The Final Circle of Paradise

CHAPTER TEN

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 hate, 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.