Chapter 2

I woke up in the middle of the night because a conversation was going on in the room. Two voices were talking in a barely audible whisper. They were very similar, but one was a bit stifled and hoarse and the other betrayed an extreme irritation.

“Stop wheezing,” whispered the irritated one. “Can’t you do without it?”

“I can,” responded the stifled one, and began to hack.

“Be quiet!” hissed the irritated voice.

“It’s the wheezes,” explained the stifled one. “The morning cough of the smoker… ” He started hacking again.

“Get out of here,” said the irritated one.

“He is asleep, in any case…”

“Who is he? Where did he come from?”

“How should I know?”

“What a disgusting development… such phenomenal bad luck.”

Again the neighbors can’t get to sleep, I thought, half awake. I imagined I was at home. I have these neighbors there, two brother physicists, who adore working through the night. Toward two A.M. they run out of cigarettes and then they invade my room and start feeling about for them, banging the furniture and cursing at each other.

I grabbed the pillow and flung it at random. Something fell with a crash, and then silence ensued.

“You can return my pillow,” I said, “and welcome to leave. The cigarettes are on the table.”

The sound of my own voice awakened me completely. I sat up. Somewhere dogs were barking despondently; behind the wall the old woman snored menacingly. At last I remembered where I was. There was nobody in the room.

In the dim light I saw the pillow on the floor and the trash that had fallen from the wardrobe. The old crone will have my head, I thought, jumping up. The floor was icy and I stepped over on the runners. The snoring stopped. I froze. The floorboards creaked; something crackled and rustled in the corners. The crone gave a deafening whistle and continued her snoring. I picked up the pillow and threw it on the sofa. The trash smelled of dog. The hanger rod had fallen off its support on one side. I re-hung it and began picking up the old trash. No sooner had I hung up the last coat, than the pole came away again and, sliding along the wallpaper, hung by one nail again. The crone stopped snoring and I turned cold with sweat. Somewhere, nearby, a cock crowed loudly. To the soup pot with you, I thought venomously. The crone behind the wall set to turning, the bedspring snapping and creaking. I waited, standing on one foot.

Someone in the yard said softly, “Time for bed; we have sat up too long today.” The voice was youthful and female.

“So be it, it’s off to sleep,” responded the other voice. There was a protracted yawn.

“No more splashing for you today?”

“It’s too cold. Let’s go bye-bye.”

All was quiet. The old hag growled and muttered, and I returned cautiously to the sofa. I’ll get up early in the morning and fix everything up properly.

I turned on my right side, pulled the blanket over my ear, and it suddenly became crystal clear to me that I wasn’t at all sleepy — that I was hungry. Oh-oh, I thought. Severe measures had to be taken at once, and I took them.

Consider, for instance, a system of integral equations of the type commonly found in star statistics: both unknowns are functions to be integrated. Naturally the only solutions possible are by successive numerical approximations and only with computers such as the RECM. I recalled our RECM. The main control panel is painted the color of boiled cream. Gene is laying a package on the panel and is opening it unhurriedly.

“What have you got?”

“Mine is with cheese and sausage.” Polish, lightly smoked, in round slices.

“Poor you, it’s married you should be. I have cutlets, with garlic, home-made. And a dill pickle.”

No, there are two dill pickles… Four cutlets, and to make things even, four pickles. And four pieces of buttered bread.

I threw off the blanket and sat up. Maybe there was something left in the car? No — I had already cleaned out everything there was. The only remaining item was the cookbook that I had got for Valya’s mother, who lived in Liezhnev.

Let’s see, how does it go? Sauce piquant… half a glass of vinegar, two onions, and a pinch of pepper. Served with meat dishes…. I can see it now with miniature steaks. What a rotten trick, I thought, not just any old steaks, but miniature ones. I jumped up and ran to the window. The night air was distinctly laden with the odor of miniature beefsteaks. Out of some nether depths of my subconscious this floated up: “Such dishes were usually served him in the taverns as: marinated vegetable soup, brains with fresh peas, pickles (I swallowed), and the perpetual layer cake…” I must distract myself, I thought, and took the book on the windowsill. It was The Gloomy Morning by Alexis Tolstoi. I opened it at random.

