"Probably not. Most likely-- the day after tomorrow."

"Then we'll see you again. Our liaison is still ahead of us." He smiled and went out with a wave of his hand. I should see him out and say good-bye to Volodia, I thought lackadaisically, and lay down. And there was the old woman in the room again. I got up. She looked hard at me for some time.

"I fear me, old fellow, that you'll be smacking through your teeth,"

she said.

"No I won't be," I said. Then, exhausted, "It's sleeping I'll be."

"Then lie down and sleep. . . . Just pay me and welcome to snooze."

I reached for my wallet in the back pocket. "What do I owe you?"

The crone raised her eyes to the ceiling. "Let's say a ruble for the quarters. . . Fifty kopecks for the bed-clothes-- that's my own, not G.I.

For two nights, that comes out to be three rubles. . . . As to what you'll throw in for generosity's sake-- that's for my troubles, you know-- that I couldn't say...

I proffered her a five-ruble note.

"Make it a ruble out of generosity for now," said I, "and then we'll see."

The crone s.n.a.t.c.hed the money and retired, muttering something about change. She was absent a fair time and I was about to forget the change and the bed-sheets, but she came back and laid a handful of dirty coppers on the table.

"And here's your change, governor," she said. "One nice ruble, exactly; you needn't count."

"I won't count," I said. "How about the sheets?"

"I'll make your bed right away. You go take a walk in the yard, and I'll get right to it."

I went out, extricating my pack of cigarettes. The sun had finally set and the white night had arrived. Dogs were barking somewhere in the distance. I sat down by the oak on a garden bench that had sunk into the ground, lighted up, and stared at the pale, starless sky. The cat appeared noiselessly out of somewhere, glanced at me with his fluorescent eyes, and then rapidly climbed up the oak and disappeared in its foliage. I forgot about him at once, and started when he began pottering above me. Some sort of rubbish fell on my head. "You darned . . ." I said aloud, and shook myself. The desire to sleep became overwhelming. The crone came out, and wended her way to the well, not seeing me. I took this to mean that the bed was ready, and went back to the room.

The perverse crone had made my bed on the floor. Oh no you don't, Ithought, slid the bolt on the door, dragged the bedding over onto the sofa, and began to undress. The somber light fell through the window; the cat was thrashing about noisily in the oak. I shook my head, to dislodge the rubbish from my hair. It was strange and unexpected rubbish: largish dry fish scales. p.r.i.c.kly to sleep on, I thought. I fell on the pillow and was immediately asleep.

Chapter 2.

... The deserted house became the lair of foxes and badgers, and that is why weird spirits and shape-shifters can now appear here.

A. Weda I woke up in the middle of the night because a conversation was going on in the room. Two voices were talking in a barely audible whisper. They were very similar, but one was a bit stifled and hoa.r.s.e and the other betrayed an extreme irritation.

"Stop wheezing," whispered the irritated one. "Can't you do without it?"

"I can," responded the stifled one, and began to hack.

"Be quiet!" hissed the irritated voice.

"It's the wheezes," explained the stifled one. "The morning cough of the smoker... ." He started hacking again.

"Get out of here," said the irritated one.

"He is asleep, in any case..."

"Who is he? Where did he come from?"

"How should I know?"

"What a disgusting development . . . such phenomenal bad luck."

Again the neighbors can't get to sleep, I thought, half awake. I imagined I was at home. I have these neighbors there, two brother physicists, who adore working through the night. Toward two A.M. they run out of cigarettes and then they invade my room and start feeling about for them, banging the furniture and cursing at each other.

I grabbed the pillow and flung it at random. Something fell with a crash, and then silence ensued.

"You can return my pillow," I said, "and welcome to leave. The cigarettes are on the table."

The sound of my own voice awakened me completely. I sat up. Somewhere dogs were barking despondently; behind the wall the old woman snored menacingly. At last I remembered where I was. There was n.o.body in the room.

In the dim light I saw the pillow on the floor and the trash that had fallen from the wardrobe. The old crone will have my head, I thought, jumping up. The floor was icy and I stepped over on the runners. The snoring stopped. I froze. The floorboards creaked; something crackled and rustled in the corners. The crone gave a deafening whistle and continued her snoring. I picked up the pillow and threw it on the sofa. The trash smelled of dog. The hanger rod had fallen off its support on one side. I re-hung it and began picking up the old trash. No sooner had I hung up the last coat, than the pole came away again and, sliding along the wallpaper, hung by one nail again. The crone stopped snoring and I turned cold with sweat. Somewhere, nearby, a c.o.c.k crowed loudly. To the soup pot with you, I thought venomously. The crone behind the wall set to turning, the bedspring snapping and creaking. I waited, standing on one foot Someone in the yard said softly, "Time for bed; we have sat up too long today." The voice was youthful and female.

"So be it, it's off to sleep," responded the other voice. There was a protracted yawn.

"No more splashing for you today?" "It's too cold. Let's go bye-bye."

