Memoirs Found In a Bathtub (7 page)

“Go ahead,” he said.

“Do you know the man in charge of the Department of Instructions?” I asked. His eyebrows lifted slightly.

“Major Erms? Yes, I know him.”

“And the number of his office?”

The priest became confused; he fingered the buttons of his uniform as if it were a cassock.

“Did anything—” he began, but I interrupted.

“Now Father, let’s have the number.”

“Nine thousand one hundred twenty-nine … but I don’t understand why I—”

“Nine thousand one hundred twenty-nine,” I repeated slowly, certain that this was one number I would not forget.

The priest was clearly taken aback.

“Excuse me, I… Brother Persuasion gave me to understand that—”

“Brother Persuasion? The monk who brought you over to me? What’s your opinion of him, Father?”

“I really don’t know what you mean,” the priest said, still standing behind his desk. “Brother Persuasion heads our Handicrafts Unit.”

“Handicrafts?”

“Ecclesiastical attire, vestments, pontificals, various liturgical paraphernalia, aspergers, thuribles, censers, etc.”

“That’s all?”

“Well, on special order … for Department S.D. I believe we made a number of bugged percolators, and I know our Gerontophile Section produces earmuffs and miscellaneous items for our suffering senior citizens, for example polygraph mittens.”

“Polygraph mittens?”

“The galvanic skin response, you know—records their hidden moments of excitement… Then there are microphone pillows for those who talk in their sleep, and so on. But, you couldn’t tell me…? Did Brother Persuasion … say anything about me?”

“He spoke of various things…” I let it hang there.

“The people in the Department?”

“You might say…”

“One moment, please.”

The priest hurried to the safe and in three quick motions opened the combination lock. The steel door swung aside with a clang, revealing stacks of sealed folders in all colors. These he feverishly searched—then pounced on one. His face was covered with tiny beads of sweat.

“Make yourself at home, I’ll be right back.”

“Oh no you don’t!” I yelled, jumping up. “Hand over that folder!”

I did this on the spur of the moment.

He clutched the folder to his chest. I looked him in the eye and grabbed an edge of it. He wouldn’t let go.

“Nineteen,” I said slowly. A drop of sweat ran down his cheek like a tear. The folder eased itself into my hands. I opened it—it was empty.

“My duty… I acted under orders … from high up,” the priest muttered.

“Sixteen,” I said.

“No! Anything but that!!”

“Be seated, Father. You will not leave this room until you are given the proper authorization by phone. Is that understood?”

“Yes! Yes!”

“Nor will you initiate any calls yourself, Father!”

“I won’t! I swear!”

“Good.”

I left and closed the door, went back through the chapel and down the spiral staircase. This time there was no guard at the entrance. In the elevator I noticed that the yellow folder taken from the priest was still in my hand.

Room 9129 was on the ninth level, sure enough. I entered without knocking.

One of the secretaries was knitting, the other worked on a ham sandwich and a cup of coffee. I looked for a door to the chief’s office. There wasn’t any, which was odd.

“Major Erms, Special Mission,” I announced. The secretaries acted as if they hadn’t heard me. The one who was knitting counted stitches under her breath. A code? I examined the small room more carefully: rows of bookshelves on every wall, bookshelves and file cabinets, a microphone painted like a flower and hanging above one shelf at an unusual height. Without another word, I placed my yellow folder on the desk in front of the girl with the ham sandwich. She glanced at it, chewing. Pale pink gums showed above her teeth. With the little finger of her left hand she pushed back the wax paper that held her sandwich. A secret sign? I walked along the shelves and noticed a gap between two cabinets … something white … a door. There was a door behind one of the bookshelves. I gripped the shelf and pulled hard. The files above my head swayed dangerously.

“Sixteen …
nineteen
,” the knitting secretary counted in a whisper that became suddenly shrill. The shelf caught on something halfway—but I had access to the door and managed to turn the knob and squeeze through.

“So you decided to show up at last!” a young, vibrant voice greeted me. A blond officer got up from behind his mahogany desk. The room was stifling hot and he was in his shirtsleeves. “You’re a little dirty from the wall…”

He took out a small brush and applied it to the sleeve of my jacket as he talked.

