Snail on the Slope

Chapter Six

Pepper opened the door of the landrover and looked at the thickets. He didn't know what he was supposed to see. Something in the nature of a nauseating blancmange. Something strange, something indescribable. But the most strange, the most unimaginable thing in this undergrowth was the people, therefore Pepper saw only them. They were walking toward the landrover, slender and neat in their movements, confident and elegant, they walked easily, never backtracking, instantly choosing the exact place to step. They acted as if they didn't notice the forest, as if they were at home in it and the forest belonged to them. They weren't pretending even, they really did think that, and the forest hung above them silently laughing and pointing with myriads of jeering fingers, while adroitly contriving to be familiar, obedient and simple - absolutely trustworthy. Until the time, the day...

"Oh what a wench, that Rita," said former driver Acey to Pepper. He was standing next to the landrover, his somewhat bandy legs set wide across a rasping and trembling motorcycle, which he held lightly with his thighs. "I'd have got my hands on her for sure if it wasn't for her Quentin, he's a sharp one."

Quentin and Rita had approached quite close and Stoyan climbed out from behind the wheel to meet them.

"Well, how is she?" asked Stoyan. "Breathing," said Quentin, closely studying Pepper. "Has the money arrived, then?"

"This is Pepper," said Stoyan. "I was telling you."

Rita and Quentin smiled at Pepper. There was no time to study them but the thought crossed Pepper's mind that he had never seen a stranger woman than Rita or a more deeply unhappy man than Quentin.

"Hello, Pepper," said Quentin, continuing to smile piteously. "Come to have a look? Never seen it before?"

"I don't see it now," said Pepper. And it was true, the unhappiness and the strangeness were impossible to pin down, though linked powerfully.

Rita lit a cigarette and turned away. "You're looking in the wrong direction, man. Look straight ahead of you. Don't tell me you can't see?"

Then Pepper did see and at once forgot about the people. It had appeared like a hidden image on photographic paper, like a figure in a child's puzzle picture "where is the rabbit hiding" and once having found it, it was impossible to lose it from view. It was very close, it began ten paces from the landrover's wheels and the path. Pepper shuddered and swallowed.

A living column rose to treetop level, a sheaf of thin transparent threads, sticky, shiny, writhing and tense, a sheaf penetrating the dense foliage and climbing farther and farther into the clouds. It had its origin in a cesspit, an oily gurgling cesspit, full up with protoplasm, living, active, swelling up in bubbles of primitive flesh, busily organizing and as quickly decaying, pouring out the products of decay onto its flat banks spitting gluey foam... And at once, as if unseen sound-filters had been switched on, the voice of the cesspit stood out from the chugging of the motorbike: gurgling, splashing, sobbing, bubbling, long drawn-out swamp groans; a heavy wall of smells drew nearer of raw sweating meat, pus, fresh bile, serum, hot paste - only then did Pepper notice that both Rita and Quentin had oxygen masks hanging on their chests; he saw Stoyan squeamishly grimacing and raising a respirator to his face. He himself did not start putting his respirator on, he was somehow hoping that the smells might tell him what his eyes and ears had failed to do...

"It stinks around here," said Acey, revolted. "Like a morgue..."

Quentin was talking to Stoyan.

"You might have asked Kim to see about our rations. We should get danger money. We're due milk, chocolate..."

Rita was smoking pensively, dribbling smoke through her thin mobile nostrils...

Around the cesspit, bending tenderly over it, trembled the trees; their branches were all turned in one direction and drooped toward the seething mass, while along the branches thick hairy lianas wriggled and dropped into the cesspit. The cesspit took them to itself and the protoplasm gnawed around them and converted them into itself, as it could dissolve and make its own all that surrounded it...

"Peppy," said Stoyan, "don't goggle like that, your eyes'll pop out."

Pepper smiled, though he knew it looked forced.

"Why did you bring the motorbike, anyway?" asked Quentin.

"In case we got stranded. They crawl along the path - I go with one wheel on the path, the other on the grass, and the motorbike goes behind. If we get stuck, Acey nips off on the bike and gets a tractor."

"You'll get stuck for sure," said Quentin.

"Course we will," said Acey. "This is a stupid idea, I've said so all along."

