Snail on the Slope Page 19

  "Oh, there's no making you out," said Jeanne the doll. "For you, everything's caused by dreams, or I don't know what. But I've got premonitions. I can't stay still. I know there's going to be a terrible explosion and I'll be blown to tiny pieces. I'll turn into steam. I know. I've seen..."

  "Dismissed!" burst out the leaden voice. "I can't stand it! What do you know about explosions? You can run toward the horizon with any speed you like at any angle. But the one whose business it is can overtake you at any distance and that'll be a real explosion, not some intellectual vapor. But I'm not the one whose business it is, am I? Nobody will tell you that, and even if they wanted to tell, they wouldn't be able. I know what I'm saying. All clear? Repeat."

  There was a good deal of blind self-assurance in all this. It was probably a huge wind-up tank speaking. With exactly the same blind self-assurance it used to move its rubber tracks forward, scrambling over a boot placed in its way.

  "I don't know what you mean," said the Jeanne doll. "But if I fled here to you, the only creatures of my own kind, that doesn't mean, in my view, that I intend at whoever's pleasure to run off to the horizon at some angle. And anyway I would like you to observe that I'm not talking to you... If it's work we're discussing, well I'm not ill, I'm a normal creature, and I need pleasures just as all of you do. But this isn't real work, just a sort of unreal pleasure. I keep waiting for my real work, but there's no sign of it, no sign. I don't know what's the matter but when I start thinking, I think myself into all sorts of nonsense." She gave a sob.

  "Well, well, now..." rumbled Winnie the Pooh. "On the whole, yes. Of course ... only... Hmm..."

  "It's all true!" observed a new voice, ringing and cheerful. "The little girl's right. There's no real work..."

  "Real work, real work!" creaked the old man venomously. "All of a sudden whole seams of real work. Eldorado! King Solomon's mines! They're all around me with their sick insides, sarcomas, delightful fistulas, appetizing adenoids and appendixes, ordinary but so attractive. Let us speak frankly. They get in the way, they prevent you from working. I don't know what the matter is here, perhaps they give off some sort of special odor or they radiate an unknown field, but whenever they're near I go schizophrenic. I become two persons. One half of me longs for enjoyment, yearns to seize hold of and accomplish the necessary, the sweet, the desirable, the other falls into prostration and hammers away at the eternal questions - is it worth it, why, is it moral? ... You, it's you I'm talking about, what are you doing, working?"

  "Me?" said Winnie the Pooh. "Of course ... why not? It's odd to hear that from you, I didn't expect. I'm finishing a helicopter design and after that ... I was telling you I'd created a marvelous tractor, such pure enjoyment that was... I believe you have no grounds for doubting that I'm working."

  "No, I don't doubt it, don't doubt it at all," the old one ground out. (Horrible boneless old man, between a goblin and an astrologer, wearing a black plush shawl with gold spangles.) "If you'll just tell me where this tractor is?"

  "Well now ... I don't quite understand... How do I know? What business is it of mine? The helicopter interests me now..."

  "That's just what I'm talking about!" said the Astrologer. "Nothing's your business, seemingly. You're satisfied with everything. Nobody's in your way. They even help you! You gave birth to a tractor, choking with sheer pleasure, and the people took it away from you at once, to keep you concentrating on your main job, so's you didn't enjoy yourself over much. You just ask him whether people help him or not..."

  "You talking to me?" Tank bellowed. "Crap! Dismissed! Whenever somebody goes out on the testing area and decides to stretch his legs a bit, keeping his pleasure going, playing about, taking aim on the azimuth, or let's say the vertical bracket, they raise a racket and uproar, their shouting makes^you feel awful, anybody can get upset by it. But I didn't say that anybody was - me, did I? No! You'll have a long wait to hear that from me. Is that clear? Repeat!"

  "Me, too, me as well!" Jeanne began chattering. "I've wondered lots of times, why do they exist? Now everything in the world has a meaning, hasn't it? I don't think they do. Probably they're not there, it's a hallucination. When you try to analyze them, and take a sample from the lower parts, then the upper, then the middle, you're sure to run into a wall or go right past them or you fall asleep all of a sudden..."

