Return From The Stars Part 9

"I understand. My height and so forth," I said.

"Yes. How old are you now, biologically?"

"Forty."

"I could have. . ." he murmured.

I understood what he was thinking.

"Do not regret it," I said firmly. "You should not regret it. You should not regret a thing, do you understand?"

For the first time he lifted his gaze to my face.

"Why?"

"Because there is nothing for me to do here," I said. "No one needs me. And I. . . no one."

He didn't seem to hear me.

"What is your name?"

"Bregg. Hal Bregg."

"Bregg," he repeated. "Bregg. . . No, I don't remember. Were you there?"

"Yes. At Apprenous, when your father came with the corrections Geonides made in the final month before takeoff. . . It turned out that the coefficients of refraction for the dark dusts had been too low. . . Does that mean anything to you?" I broke off uncertainly.

"It does. Of course," he replied with special emphasis. "My father. Of course. At Apprenous? But what were you doing there? Where were you?"

"In the gravitation chamber, at Janssen's. You were there then, Arder brought you in, you stood high up, on the platform, and watched while they gave me forty g's. When I climbed out, my nose was bleeding. You gave me your handkerchief."

"Ah! That was you?"

"Yes."

"But that person in the chamber had dark hair, I thought."

"Yes. My hair isn't light. It's gray. It's just that you can't see well now."

There was a silence, longer than before.

"You are a professor, I suppose?" I said, to say something.

"I was. Now. . . nothing. For twenty-three years. Nothing." And once more, very quietly, he repeated, "Nothing."

"I bought some books today, and among them was Roemer's topology. Is that you or your father?"

"I. You are a mathematician?"

He stared at me, as if with renewed interest.

"No," I said, "but I had a great deal of time. . . there. Each of us did what he wanted. I found mathematics helpful."

"How did you understand it?"

"We had an enormous number of microfilms: fiction, novels, whatever you like. Do you know that we had three hundred thousand t.i.tles? Your father helped Arder compile the mathematical part."

"I know about that."

"At first, we treated it as. . . a diversion. To kill time. But then, after a few months, when we had completely lost contact with Earth and were hanging there -- seemingly motionless in relation to the stars -- then, you see, to read that some Peter nervously puffed his cigarette and was worried about whether or not Lucy would come, and that she walked in and twisted her gloves, well, first you began to laugh at this like an idiot, and then you simply saw red. In other words, no one would touch it."

"And mathematics?"

"No. Not right away. At first I took up languages, and I stuck with that until the end, even though I knew it might be futile, for when I returned, some might have become archaic dialects. But Gimma -- and Thurber, especially -- urged me to learn physics. Said it might be useful. I tackled it, along with Arder and Olaf Staave, but we three were not scientists. . ."

"You did have a degree."

"Yes, a master's degree in information theory and cosmodromia, and a diploma in nuclear engineering, but all that was professional, not theoretical. You know how engineers know mathematics. So, then, physics. But I wanted something more -- of my own. And, finally, pure mathematics. I had no mathematical ability. None. I had nothing but persistence."

"Yes," he said quietly. "One would have to have that to fly. . ."

"Particularly to become a member of the expedition," I corrected him. "And do you know why mathematics had this effect? I only came to understand this there. Because mathematics stands above everything. The works of Abel and Kronecker are as good today as they were four hundred years ago, and it will always be so. New roads arise, but the old ones lead on. They do not become overgrown. There. . . there you have eternity. Only mathematics does not fear it. Up there, I understood how final it is. And strong. There was nothing like it. And the fact that I had to struggle was also good. I slaved away at it, and when I couldn't sleep I would go over, in my mind, the material I had studied that day."

"Interesting," he said. But there was no interest in his voice. I did not even know whether he was listening to me. Far back in the park flew columns of fire, red and green blazes, accompanied by roars of delight. Here, where we sat, beneath the trees, it was dark. I fell silent. But the silence was unbearable.

