It was a warm afternoon in early September when I first met the Illustrated Man. Walking along an asphalt road, I was on the final long of a two weeks' walking tour of Wisconsin. Late in the afternoon I stopped, ate some pork, beans, and a doughnut, and was preparing to stretch out and read when the Illustrated Man walked over the hill and stood for a moment against the sky.
      I didn't know he was Illustrated then. I only know that he was tall, once well muscled, but now, for some reason, going to fat. I recall that his arms were long, and the hands thick, but that his face was like a child's, set upon a massive body.
      He seemed only to sense my presence, for he didn't look directly at me when he spoke his first words.
      "Do you know where I earn find a job?"
      "I'm afraid not," I said.
      "I hadn't bad a job that's lasted in forty years," he said.
      Though it was a hot late afternoon, he wore his wool shirt buttoned tight about his neck. His sleeves were rolled and buttoned down over his thick wrists. Perspiration was streaming from his face, yet he made no move to open his shirt.
      "Well," he said at last, "this is as good a place as any to spend the night. Do you mind company."
      "I have some extra food you'd be welcome to," I said.
      He sat down heavily, grunting. 'You'll be sorry you asked me to stay," he said. "Everyone always is. That's why I'm walking. Here it is, early. September, the cream of the Labor Day carnival season. I should be making money hand over fist at any small town side show celebration, but here I am with no prospects."
      He took off an immense shoe and peered at it closely. "I usually keep a job about ten days. Then something happens and they fire me. By now every carnival in America won't touch me with a ten-foot pole."
      "What seems to be the trouble?" I asked.
      For answer, he unbuttoned his tight collar, slowly. With his eyes shut, he put a slow hand to the task of unbuttoning his shirt all the way down. He slipped his fingers in to feel his chest. "Funny," he said, eyes still shut. 'You can't feel them but they're there. I always hope that someday I'll look and they'll be gone. I walk in the sun for hours on the hottest days, baking, and hope that my sweat'll wash them off, the sun'll cook them off, but at sundown they're still there." He turned his head slightly toward me and exposed his chest. "Are they still there now?"
      After a long while I exhaled. "Yes," I said. "They're still there."
      The Illustrations.
      "Another reason I keep my collar buttoned up," he said, opening his eyes, "is the children. They follow me along country roads. Everyone wants to see the pictures, and yet nobody wants to see them."
      He took his shirt off and wadded it in his hands. He was covered with Illustrations from the blue tattooed ring about his neck to his belt line.
      "It keeps right on going," he said, guessing my thought. "All of me is Illustrated. Look." He opened his hand. On his palm was a rose, freshly cut, with drops of crystal wake among the soft pink petals. I put my hand out to touch it, but it was only an Illustration.
      As for the rest of him, I cannot say how I sat and stared, for be was a riot of rockets and fountains and people, in such intricate detail and color that you could hear the voices murmuring small and muted, from the crowds that inhabited his body. When his flesh twitched, the tiny mouths flickered, the tiny green-and-gold eyes winked, the tiny pink hands gestured. There were yellow meadows and blue rivers and mountains and stars and suns and planets spread in a Milky Way across his chest. The people themselves were in twenty or more odd groups upon his arms, shoulders, back, sides, and wrists, as well as on the flat of his stomach. You found them in forests of hair, lurking among a constellation of freckles, or peering from armpit caverns, diamond eyes aglitter. Each seemed intent upon his own activity, each was a separate gallery portrait.
      "Why, they're beautiful!" I said.
      How can I explain about his Illustrations? If El Greco had painted miniatures in his prime, no bigger than your hand, infinitely detailed, with all his sulphurous color, elongation, and anatomy, perhaps he might have used this man's body for his art. The colors burned in three dimensions. They were windows looking in upon fiery reality. Here, gathered on one wall, were all the finest scenes in the universe the man was a walking treasure gallery. This wasn't the work of a cheap carnival tattoo man with three colors and whisky on his breath. This was the accomplishment of a living genius vibrant, clear, and beautiful.
