Arkady Strugatsky: Monday Begins on Saturday

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 a non-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 bum 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 windlass. 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 pronounced 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 glasses 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, (a wishing fish—a fairy tale personage) 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.