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     © Copyright Victor Pelevin
     Translated from Russian by Serge Winitzki (c) 1996-1997
          
     http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/5344/fun/friends.html#translations
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          Sometimes hidden behind the smooth stone faces of these idols are labyrinths of cracks and hollows, inhabited by various kinds of birds.
                     Joseph Lavender, "Easter Island"

     He didn't remember such  a cold  winter  in Vienna yet. Every  time the
door  opened and a  cloud of  cold air flew  into  the  cafe, he  shivered a
little. For a long time no new  visitors came, and Sigmund fell into a light
senile nap, but now the door banged again, and he raised his head to look.
     Two newcomers just entered the cafe -- a whiskered gentleman and a lady
with a high chignon.
     The lady held a long sharp umbrella in her hands.
     The gentleman  carried a small purse decorated  by dark  shiny furs,  a
little moist from the melted snowflakes.
     They stopped at the hat rack and began undressing: the man took off his
overcoat, hung it on  a peg, and then tried to  hang his hat on  one  of the
long wooden knobs  that jutted  out of  the  wall  above  the  hat rack, but
missed,  and the hat fell out  of his hand and down on the  floor.  The  man
muttered something, lifted his hat and hung  it finally on the knob; then he
hurried to help her take off her furcoat. Relieved of the furcoat, the  lady
smiled benevolently and  took  her purse from him, but suddenly she grimaced
in distress: the lock on the  purse had been open, and some  snow had fallen
in.  She hanged the  purse on her shoulder, put the umbrella into the corner
with its handle down for some  reason, took  her  companion's hand and  went
with him into the main room.
     -- Aha, -- said Sigmund softly and shook his head.
     Between  the  wall  and  the  bar  counter,  near  the table where  the
whiskered  gentleman and his companion  went, was a small  empty space where
the barkeeper's children were playing: a boy of about eight in a bulky white
sweater  covered with black diamonds, and  a girl still younger,  in  a dark
dress and  striped  woolen  pants.  Their playthings,  wooden bricks  and  a
half-deflated ball, lay beside them on the floor.
     The  kids  were  unusually quiet. The boy was  occupied with a pile  of
wooden bricks  with painted  sides. He  was building  a house of  a somewhat
strange shape,  with an  opening in the front wall. The house would collapse
time  and again, because the opening was too wide and  the upper brick would
fall in between the sides. Every time the bricks  ended up strewn around the
floor, the boy would sadly pick his nose with a dirty finger  and then start
building anew. The  girl sat  in front  of her brother  right on  the floor,
watching  him without much interest and  playing  with  a  handful  of small
change -- she  would  lay  the coins out on the  floor, or  gather them in a
small pile and  shove it under  herself.  Soon she  was  bored with it,  she
dropped the coins, leaned  aside, grabbed the  nearest chair  by  its  legs,
pulled  it to her and started moving it around on the floor and  pushing the
ball with the chair's legs. Once she pushed too hard, the ball rolled toward
the boy, and his feeble construction collapsed at  the very  moment  when he
was going to mount on top of it the  last brick, the sides of which showed a
branch of an orange tree and a firepost. The boy  lifted his head  and shook
his fist at her, to which she  opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue  --
she held it out for so long that one could perhaps examine it in all detail.
     -- Aha, -- said Sigmund and looked at the whiskered man and the lady.
     They already  had  the appetizers served to  them.  The  gentleman  was
swallowing the oysters, knowingly opening their  shells with  a small silver
knife, and was telling  something to his companion, who was smiling, nodding
and eating mushrooms  -- she would take  them with a two-toothed fork one by
one  from the plate and scrutinize them  before  dipping in  a  thick yellow
sauce. The gentleman, clinking with the bottle on  the brim  of  his  glass,
poured himself some white wine,  drank it and moved the  soup bowl closer to
himself.
     The  waiter brought a plate with a long fried fish.  The lady looked at
the  fish and suddenly smacked herself  on the forehead and started  telling
something  to  the  gentleman. He looked at her, listened to her for a while
and grimaced  doubtfully, then drank  another  glass  of  wine  and  started
carefully putting a cigarette  into a conical red cigarette holder, which he
held between his little finger and his ring finger.