“I expected you yesterday. You will be able to spend the night, won’t you? My work kept me in the office all day, but at least this way I couldn’t miss you. There, now you look fine. You know, I’ve become so familiar with your case that here I am treating you like an old friend and we haven’t even been introduced! I’m Erms.”

“And you have my instructions,” I said.

“Why else would I be here? Coffee?”

“Thanks.”

He poured me a cup, threw the brush in a drawer and took a seat. The smile never left his face. He had the winsome air of a towheaded boy, though when I looked closer I saw wrinkles around those bright blue eyes—laugh lines, no doubt. His teeth were like a puppy’s, clean and sharp.

“Okay, down to business. Your instructions. Now let’s see, where did I put them…”

“Just don’t tell me you have to leave the room to get them,” I said with a strained smile. This sent him into such gales of laughter that the tears streamed from his eyes. He had to loosen his tie.

“Terrific! What a clown! But I really don’t have to go anywhere to get them, they’re right here.” And he went over to a small safe, took out a thick bundle of papers and tossed it on the desk. “No use kidding you, the Old Boy gave you a tough nut to crack. It won’t be any picnic. And it’s your first, isn’t it?”

“That’s right,” I admitted, then added, since he seemed such a decent guy: “You know, if I stayed around here long enough, I could become a pro at this game without actually going on a single mission. I mean, it’s in the air … you take it in, you absorb the … the…” I couldn’t find the right word.

“The local color!” he said and again broke into loud laughter. I laughed too, feeling light and happy as I stirred my coffee. Yet there was some unpleasant association connected with this stirring, something recent. I couldn’t remember…

“May I see my instructions?” I asked.

“They’re all yours.”

He pushed the bundle to me across the desk.

“Just a second,” he said in a low voice, gentle but insistent, just as I began to read. “Perhaps we should first take care of certain—formalities. An ugly, bureaucratic term, I know, but … you’ll cooperate, won’t you?”

“Formalities?” I had a sinking feeling.

“Isn’t there a call you ought to make?…” he suggested discreetly.

“Of course, I completely forgot! That priest in the Theological Department. May I use your phone?”

“Don’t bother, I already took care of that for you.”

“You did? But how—”

“Forget it, it’s nothing. But wasn’t there something else—?”

“I can’t think of anything… Unless you want me to make a report.”

“If you like, but I don’t insist.”

“Major Erms, was this whole thing—a test?”

“A test?”

“Oh, some sort of entrance exam. I mean, the abilities of a novice might be questioned, so they might want to, you know, set up certain situations…”

“Really!” Apparently I had hurt his feelings; he sounded injured, grieved. “Tests? Entrance exams? Setting up situations? How can you think of such a thing? No, what I had in mind was … you took something there, didn’t you? Something for me? Tsk-tsk, how absentminded!” My confusion amused him. “Come now, it was in the chapel … you have it with you, it’s right in your pocket, isn’t it?”

“Oh,
that!”

I pulled out the painted membrane finger and handed it over.

“Fine,” he said. “This will be added to the evidence against him.”

“What’s in it?” I asked.

He raised the pink sausage to the light. It was empty, like a balloon.

“Proof of ostentation—a damaging entry in his dossier.”

“The old man?”

“Of course.”

“But he’s dead.”

“So? It was clearly a hostile act. You were a witness! Right there, on the flag—”

“But he’s dead!”

He chuckled.

“My dear boy, wouldn’t we be in fine shape if death excused everything! But enough of that. I want to thank you for your cooperation. Now let’s get back to business. Before you start out we have to go through some things.”

“What exactly?”

“Oh, nothing unpleasant, I assure you. Routine induction. Propaedeutics. Are you familiar, for example, with the basic codes you’ll have to use?”

“No, I guess not.”

“You see? Now, there are calling codes, stalling codes, departmental codes, special codes, and—you’ll like this,” he grinned, “they’re changed every day. A necessary precaution, but what a bother! Each section, of course, has its own system, so the same word or name will have different meanings on different levels.”

“Even names?”

“Sure. If you could only see the look on your face!” He laughed. “Take the official name of our Commander in Chief, for example. Haven’t you noticed that all the names of his staff have a certain ring to them?”

