The Final Circle of Paradise

Bang, bang, rat-tat-tat-tat… around me people stood like wooden pickets. Some were coming to and rolling their eyeballs inanely. I was half reclining on a man's chest, which was as hard as a bench, and right in front of my eyes was his open mouth and chin glistening with saliva… Blue-green, blue-green, blue-green… Something was missing.

There were piercing screams, cursing, someone thrashed and screeched hysterically. A mechanical roar grew louder over the square. I raised my head with difficulty. The panels were right overhead, the blue and green flashing regularly, while the red was extinguished and raining glass rubble. Rat-tat-tat-tat and the green panel broke and darkened. In the blue remaining light unhurried wings floated by, spewing the reddish lightning of a fusillade.

Again I attempted to throw myself on the ground, but it was impossible, as they all stood around me like pillars. Something made an ugly snap quite near me, and a yellow-green plume rose skyward from which puffed a repulsive stench. Pow! Pow! Another two plumes hung over the square. The crowd howled and stirred. The yellow vapor was caustic like mustard, my eyes and mouth filled, and I began to cry and cough, and around me, everyone began to cry and cough and yell hoarsely: "Lousy bums! Scoundrels! Sock the Intels!" Again the roar of the engine could be heard, coming in louder and louder. The airplane was returning. "Down, you idiots," I yelled. Everyone around me flopped down all over each other. Rat-tat-tat-tat! This time the machine gunner missed and the string apparently got the building opposite us. To make up for the miss, the gas bombs fell again right on target. The lights around the square went out, and with them the blue panel, as a free-for-all started in the pitch-black dark.

Chapter SEVEN

I'll never know how I arrived at that fountain. It must be that I have good instincts and ordinary cold water was exactly what I needed. I crawled into the water without taking off my clothes, and lay down, feeling better immediately. I was lying on my back, drops rained on my face, and this was unbelievably pleasant. It was quite dark here, and dim stars shone through the branches and the water. It was very quiet. For several minutes I was watching a brighter star, for some reason unknown to me, which was slowly moving across the sky, until I realized that I was watching the relay satellite Europa. How far from all this, I thought, how degrading and senseless to remember the revolting mess on the square, the disgusting foul mouthings and screechings, the wet phrumping of the gas bombs, and the putrid stench which turned your stomach and lungs inside out.

Understanding freedom as the rapid satisfaction and multiplication of needs and desires, I recollected, people distort their natures as they engender within themselves many senseless and stupid desires, habits and the most unlikely inventions…

Priceless Peck, he loved to quote old pundit Zosima as he circled around a well-laid table, rubbing his hands. We were snot-nosed undergrads then and ingenuously believed that such pronouncements, in our time, were meant only to show off flashes of humor and erudition… At this point in my reflections, someone noisily plunged into the water some ten paces from me.

At first he coughed hoarsely, spat and blew his nose, so that I hurried to leave the water, then he started to splash, finally became quiet, and suddenly discharged himself of a string of curses: "Shameless lice," he growled. "Whores, swine… on live people! Stinking hyenas, rotten scum… learned prostitutes, filthy snakes." He hawked furiously again. "It bothers them that people are having a good time! Stepped on my face, the crud!" He groaned nasally and painfully, "The hell with this shiver business. That will be the day when I'll go again."

He moaned again and rose. I could hear the water running from his clothes. I could dimly perceive his swaying figure. He saw me too.

"Hey, friend, have a smoke on you?"

"I did," I replied.

"Low-lifers! I didn't think to take them out. Just fell in with everything on." He splashed over to me and sat down alongside. "Some moron stepped on my cheek," he informed me.

"They marched over me, too," I said. "The people went ape."

"But, you tell me, where do they get the tear gas?" he said. "And machine guns?"

"And airplanes," I added.

"An airplane means nothing," he contradicted. "I have one myself. I bought it cheap for seven hundred crowns… What do they want, that's what I don't understand."

"Hoodlums," I said. "They should have their faces pulped properly, and that would be the end of that argument."

He laughed bitterly.