      "Oh, yes," said the Illustrated Man. "I'm so proud of my Illustrations that I'd like to burn them off. I've tried sandpaper, acid, a knife . . ."
      The sun was setting. The moon was already up in the East.
      "For, you see," said the Illustrated Man, "these Illustrations predict the future."
      I said nothing.
      "It's all right in sunlight," he went on.
      "I would keep a carnival day job. But at night--the pictures move. The pictures change."
      I must have smiled. "How long have you been Illustrated?"
      "In 1900, when I was twenty years old and working a carnival, I broke my leg. It laid me up; I had to do something to keep my band in, so I decided to get tattooed."
      "But who tattooed you? What happened to the artist?"
      "She went back to the future," he said. "I mean it. She was an old woman in a little house in the middle of Wisconsin here somewhere not far from this place. A little old witch who looked a thousand years old one moment and twenty years old the next, but she said she could travel in time. I laughed. Now, I know better."
      "How did you happen to meet her?"
      He told me. He had seen her painted sign by the road SKIN ILLUSTRATION! Illustration instead of tattoo! Artistic! So he had sat all night while her magic needles stung him wasp stings and delicate bee stings. By morning he looked like a man who had fallen into a twenty color print press and been squeezed out, all bright and picturesque.
      "I've hunted every summer for fifty years," he said, putting his hands out on the air. "When I find that witch I'm going to kill her."
      The sun was gone. Now the first stars were shining and the moon had brightened the fields of grass and wheat. Still the Illustrated Man's pictures glowed like charcoals in the half light, like scattered rubies and emeralds, with Rouault colors and Picasso colors and the long, pressed out El Greco bodies.
      "So people fire me when my pictures move. They don't like it when violent things happen in my Illustrations. Each Illustration is a little story. If you watch them, in a few minutes they tell you a tale. In three hours of looking you could see eighteen or twenty stories acted right on my body, you could hear voices and think thoughts. It's all here, just waiting for you to look. But most of all, there's a special spot on my body." He bared his back. "See?" There's no special design on my right shoulder blade, just a jumble."
      "Yes. "
      "When I've been around a person long enough, that spot clouds over and fills in. If I'm with a woman, her picture comes there on my back, in an hour, and shows her whole life-how she'll live, how she'll die, what she'll look like when she's sixty. And if it's a man, an hour later his picture's here on my back. It shows him falling off a cliff, or dying under a. train. So I'm fired again."
      All the time he had been talking his hands had wandered over the Illustrations, as if to adjust their frames, to brush away dust--the motions of a connoisseur, an art patron. Now he lay back, long and full in the moonlight. It was a warm night. There was no breeze and the air was stifling. We both had our shirts off.
      "And you'll never found the old woman?"
      "Never."
      "And you think she came from the future?"
      "How else could she know these stories she painted on me?"
      He shut his eyes tiredly. His voice grew fainter. "Sometimes at night I can fed them, the pictures, like ants, crawling on my skin. Then I know they're doing what they have to do. I never look at them any more. I just try to rest. I don't sleep much. Don't you look at them either, I warn you. Turn the other way when you sleep."
      I lay back a few feet from him. He didn't seem violent, and the pictures were beautiful. Otherwise I might have been tempted to get out and away from such babbling. But the Illustrations . . . I let my eyes fill up on them. Any person would go a little mad with such things upon his body.
      The night was serene. I could bear the Illustrated Man's breathing in the moonlight. Crickets were stirring gently in the distant ravines. I lay with my body sidewise so I could- watch the Illustrations. Perhaps half an hour passed. Whether the Illustrated Man slept I could not tell, but suddenly I heard him whisper, 'They're moving, aren't they?"
      I waited a minute.
      Then I said, "Yes."
      The pictures were moving, each in its turn, each for a brief minute or two. There in the moonlight, with the tiny tinkling thoughts and the distant sea voices, it seemed, each little drama was enacted. Whether it took an hour or three hours for the dramas to finish, it would be hard to say. I only know that I lay fascinated and did not move while the stars wheeled in the sky.
