me-eh ... the third was an imbecile, but the first...?"

Bending down like a trooper under fire, I sneaked up to the window and looked out. The oak was in its place. Tomcat Basil stood on his hind legs with his back to it, immersed in deep thought. In his teeth, he clamped the stem of a water lily. He kept looking down at his feet and sounding a drawn-out "Me-eh-eh." Then he shook his head, put his front legs behind his back, and, hunching over like a lecturing professor, glided smoothly away from the oak.

"Very well," he enunciated through his teeth. "So, once upon a time there lived a tsar and tsarina. And they had one son... me-eh.. . an imbecile, naturally..."

Chagrined, he spit out the flower, and, frowning mightily, rubbed his forehead.

"A desperate situation," he stated. "But I do remember this and that!

'Ha-ha-ha! There'll be something to feast on: a stallion for dinner, a brave lad for supper.' Now, where would that be from? But, Ivan, you can figure out for yourself, the imbecile replies: 'Hey, you, revolting monstrosity, stuffing yourself before you caught the snow-white swan!' And later, of course, the tempered arrow and off with all the three heads. Ivan removes the three hearts and carts them home to his mother; the cretin. . . . Now, how do you like that for a gift!" The cat laughed sardonically, and then sighed. "Then there is that sickness-- sclerosis," he remarked.

Sighing again, he turned back toward the oak and began to sing. "Krou, krou, my little ones! Krou, krou, my pigeonlets! I... me-eh... I slaked your thirst with the dew of my eyes . . . more exactly-- watered you. .

He sighed for the third time and walked on silently for some time. As he reached the oak, he yelled out abruptly in a very unmusical voice, "Choice morsel she finished not!"

A ma.s.sive psaltery suddenly appeared in his paws; I didn't notice at all how he came by it. Desperately he struck with his paw, and, catching the strings with his claws, bellowed even louder, as though trying to drown out the music: "Doss im tann void foster ist Doss macht dos hoitz Da.s.s... me-eh ... mein shatz... or katz?"

He stopped and paced a while, banging the strings in silence; then he sang in a low, uncertain voice: "Oi, I been by that there garden That I'll tell as gospel truth: Thus and snappy, They dug the poppy."

He returned to the oak, leaned the psaltery against it, and scratched behind his ear with a hind leg.

"Work, work, work," he said, "and nothing but work!"

He placed his paws behind his back again and went off to the left of the oak, muttering, "It has come to me, oh great tsar, that in the splendid city of Baghdad, there lived a tailor, by the name . . ." He dropped to all fours, arched his back, and hissed angrily. "It's especially bad with the names! Abu . . . Au . . . Somebody Ibn, whoever. . . . So-o, all right, let's say Polouekt. Polouekt Ibn, me-eh. . . Polouektovich. .. . In any event, I can't recall what happened to him. Dog take it, let's start another." I lay with my stomach on the sill in a trance-like state, watching the unfortunate Basil wandering about the oak, now to the left and then to the right, muttering, coughing, meowing and mooing, standing on all fours in his efforts-- in a word, suffering endlessly. The diapason of his knowledge was truly grandiose. He did not know a single tale or song more than halfway, but to make up for this, the repertoire included Russian, Ukrainian, West Slavic, German, English-- I think even j.a.panese, Chinese, and African-- fairy tales, legends, sermons, ballads, songs, romances, ditties, and refrains. The misfunction drove him into such a rage that several times he flung himself at the oak, ripping its bark with his claws, hissing and spitting while his eyes glowed with a satanic gleam and his furry tail, thick as a log, would now point at the zenith, then twitch spasmodically, then lash his sides. But the only song he carried to the end was "Tchizhik Pizhic,"* and the only fairy tale he recounted at all coherently was "The House that Jack Built" in the Marshak translation, and even that with several excisions. Gradually-- apparently fatiguing-- his speech acquired more and more catlike accent. "Ah me, in the field and meadow," he sang.

"the plow goes by itself, and . . . me-e . . . ah . . . me-a-ou...and behind that plow the master himself has paced... or is it wended his way . . . ?"

Finally, altogether spent, he sat down on his tail and stayed thus for some time, his head bent low. Then, meowing softly and sorrowfully, he took the psaltery under his arm and wandered off on the dewy gra.s.s, haltingly on three legs.

I climbed off the sill and dropped the book. I distinctly remembered that the last time it was Creativity of the Mentally Ill, and was sure that was the book which had fallen on the floor. But the book I picked up and placed on the sill was The Solution of Crimes by A. Swanson and O. Wendell.

Dully I opened it, scanned a few samples, and at once I was sure that I sensed there was someone strangled hanging in the oak. Fearfully I raised my eyes. From the lower branches, a wet silvery shark tail hung. It was swinging heavily in the gusts of the morning wind.

I shied violently and struck the back of my head on something hard. A telephone rang loudly. I looked around. I was lying crosswise on the sofa, the blanket had slid to the floor, and the early sun was shining into the window through the oak leaves.

