RAY BRADBURY
QUICKER THAN THE EYE 1996
www.raybradbury.ru
1994 year
The incredible event occurred during my third visit to Gustav Von Seyfertitz, my foreign psychoanalyst.
I should have guessed at the strange explosion before it came.
After all, my alienist,
In
After that, «At Liberty,» he could be seen riding the Hollywood Boulevard trolley cars as calm as a mummy, as quiet as an unwired telephone pole.
Where was I? Ah, yes!
It was my
Beddy-bye was, of course, his couch of pain and humiliation where I lay writhing in agonies of assumed Jewish guilt and Northern Baptist stress as he from time to time muttered, «A fruitcake remark!» or «Dumb!» or «If you ever do
As you can see, Gustav Von Seyfertitz was a most unusual
»
Again, this was my third visit to his strange, metallic-looking room with a most odd series of locks on a roundish door. Suddenly, as I was maundering and treading dark waters, I heard his spine stiffen behind me. He gasped a great death rattle, sucked air, and blew it out in a yell that curled and bleached my hair:
«Dive! Dive!»
I dove.
Thinking that the room might be struck by a titanic iceberg, I fell, to scuttle beneath the lion-claw-footed couch.
«Dive!» cried the old man.
«Dive?» I whispered, and looked up.
To see a submarine periscope, all polished brass, slide up to vanish in the ceiling.
Gustav Von Seyfertitz stood pretending not to notice me, the sweat-oiled leather couch, or the vanished brass machine. Very calmly, in the fashion of Conrad Veidt in
like Jack Nicklaus hits a ball?
That was the sound my Germanic friend's boots
made as he knocked them together in a salute
«Gustav Mannerheim Auschlitz Von Seyfertitz Baron Woldstein, at your service!» He lowered his voice. «Unterderseaboat-«
I thought he might say «Doktor.» But:
«Unterderseaboat
I scrambled off the floor.
Another crrrack and-The periscope slid calmly down out of the
ceiling, the most beautiful Freudian cigar I had ever seen.
«No!» I gasped.
«Have I ever
«But' '-he shrugged-' 'little white ones.» He stepped to the periscope, slapped two
handles in place, slammed one eye shut, and crammed the other angrily against the view piece, turning the periscope in a slow roundabout of the room, the couch, and me.
«Fire one,» he ordered.
I almost heard the torpedo leave its tube. «Fire
And a second soundless and invisible bomb
motored on its way to infinity. Struck midships, I sank to the couch.
«You, you!» I said mindlessly. «It!» I pointed
at the brass machine. «This!» I touched couch. «
«Sit down,» said Von Seyfertitz.
«I am.» «
«I'd rather not,» I said uneasily.
Von Seyfertitz turned the periscope so its topmost eye, raked at an angle, glared at me. It had an uncanny resemblance, in its glassy coldness, his own fierce hawk's gaze.
His voice, from behind the periscope, echoed. «So you want to know, eh, how Gustav Von Seyfertitz, Baron Woldstein, suffered to leave the cold ocean depths, depart his dear North Sea ship, flee his destroyed and beaten fatherland, to become the Unterderseaboat
«Now that you mention-«
«I never mention! I declare. And my declarations are sea-battle commands.»
«So I noticed . .
«Shut up. Sit back-«
«Not just now . . .» I said uneasily.
His heels knocked as he let his right hand spider to his top coat pocket and slip forth yet a forth eye with which to fasten me: a bright, thin monocle which he screwed into his stare as if decupping a boiled egg. I winced. For now the monocle was part of his glare and regarded me with cold fire.
«Why the monocle?» I said.
«Idiot! It is to cover my
«Oh,» I said.
And he began his monologue. And as he talked I realized his need had been pent up, capped, years, so he talked on and on, forgetting me.
And it was during this monologue that a strange thing occurred. I rose slowly to my feet as Herr Doktor Von Seyfertitz circled, his long, slim cigar printing smoke cumuli on the air, which read like white Rorschach blots.
With each implantation of his foot, a word ca out, and then another, in a sort of plodding grammar. Sometimes he stopped and stood poised with one leg raised and one word stopped in his mouth to be turned on his tongue and examined. Then the shoe went down, the noun slid forth and the verb and object in good time.
Until at last, circling, I found myself in a chair stunned, for I saw:
Herr Doktor Von Seyfertitz stretched on his couch, his long spider fingers laced on his chest.
«It has been no easy thing to come forth on land,» he sibilated. «Some days I was the jellyfish, frozen. Others, the shore-strewn octopi, at
He paused to take a trembling breath, then continued:
«I moved in stages from the depths to a houseboat, to a wharf bungalow, to a shore-tent and then
back to a canal in a city and at last to New York
