The Final Circle of Paradise

by Arkady Strugatsky

  “And then?”

  “Then I was in the fourth.” I got up. “Well, okay. Talk you won’t, go for a walk you won’t, and your pants are wet, so I am going back in. You won’t even tell me your name.”

  He looked at me in silence and breathed heavily through his mouth. I went back to my quarters. The cream-colored hall was irreparably disfigured, it seemed to me. The huge black clot was not drying. Somebody is going to get it today, I thought. A ball of string was underfoot. I picked it up. The end of the string was tied to the landlady’s half-doorknob. So, I thought, this too is clear. I untied the string and put the ball in my pocket.

  In the study, I got a clean sheet of paper from the desk and composed a telegram to Matia. “Arrived safely, 78 Second Waterway. Kisses. Ivan.” I telephoned it to the local PT T and again dialed Rimeyer’s number. Again there was no answer. I put on my jacket, looked in the mirror, counted my money, and was about to set out when I saw that the door to the living room was open and an eye was visible through the crack. Naturally, I gave no sign. I carefully completed the inspection of my clothing, returned to the bathroom, and vacuumed myself for a while, whistling away merrily. When I returned to the study, the mouse-eared head sticking through the half-open door immediately vanished. Only the silvery tube of the splotcher continued to protrude. Sitting down in the chair, I opened and closed all the twelve drawers, including the secret one, and only then looked at the door. The boy stood framed in it.

  “My name is Len,” he announced.

  “Greetings, Len,” I said absent-mindedly. “I am called Ivan. Come on in — although I was going out to have dinner.

  “You haven’t had dinner yet?”

  “No.”

  “That’s good. Go ask your mother’s permission and we’ll be off “

  “It’s too early,” he said.

  “What’s too early? To have dinner?”

  “No, to go. School doesn’t end for another twenty minutes.” He was silent again. “Besides, there’s that fat fink with the braid.”

  “He’s a bad one?’ I asked.

  “Yeah,” said Len. “Are you really leaving now?”

  “Yes, I am,” I said, and took the ball of string from my pocket. “Here, take it. And what if Mother comes out first?”

  He shrugged.

  “If you are really leaving,” he said, “would it be all right if I stayed in your place?”

  “Go ahead, stay.”

  “There’s nobody else here?”

  “Nobody.”

  He still didn’t come to me to take the string, but let me come to him, and even allowed me to take his ear. It was indeed cold. I ruffled his head lightly and pushed him toward the table.

  “Go sit all you want. I won’t be back soon.”

  “I’ll take a snooze,” said Len.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Hotel Olympic was a fifteen-story red-and-black structure. Half the plaza in front of it was covered with cars, and in its center stood a monument surrounded by a small flowerbed. It represented a man with a proudly raised head.

  Detouring the monument, I suddenly realized that I knew the man. In puzzlement I stopped and examined it more thoroughly.

  There was no doubt about it. There in front of Hotel Olympic, in a funny old-fashioned suit with his hand resting on an incomprehensible apparatus which I almost took for the extension of the abstract-styled base, and with his eyes staring at infinity through contemptuously squinting lids, was none other than Vladimir Sergeyevitch Yurkovsky. Carved in gold letters on the base was the legend “Vladimir Yurkovsky, December 5, Year of the Scales.”

  I couldn’t believe it, because they do not raise monuments to Yurkovskys. While they live, they are appointed to more or less responsible positions, they are honored at jubilees, they are elected to membership in academies. They are rewarded with medals and are honored with international prizes, and when they die or perish, they are the subjects of books, quotations, references, but always less and less often as time passes, and finally they are forgotten altogether. They depart the halls of memory and linger on only in books. Vladimir Sergeyevitch was a general of the sciences and a remarkable man. But it is not possible to erect monuments to all generals and all remarkable men, especially in countries to which they had no direct relationship and in cities where if they did visit, it was only temporarily. In any case, in that Year of the Scales, which is of significance only to them, he was not even a general. In March he was, jointly with Dauge, completing the investigation of the Amorphous Spot on Uranus. That was when the sounding probe blew up and we all got a dose in the work section — and when we got back to the Planet in September, he was all spotted with lilac blotches, mad at the world, promising himself that he would take time out to swim and get sunburned and then get right back to the design of a new probe because the old one was trash… I looked at the hotel again to reassure myself. The only out was to assume that the life of the town was in some mysterious and potent manner highly dependent on the Amorphous Spot on Uranus. Yurkovsky continued to smile with snobbish superiority. Generally, the sculpture was quite good, but I could not figure out what it was he was leaning on. The apparatus didn’t look like the probe.

