The Final Circle of Paradise

“It’s really not an affair,” I contradicted. “It’s a piece of history, Oscar, and you would like to fit it into a file and tie it with a ribbon. But this is no gangster business. It should be obvious to a hedgehog, as Yurkovsky used to say.”

“Who?”

“Yurkovsky, Vladimir Sergeyevitch. There was such a renowned planetologist. I worked with him.”

“Aah,” said Oscar, “By the way, on the plaza by the Hotel Olympic there is a monument to a Yurkovsky.”

“The very same man.”

“Really?” said Oscar. “On the other hand, it’s quite possible. However, the monument was not put up because he was a renowned planetologist. It’s simply that for the first time in the history of the city, he broke the electronic roulette bank.

It was decided to immortalize such a feat.”

“I expected something of the sort,” I murmured. I felt depressed.

The shower began to hiss in the bathroom, and there was a frightful roar from Matia, At first, I decided that he turned on ice water instead of warm, but he kept yelling and then began to curse in the most horrendous terms. Oscar and I exchanged glances. He was generally calm, interpreting this as the typical action of slug, and his face exhibited a compassionate expression. The latch rattled wildly, the door flew open with a crash. Bare heels slapped in the bedroom, and a naked Matia rolled into the study.

“Are you some kind of an idiot?” he bellowed at me. “What sort of filthy trick is this?”

I went numb. Matia resembled a grotesque zebra. His well-fed body was covered with poison-green vertical stripes.

He reared and stamped his feet, spraying emerald drops. When we regained our composure and investigated the site of the accident, we learned that the shower head had been stuffed with a sponge saturated with a green dye. I remembered Len’s note and guessed that Vousi was the culprit. It took a long while to restore a normal atmosphere. Matia viewed the incident as a boorish joke and an inadmissible disregard of subordinate discipline and behavior. Oscar horse-laughed. I scrubbed Matia with a brush and explained. Then Matia announced that from now on he wouldn’t trust anyone and would try out slug when he got home. He dressed and went into conference with Oscar on the plans for blockading the city.

I was cleaning up in the bath and thinking that with this, my work in the Council was coming to an end, and another kind of work was beginning — which I did not know how to begin. I would have liked to include myself in the blockade planning, not because I considered it necessary, but because it was so simple, so much more simple than to return to people their souls which had been devoured by affluence, and to teach each one to think of world problems in the same way as his own personal ones.

“Isolate this pus bag from the rest of the world, isolate it totally, that’s the total of our philosophy,” orated Matia.

That was aimed at me. But perhaps not even me. For Matia was a brilliant mind. He understood too well that isolation was always a defense, but here we had to attack. But he knew how to advance only with squads, and this was embarrassing to him.

To rescue. For how long would you need rescuing? When would you learn to rescue yourselves? Why were you eternally harkening to priests, fascists, demagogues, and imbecile Opirs?

Why didn’t you want to exert your brains? Why did you resist thinking so? Why couldn’t you understand that the world is vast, complex, and fascinating? Why was everything simple and boring to you? In what way did your mind differ from the mind of Rabelais, Swift, Lenin, Einstein, Makarenko, Hemingway, and Strogoff? Someday I would grow tired of all this. Someday when I had no more strength and conviction. For I was similar to you. But I wanted to help you, and you didn’t want to help me…

Reg and Len came over after school, and Len said, “We have decided, Ivan. We will go to the Gobi Central.” He had red fuzz on his lip and huge red hands, and I could see that it divas he who had thought up the Gobi trip, and quite recently — not more than ten minutes ago. Reg, as usual, was silent, chewing on a blade of grass and placidly studying me with his calm gray eyes. He has become altogether a square, I thought, and said, “Wonderful book, isn’t it?” “Yes, indeed,” said Len.

'We understood at once where we should go.” Reg was quiet.

'Heat and stench are suspended in the shadow of these hard laboring dragons,” I said from memory. “They devour everything under them — the ancient Mongolian prayer gate, the bones of a two-humped beast fallen in some sand storm…”

“Yes,” said Len, while Reg went on chewing his blade of grass.

“Every time,” I continued (now from Ichin-dagli), “that the sun arrives at a mathematically precise required position, a strange mirage blossoms out in the East — of a strange city with white towers which no one has yet seen in reality. “ “One should see that with his own eyes,” said Len, and laughed. “Friend Len,” I said, “it’s too fascinating and therefore too simple. You will see that it’s too simple yourself and it will become an unpleasant disappointment.” No, I hadn’t said it right. “Friend Len,” I said, “what sort of a mirage is that? Here is one.

Seven years ago, in your mother’s house, I saw a truly marvelous mirage: both of you standing before me almost grown up…” No — I was saying that for myself, not for them. It should be said differently. “Friend Len,” I said, “seven years ago you explained to me that your people were accursed. We came here and removed the curse from you and Reg and from many other children who had no parents. And now it’s your turn to remove, the curse, which…'

It will be very difficult, but I’ll explain it to them.

One way or another, I’ll get it across. We have known from childhood how to remove the curses on the barricades and on construction sites and in laboratories, and you will remove the last of the curses, you will be the future teachers and educators. In the last war — the most bloodless and the most difficult for its soldiers.

Upstairs Vousi screeched and Len started to cry piteously.

Oscar’s voice boomed in the study. How well off he is, I thought. Simple: slug is bad, harmful, unnatural. Therefore, it must be destroyed, forbidden by law, and then you must watch closely that the law is strictly enforced. Only Matia is smarter than that, because he is older and more experienced.

Matia can still be pulled over to my side. My word doesn’t mean anything to him, but others will be found to whom he will listen… How wonderful that I can now cry out to the whole world and be heard by millions of like- thinkers!

And then I thought that I would not leave this place. I had been here only three days. It could not be that there was no one here who would be with us. No one who hated all this with a deadly hatred, who wanted to blast this dull sated world out of its stasis. Such people always existed and always will.

Perhaps that bibliophile driver or that tall, harsh one of the Intels… and who knew how many more. They stumbled about as though they were blind. We would do everything in our power to help them so that they would not waste their anger on trifles.

It was our place to be here now. And my place, too.

What a labor lies ahead, I thought, what a task! For the time being, I didn’t know where to begin in this Country of the Boob, caught unprepared in a flood of affluence, but I knew that I wouldn’t leave here as long as the immigration laws permitted. And when they stopped permitting it, I would break them…