real houses, we will say to the people: now you are
-free -- divert yourselves!"
- "And don't think about a thing," I added. "But don't you
-think that all that could come out badly for you?"
- "Forget it," he said. "That's sheer demagogy. You are a
-demagogue. Also a dogmatist. We too have all kinds of
-dogmatists similar to yourself. Man, they say, will lose the
-meaning of life. No, we reply, man will lose nothing. Man will
-acquire and not lose. You have to feel the people. You have to
-be from the people yourself. The people don't like sophists.
-What the hell for do I let myself be fed on by wood leeches and
-feed on worms myself?" Suddenly he smiled amiably. "You must
-have taken offense at me a bit, for calling you well fed and
-other things. Please don't. Affluence is bad when you don't
-have it, but your neighbor does. But achieved affluence --
-that's a great thing! It's worth fighting for. Everybody fought
-for it. It must be obtained with weapons in hand, and not
-traded for freedom and democracy."
- "So your final goal is still abundance? Just abundance?"
- "Obviously! The final objective always is abundance. The
-difference is that we are choosy about the means to get it."
- "I have already grasped that. But what about man?"
- "What do you mean, man?"
- I did understand that it was futile to argue.
- "You have never been here before?" I asked.
- "Why?"
- "Look into it, I said. This town gives excellent practical
-lessons in abundance."
- He shrugged his shoulders.
- "So far, I like it here." Again he pushed away an empty
-plate and replaced it with a full one. "These hors d'oeuvres
-are strange to me.... Everything is tasty and cheap.... It's
-enviable." He swallowed a few forkfuls of salad and growled.
-"We know that all great revolutionaries fought for abundance.
-We don't have time to theorize, but there is no need for it,
-anyway. There are enough theories without us. Furthermore,
-abundance is in no way threatening us. It won't threaten us for
-quite a while yet. We have much more pressing problems."
- "To hang Boadshah," I said.
- "Yes -- to begin with. Next we will need to do away with
-the dogmatists. I can perceive that even now. Next comes the
-realization of our legitimate claims. After that, something
-else will come up. And only then, and after many other things,
-will abundance arrive. I am an optimist, but I don't believe I
-will live to see it. Don't you worry -- we'll manage somehow.
-If we can stand hunger then we can take abundance for sure....
-The dogmatists prattle that abundance is not an end, but a
-means. We reply that every means was once an goal. Today,
-abundance is a goal. Tomorrow, perhaps it may become a means."
- I got up.
- "Tomorrow may be too late," I said. "It is incorrect of
-you to fall back on great revolutionaries. They would not have
-accepted your shibboleth: now you are free -- enjoy yourselves.
-They spoke otherwise: now that you are free -- work. After all,
-they never fought for abundance for the belly, they were
-interested in abundance for the soul and the mind."
- His hand twitched toward the holster again, and again he
-caught himself.
- "A Marxist!" he said with astonishment. "But then again,
-you are a visitor. We have almost no Marxists, we take them
-and..."
- I kept control of myself.
- Passing by the window, I took another look at him. He sat
-with his back to the street and ate and ate, his elbows stuck
-out.
- When I got home, the living room was already vacant. The
-youngsters had piled the bedsheets and pillows in the corner.
-There was a note under the telephone on the desk. Written in a
-childish scrawl, it read: "Take care. She has plotted
-something. She was fussing in the bedroom." I sighed and sat
-down in the armchair.
- There was still an hour until the meeting with Oscar,
-assuming he came. There was no sense in going to sleep, but in
-addition, it might not be safe -- Oscar could bring company,
-and come earlier than expected, possibly not through the door.
-I got the pistol out of the suitcase, put in a clip, and
-dropped it in my side pocket. Next I climbed into the bar,
-brewed myself some coffee, and went back to the study.
