“Everything all right? Did it come out correctly?” the smallest asked impatiently.
“I think so. As far as one can tell from the surface,” the largest answered him.
“It will be a nice woman. Beautiful.”
“And happy?” inquired the little one.
“Expect so . . . The potential is there . . . All its qualities are supposed to be transformed: fidelity, the ability to serve, ingenuousness . . . In this case an innate cheerfulness . . .”
“Then why can’t we move to phase out and launch?” The little one bombarded its senior with questions, but the latter was patient.
“What are you saying? How could we do that? On the contrary: it needs to spend some more time here. So that the lower layers fill out. If we launch immediately, just imagine what she will dream of. It’ll be awful! When those animal instincts start breaking through . . . This is Canis lupus familiaris, a predator after all . . . You should know what the results are when they’re underprocessed . . . Well?” The older one awaited an answer.
The little one was at a loss: “We haven’t studied that yet. I just started the third level . . .”
“All right, all right. If you haven’t studied it yet, you will soon . . . But you’ll also know from practical experience—werewolves, maniacs, and murderers of all sorts, from serial killers to those in the general staff . . . Got it?” He offered the clarification with pleasure.
“Oh!” The little one was amazed. “But making sure all the lower layers get filled out—that’s quite a job!”
“And you thought our work was easy?” The older one raised the edge of the blanket. Under the blanket lay a large woman with an upturned nose and a receding forehead. “But if we do a good job now, it will be a very good woman, a loyal friend, and a devoted wife. Come on,” he beckoned the younger one. He placed his sharp paws on the receding forehead and began massaging lightly . . .
14
THE FOOTPATH NOW WENT UPHILL. WHEN HE REACHED the top of the hill, he saw from above a small, narrow, winding river. In a sandy basin along the riverbank a campfire burned, almost invisible in the sun’s rays, and a smoke-blackened kettle hung over the fire. Near the campfire, with his back turned toward Skinhead, sat a slumped old man with what remained of his gray hair surrounding a shining bald spot. Skinhead approached him and said hello.
“The tea’s ready. The fish is done.” The old man smiled and picked with his stick at the fish lying on a flat rock in the smoldering coals. “It’s ready.”
“Did you catch it in this stream?” Skinhead asked, as he sat down and accepted the hot fish arranged on leaves.
“Some fishermen brought it. I gave up all those pastimes—hunting, fishing—in my youth. To be honest, I also gave up animal-based food then. Out of moral considerations.”
The baked fish was tasty, although bony. It resembled a large ruff or a marine goby, with a spiny dorsal fin. The old man then poured tea from the kettle into two aluminum mugs, pulled out a small package from his canvas bag, and opened it. Inside was a piece of comb honey.
The old man’s face was familiar, but Skinhead could not put a name to it. He turned out to be rather chatty, and talked about his children, his grandchildren, and little Vanya, about whom he had worried so much and for absolutely no reason . . . He lambasted someone named Nikolai Mikhailovich and bewailed his stupidity: “I used to think that stupidity was a misfortune, not a sin. Now I’ve changed my opinion. Stupidity is a great sin because what underlies it is overconfidence, that is, pride.”
With pursed lips the old man sipped the murky but very tasty tea, then set his mug on the flat rock and sighed.
“Of course, I’m in no way exonerated by the vulgar rumors or even by the laudatory adulation we so seek in our youth. The Sevastopol Stories brought me that, went to my head, and fed my overconfidence. It was the basis for my own stupidity, which exceeded all the talents granted me for the taking by the Creator . . . But the stupidity—the stupidity itself was mine alone . . .”
“Why, of course, how didn’t I figure it out right away! That’s why the face is so familiar . . . That face with Socrates’s wrinkles, the little eyes under brushy eyebrows, the broad Russian duckbill nose, and that world-famous beard . . .”
Skinhead egged the old man on, not without a certain craftiness.
“You’re right, you’re right. My wife was raised as a Tolstoyan and spent her entire life quoting you, while I kept kidding her and even teasing her: ‘Lenochka,’ I’d say, ‘that genius of yours was rather stupid . . .’ She would take offense.”
The old man knitted his brows and stroked his beard with his large, flat fingers.
“You said that to her? There weren’t many who understood . . .”
“That was in your time . . . Nowadays a lot of people have figured it out . . .”
The old man coughed and grabbed his sack.
“Let’s take a short walk: I’ll show you my study . . . I, you know, have taken an interest in the natural sciences of late . . . I’m working on some theories . . .”
Skinhead stood up with regret. He was already being beckoned to the shore by that voice he had grown accustomed to minding, but Skinhead understood that he had insulted the old man and to refuse the invitation would have been thoroughly impolite . . .
The little house was hidden away in an old oak grove. It was small, the span of three windows, which were almost entirely hidden behind lilac bushes.
“The buds have already emerged and should blossom in about five days or so,” Skinhead noted. The porch had three steps. There was a bucket in the entranceway. The old man opened the door into a rather large room with bookcases along the walls. There was a microscope on the table. A second table, near the wall, served as a kind of laboratory, with chemistry vessels and reactants of some sort . . . Amazing.
“You’ll be more comfortable here in the armchair, please . . . I’ve been wanting to speak to a learned man, a contemporary scholar, for a long time now. My nobleman’s education, you know . . . I didn’t study the natural sciences in my youth. Goethe, I’ll have you know, received a brilliant education. He knew mineralogy, devised his own theory of color, and had a profound understanding of the natural sciences . . . We, though, did our schooling at home . . . A half-baked education, in a way . . .”
Either the old man was playing the fool or pulling his, Skinhead’s, leg . . . He couldn’t tell . . . Then he pulled out his eyeglass case, extracted from it a pince-nez with a black ribbon, set the pince-nez on the bridge of his nose, and made a stern pronouncement, with even a certain suffering in his voice.
“For fifty years I’ve been pondering these questions. The local inhabitants are beings of a higher sort, of great simplicity of mind, and I am unable to discuss everything with them. What’s more, it’s very difficult—impossible almost—for them to make sense of our earthly tragedies because even though they are not entirely fleshless, their flesh differs from our worldly variety both in structure and chemical composition. Their skin is too thin . . . For me you are a conversation partner long overdue, the kind I have not had for many years . . .”
As the elder spoke, he unrolled some papers curled into a tube and flattened the ends with his hand, then pressed one side of the pile under two heavy tomes and the other under a marble paperweight.
“My discovery concerns love. At its cellular, so to speak, chemical, level. I’d like to share with you, Pavel Alekseevich, a few of my thoughts.”
Skinhead had not heard his earthly name for quite some time, and he was amazed less by the content of the solemn speech of this majestic man with his slightly too fussy eyes, than by the sound of his name returned to him . . . A lost connection had been restored . . .
“Love, as I now understand, needs to be examined alongside other natural phenomena, like the force of gravity or the law of chemical affinity discovered by Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev. Or the law—I forgot, what was that Italian’s name?—according to which liquids in various tubes all even out at one level . . .”