The Final Circle of Paradise

by Arkady Strugatsky

  “Let’s go, old pal, let’s go,” I said. “You’re going to sleep and I will sit alongside you. And if anything at all happens, I will awaken you at once.”

  We climbed into my room through the window (he absolutely refused to enter the house by the front door), and I put him to bed. I intended to tell him a tale, but he fell asleep immediately. His face looked tortured, and every few minutes he quivered in his sleep. I pushed the chair by the window, wrapped myself in a bathrobe, and smoked a cigarette to calm my nerves. I attempted to think about Rimeyer and about the Fishers, with whom I had not met up after all; about what must happen on the twenty-eighth; and about the Art Patrons, but nothing came of it and this irritated me. It was annoying that I was unable to think about my business as something of importance. The thoughts scattered and jumbled emotions intruded, and I did not think so much as I felt. I felt that I hadn’t come for nothing, but at the same time, I sensed that I had come for altogether the wrong reason.

  But Len slept. He did not even awake when an engine snorted at the gate, car doors were slammed, there were shouts, chokes, and howls in different voices, so that I almost decided that a crime was being committed in front of the house, when it became clear that it was just Vousi coming back. Happily humming, she began to undress while still in the garden, negligently draping her blouse, skirt, and other garments over the apple branches. She didn’t notice me, came into the house, shuffled around upstairs for a while, dropped something heavy, and finally settled down. It was close to five o’clock. The glow of dawn was kindling over the sea.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  When I woke up, Len was already gone. My shoulder ached so badly that the pain pounded in my head, and I promised myself to take it easy the whole day. Grunting and feeling sick and forlorn, I executed a feeble attempt at set-ting-up exercises, approximated a wash-up, took the envelope with the money, and set out far Aunt Vaina, moving edge-wise through the doorway.

  In the hall, I stopped in indecision: it was quiet in the house, and I wasn’t sure that my landlady was up. But at this point the door to her side of the house opened, and Pete, the customs man, came out into the hall. Well, well, thought I. At night he had looked like a drowned drunk. Now in the light of day, he resembled a victim of a hooligan attack. The lower part of his face was dark with blood. Fresh blood glistened on his chin, and he held a handkerchief under his jaw to keep his snow-white braided uniform clean. His face was strained and his eyes tended to cross, but in general, he held himself remarkably calm, as though falling face-down into broken glass was a most ordinary event for him. A slight misadventure, you know, can happen to anybody; please don’t pay it any attention; everything will be all right.

  “Good morning,” I mumbled.

  “Good morning,” he responded, politely dabbing his chin cautiously and sounding a bit nasal.

  “Anything the matter? Can I help?”

  “A trifle,” he said. “The chair fell.”

  He bowed courteously, and passing by me, unhurriedly left the house. I observed his departure with a thoroughly unpleasant feeling, and when I turned back toward the door, I found Aunt Vaina standing in front of me. She stood in the doorway, gracefully leaning on the jamb, all clean, rosy, and perfumed, and looking at me as though I was Major General Tuur or, at least, Staff Major Polom.

  “Good morning, early bird,” she cooed. “I was puzzled — who would be talking at this hour?”

  “I couldn’t bring myself to disturb you,” I said, shuddering fashionably and mentally howling at the pain in my shoulder. “Good morning, and may I take the liberty to hand you -”

  “How nice! You can tell a real gentleman right away. Major General Tuur used to say that a true gentleman never makes anyone wait. Never. Nobody…”

  I became aware that slowly but very persistently, she was herding me away from her door. The living room was darkened, with the drapes apparently drawn, and some strange sweet smell was wafting out of it into the hall.

  “But you did not have to be in such a rush, really…” She was finally in a convenient position to close the door with a smooth negligent gesture. “However, you can be sure that I will value your promptness appropriately. Vousi is still asleep, and it’s time for me to get Len off to school. So if you will excuse me… By the way, we have the newspapers on the veranda.”

  “Thank you,” I said, retreating.