- I took the slug out of my radio and the one out of
-Rimeyer's, lay them down in front of me on the table, and
-attempted again to recollect where indeed I had seen just such
-components and why I thought that I had seen them before and
-more than once. And then it came to me. I went into the bedroom
-and brought in the phonor. I didn't even need a screwdriver. I
-took the case off the phonor, stuck my index finger under the
-odorizer horn, and, catching it with my finger nail, extracted
-a vacuum tubusoid FX-92-U, four outputs, static field, capacity
-equals two. Sold in consumer electronic stores at fifty cents
-each. In local patois -- a slug.
- It had to be, I thought. We are disoriented by
-conversations about a new drug. We are constantly derailed by
-talk about horrific new inventions. We have already made
-several similar blunders.
- There was the time when Alhagana and Burris served up a
-complaint in the U.N. that the separatists were using a new
-type of weapon -- freeze bombs. We threw ourselves furiously
-into a search for underground laboratories and even arrested
-two genuine underground inventors (sixteen and ninety-six years
-old, respectively). And then it turned out that the inventors
-were in no way connected, and the awful freeze bombs were
-acquired by the separatists in Munich from a refrigerator
-warehouse -- and were in fact reject super-freezers. True, the
-effect of these super-freezers was indeed horrible. Used in
-conjunction with molecular detonators (widely used by undersea
-archaeologists in the Amazon for dispersing crocs and
-piranhas), the super-freezers were capable of instantaneous
-temperature depression of one hundred and fifty degrees
-centigrade over a radius of twenty meters. Afterward, we spent
-much effort indoctrinating ourselves with the concept that we
-should keep in mind that in our times, literally every month,
-masses of new inventions appear with the most peaceful of
-applications, but with the most unexpected side effects. These
-characteristics are often such that lawbreaking in the area of
-weapons manufacture and stockpiling becomes meaningless. We
-became extremely cautious about new types of armament, employed
-by various extremists, and only a year later got caught by
-another twist, when we went looking for a mysterious apparatus
-with which poachers lured pterodactyls from the Uganda Preserve
-at a great distance. We found a clever do-it-yourself
-adaptation of the "Up-down" toy in combination with a fairly
-generally available medical device.
- And now we had caught slug -- a combination of a standard
-radio with a standard tubusoid and a standard chemical and very
-common plumbing-supplied hot water.
- To make a long story short, there would be no need to
-search for secret factories. We'd have to look for some very
-adroit and unprincipled speculators who sensed very delicately
-indeed that they found themselves in the Country of the
-Boob.... They'd be like trichinae in a ham. Five or six
-enterprising self-seekers. An innocent cottage somewhere in the
-suburbs. Just go to a department store, buy the vacuum tubusoid
-for fifty cents, peel off the plastic wrapping, and place in an
-elegant box with a glassite cover. And then sell it for fifty
-marks -- "only to you and only through friends." True, there
-was still the inventor. Probably he was not alone, and most
-certainly he was not the only one.... But probably they had not
-survived; for this was nothing like a lure for pterodactyls.
-Anyway, was the matter really one of speculators? Let them sell
-another forty slugs, or a hundred. Even in the City of Boobs,
-people had to figure out in the end what it was all about. And
-when that happened, slug would spread like wildfire.
- The first ones to see to that would be the moralists from
-the Joy of Living. They would be followed by Dr. Opir, who
-would sally forth and announce that according to scientific
-endings, slug was conducive to clarity of thought and was
-unsurpassed in the treatment of alcoholism and depression. In
-general, the future ideal was a vast trough filled with hot
-water. Then they would stop writing the word "slug" on the
-fences.
- That's who should be taken by the throat, I thought, if
-anybody. The trouble is not the profiteers. The trouble is that
-there exists this Country of the Boob, this filthy
-misconstruction. It has taken the shivers under its wing and
-can't wait to legalize slug....
- There was a knock on the door. Oscar came into the study,
-and he was not alone. With him was Matia himself, stocky, gray,
-with dark glasses and thick cane, as always, looking like a
-veteran who has lost his sight. Oscar was smirking
-self-satisfiedly.
