The Final Circle of Paradise

CHAPTER ONE

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. Au revoir. 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.