“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 bate, 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.”