- "Hello, Ivan," said Matia. "Meet your back-up, Oscar
-Pebblebridge, from the southwest section."
- We shook hands. What I have always disliked about our
-Security Council is the plethora of mossy traditions, and
-especially infuriating is the idiotic system of
-cross-investigation, due to which we are constantly tripping
-over each other's sleuthing, busting each other's mugs, and not
-uncommonly shooting each other with fair accuracy. I can hardly
-see that as serious work -- more like adolescents playing at
-detectives. Let them go soak their heads in a swamp.
- "I was going to take you in today," confided Oscar. "Never
-in my life have I seen such a suspicious character."
- Without saying a word, I took the pistol out of my pocket,
-unloaded it, and threw it in the desk drawer. Oscar followed my
-actions with approval. I said, addressing Matia, "I guess that
-the investigation would simply collapse, without getting
-started, had I known about Oscar. But I must inform you that I
-almost maimed him yesterday."
- "I read you right," said Oscar smugly.
- Grunting, Matia lowered himself into the armchair.
- "I can't ever remember a situation," he said, "when Ivan
-was pleased with everything. But conspiracy is the foundation
-of our business.... Take a chair and sit down, both of you.
-You, Oscar, had no right to be maimed, and you, Ivan, had no
-right to be arrested. That's how you should regard it. And what
-have you got here?" he said, taking off his dark glasses to
-look at the slugs, "Taking up radio as a hobby in between your
-work? Laudable, laudable!"
- It was evident that they didn't know a thing. Oscar was
-leafing through his notebook, where everything was encrypted in
-his own personal code, and was apparently preparing himself to
-make a report, while Matia scanned over the slugs with his
-fleshy nose, holding the glasses aloft in his hand. There was
-something symbolic in this spectacle.
- "And so, agent Zhilin is enriching his leisure with radio
-technology," continued Matia, restoring his glasses and leaning
-back in his chair. "He has lots of free time, he has switched
-to a four-hour day.... And bow do you stand on the question of
-the meaning of life, agent Zhilin? It appears you may have
-found it. I hope it won't be necessary to take you away like
-agent Rimeyer?"
- "It won't be required," I said. "I had not enough time to
-become addicted. Did Rimeyer tell you anything?"
- "But of course not," he said with vast sarcasm. "Why
-should he do that? He was ordered to find the drug, and he did,
-and he used it, and now he apparently considers his duty
-discharged. He became an addict himself, don't you see. He is
-silent. He is loaded with this brew up to his ears, and it's
-useless to talk to him! He raves that he has murdered you and
-constantly asks for his radio." Matia stopped short and gazed
-at the radios. "Strange," he said and looked at me. "However, I
-like orderliness. Oscar got here first, and he has certain
-deductions both about the goodies and the conduct of the
-operation. Let's begin with him."
- I looked at Oscar.
- "About what operation?"
- "The devil knows," said Matia.
- "The raiding of the center. You haven't located the center
-yet?"
- The hunt is on, I thought, and said, "No, I didn't. A
-center I haven't latched on to. But --"
- "All in good order, in proper order," said Matia severely
-and banged the table with the flat of his hand. "Oscar, you may
-begin, and as for you, Ivan, you listen attentively and make
-your deductions. If you are still capable, that is."
- Oscar began. Obviously he was a good worker. He moved
-fast, energetically, and purposefully. True, Rimeyer had
-twisted him around his finger as well as he had me.
-Nevertheless, Oscar had been able to grasp much in spite of it.
-He understood that the sought-for "goodies" were known locally
-as "slug." Very rapidly he had grasped the connection between
-slug and Devon. He divined that neither the Fishers, nor the
-Perches, nor the Sorrowers had any relation to our problem. He
-had deduced with superb insight that in this town it was
-practically impossible to hide any secret. He had even been
-able to insinuate himself into the confidence of the Intels,
-and had established beyond any doubt that there were only two
-truly secret societies -- the Art Patrons and the Intels. Since
-the Art Patrons could be eliminated, that left only the
-Intels....
