"Devon," I prompted. "There is a repellent called Devon."
Oscar smiled for the first time.
"You are quite right, of course," he said. "But I am not a salesman. I was only doing a favor for a relative."
"That"s different," said Ilina and jumped up. "You should have said so. Ivan, we all need to drink to a pledge of friendship. I"ll call... no, I"ll go get it myself. You two can have a talk, I"ll be right back."
She ran out of the room, banging the door.
"A fun girl," said I.
"Yes, extremely. You live here?"
"No, I"m a traveler, too.... What a strange idea your relative had!"
"What do you have in mind?"
"Who needs Devon in a resort town?"
Oscar shrugged.
"It"s hard for me to judge; I"m no chemist. But you will agree that it"s hard for us to comprehend the actions of our fellow men, much less their fancies.... So Devon turns out to be - What did you call it, a res...?"
"Repellent," I said.
"That would be for mosquitoes?"
"Not so much for as against."
"I can see you are quite well up on it," said Oscar.
"I had occasion to use it."
"Well, well."
What the devil, thought I. What is he getting at? He was no longer staring at the wall He was looking me straight in the eyes and smiling. But if he was going to say something, it was already said.
He got up.
"I don"t think I"ll wait any longer," he p.r.o.nounced. "It looks like I"ll have to drink another pledge. But I didn"t come here to drink, I came here to get well. Please tell Rimeyer that I will call him again tonight. You won"t forget?"
"No," I said, "I won"t forget. If I tell him that Oscar was in to see him, he will know whom I am talking about?"
"Yes, of course. It"s my real name."
He bowed, and walked out at a deliberate pace, ramrod-straight and somehow unnatural-looking. I dipped my hand in the ashtray, found a b.u.t.t without lipstick, and inhaled several times. I didn"t like the taste and put out the stub. I didn"t like Oscar, either. Nor Ilina. And especially Rimeyer -- I didn"t like him at all. I pawed through the bottles, but they were all empty.
Chapter FOUR.
In the end I didn"t wait long enough to see Rimeyer. Ilina never came back. Finally I got tired of sitting in the smoky, stale atmosphere of the room and went down to the lobby. I intended to have dinner and stopped to look around for a restaurant. A porter immediately materialized at my side.
"At your service," he murmured discreetly. "An auto? Bar?
Restaurant? Salon?"
"What kind of salon?" I asked, my curiosity piqued.
"A hair-styling salon." He looked at my hairdo with delicate concern. "Master Gaoway is receiving today. I recommend him most strenuously."
I recollected that Ilina had called me a disheveled perch and said, "Well, all right."
"Please follow me," said the porter.
Crossing the lobby, he opened a wide low door and said into the s.p.a.cious interior, "Excuse me, Master, you have a client."
"Come in," replied a quiet voice.
I entered. The salon was light and airy and smelled pleasantly. Everything in it shone -- the chrome, the mirrors, the antique parquet floor. Shiny half-domes hung from the ceiling on glistening rods. In the center stood a huge white barber chair. The Master was advancing to meet me. He had penetrating immobile eyes, a hooked nose, and a gray Van d.y.k.e.
More than anything else he reminded me of a mature, experienced surgeon. I greeted him with some timidity, He nodded and, surveying me from head to foot, began to circle around me. I began to feel uncomfortable.
"I would like you to bring me up to the current fashion,"
said I, trying not to let him out of my field of view.
But he restrained me gently by my sleeve and. stood breathing softly behind my back for a few seconds. "No doubt!
No doubt at all", he murmured, then touched me lightly on my shoulder. "Please," he said sternly, "take a few steps forward -- five or six -- then turn abruptly to face me."
I obeyed. He regarded me pensively, pulling on his beard.
I thought he was hesitating.
"On the other hand," he said, "sit down."
"Where?" I said.
"In the chair, in the chair."
I lowered myself into its softness and watched him approach me slowly. His intelligent face was suddenly suffused with a look of profound chagrin.
"But how is such a thing possible?" he said. "It"s absolutely awful."
I couldn"t find anything to say.
"Gross disharmony," he muttered. "Repulsive... repulsive."
"Is it really that bad?" I asked.
"I don"t understand why you came to me," he said, "since you obviously don"t place any value at all on your appearance."
"I am beginning to, from this day on," I said.
He waved his hand.
"Never mind... I will work on you, but..." He shook his head, turned impulsively, and went to a high table covered with shiny devices. The back of the chair depressed smoothly, and I found myself in a half-reclining position. A big hemisphere descended toward me from above, radiating warmth, while hundreds of tiny needles seemed to sink into the nape of my neck, eliciting a strange combination of simultaneous pain and pleasure.
"Is it gone yet?" he asked.
The sensation abated.
"It"s gone," I said.
