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I put my eye to the periscope.
I looked in upon-
Nothing.
It was just a brass tube with some crystal lenses and a view of an empty couch.
No more.
I seized the view piece and tried to screw it into some new focus on a far place and some
dream bacteria that might fibrillate across an unimaginable horizon.
But the couch remained only a couch, and the wall beyond looked back at me with its
great blank face.
Von Seyfertitz leaned forward and a tear ran off the tip of his nose to fall on one rusted
fist.
"Are they dead?" he whispered.
"Gone."
"Good, they deserved to die. Now I can return to some kind of normal, sane world."
And with each word his voice fell deeper within his throat, his chest, his soul, until it, like
the vaporous haunts within the peri-kaleidoscope, melted into silence.
He clenched his fists together in a fierce clasp
Unterderseaboat Doktor 17
of prayer, like one who beseeches God to deliver him from plagues. And whether he was
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once again praying for my death, eyes shut, or whether he simply wished me gone with the
visions within the brass device, I could not say.
I only knew that my gossip had done a terrible and irrevocable thing. Me and my wild
enthusiasm for a psychological future and the fame of this incredible captain from beneath
Nemo's tidal seas.
"Gone," murmured Gustav Von Seyfertitz, Baron Woldstein, whispered for the last time.
"Gone."
That was almost the end.
I went around a month later. The landlord reluctantly let me look over the premises,
mostly because I hinted that I might be renting.
We stood in the middle of the empty room where I could see the dent marks where the
couch had once stood.
I looked up at the ceiling. It was empty.
"What's wrong?" said the landlord. "Didn't they fix it so you can't see? Damn fool Baron
made a damn big hole up into the office above. Rented that, too, but never used it for
anything I knew of. There was just that big damn hole he left when he went away."
I sighed with relief.
"Nothing left upstairs?"
"Nothing."
I looked up at the perfectly blank ceiling.
"Nice job of repair," I said.
"Thank God," said the landlord.
18 Ray Bradbury
What, I often wonder, ever happened to Gustav Von Seyfertitz? Did he move to Vienna,
to take up residence, perhaps, in or near dear Sigmund s very own address? Does he live in
Rio, aerating fellow Unterderseaboat Captains who can't sleep for seasickness, roiling on
their waterbeds under the shadow of the Andes Cross? Or is he in South Pasadena, within
striking distance of the fruit larder nut farms disguised as film studios?
I cannot guess.
All I know is that some nights in the year, oh, once or twice, in a deep sleep I hear this
terrible shout, his cry,
"Dive! Dive! Dive!"
And wake to find myself, sweating, far und my bed.
Bradbury, Ray - WONDERFUL ICECREAM SUIT.txt
THE WONDERFUL ICE CREAM SUIT
Ray Bradbury
It was summer twilight in the city, and out front of the quiet-clicking pool hall
three young Mexican-American men breathed the warm air and looked around at the
world. Sometimes they talked and sometimes they said nothing at all but watched the
cars glide by like black panthers on the hot asphalt or saw trolleys loom up like
thunderstorms, scatter lightning, and rumble away into silence.
"Hey," sighed Martinez at last. He was the youngest, the most sweetly sad of the
three. "It's a swell night, huh? Swell."
As he observed the world it moved very close and then drifted away and then came
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close again. People, brushing by, were suddenly across the street. Buildings five
miles away suddenly leaned over him. But most of the time everything - people, cars,
and buildings - stayed way out on the edge of the world and could not be touched. On
this quiet warm summer evening Martinez's face was cold.
"Nights like this you wish . . . lots of things."
"Wishing," said the second man, Villanazul, a man who shouted books out loud in his
room but spoke only in whispers on the street. "Wishing is the useless pastime of
the unemployed."
"Unemployed?" cried Vamenos, the unshaven. "Listen to him! We got no jobs, no
money!"
"So," said Martinez, "we got no friends."
"True." Villanazul gazed off toward the green plaza where the palm trees swayed in
the soft night wind. "Do you know what I wish? I wish to go into that plaza and
speak among the businessmen who gather there nights to talk big talk. But dressed as
I am, poor as I am, who would listen? So, Martinez, we have each other. The
friendship of the poor is real friendship. We-"
But now a handsome young Mexican with a fine thin mustache strolled by. And on each
of his careless arms hung a laughing woman.
"Madre mía! " Martinez slapped his own brow. "How does that one rate two friends?"
"It's his nice new white summer suit." Vamenos chewed a black thumbnail. "He looks
sharp."
Martinez leaned out to watch the three people moving away, and then at the tenement
across the street, in one fourth-floor window of which, far above, a beautiful girl
leaned out, her dark hair faintly stirred by the wind. She had been there forever,
which was to say for six weeks. He had nodded, he had raised a hand, he had smiled,
he had blinked rapidly, he had even bowed to her, on the street, in the hall when
visiting friends, in the park, downtown. Even now, he put his hand up from his waist
and moved his fingers. But all the lovely girl did was let the summer wind stir her
dark hair. He did not exist. He was nothing.
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Bradbury, Ray - WONDERFUL ICECREAM SUIT.txt
"Madre mía! " He looked away and down the street where the man walked his two
friends around a corner. "Oh, if just I had one suit, one! I wouldn't need money if
I looked okay."
"I hesitate to suggest," said Villanazul, "that you see Gómez. But he's been talking
some crazy talk for a month now about clothes. I keep on saying I'll be in on it to
make him go away. That Gómez."
"Friend," said a quiet voice.
"Gómez!" Everyone turned to stare.
Smiling strangely, Gómez pulled forth an endless thin yellow ribbon which fluttered
and swirled on the summer air.
"Gómez," said Martinez, "what you doing with that tape measure?"
Gómez beamed. "Measuring people's skeletons."
"Skeletons!"
"Hold on." Gómez squinted at Martinez. "Caramba! Where you been all my life! Let's
try you! "
Martinez saw his arm seized and taped, his leg measured, his chest encircled.
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"Hold still!" cried Gómez. "Arm - perfect. Leg - chest - perfecto! Now quick, the
height! There! Yes! Five foot five! You're in! Shake!" Pumping Martinez's hand, he
stopped suddenly. "Wait. You got . . . ten bucks?"
"I have!" Vamenos waved some grimy bills. "Gómez, measure me!"
"All I got left in the world is nine dollars and ninety-two cents." Martinez
searched his pockets. "That's enough for a new suit? Why?"
"Why? Because you got the right skeleton, that's why!"
"Seòor Gómez, I don't hardly know you-"
"Know me? You're going to live with me! Come on!"
Gómez vanished into the poolroom. Martinez, escorted by the polite Villanazul,
pushed by an eager Vamenos, found himself inside.
"Dominguez!" said Gómez.
Dominguez, at a wall telephone, winked at them. A woman's voice squeaked on the
receiver.
"Manulo!" said Gómez.
Manulo, a wine bottle tilted bubbling to his mouth, turned.
Gómez pointed at Martinez.
"At last we found our fifth volunteer!" [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]