     --Aha!  -- said Sigmund and stared at the far corner of the room, where
the hostess, the barkeeper's wife, stood with a stocky waiter.
     It was  dark there, or  rather  it  was darker than in  other  corners,
because  the lightbulb  under  the ceiling was  burnt  out. The hostess  was
staring  up with  her  plump hands on her hips; because of  her pose and her
apron with colorful zigzags she resembled  an  ancient vase.  The waiter has
already fetched a long  folding  ladder, which  stood  now beside  an  empty
table. The hostess checked that the ladder  was sturdy enough, scratched her
head ponderously and said something to the waiter. He turned and went around
the bar counter, then  stooped behind it and was not seen for a while. After
a minute, he emerged  from behind the counter and showed to  the  hostess an
elongated, shining object. She nodded  energetically,  and the  waiter  came
back to her with the found flashlight in his raised hand. He  wanted to give
it to her, but she shook her head and pointed her finger to the floor.
     There was a large square  hatch in the floor beside the empty table. It
was almost  invisible  because its lid  was covered with  the  same  parquet
diamonds  as the rest of the floor, and one could suspect its existence only
from the double  border line  of thin  copper  which  crossed the  intricate
parquet patterns, and from the inlaid copper ring.
     The  waiter  meticulously  pulled  his  pants  at the  knees, squatted,
grabbed the  ring and with one  powerful  tug opened the  hatch. The hostess
grimaced and  shifted.  The  waiter  looked at her  questioningly,  but  she
energetically nodded again, and he  started climbing down. Apparently, there
was  a ladder beneath the floor, as he sank into the blackness of the square
in  short  jerks,  one  for each invisible step.  At first he held  the  lid
himself,  but  as he descended  lower,  the  hostess helped him  by  leaning
forward and grasping  the lid with her two  hands, and staring intently into
the dark hole where the waiter went.
     After a while the  waiter's white coat, rather dirty  from  cobwebs and
dust, appeared  again  above  the  floor.  He got out, resolutely closed the
hatch and moved  to the ladder, but the  hostess stopped him  and turned him
around. She  thoroughly dusted his  coat, took the  lightbulb from his hand,
breathed on it and stroked  it a few  times with the palm of her  hand.  She
moved to the ladder, put her foot on the lower step, waited until the waiter
firmly held the ladder from aside, and started climbing up.
     The burnt lightbulb was  fitted inside a narrow  glass  lampshade which
hung on a long string, and she didn't have  to climb too high. She went five
or six  steps up, reached with  her hand  inside the lampshade and tried  to
turn the bulb, but it was screwed in too tightly, and the  lampshade started
turning  with  it.  Then  the  hostess took  the new  bulb  into her  mouth,
cautiously  holding it with her  lips, lifted  her  other hand  and held the
lampshade  by its rim; this way it went much easier. She unscrewed the burnt
bulb, put it into a pocket in her apron, and started fitting in the new one.
The waiter's  attention  was riveted to the movements of her plump palms, as
he  was holding the ladder in  his strong hands and moistening his lips with
the tip of his tongue. Suddenly the light broke out of the matted lampshade,
the waiter  shuddered, blinked and loosened his grip for a moment. The sides
of the folding ladder started to come apart; the hostess waved her hands and
almost fell  on the floor, but the waiter managed to hold the  ladder at the
last moment;  with incredible speed the  hostess,  pale from fright, made it
over  the three  or four steps  to  the parquet  floor  and stood  weak  and
motionless in the calming embrace of her companion.
     -- Aha!  Aha! --  Sigmund  said aloud  and stared  at the couple at the
table.
