“Push the button.”
“Which one?”
“The second, dear. I’m making goulash.”
“We should go to a restaurant,” Sheila repeated, getting up reluctantly.
The machine responded to the push of the button with a muffled roar. A white light on its front panel went on, and Sheila, looking into the opening at the right, saw that there was nothing there. “It seems to have taken the meat,” she said with surprise. This was more than she had expected.
“There, you see!” said Evgeny proudly. He stood up and admired his machine, listening to it hum and click. Then the white light went out and a red one came on. The machine stopped humming.
“That’s it, Sheila my sweet,” Evgeny said with a wink. He bent down and got the dishes out of the bag. They were light and shiny. He took two, put them in the opening on the left, then stepped back a step and and folded his arms across his chest. He and Sheila were silent for a minute.
Finally Sheila, shifting her eyes in puzzlement from Evgeny to the machine and back, asked, “Just what exactly are you waiting for?”
Uncertainty appeared in Evgeny’s eyes. If the goulash were ready, he realized, it should have appeared in the opening on the left whether or not there were dishes there. He stuck his head into the opening on the left and saw that the dishes were still empty.
“Where’s the goulash?” he asked distractedly.
Sheila did not know where the goulash was. “There are levers of some sort over here,” she said.
On the upper part of the machine there were indeed levers of some sort. Sheila grabbed them with both hands and pulled toward herself. Out of the machine came a white box, and a strange odor spread through the room.
“What’s inside?” asked Evgeny.
“Look for yourself,” Sheila answered. She stood up, holding the box in her hands and, squinting, examined its contents. “Your UKM has converted the meat into air and sunlight. Maybe the instructions were here?”
Evgeny looked into the box and gave a cry. There lay a packet of some sort of thin sheets—red, speckled with white spots. A stench rose up from them. “What’s this?” he asked with irritation, taking the top sheet with both hands. It fell apart, and the pieces dropped onto the floor, jangling like tin cans.
“Wonderful goulash,” said Sheila. “Tinkling goulash, yet. A fifth element. I wonder what it tastes like.”
Evgeny, turning beet red, stuck a piece of “goulash” in his mouth.
“What a daredevil!” Sheila said enviously. “My hero!”
Evgeny silently put down the bag of groceries. Sheila looked to see where to get rid of the mess, and dumped the contents of the machine’s box onto the pile of packing paper. The odor got stronger.
Evgeny got out a loaf of bread. “Which button did you push?” he asked sternly.
“The second from the top,” Sheila answered timidly, and immediately got the feeling that she had pushed the second from the bottom.
“I’m sure you must have pushed the fourth button,” declared Evgeny. He stuck the loaf decisively into the opening on the right. “That’s the bread-slicing button!”
Sheila started to ask how that could explain the strange metamorphoses undergone by the meat and potatoes, but Evgeny shoved her away from the machine and pushed the fourth button. A sort of clank sounded, and they could hear frequent muffled blows.
“You see,” said Evgeny with a sigh of relief, “it’s cutting the bread. I wish I knew just what was going on inside right now.” He imagined what was going on inside right now, and shuddered. “But for some reason the light hasn’t come on,” he said.
The machine knocked and whinnied. The noise continued a fairly long time, and Evgeny started looking to see what to push to make it stop. But then the machine gave a pleasant-sounding ring, and the red light began blinking, while the machine continued to hum and knock. Evgeny looked at his watch and said, “I’d always thought that slicing bread was easier than cooking goulash.”
“Let’s go to a restaurant,” Sheila said timidly.
Evgeny was silent. After three minutes he walked around the machine and then looked inside. He saw absolutely nothing there which could serve as food for thought. Nothing that could serve as food period, for that matter. He straightened up and met his wife’s eyes. In answer to her inquiring glance he shook his head. “Everything’s fine there.” He risked nothing in making that declaration. There were two buttons yet to be investigated, and also a quantity of possible permutations and combinations of the four.
“Couldn’t you stop it?” he asked Sheila.
Sheila shrugged, and for some time they continued to stand expectantly, watching the machine’s blinking lights—the red one and the white by turns.
Then Sheila stretched out an arm and touched the uppermost button with her finger. There was a ring, and the machine stopped. The room became quiet.
“Good work!” Evgeny exclaimed in spite of himself.
Through the window they could hear grasshoppers chirring and the wind stirring the bushes.
“Where’s the box?” Evgeny asked apprehensively.
Sheila looked around. The box was on the floor by the dishes.
“So?” she asked.
“We didn’t put the box back, and now I don’t know where the sliced bread is.”
Evgeny walked around the machine and looked into both openings—the one on the right and the one on the left. There was no bread. He looked with trepidation into the deep black slit in the machine where the box had been. The machine responded to his threatening glare with a red light. He clenched his teeth, narrowed his eyes, and stuck his arm into the slot.
It was hot inside the machine. He felt some sort of smooth surfaces, obviously not the bread. He withdrew his arm and shrugged. “No bread.”
Sheila bent over and looked under the machine. “There’s some sort of hose down here,” she said.
“Hose?” he asked with horror.
“No, no—it’s not the bread. It doesn’t look in the least like bread. It’s a real hose.” She brought a long corrugated tube with a shiny ring on the end out from under the machine. “You haven’t hooked the UKM up to the water, stupid. Think of it-no water! No wonder the goulash came out like that.”
“Uh, yes,” said Evgeny, casting a glance at the remains of the goulash, “There certainly isn’t much water in it. But still, where’s the bread?”
“What does it matter?” said Sheila gaily. “A mere side issue. Bread isn’t the main problem. Observe as I attach the hose to the faucet.”
“Maybe it’s not worth the bother?” Evgeny said warily.
“Nonsense. Research is research. We’ll make stew. There are vegetables in the bag.”
The machine, roused into action by the top button, worked for about a minute this time. “The stew can’t really drop out into the box too, can it?” Evgeny muttered uncertainly, fingering the levers.
“Let’s give it a try,” said Sheila.
The box was filled to the top with odorless pink goop.
“Borscht,” Evgeny said sadly. “Ukrainian style. It’s like—”
“I see for myself. Good heavens, the shame of it! I’m embarrassed even to call for an instructor. Maybe Yurii?…”
“Right,” Evgeny said mournfully. “A waste-disposal specialist is just what we need here. I’ll go call him over.” He was desperately hungry.
“Come in!” shouted Yurii’s voice.
Evgeny went in and stopped in the doorway, stricken.
“I hope you haven’t brought your charming spouse along,” said Yurii. “I’m not dressed.”
He was wearing a clumsily ironed shirt. His tanned bare legs stuck out from underneath it. Strange machine parts and pieces of paper were strewn over the floor throughout the room. He was sitting on the floor, holding in his hands a box with rays of light streaming from little openings.