Potboiler

Zhulk returned not long after. He was not alone. The surroundings would seem to preclude maid service, but sure enough, the woman following him was dressed in a black polyester dress, a limp white headband, and a white apron gone gray with numerous launderings. The dress had seen better days. Its seams were puckered. The maid herself was a stout, sallow creature, with swollen calves and a broad, flat backside. Her eyes were droopy. The backs of her hands were flaky from washing dishes. She was carrying a tray of food. She seemed unhappy to be there. Pfefferkorn could more or less see the rain cloud over her head. She unlocked the cell door, crossed to the desk, put the tray down, and started to walk out.

Zhulk clucked his tongue at her. She paused and turned to face Pfefferkorn.

Pfefferkorn had never imagined how much venom could be packed into a single curtsy.

She stepped out of the cell. Zhulk spoke harshly to her and she trudged out of sight. A moment later, a door opened and closed.

Zhulk gestured to the food. “Sir, please.”

Pfefferkorn peered at the tray. Its contents confirmed that he was back in West Zlabia. There was a charred puck of root vegetable hash, a cup of brown tea, and a small pat of goat’s-milk butter whose barnyardy aroma caused him to retch.

“I’ll pass,” he said.

“Sir, this is unacceptable. Food represents labor, and labor represents the will of the Party, and what the Party wills cannot be denied.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Sir, this is incorrect. Article eleven of the principles of the glorious revolution dictates that nothing exists except for that which is necessary. Sir, I, the individual, have already eaten my lunch. Hence the need for this food cannot reasonably be ascribed to me, the individual. Therefore you, sir, must have need of this food. If you did not, then the food would exist without its being necessary, and clearly this cannot be true, for the principle just stated. Therefore, either this food is an illusion or you must need it. But this food is not an illusion. Sir, it is plainly there. Therefore you must need it. QED.”

Pfefferkorn, mindful of the phrase “scrotal electroshock,” sat down in the wooden desk chair. He picked up the puck of hash. He spread the butter across it and shoved the whole thing into his mouth. It tasted like scarcity. He got it down as fast as he could and chased it with the tea. He sat back, wishing he had something to chase the tea with. His chest hurt. It was too much food to take in at once and he could feel its mass exfoliating the interior of his gullet. He had a premonition that he would soon be tasting it in reverse.

“Sir, the Party salutes you,” Zhulk said.

A door opened and closed. The maid staggered into view, pushing a wheelbarrow full of books and papers. Zhulk held open the cell bars for her and she carted the wheelbarrow in. She set it down near the desk and began unloading it.

“Sir, you will find these items inspiring.”

The books were old and musty, with broken spines and dangling covers. There were a lot of them, and the maid was perspiring lightly by the time she finished. She took the empty tray, curtsied to Pfefferkorn, and exited the cell.

“Sir, it is the intention of the Party to provide you with all that you require, within reason. Please state any additional needs and they will be seen to.”

There was a silence.

“I could use a shower,” Pfefferkorn said.

“Very good,” Zhulk said. He spoke harshly to the maid, who trudged off again. “My wife will accommodate this request as soon as possible.”

“Your wife?”

“A proud and humble servant of the Party,” Zhulk said. “No different from any other comrade of the revolution.”

“Right,” Pfefferkorn said.

Zhulk bowed. “If there is nothing further, sir, I, the individual, shall leave you to great thoughts.”

95.

He had been given eleven reams of writing paper, an assortment of the finest West Zlabian leakproof ballpoint pens, four different linear English translations each of the West Zlabian edition of Vassily Nabochka, a compendium of errata, a Zlabian-English dictionary, a Zlabian rhyming dictionary, a Zlabian thesaurus, the complete Encyclopædia Zlabica, a bundle of maps as thick as a phone book, a copy of the Party writings, D. M. Piilyarzhkhyuiy’s seventeen-volume history of the Zlabian peoples, an anthology of Marxist literary criticism, and reprints of Zhulk’s speeches dating back to 1987. There were several photo albums filled with picture postcards of the local countryside. There was a calendar, a freebie distributed by the Ministry of Sexual Sanitation. Each month highlighted another venereal disease. Zhulk had circled three days in red. The first was that day’s date. Pfefferkorn counted twelve more days of chlamydia before the clap rolled around and the countdown to the festival began. The thirteenth was opening night, and the Friday prior was labeled final deadline in Zlabian.

Twenty-two days.