  “If you’ll have the patience, I would like to ask you to join me for breakfast and a cup of cream.”

  “Unfortunately, I will have to be going,” I said, bowing out.

  As to newspapers, there were six. Two local, illustrated, fat as almanacs; one from the capital; two luxurious weeklies; and, for some reason, the Arab El Gunia. The last I put aside, and sifted through the others, accompanying the news with sandwiches and hot cocoa.

  In Bolivia, government troops, after stubborn fighting, had occupied the town of Reyes. The rebels were pushed across the River Beni. In Moscow, at the international meeting of nuclear physicists, Haggerton and Soloviev announced a project for a commercial installation to produce anti-matter. The Tretiakoff Gallery had arrived in Leopoldville, official opening being scheduled for tomorrow. The scheduled series of pilotless craft had been launched from the Staryi Vostok base on Pluto into the totally free flight zone; communications with two of the craft were temporarily disrupted. The General Secretary of the UN had directed an official message to Orolianos, in which he warned that in the event of a repetition of the use of atomic grenades by the extremists, UN police forces would be introduced into Eldorado. In Central Angola, at the sources of the River Kwando, an archaeological expedition of the Academy of Sciences of the UAR had uncovered the remains of a cyclopean construction, apparently dating from well before the ice age. A group of specialists of the United Center for the Investigation of Subelectronic (Ritrinitive) Structures had evaluated the energy reserves available to mankind as sufficient for three billion years. The cosmic branch of Unesco had announced that the relative population growth of extraterrestrial centers and bases now approached the population growth on Earth. The head of the British delegation to the UN had put forth a proposal, in the name of the great powers, for the total demilitarization, by force if need be, of the remaining militarized regions on the globe.

  Information about how many kilos were pressed by whom and about who drove how many balls through whose goal posts I did not bother to read. Of the local announcements, I was intrigued by three. The local paper, Joy of Life, reported: “Last night a group of evil-minded men again carried out a private plane raid on Star Square, which was full of citizens taking their leisure. The hooligans fired several machine-gun bursts and dropped eleven gas bombs. As a result of the ensuing panic, several men and women suffered severe injuries. The normal recreation of hundreds of respectable people was disrupted by a small group of bandit (excuse the term) intelligentsia with the obvious connivance of the police. The president of the Society for the Good Old Country Against Evil Influences informed our correspondent that the Society intended to take into its own hands the matter of the protection of the well-earned rest of fellow citizens. In no equivocal manner, the president let it be known whom specifically the people regarded as the source of the harmful infection, banditism, and militarized hooliganism…”

  On page twelve, the paper devoted a column to an article by “the outstanding proponent of the latest philosophy, the laureate of many literary prizes, Doctor Opir.” The treatise was titled “World Without Worry.” With beautiful words and most convincingly indeed, Doctor Opir established the omnipotence of science, called for optimism, derided gloomy skeptics and denigrators, and invited all “to be as children.” He assigned a specially important role in the formation of contemporary (i.e., anxiety-free) psychology to electric wave psychotechnics. “Recollect what a wonderful charge of vigor and good feeling is imparted by a bright, happy, and joyful dream!” exclaimed this representative of the latest philosophy. “It is no wonder that sleep has been kno
wn for over a hundred years to be a curative agent for many psychic disturbances. But we are all a touch ill: we are sick with our worries, we are overcome by the trivia of daily routine, we are irritated by the rare but still remaining few malfunctions, the inevitable frictions among individuals, the normal healthy sexual unsatisfiedness, the dissatisfaction with self which is so common in the makeup of each person… As fragrant bath salts wash away the dust of travel from our tired bodies, so does a joyful dream wash away and purify a tired psyche. So now, we no longer have to fear any anxieties or malfunctions. We well know that at the appointed hour, the invisible radiation of the dream generator, which together with the public I tend to call by the familiar name of ‘the shivers,’ will heal us, fill us with optimism, and return to us the wonderful feeling of the joy of being alive.”