“Makhno, having broken the sardine can opener, pulled out a mother-of-pearl knife with half a hundred blades, and continued to operate with it, opening tins with pineapple (Now I’ve had it, I though), French pвtй, with lobsters, which filled the room with a pungent smell.”

Gingerly I put down the book and sat down on the stool by the table. At once a strong, appetizing odor permeated the room: it must have been the odor of lobsters. I began to ponder why I had never tried a lobster before, or, say, oysters. With Dickens, everybody eats oysters; working with folding knives, they cut huge slabs of bread, spread them thickly with butter…. I began to smooth the tablecloth with nervous movements. On it, latent food stains appeared clearly visible. Much and tasty eating has been done on it, I thought. Probably lobsters and brains with peas. Or miniature steaks with sauce piquant. Also large and medium-sized steaks. People must have sighed, replete with food, and sucked their teeth in huge satisfaction. There was no cause for sighing and so I took to sucking my teeth.

I must have been doing it loudly and ravenously because the old woman behind the wall creaked her bed, muttered angrily, rattled something noisily, and suddenly entered my room. She had on a long gray nightshirt, and she was carrying a plate, so that a genuine and not an imaginary odor of food spread through the room. She was smiling, and set the plate directly in front of me and rumbled sweetly, “Dig in, dear friend Alexander Petrovitch. Help yourself to what God has sent, by his unworthy messenger….

“Really now, really, Naina Kievna,” I was stammering, you shouldn’t let me disturb you so….

But my hand was already holding a fork with a horn handle, which had appeared from somewhere, and I began to eat while the old woman stood by and nodded and repeated, “Eat, my friend, eat to your health. .”

And I ate it all. The dish was baked potatoes with melted butter.

“Naina Kievna,” I said earnestly, “you have saved me from starving to death.”

“Finished?” said Naina Kievna, in a voice somehow tainted with hostility.

“Yes, and magnificently fed. A tremendous thanks to you! You can’t even imagine how — “

“What’s there to imagine?” she interrupted, now definitely irritated. “Filled up, I say? Then give me the plate…. The plate I say!”

“P-please,” I mumbled.

“’Please and please.’ I have to feed you types for a please…”

“I can pay,” said I, growing angry.

“’I can pay, I can pay.’“ She went to the door. “And what if this sort of thing is not paid for at all? And you needn’t have lied…”

“What do you mean — lied?”

“Lied, that’s how. You said yourself you wouldn’t suck your teeth!”

She fell silent and disappeared through the door.

What’s with her? I thought. A strange old bag.

Maybe she noticed the clothes rack? There was the sound of creaking springs as she tossed in her bed, grumbling and complaining. Then she started singing softly to some barbarous tune: “I’ll roll and I’ll wallow, fed up on Ivash’s meat.”

Cold night air drew from the window. Shivering, I got up to return to the sofa, and it dawned on me that I had locked the door before retiring. Discomfited, I approached the door and reached out to check the bolt, but no sooner had my hand touched the cold iron, than everything began to swim before my eyes. I was, in fact, lying on the sofa, facedown in the pillow, my finger feeling the cool logs of the wall.

I lay there for some time in a state of shock, slowing growing aware that the old hag was snoring away somewhere nearby, and a conversation was in progress in the room. Someone was declaiming tutorially in a quiet tone:

“The elephant is the largest of all the animals on earth. On his face there is a large lump of meat, which is called a trunk because it’s empty and hollow like a pipe. He bends and stretches it every which way and uses it in place of a hand..”

Growing icy cold and curious, I turned over gingerly on my right side. The room was as empty as before. The voice continued, even more didactic.

“Wine, used in moderation, is exceedingly salutary for the stomach; but when drunk to excess, it produces vapors that debase the human to the level of dumb animals. You have seen drunks on occasion, and still remember the righteous indignation that welled up in you..

I sat up with a jerk, lowering my feet to the floor. The voice stopped. It was my impression that it was coming from somewhere behind the wall. Everything in the room was as before; even the coat rack, to my astonishment, hung in its proper place. And to my further surprise, I was again very hungry.