- "It was not contrary to the conviction which I had
-formed," said Oscar, "that the only people with access to
-laboratories and capable of conducting scientific or
-quasi-scientific research were the students and professors in
-the university. It's true that the factories in the city also
-have laboratories. There are only four of them, and I have
-investigated them all. These laboratories are stringently
-specialized and are loaded to the limit with ongoing work. As
-the factories work around the clock, there is no basis
-whatsoever to postulate that the industrial labs could become
-centers of slug manufacture. On the other hand, out of the
-seven university labs, two are obviously surrounded with an
-atmosphere of mystery. I was unable to determine what goes on
-in them, but I spotted three students, who, I believe, should
-know for sure...."
- I listened to him intently, amazed at how much he had been
-able to accomplish here, but it was already all too clear to me
-where his main error lay. I could see he was following a false
-trail, and alongside of that, there grew within me a vague
-feeling of an even more significant error, of a most important
-error, the error in the underlying premises of the Council.
- "I arrived at the visualization," he continued, "of a
-gangsterlike organization of the vertical type with rigorously
-separated functions in decentralized sections. The production
-section is involved in the manufacture and perfection of the
-slug.... I should inform you that slug, whatever it may be, is
-being perfected: I was able to establish that in the beginning.
-Devon was not employed at all.... Next, the marketing section
-is concerned with expanding the slug distribution, while the
-strong-arm section terrorizes the population and interdicts all
-debate on that topic.... The intimidation of the people..."
- Now I understood it all.
- "Just a minute, Oscar," I said. "Can you guarantee that in
-the entire city there are only two secret organizations?"
- "Yes," he said. "Only the Art Patrons and the Intels."
- "Please continue, Oscar," said Matia with displeasure. "I
-would ask you not to interrupt, Ivan."
- "Sorry," I said. Oscar continued to talk, but I was no
-longer listening. Something flared in my mind. The traditional
-initial model for all our undertakings, with its invariant
-axiom predicating the existence of a ramified organization of
-evildoers, had been shattered into dust, and I was only amazed
-that I had failed heretofore to recognize its inane complexity
-in the context of this simple-minded country. There were no
-secret shops guarded by gloomy persons with brass knuckles,
-there were no wary, unprincipled businessmen, there were no
-traveling salesmen with double-walled shirt collars stuffed
-with contraband, and it was quite for nothing that Oscar was
-drafting the elegant chart of squares and circles, connected by
-a confusion of lines, and inscribed with the words "center,"
-"staff," and numerous question marks. There was nothing to
-demolish and be and no one to send off to Baffin Land.... But
-there was modern industry involved in everyday trade, there
-were state stores where slugs were sold for fifty cents apiece,
-and there were -- but only in the beginning one or two
-individuals not devoid of inventiveness and dying of inactivity
-and thirsting for new sensations. And there was the
-medium-sized country where, once upon a time, abundance and
-affluence were the end to be attained, and they never did
-become the means to another end. And that was all that was
-needed.
- Someone inserted a slug into a radio by mistake and lay
-down in the bath to relax and maybe listen to some good music
-or to hear the latest news -- and it started. The news oozed
-and remnants of phonors found their way into the garbage ducts,
-then someone figured out that slugs could be obtained not only
-from phonors, but could simply be bought in stores. Someone was
-inspired to use aromatic salts and someone employed Devon.
