The Final Circle of Paradise Page 6

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Well, you know, during the strike, I had a chance to run through a novel. That would not be yours, by any chance?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, “What was it about?”

  “Well, I couldn’t say exactly… Son quarrels with father. He has a friend, an unpleasant fellow with a strange name. He occupies himself by cutting up frogs.”

  “Can’t remember,” I lied — poor Ivan Sergeyevitch.

  “I can’t remember either. It was some sort of nonsense. I have a son, but he never quarrels with me, and he never tortures animals — except perhaps when he was a child”

  He backed away again and made a slow circuit around me.

  His eyes were burning; he seemed to be very pleased.

  “It looks as though we can stop here,” he said.

  I got out of the chair. “Not bad. Not bad at all,” murmured the Master. I approached the mirror. He turned on spotlights, which illuminated me from all sides so that there were no shadows on my face.

  In the first instant I did not notice anything unusual about myself. It was my usual self. Then I felt that it was not I at all. That it was something much better than I. A whole lot better. Better looking than I. More benevolent than I.

  Appreciably more significant than I. I experienced a sense of shame, as though I were deliberately passing myself off as a man to whom I couldn’t hold a candle.

  “How did you do this thing?” I said in a strangled tone.

  “It’s nothing,” said the Master, smiling in a very special way. “You turned out to be a fairly easy client, albeit quite neglected.”

  I stood before the mirror like Narcissus and couldn’t tear myself away. Suddenly, I felt awed. The Master was a magician, and an evil one at that, although he probably didn’t realize it himself. The mirror reflected an extremely attractive lie. An intelligent, good-looking, monumental vapidity. Well, perhaps not a total vacuum, for after all I didn’t have that low an opinion of myself. But the contrast was too great. All of my inner world, everything I valued in myself — all that could just as well have not existed. It was no longer needed. I looked at the Master. He was smiling.

  “You have many clients?” I asked.

  He did not grasp my meaning, but after all, I didn’t really want him to understand me.

  “Don’t worry,” he replied, “I’ll always work on you with pleasure. The rawest material is the most intriguing.”

  “Thank you,” said I, lowering my eyes so as not to see his smile. “Thank you. Goodbye.”

  “Just don’t forget to pay,” he said placidly. “We Masters value our work very highly.”

  “Yes, of course,” I caught myself. “Naturally. How much do I owe you?”

  He stated how much I owed.

  “What?” said I regaining my equilibrium.

  He repeated with satisfaction.

  “Madness", I said forthrightly.

  “Such is the price of beauty,” he explained. “You came here as an ordinary tourist, and you are leaving a king of this domain.”

  “An impersonator is what I am leaving as,” I muttered, extracting the money.

  “No, no, not that bad!” he said confidentially. “Even I don’t know that for sure. And even you are not convinced of it entirely… Two more dollars, please. Thank you. Here is 50 pfennigs change. You don’t mind pfennigs?”

  I had nothing against pfennigs. I wanted to leave as fast as possible.

  I stood in the lobby for a while, becoming myself again, and gazing at the metallic figure of Vladimir Sergeyevitch.

  After all, all this is not new. After all, millions of people are not what they pass themselves for. But the damnable barber had made me over into an empiriocritic. Reality was masked with gorgeous hieroglyphics. I no longer believed what I saw in this city. The plaza covered with stereo-plastic was probably in reality not beautiful at all. Under the elegant contours of the autos lurked ominous and ugly shapes. And that beautiful charming woman is no doubt in fact a repulsive malodorous hyena, a promiscuous dull-witted sow. I closed my eyes and shook my head. The old devil!

  Two meticulously groomed oldsters stopped nearby and began to debate heatedly the relative merits of baked pheasant compared with pheasant broiled with feathers. They argued, drooling saliva, smacking their lips and choking, snapping their bony fingers under each other’s noses. No Master could help these two. They were Masters themselves and they made no bones about it. At any rate, they restored my materialist viewpoint. I went to a porter and inquired about a restaurant.

