He had a slight stutter, and the face of an old squirrel: buckteeth, pointed whiskers and tiny, dull eyes surrounded by wrinkles.
"We haven"t been introduced," he said. "I"m Sempriaq, the Senior Cremator. Sempriaq with a q." I mumbled my name and we shook hands.
The other asked: "So where"s the doctor?"
And he gave the dice a rattle.
"He"ll be along. And you, you"re an ambulatory?"
"I suppose," I said.
"We too. Came straight from work, saves time that way, quite a convenience. You don"t happen to have a mirror, do you?"
"Stop it," said the other. Sempriaq ignored him.
"I should have one somewhere." I searched my pockets, then handed him a small, square mirror, scratched up quite a bit from long use. He looked himself over carefully and made a series of faces, as if trying to decide which was ugliest.
"Excellent!" he said. "It"s been years since I looked so old!"
"And you"re glad of it?" I asked.
"Oh yes. Even if I never see him again, this way at least --"
"See whom?"
"But you don"t know, of course. It"s my brother, my twin brother. He"s on a Mission, so I may never see him again. This way at least -- he did me dirt, you see -- I can follow his misfortune."
"Stop it," said the other, clearly annoyed. I studied them both. Sempriaq, though fairly thin and with a sunken chest, bore a striking resemblance to his heavy companion -- in fact, they were as alike as two suits of slightly different cut but in exactly the same stage of wear, or as two clerks grown old together at adjacent desks. What had dried up and wrinkled over in one, sagged and folded in the other. Sempriaq, however, tried to preserve a certain style: every now and then he would smooth his mustache with a finger, or reach to adjust his collar -- which wasn"t there, since now he had on pajamas, chartreuse and silver.
"So you"re going for treatments too?" he said, trying to resume our conversation.
"Another game?" the other asked with a nasal tw.a.n.g.
"Not the bones again?" Semipriaq sneered. "Can"t you think up something else?"
An eye peered into the room through the keyhole, then vanished.
"There"s Dolt," grumbled the other. "Up to his old tricks."
The door opened and a man in puce pajamas sauntered in, his clothes folded over one arm and the other holding a briefcase and a thermos. He was tall, painfully thin, his nose and Adam"s apple jutted out like bent knives, and his eyes were pale and vacant, a peculiar contrast to his lively manner -- particularly when he threw his head back and cried: "Greetings, greetings, comrades and accomplices! When the doctor"s called away, the patients will play!"
"What, another attack?" the heavy one asked calmly.
"Who can say? Brain failure, I suspect. Ha! But why wait, gentlemen? There is much merry to make!"
"Same old Dolt," sighed the heavy one, getting up. "One drunken orgy after another." Sempriaq touched his mustache pensively.
"Just us?"
"Just us! And a recruit to fill the cup. An able lad! Come, brave hearts, let us be off!"
I tried to slip away unnoticed. But just then he turned his watery eyes to me.
"What"s this? A new man?" he said with exaggerated warmth. "We"d love to have you! A shot, a little harmless cheer, good for what ails you -- ha! You must join us!"
I started to excuse myself, but was already arm in arm with the fuchsia pajamas and the puce pajamas, marching out the door, still protesting, and down the narrow corridor -- the chartreuse pajamas went ahead and slammed the doors left and right along the way, and the slamming echoed up and down the entire level, announcing our mad progress. One door bounced back open, revealing a large room full of old women in shawls and high-b.u.t.toned shoes. Their voices blended into one complaining and quarrelsome sound as we pa.s.sed.
"What was that?" I asked.
"Busybodies," said the cremator. "We keep them in reserve. This way, please." And he pushed me forward. I got a good whiff of his cheap hair tonic, and the smells of ink and soap.
The heavy one became strangely animated, began to bounce along, waving his arms and whistling -- until, at the last door, he stopped and adjusted his pajamas with great ceremony, cleared his throat with even greater ceremony, and threw the door open.
"Welcome, welcome to our humble abode!"
The walls were bare; there was a huge, old-fashioned cupboard in the corner; and a banquet table stood in the middle of the room, its snow-white cloth covered with gleaming bottles and endless platters of food. In the far corner a young man with flowing hair -- also in pajamas -- was struggling with a stack of folding chairs, the kind one sees in outdoor cafes. He was opening and testing them, and raising a terrible racket in the process. The heavy one went to give him a hand, and the tall, emaciated organizer of this odd celebration, the one they called Dolt, folded his arms across his chest like a general on a hilltop, and surveyed the richly laden table as if it were tomorrow"s battlefield.