-People started to die in their baths from nervous exhaustion,
-and the statistical department of the Security Council
-submitted a top secret report to the Presidium. It became
-apparent at once that all such deaths occurred with people who
-had come here as tourists. And furthermore, that there were far
-more such deaths in this country than anywhere else on the
-planet. As so often happens, a false theory was constructed on
-well-verified facts, and we, one after another, well schooled
-in conspiracy, were sent here to uncover the secret gang of
-dealers in a new and unknown drug, and we arrived here and did
-stupid things. But, as always, no labor goes for naught, and if
-you must look for the guilty, then all were guilty, from the
-mayor to Rimeyer, and if so, then no one was guilty, and now we
-have to --
- "Ivan," said Matia irritably, "are you asleep?"
- They were both looking at me. Oscar was extending me his
-notebook with the diagrams. I took the notebook and threw it on
-the table.
- "Listen," I said. "Oscar has done wonders, of course, but
-we have come a cropper again! Oscar, you have seen such a lot,
-but you understood nothing. If there are any people in this
-land who hate slug, it's the Intels. The Intels are not
-gangsters, they are desperate men and patriots. They have but
-one aim -- to stir this bog. By any means. To give this city
-some kind of purpose, to force it away from the trough They are
-sacrificing themselves, do you understand? They invite fire
-upon themselves, they are attempting to arouse the town to come
-sort of common emotion, even if it has to be hatred. Can it be
-you haven't heard of the tear gas, the shooting up of the
-shivers? They are not making slug in the laboratories, they are
-building bombs and cooking tear gas ... and generally breaking
-the laws on weapons technology. They are preparing a putsch for
-the twenty-eighth, but as for slug -- here it is!"
- I shoved one at each of them, and simultaneously expounded
-everything I thought on the subject.
- At first, they listened to me in disbelief. Then they
-stared at the slugs, not taking their eyes off them until I'd
-finished, and when I did, they were quiet for quite a while.
-Matia held his slug as though it were a buzzing wasp. There was
-displeasure written on his face.
- "Vacuum tubusoid... Hmmm... In fact... and radios ...
-there is something to it."
- Matia stuck the slug in his shirt pocket and announced
-decisively, "There is nothing in it. That is, of course, I am
-very pleased with you, Ivan, since you have apparently found
-that which was needed, but your work is in the Council and not
-with the Commission of World Problems. They adore philosophy
-there, and haven't done a single useful thing to date. As for
-you, you have been working with us for ten years now, but you
-still haven't grasped the simple truth: if there is a crime,
-there must be a criminal."
- 'That's not true," I said.
- "That is true!" said Matia. "Don't start a debate with me!
-You are eternally debating!... Be quiet, Oscar. It's my turn to
-talk. I am asking you, Ivan, what is the worth of your version?
-What do you propose to do? But be concrete, please! Be
-concrete!"
- "Concretely..." I faltered.
- True enough, my version did not suit them.
- They probably didn't even consider it a version.
- For them it was just philosophizing. They were men, so to
-say, of resolute action, knights of immediate decisive
-measures., They let nothing slide. They cut through knots and
-demounted Damocles' swords. They made rapid decisions, and
-having made them, they no longer doubted. They didn't know how
-to be otherwise. That was their world-view -- and I was the
-only one to consider that their time had passed. Patience, I
-thought. I am going to need an awful lot of patience. Suddenly,
-I understood that life's logic was again ripping me away from
-my best comrades, and that now it would be especially hard for
-me, since the resolution of this argument would take a long
-time, a very long time.... They were both looking at me.
- "Concretely," I repeated. "Concretely I suggest a plan for
-the development and spread of a humanistic viewpoint in this
-country."
- Oscar grimaced with distaste, and Matia said biliously:
- "Nah! I am talking seriously."
- "So am I. What we need is not detectives, nor squads armed
-with machine pistols."
- "We need a decision!" said Matia, "not conversations, but
-decisions!"
- 'That's precisely what I am proposing -- a decision."
- Matia reddened
- "We have to save people," he said. "Souls we can save
-after we save the people.... Don't annoy me, Ivan!"
- "While you are restructuring world-views," said Oscar,
-"people will be dying or turning into idiots."