      Eighteen Illustrations, tighten tales. I counted them one by one.
      Primarily my eyes focused upon a scene, a large house with two people in it. I saw a flight of vultures on a blazing flesh sky, I saw yellow lions, and I heard voices.
      The first Illustration quivered and came to lift….
 

 

Переводчик: Нора Галь / Б. Клюева

 
      Примечание: Этот рассказ был опубликован в сборнике "Человек в картинках" в двух частях: одна в начале сборника, другая в конце как эпилог. Причём, конец первой части предваряет начало следующего рассказа. В переводе Норы Галь – это рассказ "Калейдоскоп", в оригинале – "Вельд".
 
      С человеком в картинках я повстречался ранним тёплым вечером в начале сентября. Я шагал по асфальту шоссе, это был последний переход в моем двухнедельном странствии по штату Висконсин. Под вечер я сделал привал, подкрепился свининой с бобами, пирожком и уже собирался растянуться на земле и почитать – и тут-то на вершину холма поднялся Человек в картинках и постоял минуту, словно вычерченный на светлом небе.
      Тогда я еще не знал, что он – в картинках. Разглядел только, что он высокий и прежде, видно, был поджарый и мускулистый, а теперь почему-то располнел. Помню, руки у него были длинные, кулачищи – как гири, сам большой, грузный, а лицо совсем детское.
      Должно быть, он как-то почуял мое присутствие, потому что заговорил, еще и не посмотрев на меня:
      – Не скажете, где бы мне найти работу?
      – Право, не знаю, – сказал я.
      – Вот уже сорок лет не могу найти постоянной работы,- пожаловался он.
      В такую жару на нём была наглухо застегнутая шерстяная рубашка. Рукава – и те застегнуты, манжеты туго сжимают толстые запястья. Пот градом катится по лицу, а он хоть бы ворот распахнул.
      – Что ж, – сказал он, помолчав, – можно и тут переночевать, чем плохое место. Составлю вам компанию,- вы не против?
      – Милости просим, могу поделиться кое-какой едой, – сказал я.
      Он тяжело, с кряхтеньем опустился наземь.
      – Вы ещё пожалеете, что предложили мне остаться, – сказал он. – Все жалеют. Потому я и брожу. Вот, пожалуйста, начало сентября. День труда – самое распрекрасное время. В каждом городишке гулянье, народ развлекается, тут бы мне загребать деньги лопатой, а я вон сижу и ничего хорошего не жду.
      Он стащил с ноги огромный башмак и, прищурясь, начал его разглядывать.
      – На работе, если повезет, продержусь дней десять. А потом уж непременно так получается – катись на все четыре стороны! Теперь во всей Америке меня ни в один балаган не наймут, лучше и не соваться.
      – Что ж так?
      Вместо ответа он медленно расстегнул тугой воротник. Крепко зажмурясь, мешкотно и неуклюже расстегнул рубашку сверху донизу. Сунул руку за пазуху, осторожно ощупал себя.
      – Чудно,- сказал он, всё ещё не открывая глаз. – На ощупь ничего не заметно, но они тут. Я все надеюсь – вдруг в один прекрасный день погляжу, а они пропали! В самое пекло ходишь целый день по солнцу, весь изжаришься, думаешь: может, их потом смоет или кожа облупятся и всё сойдёт, а вечером глядишь – они тут как тут. – Он чуть повернул ко мне голову и распахнул рубаху на груди. – Тут они?
      Не сразу мне удалось перевести дух.
      – Да, – сказал я, – они тут.
      Картинки.
      – И ещё я почему застегиваю ворот – из-за ребятни, – сказал он, открывая глаза. – Детишки гоняются за мной по пятам. Всем охота поглядеть, как я разрисован, а ведь всем неприятно.
      Он снял рубашку и свернул ее в комок. Он был весь в картинках, от синего кольца, вытатуированного вокруг шеи, и до самого пояса.
      – И дальше то же самое, – сказал он, угадав мою мысль. – Я весь как есть в картинках. Вот поглядите.