"You just be quiet," Stoyan said to him. "Your part is small enough... Is the eruption soon?" he asked Quentin.

Quentin looked at his watch.

"Well now..." he said. "It reproduces every eighty-seven minutes. So in ... in ... in nothing, there, she's starting already."

The cesspit was reproducing. Out onto its level banks, in a series of convulsive jerks, came spurting out one after another, bits of whitish rippling goo. They rolled along the earth, helpless and blind, then stopped, flattened out, threw out cautious pseudopodia and suddenly began moving purposefully - still fussing, still prodding about, but now in one set direction, wandering from the direct path, now and again colliding, but in one set direction, along one radius from the womb, out into the thickets, on and out in a single flowing off-white column, like gigantic clumsy, slug-like ants...

"It's a quagmire all around here," Acey was saying. "We'll plop in so deep no tractor'll ever get us out - the ropes'll just snap."

"Do you want to come with us?" said Stoyan to Quentin.

"Rita's tired."

"Rita can go home and we'll push on..." Quentin was wavering. "How d'you feel, Rita, dear?" he asked. "Yes, I'll go on home," said Rita. "Well, that's fine," Quentin said. "We'll go and take a look eh? We'll be back soon enough I expect. Not long,eh, Stoyan?"

Rita threw away her cigarette end and went off along the track toward the biostation, without saying good-bye. Quentin shuffled in indecision before saying to Pepper in an undertone:

"Allow me ... get past..."

He pushed through into the back seat; at which moment the motorbike with tremendous roar, tore itself from under Acey and bounding high in the air, hurtled into the cesspit. "Stop!" Acey shouted, as he sank to his haunches. "Where are you off to?" Everybody froze. The bike raced over a hummock, squealing wildly, stood on end and fell into the pit. Everybody rushed forward. Pepper thought the protoplasm rose up under the bike, softening the blow; then it easily and soundlessly accepted it and closed over it. The motorbike shut off.

"Clumsy bastard," said Stoyan to Acey. "What the devil are you doing?"

The cesspit had become a maw, sucking, tasting, enjoying. It was rolling the machine around inside, the way a man rolls a mint from cheek to cheek with his tongue. The motorcycle was swirling around in the foaming mass, now disappearing, now surfacing, helplessly waving its handlebars; with every appearance it got smaller and smaller, its metal plating thinner and thinner, now transparent as thin paper. Already the engine innards could be glimpsed through it, then the plating melted away, the tires disappeared, the bike dived down for the last time and appeared no more.

"Swallowed it," said Acey with idiotic joy.

"Clumsy bastard," repeated Stoyan. "You'll pay me for that. You'll be paying me the rest of your life for it."

"Well all right then," said Acey. "So I'll pay for it! Was it my fault? I just turned the throttle the wrong way," he said to Pepper. "That's how it got away. I really wanted to throttle down, Monsieur Pepper, so it didn't rattle so much, well I just turned it the wrong way. I'm not the first or the last to do that. Anyway it was an old bike... I'm off then," said he to Stoyan. "I'm no use here now. I'll go home."

"Where are your eyes wandering then?" Quentin said abruptly with an expression that caused Pepper to step aside involuntarily.

"What's the matter?" said Acey. "I look where I want."

He was looking back at the path, where Rita's orange wrap was flickering under the dense yellowy-green awning of branches as she receded.

"Come on, let me pass," said Quentin to Pepper. "I'll just have a word with him."

"Where're you going, d'you think?" mumbled Stoyan. "Think on, Quentin..."

"What d'you mean, think on? I've known what he was after long enough..."

"Listen, don't be a kid... Just stop it! Just think on!"

"Let go, I tell you, let go my arm!"

There was a noisy struggle around Pepper who was being shoved from both sides. Stoyan held Quentin's jacket firmly by the back and sleeve, as Quentin, now red and sweating, keeping his eyes fixed on Acey, was fending off Stoyan with one hand while bending Pepper double with the other in his attempt to step over him. He was jerking about and emerging farther from his jacket with each jerk. Pepper chose this moment to tumble out of the landrover. Acey was still looking after Rita, his mouth half-open, his eyes lustful and tender.

"What's she doing wearing trousers," said he to Pepper. "It's the latest craze they've got, going about in trousers..."

