Tours of the Black Clock

122

THE OLD MAN PULLED quite a good one on Petyr today. I still shake my head thinking about it; Petyr just misjudged the situation, that’s all. He just couldn’t keep his head, his rage got the better of him. We were sitting in their room, Petyr reading to the old man who sat in his chair holding the brass frame with her picture and the dead brown flower in it. Petyr couldn’t go on with the reading. Convulsed and shaking, he looked up and said to the client, “My Leader, this is a lie.” The old man didn’t seem to have heard, and Petyr said it again, “This is a lie, my Leader,” and then he looked at me. He’s going about it all wrong, I thought to myself calmly, taking me on this way. But then he doesn’t have the imagination for going about it any other way. Now we both looked at the old man, who still seemed entranced by the picture he held, until he slowly raised his head to look at the translator. “This is a lie,” Petyr said firmly, having gotten his attention, “this is a sadistic joke. Do you see? This big stupid man is playing a joke on you. He likes jokes,” and that was true, actually, I always had rather liked a good joke. I remember a good one a long time ago; my father told a good one about his son. The old man just blinked at Petyr, still holding her picture in both hands. “There is no child, my Leader,” Petyr shook his head, tears in his eyes, “you’re not going to be a father. I’m sorry.” The old man just kept blinking at him, and Petyr just kept on saying it over and over, There’s no child, you’re not going to be a father, it’s a stupid joke, and the more he spoke the more upset he became as though he was going to cry any moment, while Z just sat there blinking at him, appearing not to register anything he heard. And then, faster than I would have believed possible, the old man brought her picture up over his head and crashed its heavy brass frame down onto Petyr. Petyr dropped to the floor without a groan or shudder; every bit of life just flew out of him with the blow of the picture, and there he lay looking up at me, a slight discoloration on his forehead from the brass of the frame, before the blood streamed out into his hair and face and the shattered glass of the picture frame and the picture itself, which lay in Petyr’s head. There was her face with a hole in it lying in his. Little shavings of brown dead flower drifted in the air. I thought I was going to choke from laughing so hard. The guards came in then and looked at Petyr in amazed horror; the old man just sat in his chair, looking at her torn picture. I didn’t bother trying to explain to them how an eighty-year-old man could kill someone with that kind of force; if they didn’t know that about him by now, they didn’t know anything. “I believe the Leader has no further use for this gentleman’s services,” I said. The guards looked at the old man and looked at me; one of them snapped his fingers at the others and they dragged poor Petyr out. I looked at the old man when they’d gone, trying to keep a straight face. But I laughed some more and slapped him on the back. “Something to tell your children about,” I suggested. After a while he smiled back.