All was quiet. The old hag growled and muttered, and I returned cautiously to the sofa. I'll get up early in the morning and fix everything up properly.

I turned on my right side, pulled the blanket over my ear, and it suddenly became crystal clear to me that I wasn't at all sleepy-- that I was hungry. Oh-oh, I thought. Severe measures had to be taken at once, and I took them.

Consider, for instance, a system of integral equations of the type commonly found in star statistics: both unknowns are functions to be integrated. Naturally the only solutions possible are by successive numerical approximations and only with computers such as the RECM. I recalled our RECM. The main control panel is painted the color of boiled cream. Gene is laying a package on the panel and is opening it unhurriedly.

"What have you got?"

"Mine is with cheese and sausage." Polish, lightly smoked, in round slices.

"Poor you, it's married you should be. I have cutlets, with garlic, home-made. And a dill pickle."

No, there are two dill pickles . . . . Four cutlets, and to make things even, four pickles. And four pieces of b.u.t.tered bread.

I threw off the blanket and sat up. Maybe there was something left in the car? No-- I had already cleaned out everything there was. The only remaining item was the cookbook that I had got for Valya's mother, who lived in Liezhnev.

Let's see, how does it go? Sauce piquant . . . half a gla.s.s of vinegar, two onions, and a pinch of pepper. Served with meat dishes. . . . I can see it now with miniature steaks. What a rotten trick, I thought, not just any old steaks, but miniature ones. I jumped up and ran to the window. The night air was distinctly laden with the odor of miniature beefsteaks. Out of some nether depths of my subconscious this floated up: "Such dishes were usually served him in the taverns as: marinated vegetable soup, brains with fresh peas, pickles [I swallowed], and the perpetual layer cake..." I must distract myself, I thought, and took the book on the windowsill. It was The Gloomy Morning by Alexis Tolstoi. I opened it at random.

"Makhno, having broken the sardine can opener, pulled out a mother-of-pearl knife with half a hundred blades, and continued to operate with it, opening tins with pineapple [Now I've had it, I thought], French pate, with lobsters, which filled the room with a pungent smell."

Gingerly I put down the book and sat down on the stool by the table. At once a strong, appetizing odor permeated the room: it must have been the odor of lobsters. I began to ponder why I had never tried a lobster before, or, say, oysters. With d.i.c.kens, everybody eats oysters; working with folding knives, they cut huge slabs of bread, spread them thickly with b.u.t.ter. . . .

I began to smooth the tablecloth with nervous movements. On it, latent food stains appeared clearly visible. Much and tasty eating has been done on it, I thought. Probably lobsters and brains with peas. Or miniature steaks with sauce piquant. Also large and medium-sized steaks. People must have sighed, replete with food, and sucked their teeth in huge satisfaction. There was no cause for sighing and so I took to sucking my teeth.

I must have been doing it loudly and ravenously because the old woman behind the wall creaked her bed, muttered angrily, rattled something noisily, and suddenly entered my room. She had on a long gray nightshirt, and she was carrying a plate, so that a genuine and not an imaginary odor of food spread through the room. She was smiling, and set the plate directly in front of me and rumbled sweetly, "Dig in, dear friend Alexander Petrovitch.

Help yourself to what G.o.d has sent, by his unworthy messenger....

"Really now, really, Naina Kievna," I was stammering, you shouldn't letme disturb you so....

But my hand was already holding a fork with a horn handle, which had appeared from somewhere, and I began to eat while the old woman stood by and nodded and repeated, "Eat, my friend, eat to your health. . ."

And I ate it all. The dish was baked potatoes with melted b.u.t.ter.

"Naina Kievna," I said earnestly, "you have saved me from starving to death."

"Finished?" said Naina Kievna, in a voice somehow tainted with hostility.

"Yes, and magnificently fed. A tremendous thanks to you! You can't even imagine how-- "

"What's there to imagine?" she interrupted, now definitely irritated.

"Filled up, I say? Then give me the plate.... The plate I say!"

"P-please," I mumbled.

"'Please and please.' I have to feed you types for a please..."

"I can pay," said I, growing angry.

"'I can pay, I can pay.'" She went to the door. "And what if this sort of thing is not paid for at all? And you needn't have lied..."

"What do you mean-- lied?"

"Lied, that's how. You said yourself you wouldn't suck your teeth!"

She fell silent and disappeared through the door.

What's with her? I thought. A strange old bag. .

Maybe she noticed the clothes rack? There was the sound of creaking springs as she tossed in her bed, grumbling and complaining. Then she started singing softly to some barbarous tune: "I'll roll and I'll wallow, fed up on Ivash's meat."

Cold night air drew from the window. Shivering, I got up to return to the sofa, and it dawned on me that I had locked the door before retiring.

Discomfited, I approached the door and reached out to check the bolt, but no sooner had my hand touched the cold iron, than everything began to swim before my eyes. I was, in fact, lying on the sofa, facedown in the pillow, my finger feeling the cool logs of the wall.

