256
VLADIMIR DUDINTSEV
When I appeared, holding a box in each hand, on the
threshold of our bachelor quarters, a few men had already
gathered in the communal room near the TV set, idlers
all
of
them.
"So, it's been decided-we are postponing the celebr.ation!"
the practical joker said to me.
He was fiddling with the television knobs. Football players'
legs began to flash on the screen. The spectators froze. Their
eyes, dilating unnaturally, became fixed. I heard the ticking of
my watch and understood: if our TV set were to continue to
work uninterruptedly for the next two thousand years, these five
men would go on sitting in this way without a break-and they
would be preserved for their descendants like the lotus seeds.
I moved several people, together with their chairs, out of
my way, and I carried all the boxes to my room. I then dis–
missed the taxi.
My owl was still perched in the same place outside the
window. I was calm now. The owl was well lit up by a bright
lamp in the room. Did I see the owl distinctly? I went to the
window. For a while we stared at each other. Then the owl
walked back and forth along the iron sheet-exactly as owls
walk on a branch in the zoo. It bent over, raised its yellow, triple
claw, which looked as
if
it had been covered with wax drippings,
and, like a hen, it quickly, very quickly, scr.atched its beaks
with its hind claw. Then
it
quieted down, perched itself
vertically, and fixed me with two metallic circles---its eyes. I
could see my owl very distinctly!
Then I pulled myself together again and began quickly
to open the boxes and to arrange the apparatus. Within five
minutes my room began to glitter with glass and chrome. It
had become a laboratory.
"Will I have time?" I thought. "I need at least ten years."
I tried to remember some fragments of the ideas which had
been burned at various times in the laboratory stoves. I attempt–
ed to jot them down again, but nothing came of it.