"Don't defend him!" roared Quentin in the car. "He's not a sexual neurasthenic, he's just a bastard! Let me go, or I'll give you one as well!"

"They used to wear skirts," said Acey dreamily. "A piece of material wrapped around and fixed with a pin. And I would get hold of the pin and unloose..."

If this had been in the park... If it had been in the hostel or the library or the assembly hall... And it had been - in the park, the library and even in the assembly hall during Kirn's lecture on "What all Directorate personnel should know about methods of mathematical statistics." But now the forest was seeing it all and hearing it all - the lascivious obscenity that filled Acey's eyes, Quentin's purple face swaying in the van doorway, some dull, ox-like, droning mumble of Stoy-an's, something about work, responsibility, stupidity and the crack of flying buttons against the windshield ... and its reaction couldn't be guessed, whether it was one of horror, amusement or a fastidious grimace. " - " said Acey with satisfaction. And Pepper hit him. Hit him on the cheekbone apparently, with a crunch, spraining his finger. Everybody stopped talking at once. Acey held his cheek and looked at Pepper in vast astonishment.

"Don't say things like that," said Pepper firmly. "Not here. Don't do it."

"Well I'm not arguing," Acey said with a shrug. "I only meantthat I'm doing no good here, haven't got a

motorbike you can see that... So what good can I do here?"

Quentin inquired loudly:

"You want one across the jaw?"

'There you are," said Acey, vexed. "Right across the cheekbone, right on the bone... Good job, you missed my eye."

"No, I mean it, one to the jaw."

"Yes," Pepper said severely, "because here that sort of thing is out."

"Let's go then," said Quentin, lying back in his seat.

"Ace," said Stoyan. "Climb in. If we get stuck you can give us a hand."

"I've got a new pair of pants on," objected Acey. "Better let me drive."

Nobody answered, so he climbed into the back seat next to Quentin who moved up. Pepper got in next to Stoyan and they set off.

The pups had already gone quite a way, but Stoyan, driving with great skill, keeping the offside wheels on the path and the nearside on the dusty moss, soon overtook them and crawled slowly behind carefully using the clutch to adjust his speed. "You'll burn the clutch out," said Acey. He turned to Quentin and began explaining that he'd had no ulterior motive, he had no motorbike anymore anyway and a man's a man and if he's normal always will be, forest or no, no matter whether ...

"Have you had one in the jaw?" Quentin kept asking. "No, you just tell me, the truth now, have you ever had one on the jaw or not?" Quentin kept asking and interrupting Acey. "No," Acey would answer, "no, wait a minute, you hear me out first..."

Pepper stroked his swollen finger and looked at the pups. The children of the forest. Or perhaps its servants. Or maybe its experiments. They were proceeding slowly and tirelessly one after the other in line ahead, as if flowing along the ground; they oozed across rotting tree stumps, crossed ruts, pools of stagnant water in the tall grass, through prickly bushes.

The track kept disappearing, diving into evil-smelling mud, hiding itself under layers of tough gray mushrooms that crunched under the wheels, then again appearing, while the pups held their direction and stayed white, clean, smooth; not a blade of grass stuck to them, not a thorn wounded them, they were unstained by the sticky black mud. They oozed along with a kind of stupid unthinking confidence, as if along a road long-known and habitual. There were forty-three of them.

I was dying to get here and now I've arrived, at least I'm seeing the forest from inside and I'm seeing nothing. I could have imagined all this sitting in my bare hostel room with its three empty bunks; late night insomnia, everything quiet all about, then right on midnight the piledriver starts thumping on the construction site. I could have thought it all up: mermaids, walking trees and these pups, turning into pathfinder Selivan - the most absurd things, the holiest. And everything there is in the Directorate I can imagine and bring to mind. I could have stayed at home and dreamed this all up, lying on my sofa listening to symphojazz or voices talking unfamiliar languages on the radio... But that doesn't mean a thing. To see and not understand is the same as making it up. I'm alive, I can see and I don't understand. I'm living in a world someone has thought up without bothering to tell me, or maybe even himself. A yearning for understanding - that's my sickness, thought Pepper suddenly, a yearning for understanding.