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* Common children's song.

Chapter 3.

It entered my head that the usual interview with the devil or a magician could be successfully replaced by a skillful exploitation of the postulates of science.

H. G. Wells The phone kept ringing. I rubbed my eyes, gazed through the window (the oak was in its place), studied the coat hanger (it, too, was in place). The telephone kept on. Behind the wall it was quiet in the old woman's room. So I leaped to the floor, opened the door (the bolt was shot), and came out in the entry. The telephone rang insistently. It stood on a shelf above a large water cask-- a quite modern white plastic phone, such as I have seen in the movies and the director's office. I picked up the receiver.

"h.e.l.lo."

"Who's this?" asked a piercing female voice.

"Whom do you want?"

"Is that Izbakurnozh?"

"What?"

"I am saying-- is it the Izba on Hen's Legs or not? Who is talking?" "Yes," I said. "It's the Izba. Whom do you want?"

"Oh, h.e.l.l," said the voice. "Take this telephonogram."

"Let's have it."

"Write it down."

"One minute," I said. "I'll get pencil and paper."

I brought over a notebook and a pencil.

"I am listening."

"Telephonogram number two hundred and six," said the female voice, "to Citizeness Gorynitch, Naina Kievna.

"Not so fast. . . . Kievna. . . . Next?"

"You are hereby requested . . . to appear today the twenty-eighth of July . . . of this year . . . at midnight . . . at the annual all-union fly-in. ... Have you got that down?"

"I have."

"The first meeting will take place . . . on Bald Mountain. Formal dress. Employment of mechanized transport at your own expense. Signed . . .

Department Manager...Eich ... Em... Viy..."*

"Who?"

"Viy! Eich Em Viy."

"I don't understand."

"Viy! Khron Monadovitch. Don't you know the department manager?"

"I don't know him," I said. "Spell it."

"h.e.l.l's bells! All right: Vampire, incubus, yang-yin... Have you got it down?"

"I think so," I said. "It comes out: Viy."

"Who?"

"Do you have polyps or something? I can't understand you."

"Vladimir, Ivan, Yakov."

"Right. Repeat the telephonogram." I repeated it.

"Correct. Sent by Onoukina. Who took it?"

"Privalov."

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* Leader of ghost goblins and supernatural monsters.

"Greetings, Privalov! Been in service here long?" "Poodles serve," I said angrily. "I work!"

"Good, good. Work on. See you at the fly-in."

Tones sounded. I hung up and returned to my room. The morning was cool so I did my setting-up exercises hurriedly and dressed. What was transpiring seemed exceedingly curious and interesting to me. The telephonogram seemed to a.s.sociate strangely in my consciousness with the events of the night, although I had no specific idea whatsoever exactly in what way. However that might be, certain ideas were beginning to circulate in my head, and my imagination was definitely aroused.

Everything that I was here witness to, was not altogether unfamiliar to me. I had read of such incidents before and remembered how the behavior of people finding themselves in a.n.a.logous situations seemed to me extraordinarily and irritatingly inept. Instead of fully exploiting the enticing perspectives that were presented to them through a fortunate opportunity, they became frightened and struggled to return themselves to the humdrum and routine. One such exponent actually advised the reader to keep a good distance from the veil dividing our world from the unknown, threatening physical and spiritual maiming. I did not yet know how the events would develop, but I was already prepared to immerse myself in them enthusiastically.

Wandering about the room in search of a pitcher or mug, I went on with my inner discourse. These poltroons, I thought, resembled certain scientist-experimenters-- very persistent, very hard-working, but totally lacking in imagination and consequently very cautious. Having obtained anon-trivial result, they shied away from it, precipitately explaining it as experimental contamination, and were in fact fleeing from the innovative, because they were, in truth, much too tied to the old concepts comfortably pigeonholed within the boundaries of authoritative theories. I was already designing some experiments with the shape-shifter book-- it was still lying on the sill, but was now The Last Exile by Oldridge-- and with the mirror and with tooth-sucking. I had several questions for tomcat Basil, and the mermaid living in the oak also presented a definite puzzle, although at times it seemed to me that I had only dreamed of her. I have nothing against mermaids, but I couldn't picture how one could be climbing trees...... But on the other hand, what about the scales?

I found a dipper on the bucket by the telephone, but the bucket was empty and I went off to the well. The sun had already risen quite high.

There was the distant b.u.m of cars, a policeman's whistle, and the sound of a helicopter making its way ponderously across the sky. I approached the well and, noting with satisfaction that a battered tin bucket hung from the chain, began to unwind the windla.s.s. The bucket, bouncing on the walls, went down into the black depth. There was a splash, the chain growing tight. I turned the crank, eyeing my car, which had a tired, dirty look, the windshield plastered with bugs. I decided it would be a good idea to fill up the radiator.

The bucket seemed inordinately heavy. When I stood it on the frame, a huge pike's head poked out of the water, all green and mossy. I jumped back.