"For me it had the value of self-preservation," I said. "The theory of plurality. . . what Mirea and Averin did with the legacy of Cantor, you know. Operations using infinite, transfinite quant.i.ties, the continua of discrete increments, strong. . . it was wonderful. The time I spent on this, I remember it as if it were yesterday."

"It isn't so useless as you think," he muttered. He was listening, after all. "You haven't heard of Igalli's studies, I suppose?"

"No, what are they?"

"The theory of the discontinuous antipole."

"I don't know anything about an antipole. What is it?"

"Retronihilation. From this came parastatics."

"I never even heard of these terms."

"Of course, for it originated sixty years ago. But that was only the beginning of gravitology."

"I can see that I will have to do some homework," I said. "Gravitology -- that's the theory of gravitation?"

"Much more. It can only be explained using mathematics. Have you studied Appiano and Froom?"

"Yes."

"Well, then, you should have no difficulty. These are metagen expansions in an n-dimensional, configurational, degenerative series."

"What are you saying? Didn't Skriabin prove that there are no metagens other than the variational?"

"Yes. A very elegant proof. But this, you see, is transcontinuous."

"Impossible! That would. . . but it must have opened up a whole new world!"

"Yes," he said dryly.

"I remember one paper by Mianikowski. . ." I began.

"Oh, that is not related. At the most, a similar direction."

"Would it take me long to catch up with everything that has been done in all this time?" I asked.

He was silent for a moment.

"What use is it to you?"

I did not know what to say.

"You are not going to fly any more?"

"No," I said. "I'm too old. I couldn't take the sort of accelerations that. . . and anyway. . . I would not fly now."

After these words we were silent for good. The unexpected elation with which I had talked about mathematics had suddenly evaporated, and I sat beside him, feeling the weight of my own body, its unnecessary size. Outside of mathematics we had nothing to say to each other, and we both knew it. Then it occurred to me that the emotion with which I had spoken of the blessed role of mathematics on the voyage was a deception. I had been deceiving myself with the modesty, the serious heroism of the pilot who occupies himself, in the gaps of the nebulae, with theoretical studies of infinity. Hypocrisy. For what had it been, really? If a castaway, adrift for months at sea, has a thousand times counted the number of wood fibers that make up his raft, in order to keep sane, should he boast about it when he reaches land? That he had the tenacity to survive? And what of it? Who cared? Why should it matter to anyone how I had filled my poor brain those ten years, and why was that more important than how I had filled my stomach? I must stop playing the quiet hero, I thought. I will be able to allow myself that when I look the way he does. I must concentrate on the future.

"Help me get up," he said in a whisper.

I led him to a gleeder that stood in the street. We went very slowly. Where there were lights, among the hedges, people followed us with their eyes. Before he got into the gleeder he turned to say good-bye to me. Neither he nor I could find anything to say. He made an unintelligible motion with his hand, from which one of the canes jutted like a sword, shook his head, and got inside; the dark vehicle floated off noiselessly. I stood with my arms hanging until the black gleeder had disappeared in a stream of others. I stuck my hands in my pockets and moved on, unable to answer the question of which of us had chosen better.

That nothing remained of the city that I had left behind me, not one stone upon another, was a good thing. As if I had been living, then, on a different Earth, among different men; that had begun and ended once and for all, and this was new. No relics, no ruins to cast doubt on my biological age; I could forget about its Earthly reckoning, so contrary to nature -- until that incredible coincidence brought me together with a person whom I had last seen as a small child; the whole time, sitting next to him, looking at his hands, dry as a mummy's, and at his face, I had felt guilt and knew he was aware of this. What an improbable accident, I repeated over and over again, inanely, until I realized that he could have been drawn to this place by the same thing that had drawn me: growing there, after all, was that chestnut tree, older than either of us. I had no idea yet how far they had gone in increasing the span of human life, but I could see that Roemer's age was something exceptional: he must have been the last or one of the last of his generation. If I had not left Earth, I would no longer be alive, I thought, and for the first time I saw an unexpected reverse side to our expedition: the subterfuge, the cruel trick that I had played on others. I walked on blindly. Around me was the noise of a crowd, a stream of pedestrians bore me along and pushed me -- then I stopped, suddenly awake.

