The Final Circle of Paradise

by Arkady Strugatsky

  He glanced around and began backing up.

  “I’m going,” he said.

  “O no,” I said decisively. “Let’s finish what we started.

  Man to man. Don’t think that I am altogether an ignoramus.”

  “What do you know?” He was already near the door and talking very quietly.

  “More than you,” I said severely. “But I don’t want to shout it all over the house. If you want to talk, come on over here. Climb up on the desk and have yourself a seat. Believe me, I’m not a necrotic phenomenon.”

  He hesitated for a whole minute, and everything for which he hoped and everything of which he was afraid appeared and disappeared on his face. At last, he said, “Just let me close the door.”

  He ran into the living room, closed the door to the hallway, returned to close the study door tight, and approached me. His hands were in his pockets, the face white, contrasting with the protruding ears, which were red but cold.

  “In the first place, you are a dope,” I pronounced, dragging him toward me and standing him between my knees. “Once there was a boy who lived in such a fear that his pants never dried out, not even when he was on a beach, and his ears were as cold as though they had been left in a refrigerator overnight. This boy trembled constantly and so well that when he grew up his legs were all wiggly, and his skin became like that of a plucked goose.”

  I was hoping that he would smile just once, but he listened very intently and very seriously inquired, “And what was he afraid of?”

  “He had an elder brother, who was a nice fellow, but a great one for drinking. And, as often happens, the tipsy brother was not at all like the sober brother. He got to look very wild indeed. And when he really drank a lot, he got to look like a dead man. So this boy…”

  A contemptuous smile appeared on Len’s face.

  “He sure found something to be scared of. When they are drunk is when they turn good.”

  “Who are they?” I asked immediately. “Mother? Vousi?”

  “That’s it. Mother is just the opposite — in the morning when she gets up, she’s always nasty, and then she drinks vermouth once, then twice, and that’s it. Toward evening she is altogether nice because night is near.”

  “And at night?”

  “At night that creep comes around,” Len said reluctantly.

  “We are not concerned with the creep,” I said in a businesslike manner. “It’s not from him that you run to the garage.”

  “I don’t run,” he said stubbornly. “It’s a game.”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know,” I said. “There are, of course, certain things in this world of which even I am afraid.

  For instance when a boy is crying and trembling. I can’t look at such things, and it just turns me over inside. Or when your teeth hurt and it is required by circumstances that you keep on smiling — that’s pretty bad and there is no way of ignoring it. But there are also just plain stupidities. When, for example, some idiots help themselves, out of sheer boredom and surfeit, to the brain of a living monkey. That’s no longer frightening, it’s just plain disgusting. Especially as they didn’t think it up by themselves. It was a thousand years ago when they thought of it first, and also out of excessive affluence, the fat tyrants of the Far East. And contemporary idiots heard and rejoiced. But they should be pitied, not feared.”

  “Pity them?” said Len. “But they don’t pity anybody. They do whatever they like. It’s all the same to them, don’t you see? It they are bored, then they don’t care whose head they saw apart. Idiots… Maybe in the daytime they are idiots, but you don’t seem to understand that at night they are not idiots, they are all accursed.”

  “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 a
ble 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 hate, 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.”

  “He — is tired,” I said.

  “Oh, so? Well then, I can leave!”

  “But I won’t let you,” I said, catching her by the scarf and pulling her down beside me. “Vousi, dear girl, are you a specialist only for ladies’ good humor or in general? You wouldn’t be able to put a lonely man whom nobody loves into a good humor?”

  “What’s to love?” She looked me over. “Red eyes and a potato for a nose.”

  “Like an alligator’s.”

  “Like a dog’s. Don’t go putting your arm about me, I won’t allow it. Why didn’t you come over?”

  “And why did you abandon me yesterday?”

  “How do you like that -.abandoned him!”

  “All alone in a strange town.”

  “I abandoned him! Why, I locked for you all over. I told everyone that you are a Tungus, and you got lost — that was a poor thing for you to do. No — I won’t permit that! Where were you last night? Fishering, no doubt. And the same thing today, you won’t tell any stories.”

