“How many things have I forgotten!” she thought with horror and sat down on the toilet. The whole procedure went off without a hitch, and there was even an unopened roll of toilet paper at her service. She flushed, went over to the sink, and searched with her eyes for a mirror. There was none. But there should be one. She turned the old-fashioned brass handle, and water flowed out. She splashed her hands in the hard stream. The water was so strong and so heavy, and the sensation of the water was so powerful that tears trickled from Newling’s eyes.
“How could I have gone all this time and never thought of water or of the fact that I’m a human being, who requires a toilet from time to time? Or about water, which is absolutely essential, yet, it turns out, one can do without? It never even occurred to me!”
She scooped a handful of water. It seemed heavy. She lowered her face into it: bliss . . . She splashed herself again and again. How good it would be to take a shower . . .
Newling left the lavatory. Skinhead had already laid out Manikin on one of the beds, and it moved its hands slightly. The others stood at the table, obviously confused. The Judean said something to them that she did not hear at first.
“. . . we’ll spend the night. We haven’t slept for a long time, and today we’re going to sleep here.”
Newling looked around: now she wanted to go to the shower room. But there was no shower room anymore. In addition, the WC was gone too. Now in the place where there had been two doors there was nothing at all. An empty wall. She sat down in confusion on the nearest bed.
“I have to ask. I will definitely ask.” Before she managed to think this strange incident through, the Judean approached and whispered in her ear.
“I’ll explain later. It was an oversight on the part of the administration. There’s not supposed to be a shower or a toilet in here. A slight mess-up.” He smiled his thin-lipped smile.
Why is his face so familiar? Maybe because we’ve been walking together for so long . . . She felt that she was falling asleep. No sooner had she stretched out on the firm white bed than everything disappeared. “How nice” was the last thing she managed to think . . .
In the place where she was there were talking half-plants, half-people, and a fascinating plot was unraveling, of which she seemed to be the star. Carefully laid out on a large white canvas, she felt as if she herself were part of that canvas, and light hands were doing something with her, as if embroidering her—whatever it was, she felt the pricks of tiny needles, and the pricking was pleasant. She figured out in her sleep that what was happening with her had some connection to her life and death, but that there was something much more important behind it all, and it was connected with an incipient revelation of some ultimate truth more important than life itself.
She opened her eyes. Her back, legs, arms, and the back of her head felt hard and white. Her body felt good: it delighted in the bones of her arms hidden deep inside their muscles, in the bare heels of her feet touching against the sheet. Her heart delighted on its own, as did her lungs, and the happiest point in her entire body was the spot just above her stomach. She felt even better than she had near the campfire. But she did not want to open her eyes. Familiar male voices were carrying on an unhurried conversation that had begun long ago, at some point beyond the reaches of her memory.
“I’m completely unprepared,” said one. That was Skinhead. “I don’t know anything. What’s more, something unpredictable keeps happening all the time.”
“Nothing is predictable here. It’s always an improvisation,” answered the Judean. “When we dragged Manikin here, I didn’t know that everyone was going to get worked on. Everyone’s moved to the next level. Each to his own.”
“Are you sure you have to leave?”
“Yes, I’ve finished everything here.”
“Right away?” Skinhead was disappointed.
“In a little bit.” There was the sound of glass ringing, as if glasses had been clinked.
“All right. So as the curtain drops tell me everything about Ilya Iosifovich,” Skinhead asked.
The Judean chuckled.
“Doctor, you’re a smart man and you made the diagnosis yourself long ago: ‘a good head on a fool’s shoulders.’”
“I’ve never been interested in climbing administrative ladders. You know that’s not my sin. But why are so many things open to you? I say that without malice or envy.”
“I know that. You see, great strength can accumulate through honest errors. And when released, the effect is meteoric. That’s how I took off. Although the explosion itself was rather painful, even if instantaneous. You’ve always stood closer to intrinsic truths. What did they used to say: ‘the truth is concrete’?” They both laughed. “Your path is slow, but true. Do you think being a saint is easy?”
Skinhead smirked: “Who here is a saint?”
“What do you mean who?” the Judean answered in complete seriousness. “You and I, and all the others . . .”
“What are you saying? I, a nonbeliever, and Manikin, and the monstrous Fat Lady? I don’t understand.”
“You’re too much in a hurry. Don’t rush. Remember how Ilya Iosifovich used to work like a madman, how it always seemed to him that just a bit more, just try a little harder, and he’d get the Nobel Prize for saving humankind? Now, as you see, I’m not rushing anywhere. You’ll figure it out eventually . . . The amazing thing is that I had read everything. I knew everything. The necessary and the sufficient . . . Through a glass darkly. Never to the bottom, always in a hurry.”
Something tinkled again.
“They’re definitely drinking,” guessed the Newling, who listened to their conversation with inexplicable excitement and a certain awkwardness. She even wanted to contribute, to make her presence known, but could not. Her body was as if switched off—she could not move a finger or use her voice . . .
“Yes,” sighed Skinhead. “There’s no reason for me to hurry. Especially now when she’s here . . . Everything is so incredible.”
“And unpredictable?” his interlocutor remarked with a certain acrimony.
“And that too . . . What strange medicine . . . Methodologically it’s very much like ours . . . They even do sutures the way we do: double surgical knots . . . Even the needle, I thought, looked round . . .”
“And what did you think? The Spasokukotsky method of surgical scrubbing, Boehm trepanation, Bekhterev mixture . . . All our techniques came from there . . .”
“What’s amazing is that they worked separately with the bone tissue, the blood vessels, and the nerves . . . I’m not sure I took it all in.”
“You can be sure you didn’t. Not all at once. All right, it’s time. One more, and we’re off. You’ll see me off.”
They distinctly clinked glasses.
“And what about them? Are we going to leave them here like this?” Skinhead was concerned.
“Doctor, Doctor,” laughed the Judean. “Let them rest. Get their postoperative sleep.”
The Newling was delighted even: she did not have to open her eyes and could sleep a bit. She immediately fell into a pure, transparent sleep in which the air fluttered not as usual, but musically, with a light radiance that coincided with the music. The vision nurtured and quenched her like food and water . . .
6
THE ROAD LED DOWNWARD, WINDING AMONG THE HILLS. They walked with a brisk step down the road and experienced that special inner force that pulls hikers along farther and farther, that is so strong that it requires some effort to stop, as if at the imaginary end of the path some breezy trail siren sang some imploring song.
They did not stop. The usual breeze blew, but instead of prickly, hostile sand, it carried scraps of smells, among them nauseating cinnamon and dangerous almond together with the delightful aroma of an old library—old leather, dry paper, and sweet glue . . .