- I didn't want to argue, but said anyway, "As long as
-world-views are not restructured, people will be dying and
-turning into idiots, and no squads will help. Remember
-Rimeyer!"
- "Rimeyer forgot his duty," raged Matia.
- "Exactly," said I.
- Matia slammed his mouth shut and, tearing off his glasses,
-was silent for a while, his eyes rotating angrily. He was,
-without a doubt, a man of iron; you could actually watch turn
-drive his rage inward. In a minute he was entirely calm and
-smiling placidly.
- "Yes," he said. "It seems that I am forced to admit that
-intelligence as a social institution has regressed to the
-piteous end. Apparently we destroyed the last of the true
-operatives in the time of the last putsches. "Knife" --
-Dannziger; "Bamboo" -- Savada; "Doll" -- Grover; "Ram" --
-Boas... True, they were bought and they were sold, they had no
-country, they were scum, lumpens, but they worked! "Sirius" --
-Haram... worked for four intelligences and was a scoundrel. He
-was a filthy animal. But if he gave information, it was real
-information, clear, precise, and timely. I can recollect
-ordering him hung without the slightest pity, but when I look
-at my current co-workers, I can understand what a loss
- that was.... Granted, a man can fail in the end and become
-a drug addict, as "Bamboo" Savada did finally. But why write
-lying reports? Rather resign, excuse yourself, don't write any
-reports at all.... I arrive in this town in the profound
-conviction that I know it through and through, because I have
-had here for ten years an experienced, proved, resident agent.
-And suddenly I determine that I know precisely nothing. Every
-local kid knows who the Fishers are. But I don't know. I know
-only that the KVS Society which occupied itself with about the
-same things as the Fishers was disbanded and outlawed three
-years ago. I know this from the reports of the resident. But at
-the local police I am informed that the VAL Society was formed
-two years ago, which I did not learn from the resident's
-reports. I am employing a simplified example, since I really
-don't give a damn about the Fishers, but this becomes
-transformed into a general style of work. Reports are delayed,
-reports lie, reports misinform... in the end reports are simply
-invented. One man openly resigns from the Council and doesn't
-consider it incumbent upon him to so inform his superior. He
-has enough, you see; he had intentions to communicate but
-somehow couldn't find the time.... Another, instead of fighting
-the drug problem, becomes an addict himself.... And the third
-philosophizes."
- He nodded at me with regretful bitterness.
- "Understand me correctly, Ivan," he continued. "I am not
-opposed to philosophy. But philosophy is one thing and our work
-altogether another. Judge for yourself, Ivan. If there is no
-secret headquarters, if we are faced with a deluge of
-do-it-yourself enterprise, then why all the secretiveness? All
-this conspiratorial atmosphere? Why is slug enveloped in such
-mystery? I allow that Rimeyer is silent because of pangs of
-conscience in general and specifically on your account, Ivan.
-But the rest? Slug is not illegal; everyone knows about it and
-yet everyone keeps it a secret. Oscar, here, doesn't
-philosophize; he postulates that the inhabitants are simply
-terrorized. I can understand that. And what do you postulate,
-Ivan?"
- "In your pocket," I said, "there is a slug. Go in the
-bathroom. There's Devon on the shelf -- one tablet orally, four
-in the water. There's some whiskey in the medicine chest. Oscar
-and I will wait. And then you can tell us aloud, so we can
-hear, we your comrades in work and your underlings, about your
-sensations and experiences. And we -- better it should be Oscar
--- should listen, but as for me, I think I'll leave."
- Matia put on his glasses and stared at me.
- "You are implying that I won't tell? You propose that I,
-too, will be derelict in my duty?"