      Он разжал кулак. На ладони у него лежала роза – только что срезанная, с хрустальными каплями росы меж нежных розовых лепестков. Я протянул руку и коснулся её, но это была только картинка.
      Да что ладонь! Я сидел и пялил на него глаза: на нём живого места не было, всюду кишели ракеты, фонтаны, человечки – целые толпы, да так все хитро сплетено и перепутано, так ярко и живо, до самых малых мелочей, что казалось – даже слышны тихие, приглушенные голоса этих бесчисленных человечков. Чуть он шевельнётся, вздохнёт – и вздрагивают крохотные рты, подмигивают крохотные зелёные с золотыми искорками глаза, взмахивают крохотные розовые руки. На его широкой груди золотились луга, синели реки, вставали горы, тут же протянулся Млечный Путь – звёзды, солнца, планеты. А человечки теснились кучками в двадцати разных местах, если не больше,- на руках, от плеча и до кисти, на боках, на спине и на животе. Они прятались в лесу волос, рыскали среди созвездий веснушек, выглядывали из пещер подмышек, глаза их так и сверкали. Каждый хлопотал о чём-то своём, каждый был сам по себе, точно портрет в картинной галерее.
      – Да какие красивые картинки! – вырвалось у меня.
      Как мне их описать? Если бы Эль Греко в расцвете сил и таланта писал миниатюры величиной в ладонь, с мельчайшими подробностями, в обычных своих жёлто-зелёных тонах, со странно удлиненными телами и лицами, можно было бы подумать, что это он расписал своей кистью моего нового знакомца. Краски пылали в трёх измерениях. Они были точно окна, распахнутые в живой, зримый и осязаемый мир, ошеломляющий своей реальностью. Здесь, собранное на одной и той же сцене, сверкало все великолепие вселенной; этот человек был живой галереей шедевров. Его расписал не какой-нибудь ярмарочный пьяница татуировщик, всё малюющий в три краски. Нет, это было создание истинного гения, трепетная, совершенная красота.
      – Ещё бы! – сказал Человек в картинках. – Я до того горжусь своими картинками, что рад бы выжечь их огнём. Я уж пробовал и наждачной бумагой, и кислотой, и ножом…
      Солнце садилось. На востоке уже взошла луна.
      – Понимаете ли, – сказал Человек в картинках, – они предсказывают будущее.
      Я молчал.
      – Днём, при свете, еще ничего, – продолжал он. – Я могу показываться в балагане. А вот ночью… все картинки двигаются. Они меняются.
      Должно быть, я невольно улыбнулся.
      – И давно вы так разрисованы?
      – В тысяча девятисотом, когда мне было двадцать лет, я работал в бродячем цирке и сломал ногу. Ну и вышел из строя, а надо ж было что-то делать, я и решил – пускай меня татуируют.
      – Кто же вас татуировал? Куда девался этот мастер?
      – Она вернулась, в будущее,- был ответ.- Я не шучу. Это была старуха, она жила в штате Висконсин, где-то тут неподалеку был ее домишко. Этакая колдунья, то дашь ей тысячу лет, а через минуту поглядишь – лет двадцать, не больше, но она мне сказала, что умеет путешествовать во времени. Я тогда захохотал. Теперь-то мне не до смеха.
      – Как же вы с ней познакомились?
      И он рассказал мне, как это было. Он увидел у дороги раскрашенную вывеску: РОСПИСЬ НА КОЖЕ! Не татуировка, а роспись! Настоящее искусство! И всю ночь напролёт он сидел и чувствовал, как ее волшебные иглы колют и жалят его, точно осы и осторожные пчелы. А наутро он стал весь такой цветистый и узорчатый, словно его пропустили через типографский пресс, печатающий рисунки в двадцать красок.
      – Вот уже полвека я каждое лето её ищу, – сказал он и потряс кулаком. – А как отыщу – убью.
