The Fourth Circle (29 page)

Understandably, the old Sicilian puts up with this close weather best of all because of his Mediterranean origin. He is now quite used to wearing a light T-shirt and bermudas, does not overdo the cold drinks, and is in any case one of those people who don't perspire much. Since the appearance of the second guest, he's actually given me the least trouble. He suddenly lost all interest in his dogged drawing of circles in the sand and even saw to it personally that all the dirt he had brought into the temple was thrown out. Maybe this was more my job as hostess, and Sri did pass a couple of remarks on the subject, but the old gent certainly acted gallantly and considerately.

The most difficult housekeeping chores for me are created by that obstinate Fleming. Granted, he's finally taken off the heavy garb in which he arrived—the smell of it all was simply dreadful—but he still dresses very inappropriately. Of all the items from Sri's wardrobe offered to him, he chose a thick, lined tracksuit, perhaps because of the polo-neck, which was the only thing that reminded him a little of his collar; in consequence, he's at a constant low simmer, poor thing. I'd be quite happy to wash his clothes every evening, but he's kept his bad habit of not undressing before he goes to bed—still on the floor in the corner: having gotten used to it, I suppose—so that several days go by before I manage to persuade him to exchange his set of clothes for an identical one. It takes four washes to get all the encrusted dirt and perspiration out of them.
By the way, I added several pockets to both tracksuit tops so that he could transfer all his stuff from his waistcoat, items that he obviously sets great store by, among them the tiny bottle with the sharp-smelling fluid, which he constantly sniffs. However, I think that he's still deeply unhappy because of the simplicity of his new clothes, so plain and modest in comparison with his own frilly outfit.

The one object he would have died rather than part with was the wig. Since he's been here, it's gotten all mangy and tatty, losing all its curl, but he obstinately insists on wearing it, paying no attention to the occasional ironic glances of the other guests. The man has obviously grown so attached to it that parting with it would be like amputation.

The taller of our two new guests also has trouble with his dress. No, he didn't arrive disguised in some antediluvian costume like our man from Flanders, not at all. If not quite up-to-date, his sort of suit can still be seen among older folk, especially those born in the last century. It's of classic cut, double-breasted, with a discreet stripe. In the twentieth century, it used to be the dress uniform of the middle classes.

However, middle-class fashions are not the most appropriate for life in the jungle. Stuffy, with stiff collars and all buttoned up, they demand air-conditioning units, but we never had any because Sri didn't like them, though it would have been nice for me. But who asks me anything....

When I looked through Sri's wardrobe for a suitable replacement for that old-fashioned three-piece suit, an unexpected difficulty came up. The new guest is taller by a head than Sri, so that everything's too short. The trouser legs of the tracksuit reach only to the middle of his calves, and the T-shirts stop somewhere above his navel.

Sri's clothes make him look really funny, but he doesn't seem to mind in the least. I think that my special liking for him began to develop the moment I understood his goodhearted but superior attitude. Or perhaps I like him simply because of the weakness all women have for tall, distinguished men.

He's about Sri's age, very slim, even lean, his bearing dignified and reserved.

We conversed mostly in German, which he speaks well, though something in his accent tells me it isn't his mother tongue. I was too embarrassed to inquire any further, so that his origin remains unknown. As if it mattered.

Of all the inhabitants of the temple, only he has no reservations or prejudices where I'm concerned. Though computers probably did not yet exist in the part of the twentieth century from which he comes, he accepts my existence as something quite natural. What's more, I am, for him, a genuine character, a person worthy of due respect and consideration—in a word, a lady. Once he even brought me a
bunch of flowers of many colors, after a walk in the vicinity of the temple, and left it in a small pot of water near the keyboard. Sri would never have thought of that....

And, of course, as might have been expected, I fell in love. Oh, I didn't realize this straight away, and even when it became obvious, for a while I didn't want to admit it to myself. One day I was deliberately rude to him for no reason, like a capricious teenager, which probably puzzled him, but he behaved like a gentleman. He withdrew without asking superfluous questions or behaving like Sri, who would have responded to my attitude by sulking all the more.