"Excuse me," said a voice behind me, and I made way for the smiling young man, who was carrying several bottles of wine. He put them down and introduced himself.
"Klappershlang," he said, shaking my hand and blushing. "A trainee, as of yesterday. . ."
He couldn"t have been more than twenty. His thick black hair curled around the pale forehead and fell to the ears in pretty ringlets.
"Comrades and accomplices, take your seats!" Dolt announced, rubbing his hands together.
We hardly had time to settle ourselves in those terribly rickety chairs when he filled our gla.s.ses and raised his own with a greedy, lopsided smile, and yelled: "Gentlemen! The Building!"
"The Building!" we roared in one voice, clicked our gla.s.ses and drank. Whatever it was, it started a slow fire inside. Dolt refilled our gla.s.ses, licked his lips, made another toast, louder than the first, and emptied his gla.s.s in one swallow. The cremator sprawled in his chair, stuffed himself with hors d"oeuvres and with considerable finesse spit olive pits in the young man"s direction. Dolt refilled and refilled. It was growing hot, and though the alcohol didn"t seem to affect me, everything began to merge into a thick, shimmering liquid. The second the gla.s.ses were filled, they had to be emptied -- as if there was some great urgency about it, as if they expected someone to rush in and call a halt to the proceedings. And their gaiety was unnaturally wild, for so few drinks.
"What kind of cake is this? Triple-layer?" asked the heavy one, his mouth full.
"No, triple-agent!" quipped Dolt, and the cremator laughed and broke into a volley of drunken jokes and off-color nursery rhymes.
"Your health, Dolt! And yours, you old necrophiliac!" roared the heavy one.
"Please, a thanatophile," said the cremator, reproachful.
Conversation became impossible; even shouts got lost in the confusion. There was toast after toast, down the hatch and bottoms up, and the jokes grew so awful that I had to drink to hide my disgust. Dolt sang in a piercing falsetto and performed an obscene dance with his fingers across the tablecloth while the cremator guzzled vodka and threw whole olives at the young man, who sat there in a stupor, and the heavy one bellowed like a bull: "We"re here because we"re here!"
"Because we"re here!"
"Because we"re here!!" they howled in unison.
Then he jumped to his feet, tore off his wig and screamed, his bald head dripping sweat: "Gentlemen! Hide and seek!"
"No, blindman"s bluff!"
"No, charades!"
"Ho-ho! Ha-ha! Hee-hee!" they whinnied and brayed.
"Come fill the cup, and in the fire of Spring, your Winter-garment of Repentance fling!" cried the cremator, kissing the air.
"Gentlemen, I give you -- I give you -- I give you -- gentlemen -- the doctor!!" shrieked Dolt. "And the ladies! Don"t forget the ladies!"
"Oo-la-la!!"
"Hail, hail, the spies are hee-eere!" wailed the heavy one, then burped and looked around with a bleary eye, and yawned, revealing a pointed, delicate tongue, an almost feminine tongue.
What in heaven"s name was I doing here among these loathsome lowlifes, partic.i.p.ating in this revolting, pitiful binge of petty bureaucrats, this crude carousal of clerks? I was filled with horror.
"Gentlemen! I give you -- our gatekeepers! Gentlemen -- our cremators! I give you --" a voice piped from under the table.
"G.o.d save the King!"
"I"ll drink to that!"
"Confusion to the enemy!"
"Prosit!"
"Long live the Archduke!"
"Skoal!" barked the chorus. I felt sorry for the young man; they were out to get him drunk, constantly filling his gla.s.s! The heavy one puffed up and turned purple, looked like he was ready to burst -- only the flabby white neck didn"t seem to match the rest of him. He had something to say, so he hurled a bottle to the floor to get everyone"s attention, jumped up on a chair -- but couldn"t speak, gagged on his own laughter, waved his arms frantically for us to wait, then finally managed to shout: "Riddles!!"
"Riddles! Riddles! Who"s first?"
Dolt sang:
Clouds so dark, snow so white, No moon up in the sky.
Hug me, kiss me, stay the night, Oh, my darling spy!. . .
"Gentlemen! Here"s number one! Who -- who saw the instructions?"
A gale of laughter greeted the question. I shuddered as I watched the shaking bellies, the open mouths -- the cremator grabbed the young man and they laughed until they cried. Again the gla.s.ses came together in a circle above the table and clinked. The cremator, like one possessed, imprinted pa.s.sionate kisses upon the air, and Dolt gargled vodka -- I noticed a little dent in his nose where the rim of the gla.s.s had hit it -- another false nose. Not that I cared. The heavy one took off his pajama top and wiped his hairy armpits with it -- the sweat trickled down his flabby body -- and he unb.u.t.toned his false ears.
