Arkady Strugatsky: The Snail on The Slope

"All right, what should I answer?" said Pepper. "I just wanted to have a talk with the director here."

Hausbotcher froze, as if trapped in the bushes. "So that's how you go about it." His voice was altered.

"Go about what? There's no going about..."

"No, no," whispered Hausbotcher, gazing about him, "just keep silent. No need for any words. I realize now. You were right."

"What've you realized? What was I right in?"

"No, no, I haven't understood anything. I haven't understood, period. You may rest absolutely assured. Haven't understood a thing. I wasn't even here, I didn't see you."

They passed by the little bench, climbed the crumbling steps, turned into an alley strewn with red sand, and entered the grounds of the Directorate.

"Total clarity can exist only on a certain level," Hausbotcher was saying. "And everybody should know what he can lay claim to. I claimed certainty on my level, that was my right and I exercised it fully. Where rights end, obligations begin..."

They passed the ten flat cottages with tulle curtains at the windows, passed the garage, cut across the sports ground, and went by dumps and the hostel, in whose doorway stood a deathly-pale warden with motionless pop-eyes, and by the long fencing beyond which could be heard the snarling of engines. They kept quickening their pace and as there was little time left, they began to run. But all the same, they burst into the canteen too late, all the seats were taken. Only at the duty table in the far corner were there two places, the third being occupied by driver Acey, and driver Acey, observing them shuffling in indecision on the threshold, waved his fork at them, inviting them over.

Everybody was drinking yogurt and Pepper took the same, so that they had six bottles on the crusted tablecloth, and when Pepper moved his legs a bit under the table, making himself more comfortable on the backless chair, there was a clink of glass and an empty brandy bottle rolled out between the little tables. Driver Acey swiftly grabbed it and thrust it back under the table; more glass clinked.

"Careful with your feet," he said.

"I couldn't help it," said Pepper. "I didn't know."

"Did I know?" responded Acey. "There's four of them under there. Prove your innocence later if you can."

"Well I, for instance, don't drink at all," said Haus-botcher with dignity.

"We know how you don't drink," said Acey. "That's how we all don't drink."

"But I have liver trouble!" Hausbotcher was growing uneasy. "Look, here's the certificate." He pulled a crumpled exercise-book page out from somewhere; it had a triangular stamp. He shoved it under Pepper's nose. It was indeed a certificate written in an illegible medical hand. Pepper could only make out one word "antabus." "I've got last year's and the year before that as well, only they're in the safe."

Driver Acey didn't look at the paper. He drained a full glass of yogurt, sniffed the joint of his index finger, and asked in a tearful voice:

"Well, what else is there in the forest? Trees." He wiped his eyes with his sleeve. "But they don't stand still: jump. Got it?"

"Well?" asked Pepper eagerly, "what was that- jump?"

"Like this. It stands still. A tree, right? Then it starts hunching and bending, then whoosh! There's a noise, crashing, I don't know what all. Ten yards. Smashed my cab. There it is standing again." "Why?" asked Pepper.

" 'Cos it's called a jumping tree," explained Acey pouring himself more yogurt.

"Yesterday, a consignment of new electric saws arrived," announced Hausbotcher, licking his lips. "Phenomenal productivity. I would go so far as to say that they weren't electrosaws but saw-combines. Our saw-combines of eradication."

All around they were drinking yogurt out of cut glasses, tin mugs, little coffee cups, paper cones, straight out of the bottle. Everybody's legs were stuck , under their chairs. And everyone probably could show his certificate of liver, stomach, small intestine trouble. For this year and for the last several.

"Then the manager calls me in," Acey went on, raising his voice, "and he asks why my cab's stove in. 'Again,' he says, 'sod, giving people lifts?' Now you, Mr. Pepper, play chess with him, you might put in a little word for me. He respects you, he often talks of you, 'Pepper,' he says, 'he's a character! I won't give a vehicle for Pepper and don't ask. We can't let a man like that go. Understand, all you zombies, we couldn't carry on without him!' Put in a word, eh?"

"All right," Pepper brought out in a low voice, "I'll try."

"I can speak with the manager," said Hausbotcher. "We served together. I was a captain and he was my lieutenant. He greets me to this day, bringing his hand to his headgear."

"Then there's the mermaids," said Acey, weighing his glass of yogurt. "In big clear lakes. They lie there, get it? Nothing on."

"Your yogurt's putting ideas into your head," said Hausbotcher.

"I haven't seen them myself," rejoined Acey. "But the water from those lakes isn't fit to drink."

"You haven't seen them because they don't exist," said Hausbotcher. "Mermaids, that's mysticism."

"You're another mysticism," said Acey, wiping his eye with a sleeve.

"Wait a bit," said Pepper, "wait a bit. Acey, you say they're lying ... is that all? They can't just lie and that's all."

"Maybe they live underwater and float up onto the surface, just like we go out onto the balcony to escape from smoke-filled rooms on moonlit nights and, eyes closed, bare our face to the chill, then they can just lie. Just lie and that's all. Rest. And talk lazily and smile at each other..."

"Don't argue with me," said Acey, looking obstinately at Hausbotcher. "Have you ever been in the forest? Never been in there once, have you, to hell."

"Silly if I did," said Hausbotcher. "What would I be doing there in your forest? I've got a permit into your forest. And you, Acey, haven't got one at all. Show me, if you please, your permit, Acey."

"I didn't see the mermaids myself," repeated Acey, turning to Pepper, "but I entirely believe in them. Because the boys have told me. So did Kandid even, and he was the one who knew everything about the forest. He used to go into that forest like a man to his woman, put his finger on anything. He perished there in his forest."

"If he did," said Hausbotcher significantly.

"What do you mean 'if'? Man flies off in his helicopter, three years no sight or sound. His obituary was in the paper, we held the wake, what more d'you want? Kandid crashed, that's for sure."

"We don't know enough," said Hausbotcher, "to assert anything with complete certainty."

Acey spat and went to the counter to order another bottle of yogurt. At this, Hausbotcher leaned over and whispered in Pepper's ear, his eyes darting:

"Bear in mind that touching Kandid there was a sealed directive... I consider it right for me to inform you, because you are a person from outside."

"What directive?"

"To regard him as alive," said Hausbotcher in a hollow whisper and moved away. "Nice, fresh yogurt today," he announced loudly.

Noise increased in the canteen. Those who had already breakfasted were getting up, scraping chairs, and making for the exit, lighting up and throwing match-sticks on the floor. Hausbotcher surveyed them malevolently and said to everyone as they passed: "Strange behavior, gentlemen, you can surely see we're having a discussion."

When Acey returned with his bottle, Pepper spoke to him.

"The manager didn't really say he wouldn't provide me with a vehicle, did he? He was just joking, wasn't that it?"

"Why should he? He likes you, Mister Pepper, bored without you and it's just not worth his while to let you go... Well if he lets you, what's in it for him? No joking."

Pepper bit his lip.