  "Of course they exist, you stupid hysteric!" creaked the Astrologer. "They've got upper, lower, and middle parts, and all the parts are full of diseases. I know nothing more delightful than people, no other creature has so many objects of enjoyment within itself. What can you know about the meaning of their existence?"

  "Oh, stop complicating matters!" said the gay, ringing voice. "They're simply beautiful. It's a genuine pleasure to look at them. Not always, of course, but just imagine a garden. It can be as beautiful as you like, but without people it won't be perfect, won't be complete. Just one sort of people would be enough to give it life, they can be little people with bare extremities that never walk but just run and throw stones ... or middling people picking flowers ... it doesn't matter. Even hairy people will do, running about on four extremities. A garden without them is no garden."

  "That sort of nonsense could make somebody feel sick," announced Tank. "Bunkum! Gardens reduce visibility, and as for people, they get in a certain person's way all the time, and you can't say anything good about them. Anyhow, if a certain person were to send over a damn good salvo on a building where for some reason people were located, all his desire for work would disappear, he'd feel sleepy, and anybody would fall asleep. Naturally, I don't speak of myself, but if someone were to say it of me, would you object?"

  "You've taken to talking a lot about people just lately," said Winnie the Pooh. "Whatever the conversation starts on, you get it around to people."

  "Well why on earth not?" the Astrologer jumped in at once. "What's it to you? You're an opportunist! If we feel like talking, then we'll talk. Without asking your permission."

  "Please, please," Winnie the Pooh said gloomily. "It's just that before we used to talk mainly about living creatures, enjoyments, plans, but now, I note that people are beginning to occupy a larger and larger part of our conversations and therefore of our thoughts."

  A silence ensued. Pepper, trying to move noiselessly, altered his position to be on his side and draw his knees up into his stomach. Winnie the Pooh was wrong. Let them talk about people as much as ever possible. Apparently they had a very poor knowledge of them and it was therefore interesting to hear what they had to say. From out of the mouths of babes and sucklings... When people talked of themselves, they either shoot their mouths off or made you confessions. Sick of it...

  "You are pretty silly in your judgments," said the Astrologer. "The gardener, for instance. I hope you realize I'm being reasonably objective so as to share the satisfaction of my friends. You enjoy planting gardens and destroying parks. Splendid. I'm with you. But be so good as to tell me what people have to do with it? What connection have those who lift their legs up against trees or those who do it another way? I sense here a certain unhealthy aestheticism. It's as if I were to operate on glands and demand for my fuller satisfaction that the patient be wrapped in a floral gown..."

  "You're just cold by nature," the Gardener put in, but the Astrologer was unheeding.

  "Or take yourselves," he went on. "You're forever slinging your bombs and rockets about, calculating corrections and playing about with range-finders. Aren't you indifferent whether there's people in there or not? It might be thought that you could spare a thought for your friends, me, for instance, sewing up wounds!" he spoke dreamily. "You can't imagine what that is - sewing up a really good jagged stomach wound."

  "People again, people again," Winnie the Pooh said in a crushed voice. "This is the seventh night we've talked only about people. It's queer for me to talk about this but clearly some sort of link, vague as yet, but powerful, has sprung up between you and people. The nature of this link is totally obscure to
me, if I don't count you, Doctor, for whom people are an essential source of satisfaction... All around, it all seems absurd to me, and in my opinion the time has come to ..."

  "Dismissed!" roared Tank. "The time has not yet come." "Wh-a-at?" inquired Winnie the Pooh, at a loss. "I say the time has not come," Tank repeated. "Some, of course, are incapable of knowing whether the time has come or not, some - I don't name them - don't even know what time it is that's coming, but someone knows absolutely for certain that the time will inevitably come when it will not only be permissible but necessary to open fire on the people in the buildings! He who does not fire is an enemy! A criminal! Annihilate! That clear? Repeat!"

  "I can guess at something like that," put in the Astrologer in an unexpectedly soft tone. "Jagged wounds. Gas gangrene... Third degree radiation burns."

  "They're all ghosts," sighed doll Jeanne. "What a bore! How miserable!"