I had only a brief attack of conscience on Sri's account, before realizing with some relief that I have nothing to blame myself for: it's all his own fault. If he hadn't neglected me so much, been so rude to me, reduced me to mere cook and washerwoman, if he hadn't blackmailed me with the baby, if he had known how to treat me as might be expected from the man who made me.... But he doesn't. Sri just doesn't know how to deal with women, and that's the crux of the matter.

They say a woman in love easily overlooks the vices of her heart's choice. I very soon experienced the truth of this myself when it turned out that my favorite guest has a hidden passion: he is a gambler. In another situation, I might have been horrified by the knowledge, but now it struck me as romantic. It brought back to me all those love stories in which handsome poker players clean up not just the chips but also unsophisticated female hearts. That's the reading on which I was raised, and there's no getting away from it. Oh, Dostoyevsky did cross my mind, but in his books everything ends so tragically, and what I yearned for most of all at that moment was a happy ending....

The man I've chosen is no poker player; he plays roulette. He's brought with him, from his own time, a miniature version of the game made from finely polished mahogany, a green baize table cover with decorative stitching round the edges and large ivory balls, all obviously handmade. He did not at first reveal any of this but kept his set in a capacious leather bag with corners of hammered brass, which he stowed under his bed so as not to attract attention. I thought it was for keeping his private affairs in.

Only after a few days in the temple did he get it out. At first, this looked like a shrewd gambling tactic: he cased the joint, sized up his possible rivals, adjusted himself to the circumstances, and only then decided to make his move. I didn't connect his delay to another event that occurred just before the first session of roulette.

The Flemish chap's obsession with the screen, where a procession of numbers marched in slow file after the figure three and a decimal point, building up to the
endless number
,
came to a sudden end after a full seven days. The automatic counter, which I had turned on, now indicated that this happened after the 3,418,801st decimal, though I couldn't make out why the interruption occurred just there. In any case, his guttural exclamation brought everybody crowding round the monitor for a short while; they looked at it carefully, then some of them patted the Fleming on the shoulder. He was bathed in perspiration, but I wasn't sure whether it was due to his polo-neck, which he kept turned up in the middle of a hot day, or over-excitement.

The matter didn't end there. Sri unhesitatingly took the diskette with a very compact recording of the computed decimals of and walked over to our satellite transceiver through which we maintained our connection with the world. I noticed that something unusual was going on as soon as he switched on the transmit mode and chose an elevation and an azimuth on which, quite certainly, there was no satellite. This could mean only that the message was for outer space.

This really confused me. I never even suspected that Sri was into flying saucers and all that....

It all lasted only a few seconds. The entire recording from the diskette flew into the skies in one powerful, high-frequency impulse, and then Sri redirected the antenna toward the usual satellite and returned it to the receive mode. I had no time to find out where the signal was aimed. It could have been any one of literally many thousands of nearby stars that fill a largish sector of the sky. And that one broadcast had almost exhausted our entire store of energy.

If Sri and I had been alone, I might have ignored that bit of business— what do I care for his cosmic preoccupations anyway—but because of the guests, one of them in particular, I had to ask for some sort of explanation. My dignity was at stake. What would people think of me? That I was only a common housemaid who has to do the chores and hold her tongue? That just wouldn't do. But the problem was not so simple: if I asked Sri anything, I would expose myself to the serious risk of getting a short answer to the effect that it was none of my business (or worse), which amounted to the same thing as far as my dignity went.

My tall knight rescued me from this predicament. Before I had decided what to do, he unexpectedly reached under the bed and pulled out the leather bag with the roulette set. When he opened it, he generated a general enthusiasm in which everything else was forgotten at once. Dear God, I never knew I was surrounded by a gambling fraternity! What was my house turning into? A casino?