There was an indescribable racket; in the midst of mingled shouts and music, volleys of fireworks burst into the sky, hanging high above in colorful bouquets; burning spheres rained on the tops of the nearby trees; at regular intervals came the piercing sound of many voices, a howl of terror mixed with laughter, exactly as if somewhere close by there was a roller coaster, but I looked in vain for the trestles. In the middle of the park stood a large building with towers and battlements, like a fortified castle transported from the Middle Ages; the cold flames of neon lights, licking its roof, arranged themselves every few seconds into the words MERLIN'S PALACE. The crowd that had led me here made for the side, toward the crimson wall of a pavilion, unusual in that it resembled a human face, with smoldering eyes for windows, and a huge, distorted mouth, full of teeth, opened to swallow the next helping of jostling people, to the accompaniment of general merriment; each time, the mouth consumed the same number -- six. At first my intention was to get out of the crowd and leave; but that would not have been easy, and besides, I had nowhere to go, and the thought came to me that out of all the possible ways of spending the rest of the evening, this one, unknown, might not be the worst. I appeared to be the only one by myself -- there were mostly couples, boys and girls, men and women, lined up two by two -- and when my turn came, heralded by the white flash of the huge teeth and the gaping crimson darkness of the mysterious throat, I found myself in a predicament, because I did not know whether I could join an already completed six. At the last moment the decision was made for me by a woman who stood with a young dark-haired man dressed more extravagantly than all the others: she grabbed me by the hand and without ceremony pulled me after her.

It grew almost completely dark; I felt the warm, strong hand of the unknown woman, the floor moved, the light returned, and we found ourselves in a s.p.a.cious grotto. The last dozen or so steps led uphill, over loose gravel, between piles of crushed stone. The unknown woman let go of my hand -- and, one by one, we stooped through the narrow exit from the cave.

Although I had been prepared for a surprise, my jaw dropped. We were standing on the broad, sandy bank of a big river, under the burning rays of a tropical sun. The far bank of the river was overgrown with jungle. In the still backwaters were moored boats, or, rather, dugouts; against the background of the brownish-green river that flowed lazily behind them, immensely tall blacks stood frozen in hieratic poses, naked, gleaming with oil, covered with chalk-white tattoos; each leaned with his spatulate oar against the side of the boat.

One of the boats was just leaving, full; its black crew, with blows from the paddles and terrifying yells, was dispersing crocodiles that lay in the mud, half immersed, like logs; these turned over and weakly snapped their tooth-lined jaws as they slid into deeper water. The seven of us descended along the steep bank; the first four took places in the next boat. With visible effort the blacks set the oars against the sh.o.r.e and pushed the unsteady boat away, so that it turned around; I remained in the rear, in front of me there was now only the couple to whom I owed my presence and the journey that was about to take place, for now appeared the next boat in line, about ten meters long; the black oarsmen called to us and, fighting the current, docked skillfully. We jumped into the rotting interior of the boat, kicking up a dust that smelled of charred wood. The young man in the fanciful outfit -- a tiger skin, actually a costume, for the upper half of the predator's skull, slung over his shoulder, could serve as a hood -- helped his companion to a seat. I took a seat opposite them. We had already been moving a good while, and although a few minutes earlier I had been in the park, in the middle of the night, now I was not so sure of that. The tall black standing at the sharp prow of the boat gave a wild cry every few seconds, two rows of backs bent, gleaming, oars. .h.i.t the water with brief, violent strokes, the boat sc.r.a.ped over the sand, drifted, then suddenly entered the main current of the river.