  Something hissed by my ear. I turned and involuntarily sprang back. Beside me, staring dully at the monument base, was a tall gaunt individual closely encased from head to foot in some sort of gray scaly material and with a bulky cubical helmet around his head. The face was obscured behind a glass plate with holes, from which smoke issued in synchronism with his breathing. The wasted visage behind the plate was covered with perspiration and the cheeks twitched in frantic tempo. At first I took him for a Wanderer, then I thought that he was a tourist executing a curative routine, and only finally did I realize that I was looking at an Arter.

  “Excuse me,” I said “Could you please tell me what sort of monument this is?”

  The damp face contorted more desperately. “What?” came the dull response from inside the helmet.

  I bent down.

  “I am inquiring: what is this monument?”

  The man glared at the statue. The smoke came thicker out of the holes. There was more powerful hissing.

  “Vladimir Yurkovsky,” he read, “Fifth of December, Year of the Scales… aha… December… so — it must be some German.”

  “And who put up the monument?”

  “I don’t know,” said the man. “But it’s written down right there. What’s it to you?”

  “I was an acquaintance of his,” I explained.

  “Well then, why do you ask? Ask the man himself.”

  “He is dead.”

  “Aah… Maybe they buried him here?”

  “No,” I said, “he is buried far away.”

  “Where?”

  “Far away. What’s that thing he is holding?”

  “What thing? It’s an eroula.”

  “What?”

  “I said, an eroula. An electronic roulette.”

  My eyes popped.

  “What’s a roulette doing here?”

  “Where?”

  “Here, on the statue.”

  “I don’t know,” said the man after some thought. “Maybe your friend invented it?”

  “Hardly,” said I. “He worked in a different field.”

  “What was that?”

  “He was a planetologist and an interplanetary pilot.”

  “Aah… well, if he invented it, that was bully for him. It’s a useful thing. I should remember it: Yurkovsky, Vladimir. He must have been a brainy German.”

  “I doubt he invented it,” I said. “I repeat — he was an interplanetary pilot.”

  The man stared at me.

  “Well, if he didn’t invent it, then why is he standing with it?”

  “That’s the point,” I said. “I am amazed myself.”

  “You are a damn liar,” said the man suddenly. “You lie and you don’t even know why you are lying. It’s early morning, and he is stoned alre
ady… Alcoholic!”

  He turned away and shuffled off, dragging his thin legs and hissing loudly. I shrugged my shoulders, took a last look at Vladimir Sergeyevitch, and set off toward the hotel, across the huge plaza.

  The gigantic doorman swung the door open for me and sounded an energetic welcome.

  I stopped.

  “Would you be so kind,” said I. “Do you know what that monument is?”

  The doorman looked toward the plaza over my head. His face registered confusion.

  “Isn’t that written on it?”

  “There is a legend,” I said. “But who put it up and why?”

  The doorman shuffled his feet.

  “I beg your pardon,” he said guiltily, “I just can’t answer your question. The monument has been there a long time, while I came here very recently. I don’t wish to misinform you. Maybe the porter…”

  I sighed.

  “Well, don’t worry about it. Where is a telephone?”

  “To your right, if you please,” he said looking delighted.

  A porter started out in my direction, but I shook my head and picked up the receiver and dialed Rimeyer’s number. This time I got a busy signal. I went to the elevator and up to the ninth floor.

