Westlake, Donald E - Novel 51 Read Online Free PDF Page A

this really was.
                Opening the door, Grigor saw a
fellow patient, a man in the striped pajamas and green robe of the clinic, with
heavy brown wool socks on his feet and a square pale envelope in his hand.
“Grigor,” he said, voice hushed because of the hour, “I won’t come in. I just
wanted to give you this.” And he extended the envelope.
                Automatically taking it, trying to
remember which of his fellow patients
this was, Grigor said, cc What are you doing up so late, uhhhh?”
Trailing off because he was unable to remember the man’s name. The corridor
night-lights offered very little illumination, and his own body blocked the
faint gleam from his bedside lamp; the man was familiar, of course, but Grigor
couldn’t quite make out which particular fellow guinea pig this was. “Very
late,” he repeated, hoping for a clue from the man’s voice.
                “We must be on the same medicine,”
the man answered, in a perfectly ordinary and non-specific voice. “I heard your
alarm just after mine, and thought you’d be the perfect person for this
invitation. I can’t go, you see.”
                “Invitation?” Grigor half turned, to
put the envelope in the light, and saw it was nearly square, made of heavy
cream-toned paper, and blank. An exterior envelope with stamps and name and
address must have been discarded. Inside this envelope was a card of nearly the
same size, which made it hard for Grigor to slide it out. When he did, he saw
it was indeed an invitation, printed in flowery script, addressed to no one in
particular— “You are invited.. —and done in two languages: next to the familiar
Cyrillic script, the same sentiments appeared in Roman script, in English.
                The invitation was to a soiree
(“cocktail party” in the English) tomorrow evening—well, no, this evening—at
the Hotel Savoy, one of the two or three first-class hotels in this classless
city. (They accepted foreign hard currency only, no roubles.) The group
extending the invitation was the International Society for Cultural
Preservation.
                Grigor frowned at this document. “I
don’t understand.”
                “They sent it to me,” the man said,
with a sad smile, “because of what I used to do.”
                Ah. Everyone here at the clinic used
to do something, of course, all different kinds of somethings; not all were
former firemen. And not all had found a new career, like Grigor’s joke-writing,
to take the place of the old. Because so many of the residents found it painful
to be reminded that they could no longer do whatever it was that used to occupy
their minds and their days, the subject was informally agreed to be taboo. No
one would ever ask a fellow resident about his or her former occupation. So
Grigor couldn’t pursue that topic, but had to say instead, “Then why don’t you
go yourself?”
                “I’ve been a little low lately,”
the man said.
                Another forbidden subject. Every
resident of the clinic was doomed to die, and soon rather than late, but not
all of them at the same pace or in the same way or to the same final date.
Complaining about one’s lot or describing one’s horrible symptoms to other
residents would be the height of insensitivity; the person you’re talking to
could very easily be in worse shape than you. So euphemisms had developed, and
were generally understood, and they served to make conversation more palatable,
even more possible. “I’ve been a little low lately,” was universally taken to
mean that one’s particular illness had just moved into a further and more
debilitating phase, that another step on one’s own staircase down into the dark
had just been reached, and that the victim had not yet adapted.
                So once again Grigor couldn’t pursue
a topic. Frowning at the