He stuck his hand out of the window and held his aching finger against the cool car-body. The pups were paying the landrover no attention. They probably had no suspicion of its existence. They gave off a sharp unpleasant smell; their membrane now seemed transparent and it was as if wave-like shadows moved beneath.

"Let's catch one," suggested Quentin. "It's simple enough, we'll wrap it in my jerkin and take it to the lab."

"Not worth it," said Stoyan.

"Why not?" Quentin asked. "We'll have to catch one sooner or later."

"Doesn't seem right, somehow," Stoyan said. "In the first place, God help us, the thing'll die on us and I'll have to write a report for Hausbotcher."

"We've had them boiled," Acey announced suddenly. "I didn't like the taste, but the boys said it was all right. Bit like rabbit, I can't touch rabbit, to me a cat and a rabbit's just the same; can't bear the stuff..."

"I've noticed one thing," said Quentin. "The number of pups is always a simple number: thirteen, forty-three, forty-seven..."

"Nonsense," objected Stoyan. "I've come across groups of six or twelve."

"That's in the forest," said Quentin, "after that groups scatter in different directions. The cesspit always produces a simple number, you can check the log, I've put all my conclusions down."

"Me and the boys caught one of the local girls once, what a laugh that was!"

"Well all right, write an article then," said Stoyan.

"1 already have," said Quentin. "That'll make fifteen..."

"I've done seventeen," said Stoyan. "And one at the printers. Who's your co-author?"

"I don't know yet," said Quentin. "Kirn recommends the manager, he says transport's the coming thing now, but Rita advises the warden."

"Not him," said Stoyan.

"Why?" asked Quentin.

"Don't choose the warden," Stoyan repeated. "I'm not saying anything to you - just keep it in mind."

"The warden used to dilute the yogurt with brake fluid," said Acey. "That was when he was the manager of the barbershop. So me and the boys slipped a handful of bedbugs into his room."

"They say they're preparing a directive," said Stoyan. "Whoever's got less than fifteen articles to their name have to undergo treatment."

"Oh Lord," said Quentin, "that's a bad business. I

know what special treatment means, after one of them your hair stops growing and you have bad breath for a year..."

Home, thought Pepper. Get home as soon as you can. Now there really is nothing for me here. Just then he saw that the pup formation had broken up. Pepper counted: thirty-two pups went straight ahead, while a column of eleven had turned off left and down, where a lake became suddenly visible between the trees - dark motionless water, quite near the landrover. Pepper glimpsed a low misty sky and the vague outline of the Directorate on the horizon. The eleven pups were heading confidently toward the water. Stoyan shut the engine off and everybody climbed out to watch the pups oozing over a twisted bough at the water's edge and plop heavily one after another into the lake. Oily circles rocked along the dark water.

"They're going down," said Quentin in amazement. "They're drowning."

Stoyan got his map and spread it out over the bonnet.

"Right enough," he said. "This lake isn't marked. There's a village marked but no lake... Here it is written: 'Vill. Aborig. Seventeen point one one.' "

"That's always the way," said Acey. "Who uses a map in this forest? In the first place all the maps are inaccurate and secondly, you don't need them here. Say there's a road here today, tomorrow they'll have barbed wire up and a watchtower. Or you'll find a dump all of a sudden."

"I don't sort of feel like going on farther," said Stoyan, stretching himself. "Maybe we'll call it a day?"

"Surely," said Quentin. "Pepper's still got his pay to collect. Back to the van."

"A pair of binoculars would be handy," said Acey suddenly, cupping his eyes and avidly staring into the lake. "I reckon there's a woman in there bathing."

Quentin halted.

"Where?"

"She's got nothing on," said Acey. "True as I'm standing here. Not a stitch."

Quentin suddenly went pale and made a headlong rush for the van.

"Where is it you see her?" asked Stoyan.

"Over there at the far bank..."

"There's nothing there," croaked Quentin. He was standing on the running-board and sweeping the far bank with his binoculars. His hands shook. "Damned bigmouth... Asking for another one... No, not a thing!" he repeated passing Stoyan the glasses.

"What d'you mean, nothing?" said Acey. "I'm no four-eyes, I've got an eye like a water-level..."

