260
VLADIMIR DUDINSTEV
I shall work for him. He will come-and that will be a happy
day for me."
These words must have pleased her. She was silent for a
while, then said:
"Why do you waste time? That is so unlike you. Mter all,
you own a new, a perfect calculating machine."
That was news! Some new gadget! Again I did not answer
her. Then she took me by the hand and led me to the door.
"What now?" I asked, stopping.
"Don't waste time," she said, mimicking me. "Don't
be
afraid! I can gain time for you."
She dragged me off to another apartment-to the one
where my extraordinary bandit friend had lived a month ago.
She pulled out a key, unlocked the door of his room and turned
away, suppressing a smile. But I beamed: the room was full
of the newest and most expensive apparatus. It was exactly what
I had needed. I began to examine and play with the apparatus,
completely forgetting about my companion.
"Aren't you ashamed!" I suddenly heard her say. "You're
pretending never to have seen these things!" She was off again.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"You should at least have visited your colleague," she
replied evasively. "Perhaps you never saw this either?"
An unfamiliar, large, white flower with a pungent smell
was growing in the aquarium, on the window sill. The woman
made me approach it. She seemed to be testing me. And then
I suddenly remembered.
"It's a lotus. It was grown from the seed which lay in the
sepulchre for two thousand. . . ."
"That's it," she cried triumphantly. "I give you A-plus.
And have you seen this?"
She handed me a calculating machine of the most modern
type--such as I never even dreamt of possessing. This device
could replace a whole staff of mathematicians armed with simple
calculators.