  "Since there's no stopping your talk of people," said Winnie the Pooh, "let us try to elucidate the nature of this bond. Let us attempt to reason logically..." "One of the two," said a new voice, measured and dull. "If the bond mentioned exists, then either they or we are the dominant."

  "Stupidity," said the Astrologer. "What's this 'or'? Of course we are."

  "What's 'dominant'?" asked doll Jeanne, crestfallen.

  "In the present context, 'dominant' means prevailing," the lackluster voice elucidated. "As far as the actual phrasing of the question goes, it's not stupid, it's the only true phrasing, if we intend to argue logically."

  A pause. Everybody, seemingly, expected a continuation. At last Winnie the Pooh could stand it no longer and asked: "Well?"

  "I am not clear if you intend to argue logically." "Yes, yes, we do," a general murmur. "In that case, accepting the existence of a bond as axiomatic, either they are for us, or you are for them. If they are for us and they hinder your work according to the laws of your nature, they should be eliminated, like any other interference. If you are for them, but that situation does not please you, they must similarly be eliminated like any other reason for an unsatisfactory situation. That is all I can say on the subject of your conversation."

  Nobody said a word; from inside the containers came noises of scraping and clicking, just as if enormous toys were settling down to sleep, weary of talking. A general uneasiness hung in the air, as when a group of people who have let themselves go in conversation, not sparing anyone in their urge for eloquence, suddenly realize they've gone too far. "Humidity's rising a bit," creaked the Astrologer in a subdued voice. "I've noticed that for ages," squeaked doll Jeanne. "Its verv nice: new figures..."

  "Don't know why, my input's acting up," mumbled Winnie the Pooh. "Gardener, you haven't got a spare twenty-two volt accumulator, have you?"

  "I've not got anything," responded the Gardener. After this there came a crash as of splintering wood, then a mechanical whistle and Pepper suddenly saw something shining and moving in the crack above him; he seemed to see someone gazing at him in the shadow between the cases. He broke into a cold sweat, got up and tiptoed out into the moonlight and sprinted off toward the road. As he ran with all his strength he seemed to feel dozens of strange grotesque eyes following him and watching the small pitiful figure, defense-less on the plain exposed to every wind, laughing to see his shadow so much larger than himself; out of fear he had forgotten to don his boots and was now scared to go back for them.

  He skirted the bridge across the dry gully and could already make out the outlying houses of the Directorate in front of him: he felt breathless and his toes pained him intolerably. He wanted to stop but heard through the noise of his own breathing the staccato clump of a multitude of feet behind him. At this, he lost his head again and raced on with his last strength, not feeling the earth beneath him, nor his own body, spitting out sticky lengths of saliva, all attempts at thinking gone.

  The moon raced with him across the plain and the thudding was getting nearer and nearer. He thought, This is it, finish, and the thudding reached him and somebody white, huge, and hot as a driven horse appeared alongside, eclipsing the moon, drove past and began drawing slowly away, long naked legs pumping in furious rhythm. Pepper saw it was a man in a football shirt with number fourteen on it and white running pants with a dark stripe. Pepper was even more frightened. The multitudinous thudding behind him did not cease, groans and painful cries could be heard. They're running, he thought hysterically. They're all running! It's started! And they're running, but it's late, late, late! ..."

  He caught vague glimpses of cottages along the main street and frozen faces as he strove to keep up with the long-legged number fourteen, since he had no idea where to run to or where safety lay, and maybe they were already distributing arms somewhere, and I don't know where, and I'm out of it again on the sidelines, but I don't want that, I can't be on the sidelines now, because those in the boxes might be right in their way, but they're my enemies too...

  He rushed into the crowd, which gave way before him; a square checkered flag flashed in front of his eyes and exclamations of approval rose all around. Someone familiar ran alongside, speaking: "Don't stop, don't stop." Then he stopped, and everybody clustered around and an enormous wrap was thrown around his shoulders. A booming radio announced:

  "Second place, Pepper of Science Security Department with a time of seven minutes twelve and three tenths seconds... Now here's the third man coming!"