  Rimeyer, looking untypically fleshy, met me in a dressing gown, out of which stuck legs in pants and with shoes on. The room stank of cigarette smoke and the ashtray was full of butts. There was a general air of chaos in the whole suite. One of the armchairs was knocked over, a woman’s slip was lying crumpled on the couch, and a whole battery of empty bottles glinted under the table.

  “What can I do for you?” asked Rimeyer with a touch of hostility, looking at my chin. Apparently he was recently out of his bathroom, and his sparse colorless hair was wet against his long skull. I handed him my card in silence. Rimeyer read it slowly and attentively, shoved it in his pocket, and continuing to look at my chin, said, “Sit down.”

  I sat.

  “It is most unfortunate. I am devilishly busy and don’t have a minute’s time.”

  “I called you several times today,” said I.

  “I just got back. What’s your name?”

  “Ivan.”

  “And your last name?”

  “Zhilin.”

  “You see, Zhilin, to make it short, I have to get dressed and leave again.” He was silent awhile, rubbing his flabby cheeks. “Anyway there’s not much to talk about… However, if you wish, you can sit here and wait for me. If I don’t return in an hour, come back tomorrow at twelve. And leave your telephone number and address, write it down right on the table there…”

  He threw off the bathrobe, and dragging it along, walked off into the adjoining room.

  “In the meantime,” he continued, “you can see the town, and a miserable little town it is… But you’ll have to do it in any case. As for me, I am sick to my stomach of it.”

  He returned adjusting his tie. His hands were trembling, and the skin on his face looked gray and wilted. Suddenly I felt that I did not trust him — the sight of him was repellent, like that of a neglected sick man.

  “You look poorly,” I said. “You have changed a great deal.”

  For the first time he looked me in the eyes.

  “And how would you know what I was like before?”

  “I saw you at Matia’s. You smoke a lot, Rimeyer, and tobacco is saturated regularly with all kinds of trash nowadays.”

  “Tobacco — that’s a lot of nonsense,” he said with sudden irritation. “Here everything is saturated with all kinds of tripe… But perhaps you may be right, probably I should quit.” He pulled on his jacket slowly; “Time to quit, and in any case, I shouldn’t have started.”

  “How is the work coming along?”

  “It could be worse. And unusually absorbing work it is.”

  He smiled in a peculiar unpleasant way. “I am going now, as they are waiting for me and I am late. So, till an hour from now, or until tomorrow at twelve.”

  He nodded to me and left.

  I wrote my address and telephone number on the table, and as my foot plowed into the mass of bottles underneath, I couldn’t help but think that the work was indeed absorbing. I called room service and requested a chambermaid to clean up the room. The most polite of voices replied that the occupant of the suite categorically forbade service personnel to enter his room during his absence and had repeated the prohibition just now on leaving the hotel. “Aha,” I said, and hung up. This didn’t sit well with me. For myself, I never issue such directions and have never hidden even my notebooks, not from anyone. It’s stupid to work at deception and much better to drink less. I picked up the overturned armchair, sat down, and prepared for a long wait, trying to overcome a sense of displeasure and disappointment.

  I didn’t have to wait for long. After some ten minutes, the door opened a crack and a pretty face protruded into the room.

  “Hey there,” it pronounced huskily. “Is Rimeyer in?”

  “Rimeyer is not in, but you can come in anyway.”

  She hesitated, examining me. Apparently she had no intention of coming in, but was just saying hello, in passing.

  “Come in, come in,” said I. “I have nothing to do.”

  She entered with a light dancing gait, and putting her arms akimbo, stood in front of me. She had a short turned-up nose and a disheveled boyish hairdo. The hair was red, the shorts crimson, and the blouse a bright yolk yellow. A colorful woman and quite attractive. She must have been about twenty-five.

  “You wait — right?”

  Her eyes were unnaturally bright and she smelled of wine, tobacco, and perfume.