  “Right in front of you,” said he and smiled at the arguing oldsters. “Any cuisine in the world.”

  I could have mistaken the entrance to the restaurant for the gates to a botanical garden. I entered, parting the branches of exotic trees, stepping alternately on soft grass and coral flagstones. Unseen birds twittered in the luxuriant greenery, and the discreet clatter of utensils was mixed with the sound of conversation and laughter. A golden bird flew right in front of my nose, barely able to carry the load of a caviar tartine in its beak.

  “I am at your service,” said the deep velvety voice.

  An imposing giant of a man with epaulettes stepped toward me cut of a thicket.

  “Dinner,” I said curtly. I don’t like maitres-d’hotel.

  “Dinner,” he said significantly. “In company? Separate table?"’

  “Separate table. On second thought…”

  A notebook instantaneously appeared in his hand.

  “A man of your age would be welcome at the table of Mrs. and Miss Hamilton-Rey.”

  “Go on,” I said.

  “Father Geoffrois…”

  “I would prefer an aborigine.”

  He turned the page.

  “Opir, doctor of philosophy, just now has sat down at his table.”

  “That’s a possibility,” said I.

  He put away the book and led me along a path paved with limestone slabs. Somewhere around us there were people eating, talking, swishing seltzer. Hummingbirds darted like multicolored bees in the leaves. The maitre-d’hotel inquired respectfully, “How would you like to be introduced?”

  “Ivan. Tourist and litterateur.”

  Doctor Opir was about fifty. I liked him at once because he immediately and without any ceremony sent the maitre-d’hotel packing after a waiter. He was pink and plump, and moved and talked incessantly.

  “Don’t trouble yourself,” he said when I reached for the menu. “It’s all set already. Vodka, anchovies under egg — we call them pacifunties — potato soup…”

  “With sour cream,” I interjected.

  “Of course!… steamed sturgeon a la Astrakhan… a patty of veal…”

  “I would prefer pheasant baked in feathers.”

  “No — don’t; it’s not the season… a slice of beef, eel in sweet marinade.”

  “Coffee,” I said.

  ” Cognac,” he retorted.

  “Coffee with cognac.”

  “All right, cognac and coffee with cognac. Some pale wine with the fish and a good natural cigar.”

  Dinner with Doctor Opir turned out to be most congenial.

  It was possible to eat, drink, and listen. Or not to listen.

  Doctor Opir did not need a conversation. He required a listener. I did not have to participate in the talking, I didn’t even supply any commentaries, while he orated with enthusiastic delight, almost without interruption, waving his fork, while plates and dishes nonetheless became empty in front of him with mystifying speed. Never in my life have I met a man who was so skilled in conversation while his mouth was so fully packed and so busy masticating.