  The familiar figure turned out to be Proconsul: "You're a great lad, Pepper, I never expected anything like this. When your name was announced at the start I laughed, but I see now you should be included in the main group. Away you go and relax, be at the stadium tomorrow before twelve. We have to get over the assault course somehow. I'm entering you for the fitters workshop team... Don't argue, I'll fix it with Kirn."

  Pepper looked around. All about him were crowds of familiar people in cardboard masks. Not far off they were tossing in the air and catching the long-legged man who came in first. He flew up to the very moon, stiff and straight as a log, clutching a large metal cup to his chest. Right across the street hung a sign "Finish," underneath it, glancing at a stopwatch, stood Claudius-Octavian Hausbotcher in a severe black coat with an armlet saying: "Ch. judge."

  "... And if you'd taken part in sports dress," rumbled Proconsul, "it would have been possible to take that time into consideration for you officially." Pepper elbowed him aside and wandered off through the crowd on rubbery legs.

  "... instead of sweating with fear sitting at home," someone was saying in the crowd, "better take up sport."

  "Just said the same thing to Hausbotcher. It's not being scared though, you're not right there; The search groups should have been better organized. Since everybody's running around, let them at least run to some purpose..."

  "Whose invention was it? Hausbotcher's! He never misses a trick. He knows what's what!"

  "No need to run around in long underpants though. It's one thing to do your duty in long Johns, all respect due. But compete in them - in my view that's a typical organizational oversight. I shall write on the matter."

  Pepper escaped from the throng, and wandered off, swaying along the murky street. He felt sick, his chest was hurting and he kept on imagining those things in the cases, extending their metal necks and staring at the road in amazement at the crowd of blindfolded people in underpants, earnestly striving to understand what link existed between them and the activity of this crowd and, of course, failing to do so; whatever served them as sources of patience must now be near exhaustion...

  It was dark in Kirn's cottage. A baby was crying.

  The hostel door was boarded up and the windows were dark but someone was walking around inside with a shielded lamp and Pepper could make out some pale faces at the first-floor windows warily peeping out.

  An inordinately lengthy gun barrel with a thick muzzle-brake was sticking out of the library door, while on the opposite side of the street a shed was burning up; around the conflagration, men in cardbo
ard masks were prowling about with mine detectors, lit up in crimson flame.

  Pepper headed for the park. In a dark alley, however, he was approached by a woman who took his arm and led him off without a word. Pepper made no resistance, he was past caring. She was all in black, her hand was soft and warm, her white face shone through the dark.

  Alevtina, thought Pepper. She's bided her time all right, he thought with frank lack of shame. Well, what's wrong in that? So she waited. Don't know why, or why I'm giving in to her, but it's me she waited for...

  They entered the house. Alevtina switched on the light and said: "I've waited for you here a long time."

  "I know," he said.

  "So why were you walking past?"

  Yes indeed, why? thought Pepper. Probably because I didn't care. "I didn't care," he said.

  "Okay, never mind," she said. "Sit down, I'll make you something."

  He perched himself on the edge of a chair, put his hands on his knees and watched her fling off the black shawl from her neck and hang it up on a nail - white, plump, warm. Then she disappeared into the recesses of the house and soon a gas heater began humming and there came a sound of water splashing. He experienced severe pain in the soles of his feet, drew up his leg and looked at the bare sole. The balls of his toes were bloody, and the blood had mixed with dust and dried in black crusts. He pictured himself submerging his feet in hot water, at first very painful, then the pain passing and being soothed. Today I'll sleep in the bath, he thought. And she can come in and pour in hot water.

  "This way," Alevtina summoned him.

  He rose with difficulty, all his bones seemed to creak together. He limped across the ginger carpet to the door that led into the corridor, in the corridor, along a black and white carpet to a dead end, where the bathroom door was already open wide. The businesslike blue flame in the geyser hummed, the tiles sparkled, and Alevtina bent over the bath sprinkling powder into the water. While he was getting undressed, stripping off his underclothes stiff with dirt, she fluffed up the water; above the water rose a blanket of foam, over the rim of the bath it came, white as snow. He sank into that foam closing his eyes from pleasure and the pain in his feet, while Alevtina seated herself on the edge of the bath and gazed at him, sweetly smiling, so kind, so welcoming, and not a word about documents.