  Further, Doctor Opir expounded that the shivers were absolutely harmless physically and psychologically, and that the attacks of detractors who wished to see in the shivers a resemblance to narcotics and who demagogically ranted about a “doped mankind,” could not but arouse in us a painful incomprehension, and, conceivably, some stronger public-spirited emotions that could be dangerous to the malevolently inclined citizens. In conclusion, Doctor Opir pronounced a happy dream to be the best kind of rest, vaguely hinted that the shivers constituted the best antidote to alcoholism and drug addiction, and insistently warned that the shivers should not be confused with other (not medically approved) methods of electric wave application.

  The weekly Golden Days informed the public that a valuable canvas, ascribed in the opinion of experts to the gifted band of Raphael, had been stolen from the National Art Galleries.

  The weekly called the attention of the authorities to the fact that this criminal act was the third during the past four months of this year, and that neither of the previously stolen works of art had ever been found.

  All in all, there was really nothing to read in the weeklies. I glanced through them quickly, and they left me with the most depressing impression.

  All were filled with desolate witticisms, artless caricatures, among which the “captionless” series stood out with particular imbecility, with biographies of dim personalities, slobbering sketches of life in various layers of society, nightmarish series of photos with such titles as “Your husband at work and at home,” endless amounts of useful advice on how to occupy your time without, God forbid, burdening your head, passionately idiotic sallies against alcoholism, hooliganism, and debauchery, and calls to join clubs and choruses with which I was already familiar. There were also memoirs of participants in the “fracas” and in the struggle against organized crime, which were served up in the literary style of jackasses totally lacking in taste or conscience. These were obviously exercises of addicts of literary sensationalism, loaded with suffering and tears, magnificent feats and saccharine futures. There were endless crosswords, chainwords, rebuses, and puzzle pictures.

  I flung the pile of papers into the corner. What a dreary place they had here! The boob was coddled, the boob was lovingly nurtured, and the boob was cultivated; the boob had become the norm; a little more and he would become the ideal, while jubilant doctors of philosophy would exultantly dance attendance upon him. But the papers were in full choreographic swing even now. Oh, what a wonderful boob we have! Such an optimistic boob, and such an intelligent boob, such a healthy alert boob, and with such a fine sense of humor; and oh boob, how well and adroitly you can solve crossword puzzles! But most important of all, boob, don’t you worry about a thing, everything is quite all right, everything is just dandy, everything is in your service, the science and the literature, just so you can be amused and don’t have to think about a thing… As for those seditious skeptics and hoodlums, boob, we’ll take care of them! With your help, we can’t help but take care of them! What are they complaining about, anyway? Do they have more needs than other people?

  Dreariness and desolation! There had to be some curse upon these people, some awful predilection for dangers and disasters. Imperialism, fascism, tens of millions of people killed and lives destroyed, including millions of these same boobs, guilty and innocent, good and bad. The last skirmishes, the last putsches, especially pitiless because they were the last. Criminals, the military driven berserk by prolonged uselessness, all kinds of leftover trash from intelligence and counterintelligence, bored by the sameness of commercial espionage, all slavering for power. Again we were forced to return from space, to come out of our laboratories and factories, to call back our soldiers. And we managed it again. The zephyr was gently turning the pages of History of Fascism by my feet. But hardly had we had the time to savor the cloudless horizons, when out of these same sewers of history crept the scum with submachine guns, homemade quantum pistols, gangsters, syndicates, gangster corporations, gangster empires. “Minor malfunctions are still encountered here and there,” soothed and calmed Doctor Opir, while napalm bottles flew through university windows, cities were seized by bands of outlaws, and museums burned like candles… All right.