“Tincture, ex vitro of antimony,” announced the voice abruptly. I shivered. “Magiphterium antimon angelii salae. Bafllii oleum vitri antimonii elixiterium antimoiale!” There was the sound of frank tittering. “What a delirium!” said the voice and continued, ululating. “Soon these eyes, not yet defeated, will no longer see the sun, but let them not be shut ere being told of my forgiveness and salvation.

This be from The Spirit or Moral Thoughts of the Renowned Jung. Extracted from his Nighttime Meditations. Sold in Saint Petersburg and Riga, in the bookstore of Sveshnikov for two rubles in hard cover.” Somebody sobbed. “That, too, is delirium,” said the voice, and declaimed with expression:

Now I understood where they were talking. The voice came from the corner, where the murky mirror hung.

“And now,” said the voice, “the following: “Everything is the unified I: this I is cosmic. The union with disunion, arising from the eclipse of enlightenment, the I sublimates with spiritual attainment.’“

“And where is that derived from?” I said. I was not expecting an answer. I was convinced I was asleep.

“Sayings from the Upanishads,” the voice replied readily.

“And what are the Upanishads?” I wasn’t sure I was asleep anymore.

“I don’t know,” said the voice.

I got up and tiptoed to the mirror. I couldn’t see my reflection. The curtain, the corner of the stove, and a whole lot of things were reflected in the cloudy glass. But I wasn’t among them.

“What’s the matter?” asked the voice. “Are there questions?”

“Who’s talking?” I asked, peering behind the mirror. Many dead spiders and a lot of dust were there. Then I pressed my left eye with my index finger. This was an old formula for detecting hallucinations, which I had read in To Believe or Not to Believe? the gripping book by B. B. Bittner. It is sufficient to press on the eyeball, and all the real objects, in contradistinction to the hallucinated, will double. The mirror promptly divided into two and my worried and sleep-dulled face appeared in it. There was a draft on my feet. Curling my toes, I went to the window and looked out.

There was nobody there and neither was the oak. I rubbed my eyes and looked again. The moss-covered frame of the well with its windlass, my car, and the gates were distinctly visible directly in front of me. Still asleep, I decided, to calm myself. My glance fell on the disheveled book on the windowsill. In the last dream, it was the third volume of Lives of the Martyrs; now I read the title as: P.I. Karpov, Creativity of the Mentally Ill and Its influence on the Development of Science, Art, and Technology. Teeth chattering from a sudden chill, I thumbed the pages and looked through the colored illustrations. Next I read “Verse No. 2”:

The floor suddenly swayed beneath me. There was a piercing and prolonged creaking, then, like the rumble of a distant earthquake, sounded a rolling “Ko-o… Ko-o. .Ko-o…” The house swayed as though it were a boat in the waves. The yard behind the window slid sideways, and a gargantuan chicken leg stretched out from beneath, stuck its claws into the ground, raked deep furrows in the grass, and disappeared below. The floor tilted steeply, and I sensed that I was falling. I grabbed something soft, struck something solid with head and side, and fell off the sofa. I was lying on the boards clutching the pillow that had fallen with me. It was quite bright in the room. Behind the window somebody was methodically clearing his throat.

“So-o, then…” said a well-poised male voice. “In a certain kingdom, in an ancient tsardom, there was and lived a tsar by the name of… mmm… well, anyway, it’s really not all that important. Let’s say… me-eh… Polouekt. He had three sons. tsareviches. The first… me-eh… the third was an imbecile, but the first…?”

Bending down like a trooper under fire, I sneaked up to the window and looked out. The oak was in its place. Tomcat Basil stood on his hind legs with his back to it, immersed in deep thought. In his teeth, he clamped the stem of a water lily. He kept looking down at his feet and sounding a drawn-out “Me-eh-eh.” Then he shook his head, put his front legs behind his back, and, hunching over like a lecturing professor, glided smoothly away from the oak.

“Very well,” he enunciated through his teeth. “So, once upon a time there lived a tsar and tsarina. And they had one son… me-eh.. an imbecile, naturally…”

Chagrined, he spit out the flower, and, frowning mightily, rubbed his forehead.