"Oh, give me a peek and some secrets to leak," sang Dolt and the young man in harmony. "Where the spies and the counterspies play." The cremator joined in, off key: "Where treason is heard an encouraging word -- and there"s plenty of men to betray!"
"Gentlemen! Riddle number two! What is marriage?" The heavy one shaked like a hairy woman. "Marriage is the smallest espionage unit," he said, but n.o.body was listening.
Red, screaming faces whirled around me. Was Dolt giving the cremator a sign by wiggling his ears? Impossible, they were both too drunk. Suddenly Sempriaq grabbed someone else"s gla.s.s, gulped it down and smashed it on the floor. Then he stood up. Vodka and drool dribbled off his red whiskers.
"Gentlemen!" they yelled. "Pay attention! Look at that bearing, gentlemen! He needs a promotion!"
"Silence!" the cremator bawled, deathly pale. He reeled and clutched the table for support, cleared his throat, bared his squirrel-like teeth and broke into tears, crying: "Alas, my youth! My sacred childhood! The haunts where I was wont to play! Whither have they fled? And wherefore? Where are the snows of yesteryear? Must all things p.i.s.s away -- that is, pa.s.s away?"
"Oh, shut up!" snapped Dolt. He looked the young man over very carefully, took out another full bottle and hissed: "Don"t you listen to him!"
And he put the bottle to the young man"s lips and pulled back the head, forcing him to drink.
The gurgle of the emptying bottle was the only sound in the room. The cremator squinted, cleared his throat and continued: "Am I not my left hand"s keeper? Forty days and nights? My neighbor"s a.s.s, and much cattle? Behold, I stand before you, violated by existence. . ." He stopped.
The young man fell limp into Dolt"s arms. Dolt removed the empty bottle and said in a perfectly sober voice: "That"ll do."
"H"m," the heavy one grunted, bending over the young man and pushing the eyelids back with a thumb. Evidently satisfied, he let the body drop. It fell with a thud and rolled under the table, where it was soon snoring away.
The cremator took a seat, mopped his brow with a handkerchief, adjusted his mustache, and the others too began to stir themselves. . .
I couldn"t believe my eyes. Everything was coming off: noses, eyebrows, wrinkles, birthmarks, they were all placed neatly on saucers. Stranger yet, the eyes cleared, the expressions grew more intelligent, the faces lost that dissipated office look. The tall, emaciated one (though actually, his cheeks were already filling out) pulled up a chair, gave a worldly smile, and said: "Do forgive us this masquerade. An extremely unpleasant business, to be sure -- yet quite unavoidable. Force majeure. Believe me when I tell you that it doesn"t come easily to us. If a man imitates a pig, some of the piggishness is bound to rub off on him."
"Then he can unpig himself afterwards!" the cremator retorted from across the table, looking at his own hands with distaste.
I was speechless.
The tall one (he was shorter now) leaned against my chair. The cuff of an elegant dress shirt showed from under his pajama sleeve.
"The mire and the spire," he mused, "the eternal rhythm of history, the pendulum above the abyss. . ."
He raised his head.
"Now you can be our guest in earnest, though I fear our company might prove a bit too academic for your liking. . . We do tend to get abstruse at times. . ."
"What?" I blurted, not yet over this incredible transformation.
"Well, you know, we"re all professors here. That"s Professor Deluge," he pointed to the heavy one, who was dragging the young man out from under the table and trying, with difficulty, to prop him up against the wall. The trainee was apparently a high-ranking officer, to judge from the uniform that now showed under his pajamas.
"Deluge holds a chair in Scoposcopy."
"Scoposcopy?"
"Also, he"s an accomplished cabalist and countercollaborationist. It was Deluge who doctored half the stars in the Galaxy."
"Dolt! That"s a military secret!" cried the heavy professor in mock dismay. He straightened his clothes, reached for a gla.s.s of water and sprinkled some on his bald head.
"A secret? Now?" grinned Dolt.
"You"re sure he"s unconscious?" asked the cremator, his face in his hands, apparently fighting the effects of the alcohol he"d consumed.
"That"s right, he snores too loud for such a young man," I said, realizing only now that all along they had been out to drink the young officer (disguised as a trainee) under the table.
"Young man? Why, he"s old enough to be your father," snorted the heavy professor as he patted his bald head dry.
"You can believe Deluge, he"s an old hand at this," Dolt rea.s.sured me -- and lifted a corner of the tablecloth to let me see that the scholar in question discontinued below the waist.