There was the heavy, heated smell of the water, of the mud, of the rotting vegetation that floated past us around the sides of the boat, which were hardly a hand's breadth above the surface of the water. The banks receded; we pa.s.sed bush, characteristically gray-green, as though burned; from sun-baked sandy shoals crocodiles slid from time to time like animated logs, with a splash; one of them remained for quite a while at our stern, its elongated head on the surface; slowly water began to encroach upon the bulging eyes, and then there was only its snout, dark as a river stone, gliding swiftly, cleaving the brown water. Between the rhythmically swaying backs of the black rowers one could see humps in the river, where it flowed over submerged obstacles -- the man at the bow would then let out a harsh cry, the oars on one side began to strike the water more vigorously, and the boat turned. It is difficult to say when the hollow grunts made by the blacks as they leaned on their oars began to merge in an inexpressibly gloomy, endlessly repeating song, a kind of angry cry that changed to grievance, whose chorus was the lapping of the water broken by the oars. Thus we proceeded, as if actually transported into the heart of Africa, on an enormous river in the middle of a gray-green wild. The solid wall of jungle receded finally and disappeared in a s.h.i.+mmering ma.s.s of sweltering air; the black helmsman quickened the tempo; on the distant savannah antelopes grazed; and at one point a herd of giraffes pa.s.sed in a cloud of dust, at a languorous trot; then I felt the gaze of the woman seated opposite me, and I looked at her.

Her loveliness took me by surprise. I had noticed earlier that she was attractive, but that had been just in pa.s.sing and had not arrested my attention. Now I was too close to her to make the same mistake: she was not attractive, she was beautiful. She had dark hair with a coppery sheen, a white, indescribably tranquil face, and dark, motionless lips. She captivated me. Not as a woman -- rather, in the same way as this vast expanse mute beneath the sun. Her beauty had that perfection that had always frightened me a little. Possibly because I had, on Earth, experienced too little and thought too much about it; in any case, here before me was one of those women who seem cast of a different clay from that of ordinary mortals, although this magnificent life is produced only by a certain configuration of features and is entirely on the surface -- but who, looking, thinks of that? She smiled, with only her eyes; her lips preserved an expression of scornful indifference. Not to me -- to her own thoughts, perhaps. Her companion sat on a recessed ledge in the dugout; he let his left hand hang limply over the side, so that his fingers trailed in the water, but he did not look in that direction, or at the panorama of wild Africa unfolding all around; he simply sat, as in a dentist's waiting room, completely bored.

Ahead of us gray rocks came into view, strewn across the entire river. The helmsman began to shout, as if cursing, with a penetrating, powerful voice; the blacks struck furiously with their oars, and when the rocks turned out to be diving hippopotamuses, the boat picked up speed; the herd of thick-skinned animals was left behind, and through the rhythmic splash of the oars, through the hoa.r.s.e, heavy song of the rowers, one could hear a hollow roar that came from an unknown source. Far off, where the river disappeared between increasingly steeper banks, I saw two rainbows, immense, flickering, bending toward each other.

"Age! Annai! Annai! Agee!" bellowed the helmsman frantically. The blacks redoubled their strokes, the boat flew as if it had acquired wings; the woman reached out her hand, without looking, for the hand of her companion.