"Wait a minute, wait, don't grab them," said Stoyan. "There's manners, grabbing them out of my hand..."

"There's nothing there," muttered Quentin. "He's pulling your leg. There's plenty of travelers' tales..."

"I know what it is," said Acey. "It's a mermaid. I'm telling you."

Pepper roused himself.

"Give me the binoculars," he said quickly.

"Nothing to see," said Stoyan, holding out the glasses.

"Fine guy to believe, I must say," muttered Quentin, now calming down.

"Honestly, there was," said Acey. "She must have dived. She'll be up in a minute..."

Pepper focused the glasses. He didn't expect to see anything: that would have been too simple. And nothing was what he saw. The unruffled lake, a distant bank overgrown with forest and the silhouette of a rock above the forest's jagged skyline.

"What was she like?" he asked.

Acey began a detailed description of her, with much use of the hands. His narrative was succulent and full of fervor, but it wasn't at all what Pepper wanted.

"Yes, naturally ..." said he, "yes ... yes."

Perhaps she came up to welcome the pups, he thought as he bounced around in the back seat alongside a gloomy Quentin, gazing at the even movement of Acey's ears. Acey was chewing something. She came out of the forest thickets white, cold, confident, and stepped into the water, the water she knew so well, entered into the lake as I walk into a library, sank into the rippling green twilight and swam toward the pups. She met them straight away in the center of the lake, on the bottom, and led them off somewhere, for some reason, at someone's behest, and one more knot of forest events is tied. And perhaps miles away from here something will happen or start to happen; banks of the lilac fog that isn't fog will seethe between the trees, or another cesspit will start up in a peaceful clearing, or mottled aborigines who've just been sitting and watching an educational film and patiently listening to a lecture by Beatrice Vakh, earnestly hoarse, will all of a sudden get up and go off into the forest, never to return... And it will all be replete with profound significance, the profound significance that informs the movements of complicated machinery, and it will all be strange and, therefore, meaningless to us, at any rate for those of us who still can't get used to lack of meaning or accept it as the norm. He sensed the significance of each and every event, every phenomenon about him: that no batch of pups could number forty-two or forty-five and that the trunk of that tree there was overgrown with red moss and no other, that the sky was invisible along the path because of overhanging branches.

The vehicle shook. Stoyan was driving extremely slowly and from some way off Pepper could see a leaning post and a sign with something written on it. The legend had been washed out by rain and faded, it was a very old notice on a very old, dirty-gray board, pinned to the pole with two huge rusty nails. "Here, two years ago, pathfinder Gustave was tragically drowned. Here his memorial will be set up." The landrover made its way around the pole, lurching from side to side.

Whatever got into you, Gustave, Pepper thought. How did you manage to drown here? You were a tough guy no doubt, your head was shaved, your jaw was bristly and square, a gold tooth, tattooed from top to toe, your arms hung below your knees, you'd a finger missing on the right, bitten off in a drunken brawl. It wasn't your heart that sent you off to become a pathfinder, things just panned out that way, you served your time up on the cliff where the Directorate stands now and there was nowhere for you to run to except the forest. And you wrote no articles in the forest, you never even gave them a thought, you thought about other articles written before that and aimed at you. And you built a strategic road, laid concrete slabs and chopped down the forest far away on both sides so that eight-engined bombers could land here if need be. Could the forest put up with that? It drowned you in a dry place, but they'll put a monument up to you in ten years time and maybe give your name to some cafe. The cafe will be called "Gustave's" and driver Acey will drink yogurt there and stroke the rumpled girls from the local choir...

Apparently Acey had two convictions, neither, for some reason, for what might be expected. The first time he'd landed up in a labor colony for stealing stationery from some concern, and the second time for offenses against the passport regulations. Stoyan there was clean. Doesn't drink yogurt, nothing. He loves Alevtina tenderly and purely, whom nobody ever loved tenderly and purely. When article number twenty came out, he would offer Alevtina his heart and hand and would be turned down, his articles notwithstanding, his broad shoulders and beautiful Roman nose notwithstanding, for Alevtina couldn't stand anybody fastidious, suspecting in him (not without reason) a rake of such refinement as to be beyond her comprehension. Stoyan lives in the forest whither, unlike Gustave, he came voluntarily. He never complains about anything although for him the forest is just a vast pile of material for articles, guaranteeing him against treatment...