     The lady with  the  chignon was already having dessert: in her hand was
an oblong tube with  cream, and she nibbled at it from the  wider side. When
Sigmund looked at her, she was just about to take a larger bite: she put the
tube  in  her mouth and pressed with her teeth,  but  the thick  white cream
broke through the  thin gilded box at its rear end. The whiskered  gentleman
reacted instantly, and the ejected protuberance  of cream fell into his hand
instead of slumping  onto the table-cloth.  The lady broke out laughing. The
gentleman brought his hand with  a pile  of cream to his mouth and licked it
off,  which made his companion laugh even more, so that she even gave up her
cookie  and  dropped it  on the plate with the remains  of  the  fish. After
licking  the  cream, the gentleman  caught  the  lady's  hand and gave it  a
heart-felt kiss, to which she took  his glass of  golden wine and took a few
small sips. Thereafter, the gentleman  lighted  another cigarette: he put it
into his  conical red  cigarette-holder, quickly  inhaled  a  few times, and
started to blow smoke rings.
     He was doubtlessly a master of that complicated  art. At  first he blew
out  one large blue-grey ring with a wavy brim, then another, smaller  ring,
which went through the  first one without touching it. He waved his  hand in
the air, destroyed the smoke construction and made two new rings, now of the
same size, which hung one above the other in an almost perfect figure-eight.
His companion looked at it with  interest, perfunctorily picking at the fish
head with a thin wooden stick.
     Having gotten a lungful of smoke once again, the gentleman blew out two
thin  long spurts, one  of which went through the upper  ring and  the other
through the lower,  where they touched  and converged  into  a  muddy bluish
cloud. The lady applauded.
     --  Aha! --  exclaimed Sigmund,  and  the gentleman turned and eyed him
curiously.
     Sigmund looked at  the  children  again.  It seemed  that one  of  them
fetched  some  new toys.  Beside  the  bricks  and  the ball,  they  now had
disheveled dolls and colored pieces of  clay lying around them. The boy  was
still busy with  the bricks, but now instead of  a  house he was  building a
long, low wall, upon which at regular intervals stood tin soldiers with high
red  hats.  A  few openings  were  left in the wall, each  guarded  by three
soldiers -- one outside and two inside. The wall was shaped as a semicircle,
and at its center a  carefully arranged podium of four bricks held  the ball
-- which rested only on  the  bricks,  not touching the floor. The  girl was
sitting with her back to her brother and  absent-mindedly biting at the tail
of a stuffed canary.
     -- Aha! -- shouted Sigmund restlessly. -- Aha! Aha!
     Now not only the  whiskered gentleman glanced at him (the gentleman and
the lady  were  already standing at  the hat rack and dressing up), but also
the hostess, who was  adjusting the window shades with a long stick. Sigmund
looked at the hostess and then at the wall, which held a few paintings  -- a
banal  seascape with  the  moon  and  a  beacon,  and  a  huge, out-of-place
avant-guarde painting,  showing from above two  open  grand pianos, in which
lay the dead Bounuel and Salvador Dali, both with strangely elongated ears.
     -- Aha! -- shouted Sigmund with all might. -- Aha! Aha!! Aha!!!
     Now people  from  all sides looked  at  him,  and not  just looked: the
hostess was approaching him with a long stick in her hand,  and on the other
side  --  the whiskered gentleman, holding his hat. The  hostess frowned  as
usual, but the gentleman's  face expressed a touching, genuine interest. The
faces were getting closer until they occupied almost his  entire  view,  and
Sigmund felt ill at ease and cringed into a fluffy bundle.
     --  What  a beautiful parrot  you have here, -- the whiskered gentleman
said to the hostess. -- What else can he say?
     -- Many things, -- answered  the hostess. -- Come  on, Sigmund, tell us
something.
     She raised her hand and put the tip of a fat finger between the rods.
     --  Nice boy Sigmund, --  Sigmund said flirtingly, moving however along
the rod to the far corner of the cage, just in case. -- Clever boy Sigmund.
     -- Clever boy  he is, -- the hostess said, --  but the  cage is full of
his shit. Not a clean spot left.
     -- Don't be too strict with the poor  bird. It's his cage after all and
not yours, -- the whiskered gentleman said, preening his hair.  -- He has to
live in it, too.
     A moment later he apparently felt embarrassed about talking to a vulgar
barkeeper's  wife. With a  stiff  face  he put on his hat, turned  and  went
toward the door.


Last-modified: Sun, 26 Sep 1999 13:33:07 GMT
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