      Солнце зашло. Сияли первые звезды, светились под луной травы и пшеница в полях. А картинки на странном человеке все еще горели в сумраке, точно раскаленные уголья, точно разбросанные пригоршни рубинов и изумрудов, и там были краски Pyo, и краски Пикассо, и удлиненные плоские тела Эль Греко.
      – Ну вот, и когда мои картинки начинают шевелиться, люди меня выгоняют. Им не по вкусу, когда на картинках творятся всякие страсти. Каждая картинка – повесть. Посмотрите несколько минут – и она вам что-то расскажет. А если три часа будете смотреть, увидите штук двадцать разных историй, они прямо на мне разыгрываются, вы и голоса услышите, и разные думы передумаете. Вот оно всё тут, только и ждёт, чтоб вы смотрели. А главное, есть на мне одно такое место. – Он повернулся спиной. – Видите? Там у меня на правой лопатке ничего определенного не нарисовано, просто каша какая-то.
      – Вижу.
      – Стоит мне побыть рядом с человеком немножко подольше, и это место вроде как затуманивается и на нем появляется картинка. Если рядом женщина, через час у меня на спине появляется ее изображение и видна вся ее жизнь – как она будет жить дальше, как помрет, какая она будет в шестьдесят лет. А если это мужчина, за час у меня на спине появится его изображение: как он свалится с обрыва или поездом его переедет. И опять меня гонят в три шеи.
      Так он говорил и все поглаживал ладонями свои картинки, будто поправлял рамки или пыль стирал, точь-в-точь какой-нибудь коллекционер, знаток и любитель живописи. Потом лёг, откинувшись на спину, очень большой и грузный в лунном свете. Ночь настала теплая. Душно, ни ветерка. Мы оба лежали без рубашек.
      – И вы так и не отыскали ту старуху?
      – Нет.
      – И по-вашему, она явилась из будущего?
      – А иначе откуда бы ей знать все эти истории, что она на мне разрисовала?
      Он устало закрыл глаза. Заговорил тише:
      – Бывает, по ночам я их чувствую, картинки. Вроде как муравьи по мне ползают. Тут уж я знаю, они делают свое дело. Я на них больше и не гляжу никогда. Стараюсь хоть немного отдохнуть. Я ведь почти не сплю. И вы тоже лучше не глядите, вот что я вам скажу. Коли хотите уснуть, отвернитесь от меня.
      Я лежал шагах в трёх от него. Он был как будто не буйный и уж очень занятно разрисован. Не то я, пожалуй, предпочел бы убраться подальше от его нелепой болтовни. Но эти картинки… Я всё не мог наглядеться. Всякий бы свихнулся, если б его так изукрасили.
      Ночь была тихая, лунная. Я слышал, как он дышит. Где-то поодаль, в овражках, не смолкали сверчки. Я лежал на боку так, чтоб видеть картинки. Прошло, пожалуй, с полчаса. Непонятно было, уснул ли Человек в картинках, но вдруг я услышал его шепот:
      – Шевелятся, а?
      Я понаблюдал с минуту. Потом сказал:
      – Да.
      Картинки шевелились, каждая в свой черёд, каждая – всего минуту-другую. При свете луны, казалось, одна за другой разыгрывались маленькие трагедии, тоненько звенели мысли и, словно далекий прибой, тихо роптали. Не сумею сказать, час ли, три ли часа все это длилось. Знаю только, что я лежал как зачарованный и не двигался, пока звёзды свершали свой путь по небосводу…
      Человек в картинках шевельнулся. Потом заворочался во сне, и при каждом движении на глаза мне попадала новая картинка – на спине, на плече, на запястье. Он откинул руку, теперь она лежала в сухой траве, на которую ещё не пала утренняя роса, ладонью вверх. Пальцы разжались, и на ладони ожила еще одна картинка. Он поежился, и на груди его я увидал чёрную пустыню, глубокую, бездонную пропасть – там мерцали звёзды, и среди звёзд что-то шевелилось, что-то падало в чёрную бездну; я смотрел, а оно всё падало…
 

      "George, I wish you'd look at the nursery."
      "What's wrong with it?"