One might marvel endlessly at the fact that there were people able to get used to the forest, and yet such people were the overwhelming majority. At first they were attracted by the forest as a romantic or lucrative location, or a place where control was not over-strict, or a place of refuge. Then they got a bit afraid of it, and then they made the discovery that "it's just the same mess here as everywhere else," and that reconciled them to the strangeness of the forest, but nobody intended to live out his old age here. Quentin now, as rumor had it, only lived here because he feared to leave Rita unguarded, and Rita refused to go away from the forest at any price, though she never told anybody why... There, I've got around to Rita... Rita can go off into the forest and not come back for weeks. Rita bathes in forest lakes. Rita breaks all the rules and nobody dares to criticize. Rita writes no articles. Rita doesn't write anything, even letters. It's common knowledge that Quentin cries of a night and goes off to sleep with the canteen assistant if she's not busy with somebody else ... it's all over the biostation... Good god, they light up the club, plug in the record-player, drink yogurt; they drink a vast amount of yogurt and in the moonlight they hurl the bottles into the lake and see who gets the farthest. They dance, play forfeits and spin the bottle, cards and billiards, they swap women, and by day in their laboratories they pour the forest from one test tube to another, study the forest under a microscope, reckon it up on adding machines, while the forest stands all around them, looms above them, grows up through their bedrooms and in the stifling hours before the thunderstorm, wandering trees come crowding up to their windows, and they also, no doubt wonder what these people are, why they're here and why they exist at all...

A good thing I'm getting out of here, he thought. I've been here, understood nothing, found nothing I wanted to find, but I know now that I never will understand anything, that there is a time for everything. There's nothing in common between the forest and me, the forest is no nearer to me than the Directorate is. Anyway, at least I'm not staying here to be covered in shame. I'm going away, I shall work and wait. I shall hope for the time to come when...

The biostation yard was empty. There was no sign of the truck, and there was no line at the pay-out window. All there was was Pepper's suitcase standing on the porch that barred his way, his gray raincoat hung on the verandah rail. Pepper got out of the landrover and looked around in perplexity. Acey, arm in arm with Quentin was already heading for the canteen, which gave out a clink of cutlery and a smell of burning. Stoyan said: "Let's go and have supper, Peppy," and drove the vehicle into the garage. Pepper, to his horror, suddenly realized what all this meant: a howling record-player, senseless chatter, yogurt, another little glass, eh? And the same every evening, on and on for evening after...

The pay-window rattled and an angry cashier stuck his head out: "Where've you been, Pepper? How long haye I got to wait? Get over here and sign up."

Pepper approached the window on stiffened legs. "Right here - I'll put the total in," the cashier said. "No, no, not there, here. Why're your hands shaking? Here you are."

He began counting out notes.

"But where are the rest? asked Pepper.

"Don't rush... The rest are in the envelope here."

"No, I mean..."

"What you mean doesn't affect anybody. I - canf change the procedure just for you. There's your salary, have you got it?"

"I wanted to find out..."

"I'm asking you, have you received your salary? Yes or no?"

"Yes."

"Thank the Lord. Now your bonus. Have you received that?"

"Yes."

"That's it then. Allow me to shake your hand. I'm in a hurry. I have to be at the Directorate by seven."

"I only wanted to ask," said Pepper hurriedly, "where all the rest of the people ... Kim, the truck ... they did promise to take me ... to the Mainland."

"Can't do it to the Mainland, I have to be at the Directorate. Excuse me, I'm shutting the window now.

"I won't take up much room," said Pepper.

"That's not the point. You're not a child, you must realize, I'm a cashier. I have payrolls - what if anything happens to them? Take your elbow away."

Pepper took his elbow away and the window slammed down. Through the murky thumb-printed glass, Pepper could make out the cashier collecting up his payrolls, screwing them up any how and stuffing them into his briefcase; then the office door opened, two massive guards came in and bound the cashier's hands, throwing a noose about his neck; one of them led the cashier off on the rope while the other took the briefcase and gazed around the room, catching sight of Pepper as he did so. For a while they stared at one another through the dirty glass, then very slowly and carefully, as if fearing to scare someone, the guard placed the briefcase on the chair and, without taking his eyes from Pepper, reached out for the rifle that was leaning against the wall. Pepper waited, cold and incredulous, as the guard took up the rifle, stumbled and went out, shutting the door behind him. The light was extinguished.