  “Science! Her Majesty!” he exclaimed. “She matured long and painfully, but her fruits turned out to be abundant and sweet. Stop, Moment, you are beautiful! Hundreds of generations were born, suffered, and died, and not one was impelled to pronounce this incantation. We are singularly fortunate. We were born in the greatest of epochs, the Epoch of the Sa
tisfaction of Desires. It may be that not everybody understands this as yet, but ninety-nine percent of my fellow citizens are already living in a world where, for all practical purposes, a man can have all he can think of. O, Science! You have finally freed mankind. You have given us and will henceforth provide for us everything — food — wonderful food — clothing of the best quality and in any quantity, and to suit any taste! — shelter — magnificent shelter. Love, joy, satisfaction, and for those desiring it, for those who are fatigued by happiness — tears, sweet tears, little saving sorrows, pleasant consoling worries which lend us significance in our own eyes… Yes, we philosophers have maligned science long and angrily. We called forth Luddites, to break up machines, we cursed Einstein, who changed our whole universe, we vilified Wiener, who impugned our godlike essence. Well, so we really lost that godlike substance. Science robbed us of it. But in return! In return, it launched men to the feasting tables of Olympus. Aha! Here is the potato soup, that heavenly porridge. No, no, do as I do… take this spoon, a touch of vinegar… a dash of pepper… with the other spoon, this one here, dip some sour cream and… no, no… gently, gently mix it… This too is a science, one of the most ancient, older in any cue than the ubiquitous synthetic… By the way, don’t fail to visit our synthesizers, Amalthea’s Horn, Inc. You wouldn’t be a chemist? Oh yes, you are a litterateur! You should write about it, the greatest mystery of our times, beefsteaks out of thin air, asparagus from clay, truffles from sawdust… What a pity that Malthus is dead! The whole world would be laughing at him! Of course, he had certain reasons for his pessimism. I am prepared to agree with those who consider him a genius. But he was too ill-informed, he completely missed the possibilities in the natural sciences. He was one of those unlucky geniuses who discover laws of social development precisely at that moment when these laws cease to operate. I am genuinely sorry for him. The whole of humanity was but billions of hungrily gaping mouths to him. He must have lost sleep from the sheer horror of it. It is a truly monstrous nightmare — a billion gaping maws and not one head. I turned back and see with bitterness how blind they were, the shakers of souls and the masters of the minds of the recent past. Their awareness was dimmed by unbroken horror. Social Darwinists! They saw only the press of the struggle for survival: mobs of hunger-crazed people, tearing each other to pieces for a place in the sun, as though there was only that one single place, as though the sun wasn’t sufficient for all! And Nietzsche… maybe he was suitable for the hungry slaves of the Pharaohs’ times, with his ominous sermons about the master race, with his supermen beyond good and evil… who needs to be beyond now? It’s not so bad on this side, don’t you suppose? There were, of course, Marx and Freud. Marx, for example, was the first to understand that it all depended on economics. He understood that to rip the economics out of the hands of greedy nincompoops and fetishists, to make it part of the state, to develop it limitlessly, was the very way to lay the foundations of a Golden Age. And Freud showed us for what, after all, we needed this Golden Age. Recollect the source of all human misery. Unsatisfied instincts, unrequited love, and unsated hunger — isn’t that right? But here comes Her Majesty, Science, and presents us with satisfactions. And how rapidly all this has come to pass! The names of gloomy prognosticators are not yet forgotten, and already… How do you like the sturgeon? I am under the impression that the sauce is synthetic. Do you see the pinkish tint? Yes, it is synthetic. In a restaurant we should be able to expect natural sauce. Waiter! On second thought — the devil take it, let’s not be so finicky. Go on, go on… Now what was I saying? Yes! Love and hunger. Satisfy love and hunger, and you’ll see a happy man. On condition, of course, that your man is secure about the next day. All the utopias of all times are based on this simplest of considerations. Free a man of the worry about his daily bread and about the morrow, and he will become truly free and happy. I am deeply convinced that children, yes, precisely the children, are man’s ideal. I see the most profound meaning in the remarkable similarity between a child and the carefree man who is the object of utopia. Carefree means happy — and we are so close to that ideal! Another few decades, or maybe just a few more years, and we will attain the automated plenty, we will discard science as a healed man discards his crutches, and the whole of mankind will become one huge happy family of children. The adults will be distinguished from the children only by their ability to love, and this ability will, again with the help of science, become the source of new and unheard-of joys and pleasures… Excuse me, what is your name? Ivan? So, you must be from Russia. Communist? Aha… well, everything is different there I know… And here is the coffee! Mm, not bad. But where is the cognac? Well, thank you! By the way, I hear that the Great Wine Taster has retired. The most grandiose scandal befell at the Brussels contest of cognacs, which was suppressed only with the greatest of difficulties. The Grand Prix is awarded to the White Centaur brand. The jury is delighted! It is something totally unprecedented! Such a phenomenal extravaganza of sensations! The declaratory packet is opened, and, oh horrors, it’s a synthetic! The Great Wine Taster turned as white as a sheet of paper and was physically ill. By the way, I had an opportunity to try this cognac, and it’s really superb, but they run it from crude and it doesn’t even have a proper name. H ex eighteen naphtha fraction and it’s cheaper than hydrolyzed alcohol… Have a cigar. Nonsense, what do you mean you don’t smoke? It’s not right not to have a cigar after a dinner like this… I love this restaurant. Every time I come here to lecture at the university, I dine at the Olympic. And before returning, I invariably visit the Tavern. True, they don’t have the greenery, nor the tropical birds, and it’s a bit stuffy and warm and smells of smoke, but they have a genuine, inimitable cuisine. The Assiduous Tasters gather nowhere but there — at the Gourmet. In that place you do nothing but eat. You can’t talk, you can’t laugh, it’s totally nonsensical to go there with a woman — you only eat there! Slowly, thoughtfully…”

