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?”
“Neo-optimist Philosophy. I will be sure to touch upon a series of questions which we have so pithily discussed today.”
“Thank you,” I said again. “Most assuredly.”
I watched as he went to his long automobile, collapsed in the seat, puttered with the auto-driver control, fell back against the seat back, and apparently dozed off instantly. The car began to roll cautiously across the plaza and disappeared in the shade and greenery of a side street.
Neo-optimism… Neo-hedonism… Neo-cretinism…
Neo-capitalism… “No evil without good,” said the fox. So, I have landed in the Country of the Boobs. It should