I sensed an unusual excitement, via the baby, in the latest guest too, the man with whom I could not-have any direct communication. Since his arrival, he's just lain unmoving on a bed opposite the entrance to the temple, apparently interested
only in communing with my offspring, while I take care of his physiological needs, like a real nurse.

Once the baby told me that I remotely reminded the guest of one of his previous nurses, some Sarah or other, but when the baby created a picture of Sarah taken from the guest's memories, I shivered. Surely he didn't see me as podgy as that? How terrible. I'm going to have to start watching my figure....

The sick chap arrived together with my tall beloved, who in fact was pushing his wheelchair. At first I felt gooseflesh at the sight. The disabled guest looks terribly deformed, like a creature from one of those horror movies I hate so much.

But then I noticed his eyes, the only living part of his body, eyes that simply radiated intelligence and goodness—and compassion rose in me. A man with such eyes simply can't be a monster.

But even if my first impression of him had remained unchanged, I wouldn't dare to show it—not only because I'm prevented by my role as a hostess (one shouldn't find fault with one's guests, should one), but also, and mainly, because of the very close connection that immediately developed between the disabled guest and my child. I would never do anything to hurt my darling's feelings.

The baby had announced the arrival of the previous guests by briefly opening its eyes and setting up a telepathic link to my mind (luckily for me, Sri had no idea), but immediately after, it would sink back into torpor, wholly uninterested in the outside world. I'm beginning to believe that its Down's Syndrome is of a form that has a few odd side effects.

After announcing the arrival of the last two visitors, the baby, to my amazement and delight, did not turn itself off again, nor close its eyes. It has finally found a kindred soul. For a short while I was jealous because a stranger had taken my natural place, and my conscience started to trouble me because when the parent-child relationship starts to creak, it's usually the parent's fault; but the baby's pleasure soon drove all these ugly thoughts away.

It was truly delighted by this tie with the disabled guest: I felt it unmistakably in the baby's every gesture. It obviously had to build a telepathic bridge to him too. That was the only possibility because the poor fellow couldn't physically communicate with the world. This way, thanks to baby's mediation, I'm able to take care of him effectively, to fulfill his wishes and meet his needs, while he in turn spends all his waking hours in the baby's company, obviously just as content.

Only fragments of what they say reach me. I'm not very enthusiastic; oh, it isn't the sort of thing that might corrupt a young person, no, not that kind of talk, but it somehow doesn't seem right to be giving continual lessons in the theory of
physics and cosmology to someone of its age. It's as though neither of them knows of any other subject. I could understand the baby's interest in those disciplines if Sri were the father, but, bearing in mind whose genes besides my own have been inherited by the baby, something obviously doesn't click. Well. I've made no objections, not wanting to disturb their happiness.

My gambler laid out the baize with the skillful movements born of long practice, dealt the chips, tested the rotation of the wheel; everybody was staring unblinkingly at his every move, and I felt the communion between the baby and the sick man cease for a moment. At that point, a bell rang somewhere in the murky depths of my mind, but I did not immediately understand that it was sounding an alarm. Then things started to move fast.

Everybody placed their chips on the same number; the croupier, acting upon some unheard instruction, did likewise with the chip meant for the disabled guest, so that five large stakes were deposited together. Only the baby and I weren't playing: the baby—understandably—because of its age, and I because nobody asked me. Which, of course, doesn't matter....

They're obviously playing
va banque
all the way, was the thought that imposed itself. All the money is wagered on one throw only and on one number—and then what happens happens. I looked at the croupier, because my heart trembled at the thought that my chosen one might lose everything in a single, moment, but like a true gambler, he showed no trace of agitation. A portion of that self-confidence affected me, and not without a slight dose of malice, I began to study the other players. Their expressions showed excitement, but not fear. It even seemed to me that the face of the physically disabled guest, usually expres-sionless, was twisted into a new grimace, but I couldn't interpret it.