Snail on the Slope

by Arkady Strugatsky

  "Ask me what I'm seeing awake!" said Acey gazing up.

  "Anything new?" asked Alevtina. "Never seen it before?"

  "Well, no," said Acey. "Can't say it's especially new, but it's like the movies - you see it twenty times over but it's still nice."

  On the third step from the bottom lay pieces of a massive strudel, on the fourth were laid out cucumbers and peeled oranges, a half-empty bottle and a plastic pencil-cup stood on the fifth step.

  "Look as much as you like as long as you keep the steps steady," said Alevtina, and she set to work getting weighty journals and faded folders down from the top shelves of the stack. She blew the dust off and frowned as she flipped the pages; she put some to one side and replaced the rest. Driver Acey snuffled loudly.

  "Do you need the year's before last?" asked Alevtina.

  "There's only one thing I want just now," said Acey mysteriously. "I'll just wake Pepper up."

  "Keep near the steps," said Alevtina.

  "I'm not asleep," said Pepper. "I've been watching you for ages."

  "You can't see anything from there," said Acey. "Come over here, Monsieur Pepper. We've got the lot here, women, wine, fruit..."

  Pepper got up, stumbling on one numb leg, and came uo to the steps; he poured himself a drink. "What did you dream about, Peppy?" inquired Alevtina from aloft.

  Pepper glanced up mechanically and averted his eyes at once.

  "What I dreamed ... rubbish... I was talking to the books."

  He drained the drink and took a piece of orange. "Just a minute there. Monsieur Pepper," said Acey. "I'll have a drink myself."

  "So do you want the year before last's?" "I'll say!" said Acey, splashing into his glass and choosing a cucumber. "And for the one before that. I always need it. I've always had it and can't do without it. Nobody can. Some need more, some less ... I always say, why lecture me? What I am, I am." Acey tossed down his drink with the greatest of pleasure and crunched into a cucumber. "But you can't live the way I live here. I'll put up with it just a little bit more and then I'll drive my truck into the forest and catch myself a mermaid..."

  Pepper stood holding the steps and tried to think about the following day, while Acey seated himself on the bottom step and began relating a story of his youth. He and a group of cronies caught a couple on the edge of town, beat up the boyfriend and chased him off and tried to make use of the dame. It was cold and damp and being extremely young nobody could achieve anything, the lady friend was crying and afraid and one by one the boys drifted off. Acey on his own tagged after her for a long time through the dirty backstreets, grabbing at her, swearing. He kept thinking he would make it, but nothing transpired until he had got her to her own house and there in the dark hallway he had his way up against the iron railing. In Acey's account the incident seemed extraordinarily thrilling and cheerful.

  "So the mermaids won't escape me," said Acey. "I never let go and won't start now. What I have in the window is what's in the shop - fair dealing."

  He had a darkly handsome face, bushy eyebrows, lively eyes, and a full mouth of excellent teeth. He looked very like an Italian. Except that his feet smelled.

  "Good lord, what've they been doing," said Alev-tina. "All the folders are mixed up. Here, hold this lot for a bit."

  She bent down and gave Acey a pile of papers and journals. Acey took it, scanned several papers, read to himself, lips moving, and counted the folders.

  "I need two more."

  Pepper kept holding the ladder and looked at his clenched fists. Tomorrow at this time I won't be here, he thought. I'll be sitting next to Acey in the cab. It'll be hot. The metal will just be starting to cool down. Acey will switch on the headlights, settle down more comfortably with his elbow out of the window and will start up about world politics. I'm not going to let him talk about anything else. Let him stop at every snack bar. Let him pick up anybody he wants, even let him make a detour to deliver somebody's repaired motorbike. But we're going to talk about world politics only. Or I could ask him about various cars, fuel consumption, accidents, murders of bribe investigators. He tells a good story, and you can never guess if he's telling the truth.