      "I don't know."
      "Well, then."
      "I just want you to look at it, is all, or call a psychologist in to look at it."
      "What would a psychologist want with a nursery?"
      "You know very well what he'd want." His wife paused in the middle of the kitchen and watched the stove busy humming to itself, making supper for four.
      "It's just that the nursery is different now than it was."
      "All right, let's have a look."
      They walked down the hall of their soundproofed Happylife Home, which had cost them thirty thousand dollars installed, this house which clothed and fed and rocked them to sleep and played and sang and was good to them. Their approach sensitized a switch somewhere and the nursery light flicked on when they came within ten feet of it. Similarly, behind them, in the halls, lights went on and off as they left them behind, with a soft automaticity.
      "Well," said George Hadley.
      They stood on the thatched floor of the nursery. It was forty feet across by forty feet long and thirty feet high; it had cost half again as much as the rest of the house. "But nothing's too good for our children," George had said.
      The nursery was silent. It was empty as a jungle glade at hot high noon. The walls were blank and two dimensional. Now, as George and Lydia Hadley stood in the center of the room, the walls began to purr and recede into crystalline distance, it seemed, and presently an African veldt appeared, in three dimensions, on all sides, in color reproduced to the final pebble and bit of straw. The ceiling above them became a deep sky with a hot yellow sun.
      George Hadley felt the perspiration start on his brow.
      "Let's get out of this sun," he said. "This is a little too real. But I don't see anything wrong."
      "Wait a moment, you'll see," said his wife.
      Now the hidden odorophonics were beginning to blow a wind of odor at the two people in the middle of the baked veldtland. The hot straw smell of lion grass, the cool green smell of the hidden water hole, the great rusty smell of animals, the smell of dust like a red paprika in the hot air. And now the sounds: the thump of distant antelope feet on grassy sod, the papery rustling of vultures. A shadow passed through the sky. The shadow flickered on George Hadley's upturned, sweating face.
      "Filthy creatures," he heard his wife say.
      "The vultures."
      "You see, there are the lions, far over, that way. Now they're on their way to the water hole. They've just been eating," said Lydia. "I don't know what."
      "Some animal." George Hadley put his hand up to shield off the burning light from his squinted eyes. "A zebra or a baby giraffe, maybe."
      "Are you sure?" His wife sounded peculiarly tense.
      "No, it's a little late to be sure," be said, amused. "Nothing over there I can see but cleaned bone, and the vultures dropping for what's left."
      "Did you bear that scream?" she asked.
      'No."
      "About a minute ago?"
      "Sorry, no."
      The lions were coming. And again George Hadley was filled with admiration for the mechanical genius who had conceived this room. A miracle of efficiency selling for an absurdly low price. Every home should have one. Oh, occasionally they frightened you with their clinical accuracy, they startled you, gave you a twinge, but most of the time what fun for everyone, not only your own son and daughter, but for yourself when you felt like a quick jaunt to a foreign land, a quick change of scenery. Well, here it was!
      And here were the lions now, fifteen feet away, so real, so feverishly and startlingly real that you could feel the prickling fur on your hand, and your mouth was stuffed with the dusty upholstery smell of their heated pelts, and the yellow of them was in your eyes like the yellow of an exquisite French tapestry, the yellows of lions and summer grass, and the sound of the matted lion lungs exhaling on the silent noontide, and the smell of meat from the panting, dripping mouths.
      The lions stood looking at George and Lydia Hadley with terrible green-yellow eyes.
      "Watch out!" screamed Lydia.
      The lions came running at them.
      Lydia bolted and ran. Instinctively, George sprang after her. Outside, in the hall, with the door slammed he was laughing and she was crying, and they both stood appalled at the other's reaction.
      "George!"
      "Lydia! Oh, my dear poor sweet Lydia!"
      "They almost got us!"
      "Walls, Lydia, remember; crystal walls, that's all they are. Oh, they look real, I must admit – Africa in your parlor – but it's all dimensional, superreactionary, supersensitive color film and mental tape film behind glass screens. It's all odorophonics and sonics, Lydia. Here's my handkerchief."
