Memoirs of a Space Traveler

And, chattering in this vein, he took me up a creaky wooden staircase dark with age. It went up around a huge square hall, paneled with bare wood. I remained silent, and when we reached the second floor Zazul said:

“Tichy, I can’t afford parlors and guest rooms; you can see that. I sleep among my specimens, yes, eat, live with them. Come in, and don’t talk too much.”

The room he ushered me into was the one whose three windows were shaded with sheets of paper, paper once white but now extremely dirty, spotted with grease and innumerable crushed flies. The windowsills were black with dead flies. When I closed the door, I noticed comma-shaped marks and dried, bloody insect fragments on it, as though Zazul had been under siege here by all the Hymenoptera. Before I had time to wonder at this, I noticed the other peculiarities of the room. In the middle stood a table, actually two sawhorses with ordinary, roughly planed boards between them; books, papers, and yellowed bones were piled there. But the strangest thing about the room was the walls. Large, crudely constructed shelves held rows of thick bottles and jars; opposite the window, in the space where the shelves broke off, was an enormous glass tank resembling an aquarium the size of a cabinet — resembling, rather, a transparent sarcophagus. The upper half of the tank was covered by a carelessly thrown dirty rag whose tattered ends hung halfway down the glass. But what I saw in the lower, uncovered half made me freeze.

All the jars and bottles contained a blue, cloudy liquid, as in an anatomical museum where various organs are preserved in embalming fluid. The tank was the same type of container, only of enormous size. In its murky depths, which glimmered with a bluish light, two shadows a few centimeters above the bottom rocked back and forth extremely slowly, with the motion of an infinitely patient pendulum. To my horror I recognized these shadows as human legs in alcohol-soaked trousers.

I stood petrified. Zazul did not move, did not make a sound. When my eyes went to his face, I saw that he was very pleased. My outrage, my revulsion delighted him. He held his hands clasped on his chest, as if in prayer, and chuckled with satisfaction.

“What’s the meaning of this, Zazul?” I said in a choking voice. “What is it?”

He turned his back to me, and his hump, so horrible and pointed (looking at it, I feared that the jacket stretched over it would tear), swayed in time with his steps. He sat down in a chair that had an open back (that piece of furniture made me shudder) and suddenly said, with apparent indifference, even weariness:

“It’s a long story, Tichy. You wanted to wait out the storm? Then have a seat and don’t disturb me. I see no reason why I should tell you anything.”

“But I do,” I replied. I had regained my composure to some extent. In the silence filled by the patter of the rain I went up to him and said, “If you don’t explain this, Zazul, I shall have to take steps that will cause you considerable trouble.”

I expected an outburst, but he did not turn a hair. He looked at me and sneered.

“Tell me, Tichy, how does this look? There’s a storm, it’s pouring, you pound on my door, barge in without invitation, threaten to beat me up, and then, when out of the goodness of my heart I try to accommodate you, I have the honor of hearing new threats: now you threaten me with jail. I am a scientist, sir, not a bandit. I am not afraid of jail or of you. I am not afraid of anything, Tichy.”

“That’s a human being,” I said, ignoring his sarcasm, for I was certain that he had brought me here on purpose — so that I could make the hideous discovery. I looked over his head at that terrible double shadow, still swaying gently in the blue liquid.

“Yes,” Zazul readily agreed. “As human as can be.”

“This you won’t weasel out of!” I cried.

He observed me; then suddenly something happened to him — he trembled, groaned — and my hair stood on end. The man was laughing.

“Tichy,” he said when he had calmed down a little, but there was still a glint of unholy mischief in his eyes, “what do you say? Let’s make a bet. I will tell you how that” — he pointed — “came about, and when I do, you will not want to touch a hair on my head. Of your own free will, of course. Is it a bet?”

“Did you kill him?”

“In a way, yes. At any rate, I put him there. Unless you think it’s possible to live in a ninety-six-percent solution of denatured alcohol? That there’s still hope?”

His swagger, his self-assured irony in the presence of the body, restored my composure.

“It’s a bet,” I said coldly. “Go on!”

“Now, don’t rush me,” he said, with the tone of a prince granting an audience. “I’m telling you this because it amuses me, Tichy, because it’s a funny story and gives me satisfaction in the telling, not because you threatened me. I’m not afraid of threats, Tichy. But enough of that. Tichy, did you ever hear of Mallengs?”