- "What you will learn will have no relation whatsoever to
-your duty. That you will renege on subsequently. As did
-Rimeyer. Comrades, this is slug. It's a cute device, which
-awakens fantasy and directs it where it will, particularly
-where you yourself subconsciously -- and I mean subconsciously
--- would like to direct it. The further you are removed from
-the animal, the more inoffensive would slug be, but the closer
-to the animal, the more you would be impelled to adhere to the
-conspiratorial way. The animals themselves are altogether
-silent. They just know how to press the lever."
- "What lever?"
- I explained about the rats to them.
- "Did you try it yourself?" asked Matia.
- "Yes."
- "And?"
- "As you can see, I tend to silence."
- Matia sibilated for some time and then said, "Well, I am
-no nearer to the animal than you are. How do you put it in?"
- I loaded the radio and handed it to him. Oscar was
-following all this with interest.
- "God be with me," said Matia, "Where is your bath? I'll
-wash after my trip while I'm at it."
- He locked himself in, and we could hear him dropping
-things.
- "Strange affair," said Oscar.
- "It's really not an affair," I contradicted. "It's a piece
-of history, Oscar, and you would like to fit it into a file and
-tie it with a ribbon. But this is no gangster business. It
-should be obvious to a hedgehog, as Yurkovsky used to say."
- "Who?"
- "Yurkovsky, Vladimir Sergeyevitch. There was such a
-renowned planetologist. I worked with him."
- "Aah," said Oscar, "By the way, on the plaza by the Hotel
-Olympic there is a monument to a Yurkovsky."
- "The very same man."
- "Really?" said Oscar. "On the other hand, it's quite
-possible. However, the monument was not put up because he was a
-renowned planetologist. It's simply that for the first time in
-the history of the city, he broke the electronic roulette bank.
-It was decided to immortalize such a feat."
- "I expected something of the sort," I murmured. I felt
-depressed.
- The shower began to hiss in the bathroom, and there was a
-frightful roar from Matia, At first, I decided that he turned
-on ice water instead of warm, but he kept yelling and then
-began to curse in the most horrendous terms. Oscar and I
-exchanged glances. He was generally calm, interpreting this as
-the typical action of slug, and his face exhibited a
-compassionate expression. The latch rattled wildly, the door
-flew open with a crash. Bare heels slapped in the bedroom, and
-a naked Matia rolled into the study.
- "Are you some kind of an idiot?" he bellowed at me. "What
-sort of filthy trick is this?"
- I went numb. Matia resembled a grotesque zebra. His
-well-fed body was covered with poison-green vertical stripes.
-He reared and stamped his feet, spraying emerald drops. When we
-regained our composure and investigated the site of the
-accident, we learned that the shower head had been stuffed with
-a sponge saturated with a green dye. I remembered Len's note
-and guessed that Vousi was the culprit. It took a long while to
-restore a normal atmosphere. Matia viewed the incident as a
-boorish joke and an inadmissible disregard of subordinate
-discipline and behavior. Oscar horse-laughed. I scrubbed Matia
-with a brush and explained. Then Matia announced that from now
-on he wouldn't trust anyone and would try out slug when he got
-home. He dressed and went into conference with Oscar on the
-plans for blockading the city.
- I was cleaning up in the bath and thinking that with this,
-my work in the Council was coming to an end, and another kind
-of work was beginning -- which I did not know how to begin. I
-would have liked to include myself in the blockade planning,
-not because I considered it necessary, but because it was so
-simple, so much more simple than to return to people their
-souls which had been devoured by affluence, and to teach each
-one to think of world problems in the same way as his own
-personal ones.
- "Isolate this pus bag from the rest of the world, isolate
-it totally, that's the total of our philosophy," orated Matia.
-That was aimed at me. But perhaps not even me. For Matia was a
-brilliant mind. He understood too well that isolation was
-always a defense, but here we had to attack. But he knew how to
-advance only with squads, and this was embarrassing to him.
- To rescue. For how long would you need rescuing? When
-would you learn to rescue yourselves? Why were you eternally
-harkening to priests, fascists, demagogues, and imbecile Opirs?
