The Final Circle of Paradise

Everything is now understandable. It's odious, that I understand… Better if I understood nothing, better if, upon regaining consciousness, I shrugged my shoulders and climbed out of the bath. Would it have been understandable to Strogoff and Einstein and Petrarch? Imagination is a priceless gift, but it must not be given an inward direction. Only outward, only outward… What a tasty worm some corrupter has dropped from his rod into this stagnant pool! And how accurately timed! Yes indeed, if I were commander of Wells' Martians, I would not have bothered with fighter tripods, heat rays, and other such nonsense. Illusory existence… no, this is not a narcotic, a narcotic has a long way to go to approach it. In a. way this is exactly appropriate. Here. Now. To each time its own. Poppy seeds and hemp, the kingdom of sweet blurred shadows and peace – for the beggar, the worn-out, the downtrodden… But here no one wants peace, here no one is dying of hunger, here is simply a bore. A well-fed, well-heated, drunken bore. It's not that the world is bad, it's just plain dreary. World without prospects, world without promise. But in the end man is not a carp, he still remains a man. Yes, it is no kingdom of shades, it is indeed the real existence, without detraction, without dreary confusion. Slug is moving on the world and the world will not mind subjecting itself to it.

Suddenly, for a fraction of a moment, I felt that I was lost. And it was cozy to be destroyed. Fortunately I grew angry. Splashing out water, I climbed out of the bath, cursing and stoking my ire, pulled my shorts and shirt over my wet body, and grabbed my watch. It was three o'clock, and it could have been three in the afternoon or three the following morning or three o'clock after a hundred years. Idiot, I thought, pulling on my trousers. Softened up and let Buba go when he was ready to give me the address of the gangsters' den. The operatives could have been there by now and we could have nabbed the whole accursed nest, the vile nest. The vermin nest.

The repulsive cloaca… And at this instant against the very depth of my consciousness, like a dancing spot of light, flicked a very calm thought. But I could not fasten upon it.

I located some Potomac in the medicine cabinet, the strongest stimulant which I could find in it. I started into the living room, but the youngsters were snoring away there, so I climbed out the window. The city was resting, of course.

Guffawing louts hung around under the street lamp on Waterway, bawling crowds surged on the brightly lit avenues. Somewhere songs were shouted, somewhere they were yelling "Shivers!"

Somewhere glass was being broken. I picked out a chauffeurless taxi, found the index for Sunshine Street, and dialed it on the control console. The car took off across town. The cab smelled sour and bottles rolled underfoot. At one intersection it almost plowed into a daisy chain of howling humanity, and at another there was the rhythmic flashing of colored lights – apparently it was possible to set up the shivers elsewhere than the plaza. They were resting, resting with all their might, these benevolent patrons from the Happy Mood Salons, these polite customs inspectors, clever barbers, tender mothers and manly fathers, innocent youths and maidens – they all exchanged their diurnal aspects for the nocturnal, they all worked hard to have fun and so that it wouldn't be necessary to think about a thing…

The taxi braked. It was the very same place. It even seemed as though there was that same burning smell…