"Your skin is good," growled the Master with a certain satisfaction.
He returned with an a.s.sortment of the most unlikely instruments and proceeded to palpate my cheeks.
"And still Mirosa married him," he said suddenly. "I expected anything and everything, except that. After all that Levant had done for her. Do you remember that moment when they were both weeping over the dying Pina? You could have bet anything that they would be together forever. And now, imagine, she is being wed to that literary fellow."
I have a rule: to pick up and sustain any conversation that comes along. When you don"t know what it"s all about, this can even be interesting.
"Not for long," I said with a.s.surance. "Literary types are very inconstant, I can a.s.sure you, being one myself."
For a moment his hands paused on my temples.
"That didn"t enter my head," he admitted. "Still, it"s wedlock, even though only a civil one.... I must remember to call my wife. She was very upset."
"I can sympathize with her," I said. "But it did always seem to me that Levant was in love with that... Pina."
"In love?" exclaimed the Master, coming around from my other side. "Of course he loved her! Madly! As only a lonely, rejected-by-all man can love."
"And so it was quite natural that after the death of Pina, he sought consolation with her best friend."
"Her bosom friend, yes," said the Master approvingly, while tickling me behind the ear. "Mirosa adored Pina! It"s a very accurate term -- bosom friend! One senses a literary man in you at once! And Pina, too, adored Mirosa."
"But, you notice," I picked up, "that. right from the beginning Pina suspected that Mirosa was infatuated with Levant."
"Well, of course! They are extremely sensitive about such things. This was clear to everyone -- my wife noticed it at once. I recollect that she would nudge me with her elbow each time Pina alighted on Mirosa"s tousled head, and so coyly and expectantly looked at Levant."
This time I kept my peace.
"In general, I am profoundly convinced," he continued, "that birds feel no less sensitively than people."
Aha, thought I, and said, "I don"t know about birds in general, but Pina was a lot more sensitive than let"s say even you or I."
Something b.u.mmed briefly over my head, and there was a soft clink of metal.
"You speak like my wife, word for word," observed the Master, "so you most probably must like Dan. I was overcome when he was able to construct a bunkin for that j.a.panese n.o.blewoman... can"t think of her name. After all, not one person believed Dan. The j.a.panese king, himself..."
"I beg your pardon," I said. "A bunkin?"
"Yes, of course, you are not a specialist.... You remember that moment when the j.a.panese n.o.blewoman comes out of prison.
Her hair, in a high roller of blond hair, is ornamented with precious combs..."
"Aah," I guessed. "It"s a coiffure."
"Yes, it even became fashionable for a time last year.
Although a true bunkin could be made by a very few... even as a real chignon, by the way. And, of course, no one could believe that Dan, with his burned hands and half-blind .. Do you remember how he was blinded?"
"It was overpowering," I said.
"Oh yes, Dan was a true Master. To make a bunkin without electro-preparation, without biodevelopment... You know, I just had a thought," he continued, and there was a note of excitement in his voice. "It just struck me that Mirosa, after she parts with that literary guy, should marry Dan and not Levant. She will be wheeling him out on the veranda in his chair, and they will be listening to the singing nightingales in the moonlight -- the two of them together."
"And crying quietly out of sheer happiness," I said.
"Yes," the voice of the Master broke, "that would be only right. Otherwise I just don"t know, I just don"t understand, what all our struggles are for. No... we must insist. I"ll go to the union this very day...."
I kept quiet, again. The Master was breathing uneasily by my ear.
"Let them go and shave at the automates," he said suddenly in a vengeful tone, "let them look like plucked geese. We let them have a taste once before of what it"s like; now we"ll see how they appreciate it."
"I am afraid it won"t be simple," I said cautiously, not -- having the vaguest idea of what this was about.
"We Masters are used to the complicated. It"s not all that simple -- when a fat and sweaty stuffed shirt comes to you, and you have to make a human being out of him, or at the very best, something which under normal circ.u.mstances does not differ too much from a human being... is that simple? Remember what Dan said: "Woman gives birth to a human being once in nine months, but we Masters have to do it every day." Aren"t those magnificent words?"
"Dan was talking about barbers?" I said, just in case.
"Dan was talking about Masters. "The beauty of the world rests on our shoulders," he would say. And again, do you remember: "In order to make a man out of an ape, Darwin had to be an excellent Master.""
I decided to capitulate and confess.
"This I don"t remember."
"How long have you been watching "Rose of the Salon"?"
"Well, I have arrived just recently."
"Aah, then you have missed a lot. My wife and I have been watching the program for seven years, every Tuesday. We missed only one show; I had an attack and lost consciousness. But in the whole town there is only one man who hasn"t missed even one show -- Master Mille at the Central Salon."
He moved off a few paces, turned various colored lights on and off, and resumed his work.