The helmsman howled. The dugout moved at an amazing speed. The bow lifted, we descended from the crest of a huge, seemingly motionless wave, and between the rows of black backs that labored at a furious pace I saw a great bend in the river: the suddenly darkened waters pounded at a gate of rock. The current split in two; we kept to the right, where the water rose in whiter and whiter crests of foam, while the left arm of the river disappeared as if chopped off, and only a monstrous thunder and columns of whirling mist indicated that those rocks concealed a waterfall. We avoided it and reached the other arm of the river, but here it was not peaceful, either. The dugout now bucked like a horse among black boulders, each of which held in check a high wall of roaring water; the banks drew near, the blacks on the right side of the boat stopped rowing and held the blunted handles of their oars to their chests; then, with a shock whose force could be judged by the hollow thud it sent through them, the boat rebounded from the rock and gained the center of the current. The bow flew upward, the helmsman standing on it kept his balance by some miracle; I felt the cold from the spray that streamed off the edges of the rocks as the dugout, quivering like a spring, sped downward. Our shooting of the rapids was extraordinary. On either side flashed black rocks with flowing manes of water; time and time again the dugout, with an echoing jolt, was kept off the rocks by the oars, bounced off, and went into the throat of the fastest water, an arrow released across white foam. I looked up and saw, high among the branching crowns of sycamores, tiny monkeys scampering. I had to grab the sides of the boat, so powerful was the next jolt, a heave, and in the thunder of water that rushed in on us from either side, so that in an instant we were soaked to the skin, we went down at an even steeper angle -- we were falling, the boulders of the bank flew past like statues of monstrous birds in a welter of sharp wings, thunder, thunder. Against the sky, the taut silhouettes of the oarsmen, like guardians at a cataclysm -- we were headed straight for a pillar of stone dividing the narrows in half, and in front of it swirled a black vortex of water. We flew toward the barrier, I heard a woman's scream.

The blacks struggled with the frenzy of desperation, and the helmsman lifted his arms; I saw his lips open wide in a shout, but I heard no voice. He danced on the bow, the dugout went sideways, a rebounding wave held us, for a second we stood in place, then, as if the work of the oars counted for nothing, the boat turned right around and went backward, faster and faster.

In an instant the two rows of blacks, throwing down their oars, disappeared; without hesitation they jumped overboard on both sides of the boat. The last to make the deadly leap was the helmsman.

The woman cried out a second time; her companion held fast with his feet against the opposite side of the boat and she clung to him; I watched, entranced, the spectacle of tumbling water, roaring rainbows; the boat struck something, a scream, a piercing scream. . .

Across the path of the downward-rus.h.i.+ng torrent that carried us lay, just above the surface, a tree, a giant of the forest, which had fallen to form a kind of bridge. The other two dropped to the bottom of the boat. In the fraction of a second left to me, I debated whether I should do the same. I knew that everything -- the blacks, this shooting of the rapids, the African waterfall -- was only an amazing illusion, but to sit still while the bow of the boat slid under the dripping, resinous trunk of the huge tree was beyond me. I threw myself down but at the same time lifted a hand, which pa.s.sed through the trunk without touching it; I felt nothing, as I had expected, but in spite of this, the illusion that we had miraculously escaped catastrophe remained intact.

Yet this was not all; with the next wave the boat stood on end, an enormous roller caught us and turned us around, and for the next few heartbeats the dugout went in a h.e.l.lish circle, heading for the center of the whirlpool. If the woman screamed, I did not hear it, I would not have heard a thing; I felt the crash, the splitting of the boat, with my whole body, my ears were as if stopped by the bellow of the waterfall; the dugout, hurled upward with enormous force, got wedged between the boulders. The other two jumped out onto a foam-covered rock; they scrambled up, with me behind them.

We found ourselves on a crag between two arms of trembling whiteness. The right bank was quite distant; to the left led a footbridge anch.o.r.ed in crevices in the rock, a kind of elevated pa.s.sage above the waves that went plunging into the depths of that h.e.l.lish cauldron. The air was chilly from the mist, the spray; the narrow bridge hung -- without handrails, slippery from the dampness -- above the wall of sound; one had to set one's feet on the rotting planks, loosely joined by knotted ropes, and walk a few steps to reach the bank. The others were on their knees in front of me and apparently arguing about who should go first. I heard nothing, of course. It was as if the air itself had hardened from the constant thunder. At last the young man got up and said something to me, pointing downward. I saw the dugout; its stern, broken off, danced on a wave and disappeared, spinning faster and faster, pulled in by the whirlpool. The young man in the tiger suit was less indifferent or sleepy than at the beginning of the journey, but seemed annoyed, as if there against his will. He grasped the woman by the arm, and I thought that he had gone insane, for unmistakably he was pus.h.i.+ng her straight into the roaring gorge. She said something to him, I saw indignation flash in her eyes. I put my hands on their shoulders, gestured for them to let me pa.s.s, and stepped onto the bridge. It swung and danced; I walked, not too quickly, keeping my balance by moving my shoulders; in the middle I reeled once or twice, and suddenly the bridge began to shake, so that I almost fell. Without waiting for me to get across, the woman walked out on the bridge. Afraid that I would fall, I leapt forward; I landed on the very edge of the rock and immediately turned around.