-Why didn't you want to exert your brains? Why did you resist
-thinking so? Why couldn't you understand that the world is
-vast, complex, and fascinating? Why was everything simple and
-boring tc you? In what way did your mind differ from the mind
-of Rabelais, Swift, Lenin, Einstein, Makarenko, Hemingway, and
-Strogoff? Someday I would grow tired of all this. Someday when
-I had no more strength and conviction. For I was similar to
-you. But I wanted to help you, and you didn't want to help
-me....
- <i>Reg and Len came over after school, and Len said, "We
-have decided, Ivan. We will go to the Gobi Central." He had red
-fuzz on his lip and huge red hands, and I could see that it
-divas he who had thought up the Gobi trip, and quite recently
--- not more than ten minutes ago. Reg, as usual, was silent,
-chewing on a blade of grass and placidly studying me with his
-calm gray eyes. He has become altogether a square, I thought,
-and said, "Wonderful book, isn't it?" "Yes, indeed," said Len.
-"We understood at once where we should go." Reg was quiet.
-"Heat and stench are suspended in the shadow of these hard
-laboring dragons," I said from memory. "They devour everything
-under them -- the ancient Mongolian prayer gate, the bones of a
-two-humped beast fallen in some sand storm..." "Yes," said Len,
-while Reg went on chewing his blade of grass. "Every time," I
-continued (now from Ichin-dagli), "that the sun arrives at a
-mathematically precise required position, a strange mirage
-blossoms out in the East -- of a strange city with white towers
-which no one has yet seen in reality. " "One should see that
-with his own eyes," said Len, and laughed. "Friend Len," I
-said, "it's too fascinating and therefore too simple. You will
-see that it's too simple yourself and it will become an
-unpleasant disappointment." No, I hadn't said it right. "Friend
-Len," I said, "what sort of a mirage is that? Here is one.
-Seven years ago, in your mother's house, I saw a truly
-marvelous mirage: both of you standing before me almost grown
-up..." No -- I was saying that for myself, not for them. It
-should be said differently. "Friend Len," I said, "seven years
-ago you explained to me that your people were accursed. We came
-here and removed the curse from you and Reg and from many other
-children who had no parents. And now it's your turn to remove,
-the curse, which..."
- It will be very difficult, but I'll explain it to them.
-One way or another, I'll get it across. We have known from
-childhood how to remove the curses on the barricades and on
-construction sites and in laboratories, and you will remove the
-last of the curses, you will be the future teachers and
-educators. In the last war -- the most bloodless and the most
-difficult for its soldiers.</i>
- Upstairs Vousi screeched and Len started to cry piteously.
-Oscar's voice boomed in the study. How well off he is, I
-thought. Simple: slug is bad, harmful, unnatural. Therefore, it
-must be destroyed, forbidden by law, and then you must watch
-closely that the law is strictly enforced. Only Matia is
-smarter than that, because he is older and more experienced.
-Matia can still be pulled over to my side. My word doesn't mean
-anything to him, but others will be found to whom he will
-listen.... How wonderful that I can now cry out to the whole
-world and be heard by millions of like-thinkers!
- And then I thought that I would not leave this place. I
-had been here only three days. It could not be that there was
-no one here who would be with us. No one who hated all this
-with a deadly hatred, who wanted to blast this dull sated world
-out of its stasis. Such people always existed and always will.
-Perhaps that bibliophile driver or that tall, harsh one of the
-Intels... and who knew how many more. They stumbled about as
-though they were blind. We would do everything in our power to
-help them so that they would not waste their anger on trifles.
-It was our place to be here now. And my place, too.
- What a labor lies ahead, I thought, what a task! For the
-time being, I didn't know where to begin in this Country of the
-Boob, caught unprepared in a flood of affluence, but I knew
-that I wouldn't leave here as long as the immigration laws
-permitted. And when they stopped permitting it, I would break
-them....
projects / libcds.git / blobdiff