"Going to drag me off to the market again?" inquired the pike, hiccuping strongly. Bewildered, I kept quiet. "Can't you let me be in peace?

Will you never have enough, biddy? How much can one stand? No sooner do I quiet down, to relax and doze a bit, than I get hauled out again! After all, I'm not young anymore-- older than you maybe. .. . The gills don't work so well, either. . . ." It was quite funny to see how she talked, just like a pike in the puppet theater. She opened and closed her toothy jaws with all her might and with a disturbing lack of synchronization with the p.r.o.nounced sounds. She said the last phrase with the jaws convulsively clamped shut.

"Also the air is bad for me," she continued. "What are you going to do when I croak? It's all the fault of your female and stupid miserliness. . .

. You save and save and don't even know what for. . . . Didn't you go bust on the last reform-- well, didn't you? There you are! And what about the Catherine notes? Trunk-fuls! And the Kerensky rubles-- didn't you fuel your stove with them?"

"You see-" said I, somewhat regaining my composure.

"Oi-- who's that?" worried the pike.

"I . . . I am here just by chance. I was going to wash up a bit."

"Wash! And I thought it was the old hag again. Don't see so well-- getting old. Furthermore, the refraction coefficient with the air is quite different. I ordered gla.s.ses for air, but I have lost them and can't find them. And who would you be?"

"A tourist," I said briefly.

"Oh, a tourist. . . . And I thought it was that hag again. You can't imagine what she does with me. First she catches me, then drags me off to the market and sells me as an ingredient for a bouillabaisse. So what can I do? I talk to the buyer: thus and thus, let me go back to my little ones-- though what little ones, I know not, as they are not children but granddaddies by now. You let me go, and I will serve you well. Just say, 'By the pike's command, this wish of mine.' So they let me go. Some out of fear, some out of the goodness of their hearts, and some out of greed. Then I swim about in the river, but with my rheumatism, back to the warm well I go, and back again is the crone with the bucket." The pike retreated under the water, bubbled a bit, and came up again. "Well, what is your wish, my fine one? But keep it simple, and not like some who want those new-fangled TV's or transistor radios. . . . One lout went altogether ape: 'Complete my yearly plan at the sawmill for me.' Cutting logs at my age!" "Aha," I said. "Can you still do the TV?"

"No," the pike owned up. "I can't do a television receiver. Also, I can't do that automated combine with separator. I don't believe in them.

Think of something more simple. Let's say thousand-league boots or an invisibility cloak. ... Well?"

My rising hope of escaping the greasing of the car began to fade.

"Don't worry yourself, ma'am," I said. "I really don't require anything. I'm going to just let you go."

"That's good," said the pike calmly. "I like people like you. The other day, too, there was this case. Some guy bought me in the market and I had to promise him a tsar's daughter. So there I am, swimming along in the river, full of shame, not knowing where to hide myself. Next thing, not looking where I am going, I barge right into a net. They lug me up. Again, I figure I'll have to lie my way out. So what do you think the man does? He grabs me right across the teeth so I can't open my mouth. 'That's the end,' I thought. 'Into the soup kettle with me-- this time.' But no. He clamps something on my fin and back in the water I go. See?"

The pike raised herself out of the bucket and placed a fin on the edge.

At its base was a metal clamp on which I read: This specimen released in the Solovei River in the year 1854. Deliver to H.I.M. Academy of Science.

"Don't tell the hag," warned the pike. "She'll tear it out with the fin. Greedy, she is, the miser.

What should I ask her? I thought feverishly.

"How do you work your miracles?"

"What miracles?"

"You know-- wish fulfillments."

"Oh, that? How do I do it? Been taught from infancy, that's how. I guess I don't really know. . . . The Golden Fish,* she did it even better than I, but she is dead now. You can't escape your fate."

It seemed to me she sighed.

"From old age?" I asked.

"Old age, nothing! Young she was, and spritely. They dropped a depth charge on her, my fine friend. So belly-up she went, and some kind of vessel that happened nearby also sank. She would have bought herself off, but they didn't ask. No sooner sighted, than blam with the bomb. .. . That's the way of it." She was silent a while. "Well, then, are you going to let me go? It feels close somehow; there is going to be a thunderstorm."

"Of course, of course," I said, startled back to reality. "How should I do it? Throw you in, or in the bucket?"

"Throw me in, my good man, throw me in."

Carefully I dipped my hands into the bucket and extracted the pike-- it must have weighed in at around eight kilos. She kept on murmuring, "And how about a self-serving tablecloth or a flying carpet-- I'll be right here. You can count on me...

"So long," I said, and let go. There was a noisy splash.

For some time, I stood there gazing at my hands, covered with green slime. I experienced some kind of strange feeling. Part of the time an awareness came over me, like a gust of wind, that I was sitting on the sofa in the room, but all I had to do was shake my head and I was back at the well. The feeling dissipated. I washed in the fine ice-cold water, filled the car radiator, then shaved. The old woman was still out.

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* Reference to well-known fairy tale with magic fish.