“True…”

“There, you see?”

He grew serious.

“Grade, rank, even greetings, everything is coded.”

“Greetings?”

“Certainly. Suppose you’re talking with someone over the phone, someone on the outside, and you say, for instance, ‘Good evening.’ From that alone one can deduce that our work goes on at night, that there are shifts in other words, which is important information—for someone,” he stressed the last word. “Every conversation…”

“Wait! You mean, even now…”

He cleared his throat, embarrassed.

“Unavoidable.”

“Then how am I to understand…?”

He looked straight at me.

“Why do you say that?” he said, lowering his voice. “Of course you understand, you must.
Completely forgot, Can’t think of anything, Some sort of entrance exam
—how could you
not
understand? But I can see that you do! Now why that look of despair? Each one codes according to his ability and mission. Don’t worry, you’ll catch on soon enough.”

“If you say so.”

“Have a little confidence in yourself! Business is business, I know, the impersonal routine, the complications, frustrations … yet your mission is so fantastically difficult that it’s silly to let a few little mistakes discourage you, even if they
are
irreparable. I’ll direct you to the Department of Codes, they’ll tell you everything you need to know—nothing rigorous, you understand, just enough to handle a social conversation. And the instructions will be waiting for you here.”

“I didn’t even get a chance to look at them.”

“No one’s stopping you.”

I opened the bundle and glanced at the top of the first page:

“…You won’t be able to find the right room—none of them will have the number designated on your pass. First you will wind up at the Department of Verification, then the Department of Misinformation, then some clerk from the Pressure Section will advise you to try level eight, but on level eight they will ignore you…”

I skipped a few pages and read:

“…you will have suspected for some time now that the Cosmic Command, obviously no longer able to supervise every assignment on an individual basis when there are literally trillions of matters in its charge, has switched over to a random system. The assumption will be that every document, circulating endlessly from desk to desk, must eventually hit upon the right one.”

“What—what is this?” I stammered, looking up at Major Erms, paralyzed by a sudden stab of fear.

“Code,” he answered absently, searching for something in his desk. “Instructions have to be in code.”

“But—but this sounds like…” I couldn’t finish.

“Code should sound like anything but code.”

Reaching across the desk, he lifted the instructions from my hands.

“I couldn’t … take them with me?”

“Whatever for?”

His voice registered genuine surprise.

“They could help me decipher them in that—that Department of Codes,” I said.

He laughed.

“What an amateur! But you’ll learn. After a while these things become second nature. Look, how could you allow your instructions to end up in anyone else’s hands? Remember, only three people know about your Mission: the Commander in Chief, the Chief Commander, and myself.”

I watched meekly as he put the bundle back inside the safe and spun the combination dials a few times.

“But at least tell me what my Mission is about,” I urged. “Give me a rough idea.”

“A rough idea?” He bit his lip; an unruly shock of hair fell into his left eye. He leaned against the desk with his fingertips, whistled softly like a schoolboy, then heaved a sigh and smiled. There was a dimple in his left cheek.

“What on earth am I going to do with you?” He shrugged, went back to the safe, took out the same bundle and asked:

“You have a folder, I believe? We’ll stuff the lot in there.”

The empty yellow folder I brought with me but had left outside now turned up on his desk, and he filled it with my instructions.

“There you are,” he said, handing it over with a broad grin. “Your instructions—and in a yellow folder, yet!”

“The color signifies something?”

My innocence amused him.

“Does it signify something, he asks. That’s great! But no more jokes, let’s be off. I’ll show you the way…”

I hurried after him, holding the heavy folder tightly under my arm. We went through an office as large and long as a classroom. On the walls above the heads of the clerical staff were blueprints of aqueducts and dams, and above those, almost at the ceiling, huge maps of the Red Planet—I recognized the canals at once. Major Erms opened a door for me and we passed between rows of desks. No one looked up from his work. Another room: an enormous chart representing the body of a rat, and rat skeletons in glass cages, looking like empty walnuts tied together with wire. The walls curved. Around the bend several people peered into microscopes, each surrounded by slides, tweezers, jars of glue. Farther on, people were ironing out and meticulously assembling tiny bits of dirty paper. There was a sharp smell of chlorine in the air.