“He was asleep when I came in,” I replied.
“Don’t be silly,” said my uncle. “Obviously he was only pretending to be asleep. Well, what happened after that?”
“When I got up in the morning, both the man and the watch were gone…”
“You’ve already said that,” he broke in impatiently. “Do you really mean to tell me that you didn’t notice what he looked like?”
“He was under the blanket,” I said firmly, not wanting to give him anything more concrete to go on. Knowing how determined my uncle could be, I was afraid that he might start rounding up all his more suspicious-looking passengers and herd them into the newspaper office for me to have a look at.
“He had his head under the blanket in this heat?!” my uncle exclaimed. “Why that alone should have made any intelligent person suspicious. Well, and where was your watch?”
“It was lying under my pillow,” I said firmly.
“How come?” he asked, frowning. “Why would you bother to take it off when it’s unbreakable?”
I didn’t take it off, I was about to object, but I caught myself just in time.
“Well, what did the hotel management say?” asked my uncle, not letting up on his questions.
“They said I should have turned it over to them for safekeeping,” I replied, remembering that such was the procedure at the public baths.
Sooner or later he would probably have tripped me up with his questions, had it not been for his abandoned passengers, who now began raising a fuss out front. First they blew the horn, then they started banging on our apartment window.
“The next time I pass through that town I’m going to stop off at that hotel and give ‘em hell!” was my uncle’s parting shot as he went dashing out onto the street.
He was so grief stricken over the loss of my watch that I began to wonder if he hadn’t perhaps been planning to reclaim it at some future date. But then it occurred to me that the loss of a gift must inevitably strike the gift giver as a form of ingratitude. For when a person gives us something, he is making a deposit, as in a savings account, from which he hopes to collect a small but fixed rate of interest. And when the gift is lost, he feels doubly cheated: for not only has he lost his original deposit, but his small percentage of gratitude as well.
Fortunately, an opportunity to pass through the ill-fated town did not immediately present itself and my uncle gradually calmed down. But I seem to be jumping ahead, and I need first to go back and describe the day of my return from Walnut Springs. True, this day has little to recommend it, but describe it I must if my story is to be complete.
The clock on the municipal tower was just striking nine when I entered my office. Platon Samsonovich was already at his desk and as he looked up, apparently startled to see me, his freshly starched shirt crackled, as if galvanized by the mere touch of his wizened old body.
I could tell that he had been struck by some new inspiration, since his flights of creativity were always celebrated by the donning of a clean shirt. Thus, although it might be objected from the standpoint of personal hygiene that Platon Samsonovich changed his shirts rather infrequently, in terms of intellectual creativity he was changing them constantly. Indeed, his mind seemed always to be operating at fever pitch.
“You can congratulate me,” he exclaimed. “I’ve come up with a new idea!”
“What sort of idea?” I asked.
“Just listen and I’ll tell you,” he replied, fairly beaming. He reached for a piece of paper and began writing down some formula, explaining it as he went along. “I propose that we crossbreed the goatibex with the long-haired Tadzhik goat, thus obtaining:
Of course the jumping ability of the second-generation goatibex will be somewhat diminished, but he’ll have twice as much hair. Pretty good, eh what?” exclaimed Platon Samsonovich, now discarding his pencil and gazing up at me with sparkling eyes.
“Where are you going to get a Tadzhik goat?” I asked, vaguely aware of some hidden danger lurking in his eyes.
“I’ll go to the agricultural administration office,” he said, rising. “They ought to support our efforts. Oh, how was your trip?”
“Okay,” I replied, sensing that his thoughts were elsewhere and that he was inquiring merely out of politeness.
He dashed to the door, but then suddenly returned to his desk, picked up the piece of paper on which he had written his new formula, and put it away in the top desk drawer. He locked the drawer with a key, jiggled it just to make sure, and then put the key in his pocket.
“Keep quiet about this for the time being,” he instructed me in parting, “and write up your article. We’ll submit it right away.”
There was a note of superiority in his voice — the natural superiority of the creative engineer over the ordinary technician. I sat down at my desk, took out my pen and reached for some clean sheets of paper. But I couldn’t think where to begin, and taking out my notebook, I started leafing through it, even though I knew there was nothing in it.
Anyone reading our paper would have supposed that all but the most ideologically backward collective farmers were busy raising goatibexes and nothing else. In the village of Walnut Springs, however, this was not quite the case. Realizing that it would be naive to make any direct attack on the goatibex, I decided to adopt Illarion Maksimovich’s approach — that is, to support the project as a whole, while making considerable allowance for local conditions. I was still deliberating on how to begin, when the door opened and a girl from the mail and supply room walked in.
“You have a letter,” she said, eyeing me strangely.
I took the letter and opened it. The girl remained standing in the doorway and only when I looked up at her, did she reluctantly leave the room, closing the door slowly behind her.
The letter was from Russia, from a former colleague at the youth newspaper. Word had reached them of our interesting undertaking, and the editor wanted me to write an article for them on the goatibex. For although I had left them, they still thought of me as one of their own — one whom they had nurtured and helped on his way. Such were the editor’s exact words, cited ironically by my friend. It was only in his private correspondence, I might add, that my friend ever indulged in irony.
The way the editor put it, it would appear that I had been nurtured by the youth newspaper and then left it of my own accord.
Nor was the remaining portion of the letter any more to my liking. Here my friend reported that he sometimes saw her in the company of the major. There were rumors that they had gotten married — but this wasn’t yet definite, he added in closing.
Of course it’s definite, I thought to myself as I put down the letter. I’ve noticed that people sometimes try to soften unpleasant news, not so much out of sympathy for us, the recipients, as out of sympathy for themselves. For who wants to have to utter the words appropriate to such occasions, to exhort us to keep a stiff upper lip or, even worse, to face up to reality?
I don’t want to exaggerate. The old wound didn’t reopen, nor was I about to slit my throat. In fact, all that I experienced was a dull ache, the sort of ache which rheumatics feel at the onset of bad weather. I decided, however, to put even this suffering to good use and to let it, along with my missing watch, contribute to the pathos of my article.
I have a theory that one’s personal failures can contribute to success if only one knows how to make use of them. I have had a lot of experience with failure and consequently have learned to put it to good use.
One should not, of course, take my theory too literally. If, for example, someone steals your watch, this doesn’t mean that you should immediately start learning to tell time by a sundial. Nor should you suddenly imagine yourself one of the proverbial few for whom time does not exist.