  Brushing aside Doctor Opir and his kind, once again we came out of space, out of the labs and factories, recalled the soldiers, and once again managed the problem. And again the skies were clear. Once more the Opirs were out, the weeklies were purring, and once more filth was flowing out of the same sewers. Tons of heroin, cisterns of opium, and oceans of alcohol, and beyond all that something new, something for which we had no name…

  Again everything was hanging by a thread for them, and boobs were solving crosswords, dancing the fling, and desired but one thing: to have fun. But somewhere idiot children were being born, people were going insane, some were dying strangely in bathtubs, some were dying no less strangely with some group called the Fishers, while art patrons defended their passion for art with brass knuckles. And the weeklies were attempting to cover this foul-smelling bog with a crust, fragile as a meringue, of cloyingly sweet prattle, and this or that diplomaed fool glorified sweet dreams, and thousands of idiots surrendered with relish to dreams in lieu of drunkenness (so that they need not think)… and again the boobs were persuaded that all was well, that space was being developed at an unprecedented pace (which was true), and that sources of energy would last for billions of years (which was also true), that life was becoming unquestionably more interesting and varied (which was also undoubtedly true, but not for boobs), while demagogue-denigrators (real-thinking men who considered that in our times any drop of pus could infect the whole of mankind, as once upon a time a beer putsch turned into a world menace) were foreign to the people’s interests and deserved of universal condemnation. Boobs and criminals, criminals and boobs.

  “Have to work at it,” I said aloud. “To hell with melancholy! We’d show you skeptics!”

  It was time to go see Rimeyer. Although there were the Fishers. But all right, the Fishers could be attended to later.

  I was tired of poking around in the dark. I went out in the yard. I could hear Aunt Vaina feeding Len.

  “But, Mom, I don’t want any!”

  “Eat, son, you must eat. You are so pale.”

  “I don’t want to. Disgusting lumps l”

  “What lumps? Here, let me have some myself! Mm! Delicious!

  Just try some and you’ll see it’s very tasty.”

  “But I don’t want any! I’m ill, I’m not going to school.”

  “Len, what are you saying? You’ve skipped a lot of days as it is.”

  “So what?”

  “What do you mean, so what? The director has already called me twice. We’ll be fined.”

  “Let them fine us!”

  “Eat, son, eat. Maybe you didn’t get enough sleep?”

  “I didn’t. And my stomach hurts… and my head… and my tooth, this one here, you see?”

  Len’s voice sounded peevish, and I immediately visualized his pouting lips and his swinging stockinged foot.

  I went out the gate. The day was again clear and sunny, full of bird twitter. It was still too early
, so that on my way to the Olympic, I met only two people. They walked together by the curb, monstrously out of place in the joyful world of green branch and clear blue sky. One was painted vermilion and the other bright blue. Sweat beaded through the paint on their bodies. Their breaths heaved through open mouths and the protruding eyes were bloodshot. Unconsciously I unbuttoned all the buttons of my shirt and breathed with relief when this strange pair passed me.

  At the hotel I went right up to the ninth floor. I was in a very determined mood. Whether Rimeyer wanted to or not, he would have to tell me everything I wanted to know. As a matter of fact, I needed him now for other things as well. I needed a listener, and in this sunny bedlam I could talk openly only to him, so far. True, this was not the Rimeyer I had counted on, but this too had to be talked cut in the end…

  The red-headed Oscar stood by the door to Rimeyer’s suite, and, seeing him, I slowed my steps. He was adjusting his tie, gazing pensively at the ceiling. He looked worried.

  “Greetings,” I said — I had to start somehow.

  He wiggled his eyebrows and looked me over, and I was aware that he remembered me. He said slowly, “How do you do.”

  “You want to see Rimeyer, too?” l asked.

  “Rimeyer is not feeling well,” he said. He stood hard by the door and apparently had no intention of letting me by.

  “A pity,” I said, moving up on him. “And what is his problem?”

  “He is feeling very bad.”

  “Oh, oh!” I said. “Someone should have a look.”

  I was now right up against Oscar. It was obvious he was not about to give way. My shoulder responded at once with a flare of pain.

  “I am not sure it’s all that necessary,” he said.

  “What do you mean? Is it really that bad?”

  “Exactly. Very bad. And you shouldn’t bother him. Not today, or any other day!”