Pepper then fell back from the window, ran on tiptoe to his suitcase, seized it and fled, anywhere, as far as might be from this place. He took cover behind the garage and watched the guard come out onto the porch, holding his rifle at the port, a glance left and right, then underfoot; he took Pepper's raincoat, weighed it in his hand, rummaged in the pockets and after another glance around, went off into the house. Pepper sat down on his suitcase. It was chilly and night was falling. Pepper sat pointlessly staring at the lighted windows, whitened for half their height. Beyond the window shadows moved; on the roof the latticed vane of the radar silently rotated. Crockery rattled, night creatures called in the forest. Then somewhere a searchlight flashed out a blue beam and into it from behind the corner of the building rolled a shovel truck, rumbling and leaping on the rutted road; followed by the searchlight, it reached the gates. In the scoop sat the guard with the rifle. He was smoking, muffled up against the wind; a thick fleecy rope was wrapped around his left wrist and led off through the half-opened window of the driver's cab.

The truck drove off and the searchlight went out. Across the yard, scraping his gigantic boots, passed the second guard, a menacing shadow with a rifle under his armpit. Every now and again he bent down and prodded the earth, looking for footprints, seemingly. Pepper pressed his sodden back to the wall and, motionless, followed him with his eyes.

There came a terrible drawn-out cry from the forest. Somewhere doors slammed. A light went on on the first floor, someone said loudly: "Not half stuffy in your place." Something round and shining dropped into the grass and rolled to Pepper's feet. Pepper froze into stillness once more, than realized it was a yogurt bottle.

On foot, thought Pepper. It'll have to be on foot. Twelve miles through the forest. Through the forest, that was bad. Now the forest would see a pitiful trembling man, damp with fear and fatigue, dead under the weight of his suitcase, yet for some reason clinging onto it. I'll be trailing along and the forest will hoot and yell at me from both sides.

The guard had reappeared in the courtyard. He was not alone. Alongside came something else, breathing heavily and snorting, huge and four-footed. They halted in the middle of the yard and Pepper could hear the guard muttering: "Grab that, go on... Don't eat the thing, then ... It's not sausage, it's a raincoat, smell it then... Well? Cherchez when you're told..." The four-footed one whined and squealed. "Gaw!" said the exasperated guard. "Hunting fleas is your job... Get on there!" They melted into the darkness. Heels clacked along the porch, a door shut.

Just then something cold and moist knocked against Pepper's cheek. He shuddered and almost fell. It was an enormous wolfhound. It whined very quietly, gave a heavy sigh, and laid its heavy head on Pepper's knees. Pepper stroked it behind the ears. The wolfhound yawned and seemed about to shift itself around to get comfortable when the record-player thundered out from the first floor. The wolfhound silently started up and bounded off.

The record-player raged on, for miles around nothing else existed. And then, just like in an adventure film, the gates were suddenly bathed in blue light and silently opened wide, and an enormous truck slid into the yard like a vast ship lit up with constellations of signal lamps. It stopped and dipped its headlights, which died slowly as if some forest monster were giving up the ghost. Driver Voldemar thrust his head out of the window and started shouting something, mouth wide, and kept it up, straining away, his eyes fierce, then spat and dived back into the cab, came out again and chalked "Pepper!!!" on his door upside down. At this, Pepper realized the truck had come for him, seized hold of his suitcase and ran across the yard, fearing to look back, fearful of hearing shots behind him. He made hard work of scrambling up the two steps into a cab the size of a room and while he got his suitcase settled, then himself a dug-out cigarette, Voldemar kept talking, purple in the face, his voice straining, gesticulating and pushing Pepper's shoulder with the palm of his hand. Only when the record-player stopped suddenly did Pepper at last hear his voice: Voldemar wasn't saying anything in particular, he was just swearing violently.

The truck had not succeeded in passing the gates, when Pepper fell asleep, as if someone had placed an ether mask over his face.