  Acey drank another, smacked his lips, glanced at Alevtina's legs, and continued his narration, fidgeting and making expressive gestures, bursting out in delighted laughter. With a scrupulous adherence to chronology he related the story of his life, from year to year, month to month. The cook at a concentration camp where he'd done time for stealing paper (the cook had commented meanwhile: "Don't let me down, Acey, see you don't! ..."), the daughter of a political prisoner at the same camp (it was all the same to her, she was sure she was a goner anyway), a sailor's wife in some seaside town, who was trying this way of revenging herself on her tomcat of a husband for his multitudinous betrayals. A certain rich widow, from whom Acey had had to flee in the middle of the night clad only in his drawers, as she wanted Acey under her wing and force him to traffic in drugs and shameful medical preparations. Women he'd transported when he was a taxi-driver; they paid him in coin for each of their guests, and at the end of the night with their bodies. ("I says to her, what's all this then, nobody thinks about me, you've had four and I've not had one yet...") Then a wife, a fifteen-year-old girl whom he married on a special dispensation - she bore him twins and finally left him when he attempted to use her in payment for the use of his friend's lady friends. Women ... birds ... stinkers ... butterflies ... shits ... bitches... "So you see I'm no lecher," he concluded. "I'm just a man with a bit of spirit, not some gutless impotent."

  He finished off the liquor, collected up the folders, and left without saying good night, scraping the parquet and whistling. Oddly bent forward as he was, he was surprisingly like a cross between a spider and a neanderthal. Pepper was looking helplessly after him when Alevtina spoke.

  "Give me your hand, Peppy."

  She sat down on the top step, put one hand on his shoulder and leapt down with a small shriek. He caught her under the arms and lowered her to the floor; for some time they stood close to one another, face to face. She kept her hands on his shoulders and he kept holding her under the arms.

  "I've been thrown out of the hotel," he said. "I know," she said. "Let's go to my place, okay?" She was kind-hearted and warm and looked him in the eyes calmly, though without any particular assurance. Looking at her, one could imagine many kindly, warm sweet pictures and Pepper avidly flicked through them all, one after the other, and tried to imagine himself next to her, but was suddenly aware that it wasn't working. Instead of himself he kept seeing Acey, handsome and naked, economical in movement and smelling of feet.

  "No, thank you," taking his hands from her. "I'll get by all right."

  She immediately turned from him and set about collecting the leftovers onto a newspaper.

  "Why 'get by'?" she said. "I can put you up on the sofa. Sleep till morning, then we'll find you a room. You can't sit in the library every night..."

  "Thank you," said Pepper. "Only I'm leaving tomorrow."

  She looked around at him in astonishment. "Leaving. For the forest?"

  "No. Home."

  "Home..." She slowly wrapped the food in the newspaper. "But you've wanted to get into the forest all the time. I've heard you myself."

  "Yes, you see, I did want to. But they won't let me go. I don't even know why. And there's nothing for me to do in the Directorate. So I've fixed it. Acey's taking me away tomorrow. It's three already. I'll go to the garage, get into Acey's truck and wait till morning. So don't you worry..."

  "So, we'll be saying good-bye... Maybe we'll go to my place anyway?"

  "Thanks, but better in the truck... I'd be afraid of oversleeping. Acey won't wait for me, will he?"

  They went out into the street arm in arm and walked toward the garage.

  "So you didn't like Acey's storytelling?" she asked.

  "No," said Pepper. "I didn't like it at all. I don't like it when people talk about that. Why? It's sort of embarrassing ... for hi
m, you and me ... for everybody. It's too pointless, all of this. Just one vast boredom."

  "It usually is," said Alevtina. "But don't be embarrassed for me. I'm absolutely indifferent... Well, this is your road. Kiss me good-bye."

  Pepper kissed her, aware of a vague regret. "Thank you," she said, turning away quickly and walking off in another direction. For some reason, Pepper waved a hand after her.