The woman did not cross: she had gone back. The young man went first, holding her by the hand; the strange shapes created by the waterfall, black and white phantoms, provided the background for their unsteady pa.s.sage. He was near; I gave him my hand; at the same time the woman stumbled, the footbridge began to sway, I pulled as if I would have sooner torn off his arm than let him fall; the impetus carried him two meters, and he landed behind me, on his knees -- but he let go of her.

She was still in the air when I jumped, feet first, having aimed so that I would enter the water at an angle, between the bank and the vertical face of the closest rock. I thought about all this later, when I had time. Essentially I knew that the waterfall and the crossing of the bridge were an illusion, the proof of which was the tree trunk that my hand had gone straight through. Nevertheless, I jumped as if she had been in real peril of her life, and I even recall that, quite by instinct, I braced myself for the icy impact with the water, whose spray had been continually dousing our faces and clothes.

I felt nothing, however, but a strong gust of air, and I landed in a s.p.a.cious room, my legs slightly bent, as though I had jumped from a height of one meter at the most. I heard a chorus of laughter.

I stood on a soft, plasticlike floor, surrounded by other people, some still in soaked clothes; with their heads turned up, they were roaring with laughter. I followed their gaze -- it was extraordinary. No trace of waterfalls, cliffs, the African sky. I saw an illuminated ceiling and, beneath it, a dugout just arriving; actually it was a kind of decoration, since it resembled a boat only from above and from the sides; the base was some sort of metal construction. Four people lay flat inside it, but there was nothing around them -- no black oarsmen, no rocks, no river, only thin jets of water spurted now and then from concealed nozzles. . . Somewhat farther away stood the obelisk of rock at which our journey had come to an end; it rose like a tethered balloon, for it was not supported by anything. From it the footbridge led to a stone exit that jutted out from the metal wall. A little higher, small steps with a handrail, and a door. That was all. The dugout with the people tossed, rose, fell sharply, without the slightest sound; I heard only the bursts of hilarity that accompanied each successive stage of the adventure of the waterfall that did not exist. After a while the dugout collided with the rock, the people jumped out, they had to cross the footbridge. . .

Twenty seconds, perhaps, had gone by since my leap. I looked for the woman. She was watching me. I grew confused. I did not know whether I should go over to her. But the crowd began to leave, and the next moment we found ourselves next to each other.

"It's always the same," she said then. "I always fall!"

The night in the park, the fireworks, and the music were, somehow, not entirely real. We left with the crowd, which was agitated after the terrors it had just experienced. I saw the woman's companion pus.h.i.+ng his way toward her. Again he was lethargic. He did not appear to notice me at all.

"Let's go to Merlin's," the woman said, so loudly that I heard. I had not intended to eavesdrop. But a new wave of exiting people pushed us together even closer. For this reason, I continued to stand near them.

"You look like you are trying to escape," she said, smiling. "What, are you afraid of witchcraft. . . ?"

She spoke to him but looked at me. I could have elbowed my way out, of course, but, as always in such situations, I was most afraid of appearing ridiculous. They moved on, leaving a gap in the crowd. Others, next to me, suddenly decided to visit Merlin's Palace, and when I headed in that direction, with a few people separating us, I knew that I had not been mistaken a moment before.