 
      "I'm afraid." She came to him and put her body against him and cried steadily. "Did you see? Did you feel? It's too real."
      "Now, Lydia…"
      "You've got to tell Wendy and Peter not to read any more on Africa."
      "Of course – of course." He patted her.
      "Promise?"
      "Sure."
      "And lock the nursery for a few days until I get my nerves settled."
      "You know how difficult Peter is about that. When I punished him a month ago by locking the nursery for even a few hours – the tantrum be threw! And Wendy too. They live for the nursery."
      "It's got to be locked, that's all there is to it."
      "All right." Reluctantly he locked the huge door. "You've been working too hard. You need a rest."
      "I don't know – I don't know," she said, blowing her nose, sitting down in a chair that immediately began to rock and comfort her. "Maybe I don't have enough to do. Maybe I have time to think too much. Why don't we shut the whole house off for a few days and take a vacation?"
      "You mean you want to fry my eggs for me?"
      "Yes." She nodded.
      "And dam my socks?"
      "Yes." A frantic, watery-eyed nodding.
      "And sweep the house?"
      "Yes, yes – oh, yes!''
      "But I thought that's why we bought this house, so we wouldn't have to do anything?"
      "That's just it. I feel like I don't belong here. The house is wife and mother now, and nursemaid. Can I compete with an African veldt? Can I give a bath and scrub the children as efficiently or quickly as the automatic scrub bath can? I cannot. And it isn't just me. It's you. You've been awfully nervous lately."
      "I suppose I have been smoking too much."
      "You look as if you didn't know what to do with yourself in this house, either. You smoke a little more every morning and drink a little more every afternoon and need a little more sedative every night. You're beginning to feel unnecessary too."
      "Am I?" He paused and tried to feel into himself to see what was really there.
      "Oh, George!" She looked beyond him, at the nursery door. "Those lions can't get out of there, can they?"
      He looked at the door and saw it tremble as if something had jumped against it from the other side.
      "Of course not," he said.
 
      At dinner they ate alone, for Wendy and Peter were at a special plastic carnival across town and bad televised home to say they'd be late, to go ahead eating. So George Hadley, bemused, sat watching the dining-room table produce warm dishes of food from its mechanical interior.
      "We forgot the ketchup," he said.
      "Sorry," said a small voice within the table, and ketchup appeared.
      As for the nursery, thought George Hadley, it won't hurt for the children to be locked out of it awhile. Too much of anything isn't good for anyone. And it was clearly indicated that the children had been spending a little too much time on Africa. That sun. He could feel it on his neck, still, like a hot paw. And the lions. And the smell of blood. Remarkable how the nursery caught the telepathic emanations of the children's minds and created life to fill their every desire. The children thought lions, and there were lions. The children thought zebras, and there were zebras. Sun – sun. Giraffes – giraffes. Death and death.
      That last. He chewed tastelessly on the meat that the table bad cut for him. Death thoughts. They were awfully young, Wendy and Peter, for death thoughts. Or, no, you were never too young, really. Long before you knew what death was you were wishing it on someone else. When you were two years old you were shooting people with cap pistols.
      But this – the long, hot African veldt-the awful death in the jaws of a lion. And repeated again and again.
      "Where are you going?"
      He didn't answer Lydia. Preoccupied, be let the lights glow softly on ahead of him, extinguish behind him as he padded to the nursery door. He listened against it. Far away, a lion roared.
      He unlocked the door and opened it. Just before he stepped inside, he heard a faraway scream. And then another roar from the lions, which subsided quickly.
      He stepped into Africa. How many times in the last year had he opened this door and found Wonderland, Alice, the Mock Turtle, or Aladdin and his Magical Lamp, or Jack Pumpkinhead of Oz, or Dr. Doolittle, or the cow jumping over a very real-appearing moon-all the delightful contraptions of a make-believe world. How often had he seen Pegasus flying in the sky ceiling, or seen fountains of red fireworks, or heard angel voices singing.