  Doctor Opir finally ran down, leaned back in his chair, and inhaled deeply with total enjoyment. I sucked on the mighty cigar and contemplated the man. I had him well pegged, this doctor of philosophy. Always and in all times there have been such men, absolutely pleased with their situation in society and therefore absolutely satisfied with the condition of that society. A marvelously well-geared tongue and a lively pen, magnificent teeth and faultless innards, and a well-employed sexual apparatus.

  “And so the world is beautiful, Doctor?”

  “Yes,” said the doctor with feeling, “it is finally beautiful.”

  “You are a gigantic optimist,” said I.

  “Our time is the time of optimists. Pessimists go to the Good Mood Salon, void the gall from their subconscious, and become optimists. The time of pessimists has passed, just as the time of tuberculars, of sexual maniacs, and of the military has passed. Pessimism, as an intellectual emotion, is being extirpated by that self-same science. And that not indirectly through the creation of affluence, but concretely by way of invasion of the dark world of the subcortex. Let’s take the dream generator, currently the most popular diversion of the masses. It is completely harmless, unusually well adopted to general use, and is structurally simple. Or consider the neurostimulators…”

  I attempted to steer him into the desired channel.

  “Doesn’t it seem to you that right there in the pharmaceutical field science is overdoing it a bit sometimes?”

  Doctor Opir smiled condescendingly and sniffed at his cigar.

  “Science has always moved by trial and error,” he said weightily. “And I am inclined to believe that the so-called errors are always the result of criminal application. We haven’t yet entered the Golden Age, we are just in the process of doing so, and all kinds of throwbacks, mobsters, and just plain dirt are under foot. So all kinds of drugs are put out which are health-destroying, but which are created, as you know, from the best of motives; all kinds of aromatics… or this… well, that doesn’t suit a dinner conversation.” He cackled suddenly and obscenely
“You can guess my meaning — we are mature people! What was I saying? Oh yes, all this shouldn’t disturb you. It will pass just like the atom bombs.”

  “I only wanted to emphasize,” I remarked, “that there is still the problem of alcoholism, and the problem of narcotics.”

  Doctor Opir’s interest in the conversation was visibly ebbing. Apparently he imagined that I challenged his thesis that science is a boon. To conduct an argument on this basis naturally bored him, as though, for instance, he had been affirming the salubriousness of ocean swimming and I was contradicting him on the basis that I had almost drowned last year.

  “Well, of course…” he mumbled, studying his watch, “we can’t have it all at once… You must admit, after all, that it is the basic trend which is the most important… Waiter!”

  Doctor Opir had eaten well, had a good conversation — professing progressive philosophy — felt well-satisfied, and I decided not to press the matter, especially as I really didn’t give a hang about his progressive philosophy, while in the matters which interested me the most, he probably would not be concretely informed at all in the final analysis.

  We paid up and went out of the restaurant. I inquired, “Do you know, Doctor, whose monument that is? Over there on the plaza.”

  Doctor Opir gazed absent-mindedly. “Sure enough, it’s a monument,” he said. “Somehow I overlooked it before… Shall I drop you somewhere?”

  “Thank you, I prefer to walk.”

  “In that case, goodbye. It was a pleasure to meet you… Of course it’s hard to expect to convince you.” He grimaced, shifting a toothpick around his mouth. “But it would be interesting to try. Perhaps you will attend my lecture? I begin tomorrow at ten.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “What is your topic?”