“A desperate situation,” he stated. “But I do remember this and that! “Ha-ha-ha! There’ll be something to feast on: a stallion for dinner, a brave lad for supper.’ Now, where would that be from? But, Ivan, you can figure out for yourself, the imbecile replies: “Hey, you, revolting monstrosity, stuffing yourself before you caught the snow-white swan!’ And later, of course, the tempered arrow and off with all the three heads. Ivan removes the three hearts and carts them home to his mother; the cretin…. Now, how do you like that for a gift!” The cat laughed sardonically, and then sighed. “Then there is that sickness — sclerosis,” he remarked.

Sighing again, he turned back toward the oak and began to sing. “Krou, krou, my little ones! Krou, krou, my pigeonlets! I… me-eh… I slaked your thirst with the dew of my eyes… more exactly — watered you.

He sighed for the third time and walked on silently for some time. As he reached the oak, he yelled out abruptly in a very unmusical voice, “Choice morsel she finished not!”

A massive psaltery suddenly appeared in his paws; I didn’t notice at all how he came by it. Desperately he struck with his paw, and, catching the strings with his claws, bellowed even louder, as though trying to drown out the music:

He stopped and paced a while, banging the strings in silence; then he sang in a low, uncertain voice:

He returned to the oak, leaned the psaltery against it, and scratched behind his ear with a hind leg.

“Work, work, work,” he said, “and nothing but work!”

He placed his paws behind his back again and went off to the left of the oak, muttering, “It has come to me, oh great tsar, that in the splendid city of Baghdad, there lived a tailor, by the name…” He dropped to all fours, arched his back, and hissed angrily. “It’s especially bad with the names! Abu… Au… Somebody Ibn, whoever…. So-o, all right, let’s say Polouekt. Polouekt Ibn, me-eh. . Polouektovich.. In any event, I can’t recall what happened to him. Dog take it, let’s start another.”

I lay with my stomach on the sill in a trance-like state, watching the unfortunate Basil wandering about the oak, now to the left and then to the right, muttering, coughing, meowing and mooing, standing on all fours in his efforts — in a word, suffering endlessly. The diapason of his knowledge was truly grandiose. He did not know a single tale or song more than halfway, but to make up for this, the repertoire included Russian, Ukrainian, West Slavic, German, English — I think even Japanese, Chinese, and African — fairy tales, legends, sermons, ballads, songs, romances, ditties, and refrains. The misfunction drove him into such a rage that several times he flung himself at the oak, ripping its bark with his claws, hissing and spitting while his eyes glowed with a satanic gleam and his furry tail, thick as a log, would now point at the zenith, then twitch spasmodically, then lash his sides. But the only song he carried to the end was “Tchizhik Pizhic,”(Common children’s song)and the only fairy tale he recounted at all coherently was “The House that Jack Built” in the Marshak translation, and even that with several excisions. Gradually — apparently fatiguing — his speech acquired more and more catlike accent. “Ah me, in the field and meadow,” he sang. “the plow goes by itself, and… me-e… ah… me-a-ou…and behind that plow the master himself has paced… or is it wended his way…?” Finally, altogether spent, he sat down on his tail and stayed thus for some time, his head bent low. Then, meowing softly and sorrowfully, he took the psaltery under his arm and wandered off on the dewy grass, haltingly on three legs.

I climbed off the sill and dropped the book. I distinctly remembered that the last time it was Creativity of the Mentally Ill, and was sure that was the book which had fallen on the floor. But the book I picked up and placed on the sill was The Solution of Crimes by A. Swanson and O. Wendell. Dully I opened it, scanned a few samples, and at once I was sure that I sensed there was someone strangled hanging in the oak. Fearfully I raised my eyes. From the lower branches, a wet silvery shark tail hung. It was swinging heavily in the gusts of the morning wind.

I shied violently and struck the back of my head on something hard. A telephone rang loudly. I looked around. I was lying crosswise on the sofa, the blanket had slid to the floor, and the early sun was shining into the window through the oak leaves.