Presently the grain stores and log-cabin fortresses came to an end and were replaced by modern two-storied houses, interspersed with small parks. In the parks, small children were running about, old women were knitting warm things, and old men were playing dominoes as if for keeps. A spacious square turned up in the center of town, surrounded with two- and three-story buildings. It was paved with asphalt, punctuated in the center by the greenery of a garden. Above it rose a large red poster titled Honor RoIl and several smaller posters with plotted curves and diagrams. I discovered the post office right there, in the square. The fellows and I had agreed that the first one to get to the town would leave a note with his coordinates in general delivery. There was no note, and I left a letter with my address and instructions on how to find the cottage on hen’s legs. Next I decided to have breakfast
Circling the square, I found a cinema playing Kozara; a bookstore, closed for inventory; the town hall with several dusty cars in front; the Hotel Frigid Sea, without vacancies as per usual; two kiosks with soda and ice cream; one general goods store, No. 2; an agricultural goods store, No. 18; dining room No. 11, which opened at noon; and a buffet, No. 3, closed without explanation. Next I observed the town police station and had a chat in its open doorway with a very young policeman about the location of the gas pump and the state of the road to Lezhnev.
“But where is your car?” inquired the policeman, looking around the square.
“Over with some people I know,” I replied.
“Aha, with acquaintances…” he said meaningfully. I felt he took note of me. Timidly I bowed off.
Next to the three-storied building of the local fisheries co-op, I finally located a small, clean tearoom, No. 16/27. It was a pleasant sort of place. There weren’t too many customers, but those were indeed drinking tea, talking about simple and comprehensible things such as that over by Korobetz the little bridge had finally fallen in and one had to ford the stream; that it was a week since they had removed the Main Motor Vehicle Inspection Station at the fifteen-kilometer milepost and that, “The spark is a beast—it will knock an elephant down—but won’t do its job worth a damn.” There was a smell of gasoline and fried fish. Those who were not involved in conversation were eyeing my jeans, and I was happy to recall that on my rear there was a highly professional spot—the day before yesterday I had sat down most propitiously on my grease gun.
I took a full plate of fried fish, three glasses of tea, three sandwiches, paid up with a heap of the coppers from my crone friend (“Been out begging on the church steps.” muttered the cashier), and settled in a cozy corner and proceeded to eat, enjoying the sight of those hoarse-voiced, heavy-smoking types. It was a pleasure to take in their sunburned, wiry, independent countenances with that I’ve-seen-it-all look, and watch how they ate with appetite, smoked with appetite, and talked with appetite. They were making use of their free time to the last second before the long hours on a bumpy, tiresome, dusty road in their hot and stuffy cabs under a hot sun. If I weren’t a programmer, I would surely become a driver, and, of course, of no light-weight truck or even a bus, but of some freight monster with a ladder to the cab and a small crane for changing a wheel.
The neighboring table was occupied by a pair of young men who didn’t look like drivers, and for this reason I didn’t pay them any heed at first. Just as they didn’t notice me, either. But as I was finishing my second glass of tea, the word “sofa” floated into my consciousness. Then, one of them said, “. . In that case it doesn’t make sense to have the hen’s-legs cottage at all,” so I began to listen. To my regret, they spoke quietly, and I had my back to them, so I couldn’t hear too well. But the voices seemed familiar.
“no thesis. . the sofa only. .”
“…… to such a hairy one…”
“…sofa… the sixteenth stage. ”
“……with only fourteen stages in transvection…”
“…it’s easier to model a translator. ”
“…does it matter who’s tittering!”
“… I’ll make a gift of a razor…”
“…we can’t do without the sofa…”
At this point, one of them began to clear his throat, and in such a familiar way that I associated it instantly with last night and I turned around, but they were already on their way to the exit—two big men with square shoulders and strong, athletic necks. For some time, I could see them through the window as they crossed the square, circumnavigated the garden, and disappeared behind the diagrams. I finished my tea and sandwiches and also went out. There you have it. The mermaid didn’t excite them. The talking cat did not intrigue them. But they couldn’t do without the sofa…. I tried to remember what that sofa looked like, but nothing unusual came to mind. A proper sofa. A good sofa. Comfortable. Except when one slept on it, one dreamed of a strange reality.
It would have been good to return home at that point and get into all those sofa affairs in earnest. To experiment a bit with the shape-shifter book and have a heart-to-heart talk with Basil the tomcat and poke around the hen’s-legs cottage to see if there were other interesting things in it. But the car was also waiting there for me, which necessitated both a DC and a TS. I could put up with DC—it was only the Daily Care, calling for the shaking out of floor mats and the washing of the body with a stream of water under pressure, which washing, incidentally, could, in case of necessity, be performed by the substitute method of ablution with a watering can or a pail. But the TS… that was a frightening concept for a neat person on a hot day. Because TS was none other than Technical Service, which technical service consisted of my lying under the car with the grease gun and gradually transferring its contents to the grease fittings and equally well to my person. It’s hot and stuffy under a car and its undercarriage is covered with a thick layer of dried mud…. In short, I was not very anxious to go home.
Chapter 4
Who has permitted himself this diabolical jest?
Seize him, and tear off his mask so that we may know whom we shall hang this morning from the castle wall.
I bought a two-day-old Pravda, drank a glass of soda water, and settled down on a bench in the park, in the shade of the Honor Roll. It was eleven o’clock. I looked through the paper carefully. This took seven minutes. Then I read the article about hydroponics, the feature about the doings in Kansk, and a long letter to the editor from the workers of a chemical plant. This took altogether twenty-two minutes.
Perhaps I should visit the cinema, I thought. But I had already seen Kozara, once in the theater and once on television. So I decided to have something to drink, folded the paper, and stood up. Of all the copper collection from the old hag, there remained only a single five-kopeck piece. Finish it up, I decided; had a glass of soda with syrup, got a kopeck back, and bought a box of matches in the adjoining stall. There was nothing else to do downtown. So I started off at random—into a narrow street between store No. 2 and dining room No. 11.
There were almost no pedestrians. A huge dusty truck with a rattling trailer passed by. The driver, head and elbow stuck out of the window, was tiredly scanning the Belgian block pavement. Descending, the street turned sharply to the right, where the barrel of an ancient cast-iron cannon, frill of butts and dirt, was stuck in the ground. Soon the street ended at the cliff by the river. I sat a while on the edge admiring the landscape, then crossed over to the other side and strolled back to the center of town.