Tripping over the suitcases, I made my way back to the cupboard and poured myself a glass of cognac just as Hermione came back in the kitchen. She said this was a madhouse, you couldn't depend on anybody here, the men were not men and the women not women. I'm a complete alcoholic, Charon lives here like a tourist and Artemis is a lily-white unfit for real life. And so on. Maybe someone would explain to her why she was awakened in the middle of the night and forced to get out the suitcases? I answered Hermione as best I could and sought refuge in my bedroom. I ached all over, and now I know for sure that my eczema will be worse tomorrow. I already feel like scratching, but so far I've been able to hold back.
About three o'clock the earth shook again. I could hear the noise of many engines and the grinding of metal. It turned out to be a column of military trucks and armored carriers full of troops moving past the house. They drove slowly, with dimmed headlights, and Myrtilus had latched onto some kind of armored vehicle and was trotting alongside, holding onto the lug of the hatchway and shouting something. I don't know what they answered him, but when the column had passed and he stood alone in the street, I called over to him and asked for the news.
"Sure, sure," said Myrtilus. "We know what kind of maneuvers these are. A bunch of wise guys riding around on my money." And finally I understood it all. Big military exercises are taking place - perhaps even with the use of atomic weapons. Big deal.
Lord, now if only I can get some sleep!
June 2
I itch all over. And above all I can't bring myself to have a talk with Artemis. I can't stand those excessively personal conversations, that intimate tone. Besides, how do I know what shell answer?
The devil knows what to do with daughters like this. If only I had an inkling of what she needs! She's got a husband, not some kind of puny egghead, but a real hunk of a man; he's no slob, no cripple, and no lecher either. Though he could be: the comptroller's niece looks at him suggestively and Thyone makes eyes at him. Everyone knows about it, not to mention the schoolgirls, the summer-cottage girls, or Madam Persephone, the cattiest she-cat of them all - no cat can stand up to her. But actually I do know what Artemis would answer.
"Daddikins," she'd say, "it's boring, it's all so deadly boring around here."
And you can't argue with that! A young, beautiful woman, no children, a model disposition: she ought to be whisked away in a whirlwind of amusements, dances, flirtations, and the like. But Charon, unfortunately, is one of those, what shall we call them, philosophizes. A thinker. Totalitarianism, fascism, managerialism, communism. Dancing is a sexual stimulant, guests are blabbermouths, one's worse than the other. Don't breathe a word about a game of four kings. Yet, when it comes to drinking, he's nobody's fool! Get five of his know-it-all friends around a table and put five bottles of cognac in front of them, and they'll go on deciding the world's affairs till dawn. The lass yawns and yawns, she slams the door and goes to bed. You call that life? I understand, a man needs something manly, but, on the other hand, a woman needs something womanly! No, I love my son-in-law, he's my son-in-law, so I love him. But how long can you go on deciding the world's affairs? And what difference do those discussions make? It's obvious: you can talk about fascism till you're blue in the face and you won't make a dint in it. Before you can take a breath, it'll slap an iron helmet on you and - forward, long live the leader! But stop paying attention to your young wife, and she'll pay you back in spades. No philosophizing will help you then. I understand, a cultured man must discuss abstruse subjects now and then, but you must keep things in proportion, gentlemen.
A wonderful morning today. (Temperature: +19° C, cloud cover: 1, wind from the south at .5 meters per second. I ought to run down to the meteorological bureau and fix my wind gauge, since I dropped it again.) After breakfast I decided that a sleeping dog gets no pension, so I went to the mayor's office to look into it. As I walked along, pleased by the peace and quiet, I suddenly saw a crowd on the corner of Freedom and Juniper streets. It turned out that Minotaur had driven his cistern through a jeweler's front window, and the people had gathered around to watch him, all dirty, puffy and drunk again since early morning, try to explain it to the traffic cop. He made such an unwholesome contrast to the bright and shining morning that I immediately fell in the dumps. Obviously the police shouldn't have let him out so early, they must've known he'd drink himself into a stupor once he got going. But, on the other hand, how could they not let him out, since he's the only honey-dipper in town? Here you have only two options: either you take up the reeducation of Minotaur and drown in filth, or you make a compromise in the name of hygiene.
Because of Minotaur I was held up, and when I got to The Five Spot all the boys had already assembled. I paid my fine, and then one-legged Polyphemus treated me to an excellent cigar in an aluminum case, which his oldest son Polycarpus, a lieutenant in the merchant marines, had sent to him for me. This Polycarpus once studied under me for several years, until he ran away to sea as a cabin boy. He was a lively lad, a playful scamp. When the scamp flew the city, Polyphemus almost took me to court, as if, so to say, the teacher had corrupted the child with his lectures on the vast multiplicity of worlds. Polyphemus is still certain that the sky is firm and satellites run around on it like cyclists in a circus. My demonstrations of the value of astronomy are beyond him: they were beyond him then, and they are just as far beyond him now.
The boys were talking about how the city comptroller had again misused funds allocated for the construction of the stadium. That makes it the seventh time already. We talked of ways to put a stop to it. Silenus shrugged his shoulders and asserted that nothing would do but a trial.
"Enough half-measures," he said. "An open trial. Gather the whole town at the foundation of the stadium and tie the embezzler to a pillory at the scene of his crime. Thank God," he repeated, "that our law is sufficiently flexible that the means of suppression can equal the seriousness of the crime."
"I would even say," remarked grouchy Paralus, "that our law is too flexible. The comptroller has been taken to court twice already, and both times our flexible law bent clean around him. But maybe you think it happened that way because he wasn't tried at the foundation, but in the town hall.,,
Morpheus, thinking it over carefully, said that from this day forward he'd never give the comptroller another shave and haircut. Let 'im go hairy.
"You're all stupid backsides," said Polyphemus. "You'll never get anywhere. He can just spit on the whole lot of you. He has his own cronies."
"That's exactly it," grouchy Paralus caught on, and he reminded us that in addition to the city comptroller there lived and flourished the city architect who had designed the stadium to the best of his abilities and now had a natural interest in seeing that the stadium, God forbid, not be built.
Calais the stutterer began to sputter and stammer, and having thus gained everyone's attention he recalled that he himself, Calais, had almost come to blows with the architect at the Flower Festival. This statement gave the discussion a decidedly new turn.
One-legged Polyphemus, as a veteran and a man not squeamish about blood, proposed that we jump both of them at the entrance to Madam Persephone's house and take them down a notch. In critical moments like these Polyphemus completely loses a hold on his tongue - the barracks language flows right out of him.