Arkady Strugatsky: Monday Begins on Saturday

“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 tittering. “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:

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 glass. 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 nobody there and neither was the oak. I rubbed my eyes and looked again. The moss-covered frame of the well with its windlass, 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 title 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 illustrations. Next I read “Verse No. 2”:

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 grass, 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… 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.