I lay there for some time in a state of shock, slowing growing aware that the old hag was snoring away somewhere nearby, and a conversation was in progress in the room. Someone was declaiming tutorially in a quiet tone: "The elephant is the largest of all the animals on earth. On his face there is a large lump of meat, which is called a trunk because it's empty and hollow like a pipe. He bends and stretches it every which way and uses it in place of a hand. .."

Growing icy cold and curious, I turned over gingerly on my right side.

The room was as empty as before. The voice continued, even more didactic.

"Wine, used in moderation, is exceedingly salutary for the stomach; but when drunk to excess, it produces vapors that debase the human to the level of dumb animals. You have seen drunks on occasion, and still remember the righteous indignation that welled up in you.. .

I sat up with a jerk, lowering my feet to the floor. The voice stopped.

It was my impression that it was coming from somewhere behind the wall.

Everything in the room was as before; even the coat rack, to my astonishment, hung in its proper place. And to my further surprise, I was again very hungry.

"Tincture, ex vitro of antimony," announced the voice abruptly. I shivered. "Magiphterium antimon angelii salae. Bafllii oleum vitri antimonii elixiterium antimoiale!" There was the sound of frank t.i.ttering. "What a delirium!" said the voice and continued, ululating. "Soon these eyes, not yet defeated, will no longer see the sun, but let them not be shut ere being told of my forgiveness and salvation. .

This be from The Spirit or Moral Thoughts of the Renowned Jung.Extracted from his Nighttime Meditations. Sold in Saint Petersburg and Riga, in the bookstore of Sveshnikov for two rubles in hard cover." Somebody sobbed. "That, too, is delirium," said the voice, and declaimed with expression: "t.i.tles, wealth, and beauty, Life's total booty.

They fly, grow weaker, disappear O, ashes! and happiness is fakel Contagion gnaws the heart And fame cannot be kept..."

Now I understood where they were talking. The voice came from the corner, where the murky mirror hung.

"And now," said the voice, "the following: 'Everything is the unified I: this I is cosmic. The union with disunion, arising from the eclipse of enlightenment, the I sublimates with spiritual attainment.'"

"And where is that derived from?" I said. I was not expecting an answer. I was convinced I was asleep.

"Sayings from the Upanishads," the voice replied readily.

"And what are the Upanishads?" I wasn't sure I was asleep anymore.

"I don't know," said the voice.

I got up and tiptoed to the mirror. I couldn't see my reflection. The curtain, the corner of the stove, and a whole lot of things were reflected in the cloudy gla.s.s. But I wasn't among them.

"What's the matter?" asked the voice. "Are there questions?"

"Who's talking?" I asked, peering behind the mirror. Many dead spiders and a lot of dust were there. Then I pressed my left eye with my index finger. This was an old formula for detecting hallucinations, which I had read in To Believe or Not to Believe?, the gripping book by B. B. Bittner.

It is sufficient to press on the eyeball, and all the real objects, in contradistinction to the hallucinated, will double. The mirror promptly divided into two and my worried and sleep-dulled face appeared in it. There was a draft on my feet. Curling my toes, I went to the window and looked out.

There was n.o.body there and neither was the oak. I rubbed my eyes and looked again. The moss-covered frame of the well with its windla.s.s, my car, and the gates were distinctly visible directly in front of me. Still asleep, I decided, to calm myself. My glance fell on the disheveled book on the windowsill. In the last dream, it was the third volume of Lives of the Martyrs; now I read the t.i.tle as: P.I. Karpov, Creativity of the Mentally Ill and Its influence on the Development of Science, Art, and Technology.

Teeth chattering from a sudden chill, I thumbed the pages and looked through the colored ill.u.s.trations. Next I read "Verse No. 2": Up high in a c.u.mulus ring An ebon-winged sparrow With loneliness shuddering Glides swift as an arrow.

He flies through the night By the pale moonlight And, through all undaunted, Sees all below him.

Proud predator enraged Flying silent as a shadow, Eyes ablaze with fire.

The floor suddenly swayed beneath me. There was a piercing and prolonged creaking, then, like the rumble of a distant earthquake, sounded a rolling "Ko-o . . . Ko-o. . .Ko-o . . ." The house swayed as though it were a boat in the waves. The yard behind the window slid sideways, and a gargantuan chicken leg stretched out from beneath, stuck its claws into the ground, raked deep furrows in the gra.s.s, and disappeared below. The floor tilted steeply, and I sensed that I was falling. I grabbed something soft,struck something solid with head and side, and fell off the sofa. I was lying on the boards clutching the pillow that had fallen with me. It was quite bright in the room. Behind the window somebody was methodically clearing his throat.

"So-o, then . . ." said a well-poised male voice. "In a certain kingdom, in an ancient tsardom, there was and lived a tsar by the name of .

. . mmm . . . well, anyway, it's really not all that important. Let's say .

. . me-eh . . . Polouekt. He had three sons. tsareviches. The first . . .