  He came into the garage, which was lit up by blue lamps and, stepping across the snoring guard on his car-seat, found Acey's truck and got into the cab. It smelled of rubber, gas, and dust. On the windshield hung a spreadeagled Mickey Mouse. Nice and cozy, thought Pepper. I should have come here straight away. All around stood silent trucks, dark and empty. The guard snored sonorously. The trucks slept, the guard slept, the whole Directorate slept. And Alevtina was undressing before the mirror in her room alongside her neatly-made bed, large, double, soft, and very warm... No, no sense thinking about that because during the day the chatter got in the way, the tapping of the Mercedes, the whole busy, meaningless chaos, but now there was no eradication, no penetration, no security, or the other sinister stupidities. There was a dream world above the abyss, transparent like all dream worlds, invisible and inaudible, not a whit more real than the forest. The forest was at this moment more real: the forest, after all, never slept. Or perhaps it slept and dreamed us. We are the forest's dream. An atavistic dream. The crude ghosts of its cooled sexuality...

  Pepper lay down, curled up, and put his rolled-up raincoat under his head as a pillow. Mickey Mouse swung gently on his thread. On seeing the toy the girls always cried: "Ah, isn't it pretty!" and driver Acey answered: "What's in the window's always in the shop." The gear-lever dug into Pepper's side and he didn't know how to remove it or whether it could be. Maybe if he moved it, the truck would move, slowly at first then quickening straight toward the sleeping sentry while Pepper flung himself about the cab pressing everything he could reach with a hand or foot, and the guard getting ever closer, his open snoring mouth already visible. Then the truck would leap and turn viciously, slamming into the garage wall; the blue sky would be seen through the hole...

  Pepper woke up and saw it was already morning. Mechanics were smoking in the gaping garage doors, the square in front of the garage was yellow with sunlight. It was seven o'clock. Pepper sat up, wiped his face and looked at himself in the rear mirror. Need a shave, he thought but he didn't get out of the truck. Acey wasn't around yet and he had to wait for him here on the spot, since all the drivers were forgetful and always went off without him. There were two rules governing relations with drivers: first, never get out of the cab if you can be patient and wait; secondly, never argue with the driver who's carrying you. If worse comes to worst, pretend to be asleep.

  The mechanics at the doors had thrown away their cigarette butts and ground them out carefully with their heels. They came into the garage. Pepper knew only one of them and he was no mechanic, he was the manager. They passed by Acey's truck, where the manager paused by the cab and, placing his hand on the wing, for some reason glanced under the vehicle. Then Pepper heard him giving orders:

  "Move now, get the jack."

  "Where is it?" asked the unknown mechanic.

  "!" said the manager calmly. "Look under the seat."

  "How should I know," said the mechanic, irritably. "I kept telling you I was a waiter." There was silence for a while, then the driver's door opened and the frowning tense face of the waiter-mechanic appeared. He glanced at Pepper, gazed around the cab, tugged the wheel for some reason, then put both arms under the seat and started feeling around.

  "Would this be the jack?" he asked quietly.

  "N-no," said Pepper. "I believe it's the starting handle."

  The mechanic raised the handle to his eyes, examined it, placed it on the step, and thrust his arms once more under the seat.

  "What about this?" he asked.

  "No," said Pepper, "I can be absolutely sure of that one. It's a calculating machine. Jacks aren't like that."

  The waiter-mechanic wrinkled his low forehead and looked the machine over carefully.

  "What are they like then?" he inquired.

  "We-11 ... a sort of metal rod ... there's different kinds. They've got a sort of movable handle."

  "Well there's a handle on this, like a cash register."

  "No, it's a different handle altogether."

  "What happens if you turn this one?"

  Pepper was completely at a loss. The mechanic waited for a moment, placed the machine on the step, and got back under the seat. "Would it be this?" he said.

  "Could be. It looks very like it. Only there should be another metal spoke to it, a thick one."

  The mechanic found that, too. He hefted it in his palm, saying: "Okay, I'll take this along to him for a start," then left, leaving the door open. Pepper lit a cigarette. Somewhere behind him came the sound of metal clanking accompanied by swearing. The truck began creaking and trembling.

  There was still no sign of Acey, but Pepper wasn't worried. He was picturing them bowling down the main street of the Directorate and no one looking at them. Then they would turn toward the settlement dragging a cloud of yellow dust behind them. The sun would rise higher and higher, it would be to their right and would soon start scorching, then they'd turn from the settlement onto the main road, it would lie long, even, gleaming and monotonous, on the horizon mirages would flow like great shining pools...

