The Final Circle of Paradise Read online

  “Isolate this pus bag from the rest of the world, isolate it totally, that’s the total of our philosophy,” orated Matia.

  That was aimed at me. But perhaps not even me. For Matia was a brilliant mind. He understood too well that isolation was always a defense, but here we had to attack. But he knew how to advance only with squads, and this was embarrassing to him.

  To rescue. For how long would you need rescuing? When would you learn to rescue yourselves? Why were you eternally harkening to priests, fascists, demagogues, and imbecile Opirs?

  Why didn’t you want to exert your brains? Why did you resist thinking so? Why couldn’t you understand that the world is vast, complex, and fascinating? Why was everything simple and boring to you? In what way did your mind differ from the mind of Rabelais, Swift, Lenin, Einstein, Makarenko, Hemingway, and Strogoff? Someday I would grow tired of all this. Someday when I had no more strength and conviction. For I was similar to you. But I wanted to help you, and you didn’t want to help me…

  Reg and Len came over after school, and Len said, “We have decided, Ivan. We will go to the Gobi Central.” He had red fuzz on his lip and huge red hands, and I could see that it divas he who had thought up the Gobi trip, and quite recently — not more than ten minutes ago. Reg, as usual, was silent, chewing on a blade of grass and placidly studying me with his calm gray eyes. He has become altogether a square, I thought, and said, “Wonderful book, isn’t it?” “Yes, indeed,” said Len.

  "We understood at once where we should go.” Reg was quiet.

  "Heat and stench are suspended in the shadow of these hard laboring dragons,” I said from memory. “They devour everything under them — the ancient Mongolian prayer gate, the bones of a two-humped beast fallen in some sand storm…”

  “Yes,” said Len, while Reg went on chewing his blade of grass.

  “Every time,” I continued (now from Ichin-dagli), “that the sun arrives at a mathematically precise required position, a strange mirage blossoms out in the East — of a strange city with white towers which no one has yet seen in reality. “ “One should see that with his own eyes,” said Len, and laughed. “Friend Len,” I said, “it’s too fascinating and therefore too simple. You will see that it’s too simple yourself and it will become an unpleasant disappointment.” No, I hadn’t said it right. “Friend Len,” I said, “what sort of a mirage is that? Here is one.

  Seven years ago, in your mother’s house, I saw a truly marvelous mirage: both of you standing before me almost grown up…” No — I was saying that for myself, not for them. It should be said differently. “Friend Len,” I said, “seven years ago you explained to me that your people were accursed. We came here and removed the curse from you and Reg and from many other children who had no parents. And now it’s your turn to remove, the curse, which…"

  It will be very difficult, but I’ll explain it to them.

  One way or another, I’ll get it across. We have known from childhood how to remove the curses on the barricades and on construction sites and in laboratories, and you will remove the last of the curses, you will be the future teachers and educators. In the last war — the most bloodless and the most difficult for its soldiers.

  Upstairs Vousi screeched and Len started to cry piteously.

  Oscar’s voice boomed in the study. How well off he is, I thought. Simple: slug is bad, harmful, unnatural. Therefore, it must be destroyed, forbidden by law, and then you must watch closely that the law is strictly enforced. Only Matia is smarter than that, because he is older and more experienced.

  Matia can still be pulled over to my side. My word doesn’t mean anything to him, but others will be found to whom he will listen… How wonderful that I can now cry out to the whole world and be heard by millions of like-thinkers!

  And then I thought that I would not leave this place. I had been here only three days. It could not be that there was no one here who would be with us. No one who hated all this with a deadly hatred, who wanted to blast this dull sated world out of its stasis. Such people always existed and always will.

  Perhaps that bibliophile driver or that tall, harsh one of the Intels… and who knew how many more. They stumbled about as though they were blind. We would do everything in our power to help them so that they would not waste their anger on trifles.

  It was our place to be here now. And my place, too.

  What a labor lies ahead, I thought, what a task! For the time being, I didn’t know where to begin in this Country of the Boob, caught unprepared in a flood of affluence, but I knew that I wouldn’t leave here as long as the immigration laws permitted. And when they stopped permitting it, I would break them…

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