  “Why shouldn’t I tell?” I said. And I told her about the old Subway. I sensed at once that the truth would be inadequate, and so I spoke of men in metallic masks, of a terrible oath, of a wall wet with blood, of a sobbing skeleton, and I let her feel the bump behind my ear. She liked everything very well.

  “Let’s go right now,” she said.

  “Not for anything,” I said and lay down.

  “What kind of manners is that? Get up at once and we’d go.

  Of course, no one will believe me. But you will show your bump, and everything will be just perfect.”

  “And then we’ll go to the shivers?” I wanted to know.

  “But yes! You know that turns out to he even good for your health.”

  “And we’ll drink brandy?”

  “Brandy and vermouth and a polecat and whiskey.”

  “Enough, enough… and no doubt we’ll also squeeze into cars and drive at a hundred and fifty miles per hour?…

  Listen, Vousi, why should you go there?”

  She finally understood and smiled in discomfiture.

  “And what’s wrong with it? The Fishers also go.”

  “There is nothing bad,” I said. “But what’s good about it?”

  “I don’t know. Everybody does it. Sometimes it’s a lot of fun… and the shivers. There everything — all your wishes come true.”

  “And that’s it? That’s all there is?”

  “Well, not everything, of course. But whatever you think about, whatever you would like to happen, often happens.

  Just like in a dream.”

  “Well then maybe it would be better to go to bed?”

  “What’s the matter with you?” she said sulkily. “In a real dream all kinds of things happen… as though you don’t know!

  But with the shivers, only what you like!”

  “And what do you like?”

  “We-e-ll! Lots of things."’

  “Still… imagine I am a magician. And I say to you, have three wishes. Anything at all, whatever you wish. The most impossible. And I will make them come true. Well?”

  She thought very hard so that even her shoulders sagged.

  Then her face lit up.

  “Let me never grow old,” she said.

  “Excellent,” I said. “That’s one.”

  “Let me…” she began inspiredly and stopped.

  I used to enjoy tremendously asking my friends this very question and used to ask it at every available opportunity.

  Several times I even assigned compositions to my youngsters on the theme of three wishes. And it was always most amusing that out of a thousand men and women, oldsters and children, only two or three dozen figured that it is possible to wish not only for themselves personally, or their immediate close ones, but also for the world at large, for mankind as a whole. No, this was not witness to the ineradicable human egotism; the wishes were not invariably strictly selfish, and the majority in subsequent discussions, when reminded of missed opportunities
and the large problems of all mankind, did a double take and in honest anger reproached me that I hadn’t explained at the beginning. But one way or another they all began their reply along the lines of “Let me…” This was a manifestation of some kind of ancient subconscious conviction that your own personal wishes cannot change anything in the wide world, and it makes no difference whether you do or do not have a magic wand.

  “Let me…” began Vousi once more, and again was silent. I was watching her surreptitiously. She noticed this, and dissolving into a broad smile, said with a wave of her hand, “So that’s your game. Some card you are!”

  “No — no — no,” I said. “You should always be prepared to answer this question. Because I knew a man once who always asked it of everyone, and then was inconsolable — ‘Oh what an opportunity I missed, how could I not have figured it out?’ So you see it’s entirely in earnest. Your first wish is never to grow old. And then?”

  “Let’s see — what else? Of course, it would be nice to have a handsome fellow, whom they would all chase, but who would be with me only. Always.”

  “Wonderful,” I said. “That’s two. And what else?”

  Her face showed that the game had already palled on her, and that any second she’d drop a bomb. And she did. All I could do was blink my eyes.

  “Yes,” I said, “of course that, too. But that happens even without any magic.”

  “Yes and no,” she argued and began to develop the idea, based on the misfortunes of her clients. All of which was very gay and amusing to her, while I, in ignominious confusion, gulped brandy with lemon and tittered in embarrassment, feeling like a virgin wall flower. Well, if all this went on in a night club, I could handle it. Well, well, well… some fine activities go on in those salons of the Good Mood. How do you like these elderly ladies…

  “Enough,” I said. “Vousi, you embarrass me, and anyway I understand it all very well now. I can see that it’s really impossible to do without magic. It’s a good thing that I am not a magician.”

  “I really stung you well,” she said happily. “And what would you wish for yourself, now?”

  I decided I’d reciprocate in kind.