  Once again the mechanic walked past the cab, rolling before him a heavy rear wheel. The wheel raced along the concrete floor and it was obvious the mechanic wanted to stop it and lean it up against the wall. The wheel, however, wobbled a little and ponderously trundled out into the yard, the mechanic in awkward pursuit, but being outdistanced. At this point, they disappeared from view. Out in the yard the mechanic began shouting despairingly. Came the tramp of many feet past the gates and shouts of: "Catch it! Come in from the right." More people ran past.

  Pepper noticed that the truck was not standing as evenly as before and looked out of the cab. The manager was busy with the rear wheel.

  "Hello," said Pepper. "What're you ..." "Ah, Pepper, friend!" the manager cried happily, continuing his work. "You stay there, stay there, don't get out! You're not bothering us. Jammed, blast it. One came off fine, the other's jammed."

  "How's that? Something broken?"

  "Don't think so," said the manager, straightening up and wiping his brow with the back end of the palm with which he held the spanner. "Just rusted in a bit, probably. I'll do it right away. Then we'll get the chessmen out. What d'you say?"

  "Chess?" said Pepper, "but where's Acey?"

  "Acey? That is, Ace? Ace is our senior lab assistant. He's been sent to the forest. Ace doesn't work with us anymore. What d'you want him for?"

  "Nothing, just ..." said Pepper quietly. "I just thought ..." He opened the door and leapt down onto the cement floor.

  "No need to get out. You could have stayed there, you're not in our way."

  "Why sit in here," said Pepper. "This truck's not going anywhere, is it?"

  "No, it isn't. Can't go without wheels, and these want taking off. That's all I needed - jammed! Ah, to ... Never mind, the mechanics'll take them off. Let's go and set up the board."

  He took Pepper's arm and led him into his office. They sat down at a table, the manager pushed away a heap of papers, set out the board, and disconnected the telephone.

  "Are we going to play with a clock?" he asked.

  "Well I don't know, really," said Pepper.

  It was dim and cold in the office, blue tobacco smoke floated between the cupboards like frozen seaweed, and the manager, warty, rotund, and covered in mottled patches, was like a gigantic octopus opening the lacquered shell of the chess board with two hairy tentacles, and busily extracting its wooden innards. His round eyes held a dull gleam, the righthand one, the false one, was permanently directed toward the ceiling, whereas the left one, lively as a mercury dot,
rolled freely in its srcket, fixing its stare in turn on Pepper, the door, and the board.

  "With a clock," the manager decided finally. He took a clock from the cupboard, wound it up and, pressing the button, made his first move.

  The sun was coming up. From the yard came a shout of "come in from the right!"

  At eight o'clock, the manager, in a difficult position, went into deep thought, then abruptly ordered breakfast for two. Cars were rumbling out of the garage. The manager lost one game and proposed another. They breakfasted solidly, two bottles of yogurt and a crustly strudel apiece. The manager lost a second game and offered a third, his good eye gazing at Pepper with devoted admiration. He played an identical queen's gambit every time, indefatigably sticking to an inevitably losing variation. He had, as it were, worked out his defeat perfectly and Pepper moved his pieces absolutely automatically feeling like a programmed machine; neither in him nor in the world was there anything except a chess board, clock buttons, and a firmly fixed program of action.

  At five to nine the tannoy crackled and announced in a sexless voice: "All Directorate personnel to stand by telephones. The Director will address all staff." The manager became most serious, reconnected the telephone and put the receiver to his ear. Both his eyes were now contemplating the ceiling. "Can I go, now," asked Pepper. The manager frowned horribly, placed his finger to his lips, then waved his hand at Pepper. An unpleasant quacking resounded in the receiver. Pepper left on tiptoe.

  There were lots of people in the garage. Every face was stern and impressive, even solemn. No one was working, everybody had telephone receivers pressed to their ears. In the yard, only the waiter-mechanic, sweaty, red and tormented, pursued his wheel, breathing heavily. Something very important was taking place. This can't go on, thought Pepper, it just can't. I'm always left out, I never know anything, perhaps that's the whole trouble, perhaps everything's really all right, but I don't know what's what, so I'm always superfluous.