We moved a step at a time. On the lawn stood pots of tar fluttering with flame; their light revealed steep bricked bastions. We crossed a drawbridge over a moat and stepped under the bared teeth of a portcullis, the dimness and chill of a stone entrance hall embraced us, a spiral staircase ascended, full of the echoes of thumping feet. But the arched corridor of the upper level contained fewer people. It led to a gallery with a view of a yard, where a noisy mob mounted on caparisoned horses pursued some black monstrosity; I went on, hesitant, not knowing where to go, among several people whom I was beginning to recognize; the woman and her companion pa.s.sed by me between columns; empty suits of armor stood in recesses in the walls. Farther on, a door with copper fittings, a door for giants, opened up, and we entered a chamber upholstered in red damask, lit by torches whose resinous smoke irritated the nose. At tables a boisterous company was feasting, either pirates or knights-errant, huge sides of meat turned on spits, licked by flames, a reddish light played on sweating faces, bones crunched between the teeth of the armored revelers, who from time to time got up from their tables and mingled with us. In the next room several giants were playing skittles, using skulls for b.a.l.l.s; the whole thing struck me as awfully naive, mediocre; I had stopped beside the players, who were as tall as I, when someone b.u.mped into me from behind and cried out in surprise. I turned and met the eyes of some youth. He stammered an apology and left quickly with a foolish expression on his face; only the look of the dark-haired woman who was the reason for my being in this palace of cheap wonders made me realize what had happened: the youth had tried to walk right through me, taking me for one of Merlin's unreal banqueters.

Merlin himself received us in a distant wing of the palace, surrounded by a retinue of masked men who a.s.sisted him pa.s.sively in his feats of magic. But I had had enough of this and watched indifferently the demonstrations of the black art. The show was soon over, and the audience had begun to leave when Merlin, gray, magnificent, barred our way and silently pointed to the door opposite, covered with a shroud.

He invited only the three of us inside. He himself did not go in. We found ourselves in a fairly small room, very high, with one of the walls a mirror from the ceiling to the black-and-white stone floor. The impression was of a room twice the size that contained six people standing on a stone chessboard.

There was no furniture -- nothing but a tall alabaster urn with a bouquet of flowers, which were like orchids but had unusually large calyxes. Each was a different color. We stood facing the mirror.

Then my image looked at me. The movement was not a reflection of my own. I froze, but the other, large, broad-shouldered, slowly looked first at the dark-haired woman, then at her companion. None of us moved, and only our images, grown independent of us in some mysterious way, came to life, played out a silent scene among themselves.

The young man in the minor went up to the woman and looked into her eyes; she shook her head in refusal. She took the flowers from the white vase, sorted through them with her fingers, selected three -- a white, a yellow, and a black. The white she gave to him, and with the other two she came to me. To me -- in the mirror. She offered both flowers. I took the black. Then she returned to her place and all three of us -- there, in the mirror room -- a.s.sumed exactly the positions that we really occupied. When that happened, the flowers disappeared from the hands of our doubles, and they were once more ordinary reflections, faithfully repeating every moment A door in the far wall opened up; we went down spiral stairs. Columns, alcoves, vaults changed imperceptibly into the silver and white of plastic corridors. We walked on in silence, not separately, not together; the situation was becoming intolerable, but what was I to do? Step forward and introduce myself in the time-honored fas.h.i.+on, with an antiquated savoir-vivre?

The m.u.f.fled sound of an orchestra. It was as if we were in the wings, behind an unseen stage; there were a few empty tables with the chairs pushed back. The woman stopped and asked her companion: "You won't dance?"

"I don't want to," he said. I heard his voice for the first time.

He was handsome, but filled with an inertia, an unaccountable pa.s.sivity, as if he cared about nothing in the world. He had beautiful lips, almost the lips of a girl. He looked at me. Then at her. He stood there, saying nothing.