  She collapsed on the hassock and flung her legs up on the telephone table.

  “Throw a cigarette to a working girl,” she said. “It’s five hours since I had one.”

  “I don’t smoke. Shall I ring for some?”

  “Good Lord, another sad sack! Never mind the phone… or that dame will show up again. Rummage around in the ashtray and find me a good long butt.”

  The ashtray did have a lot of long butts.

  “They all have lipstick on them,” said I.

  “That’s all right; it’s my lipstick. What’s your name?”

  “Ivan.”

  She snapped a lighter and lit up.

  “And mine is Ilina. Are you a foreigner, too? All you foreigners seem so wide. What are you doing here?"’

  “Waiting for Rimeyer.”

  “I don’t mean that! What brought you here, are you escaping from your wife?”

  “I am not married,” I said quietly. “I came to write a book.”

  “A book? Some friends this Rimeyer has. He came to write a book. Sex Problems of Impotent Sportsmen. How’s your situation with the sex problem?”

  “It is not a problem to me,” I said mildly. “And how about you?”

  She lowered her legs from the table.

  “That’s a no-no. Take it slow. This isn’t Paris, you know. All in good time. Anyway, you should have your locks cut — sitting there like a perch.”

  “Like a who?” I was very patient as I had another forty-five minutes to wait.

  “Like a perch. You know the type.” She made vague motions around her ears.

  “I don’t know about that,” I said. “I don’t know anything yet as I have just arrived. Tell me about it, it sounds interesting.”

  “Oh no! Not I! We don’t chatter. Our bit is a small one — serve, clean up, flash your teeth, and keep quiet. Professional secret. Have you heard of such an animal?”

  “I’ve heard,” I said. “But who’s ‘we’ — an association of doctors?

  For some reason, she thought this was hilarious.

  “Doctors! Imagine that.” She laughed. “Well, wise guy, you’re all right — quite a tongue. We have one in the once like you. One word, and we’re all rolling in the aisles.

  Whenever we cater to the Fishers, he always gets the job, they like a good laugh.”

  “Who doesn’
t?” said I.

  “Well, you are wrong. The Intels, for instance, chased him out. ‘Take the fool away,’ they said. Or also recently those pregnant males.”

  “Who?"’

  “The sad ones. Well, I can see you don’t understand a thing. Where in heaven’s name did you come from?”

  “From Vienna.”

  “So — don’t you have the sad ones in Vienna?”

  “You couldn’t imagine what we don’t have in Vienna.”

  “Could be you don’t even have irregular meetings?”

  “No, we don’t have them. All our meetings are regular, like a bus schedule.”

  She was having a good time.

  “Perhaps you don’t have waitresses either?”

  “Waitresses we do have, and you can find some excellent examples. Are you a waitress then?”

  She jumped up abruptly.

  “That won’t do at all,” she cried. “I’ve had enough sad ones for today. Now you’re going to have a loving cup with me like a good fellow…” She began to search furiously among the bottles by the window. “Damn him, they’re all empty! Could be you’re a teetotaler? Aha, here’s a little vermouth. You drink that, or shall we order whiskey?”

  “Let’s begin with the vermouth,” said I.

  She banged the bottle on the table and took two glasses from the window sill.

  “Have to wash them. Hold on a minute, everything’s full of garbage.” She went into the bathroom and continued to speak from there. “If you turned out to be a teetotaler on top of everything else. I don’t know what I would do with you… What a pigsty he’s got in his bathroom — I love it! Where are you staying? Here too?”

  “No, in town,” I replied. “On Second Waterway.”

  She came back with the glasses.

  “Straight or with water?”

  “Straight, I guess.”

  “All foreigners take it straight. But we have it with water for some reason.” She sat on my armchair and put her arms around my shoulders. We drank and kissed without any feeling.

  Her lips were heavily lipsticked, and her eyelids were heavy from lack of sleep and fatigue. She put down her glass, searched out another butt in the ashtray, and returned to the hassock.