“If it had been up to Al, we’d still have every penny in passbook savings.”
“Bury it, bury it. Stopper the genie in the bottle.”
“I happen to have an eye condition that makes it painful for me to read,” said Mr. Söderblad.
“Oh, really?” said Mrs. Nygren acidly. “What is the medical name of this condition?”
“I like a cool autumn day,” said Dr. Roth.
“Then again,” said Mrs. Nygren, “I suppose that to learn the condition’s name would itself necessitate painful reading.”
“This is a small planet.”
“There is lazy eye, of course, but to have two lazy eyes at once—”
“That is not really possible,” said Mr. Nygren. “The ‘lazy eye’ syndrome, or amblyopia, is a condition in which one eye assumes the work of the other. Therefore, if one eye is lazy, the other is by definition—”
“Per, shut up,” said Mrs. Nygren.
“Inga!”
“Waiter, refill.”
“Imagine the Uzbek upper middle class,” said Dr. Roth. “One of the families had the same Ford Stomper we have. In fact the only difference between our upper middle class and their upper middle class was that none of them, not even the richest family in town, had indoor plumbing.”
“I am aware,” said Mr. Söderblad, “that as a nonreader I am morally inferior to all Norwegians. I accept this.”
“Flies like around something four days dead. Bucket of ashes that you sprinkle in the hole. Even the little way you can see down into it is farther than you want to. And a glittering Ford Stomper parked in their driveway. And they’re videotaping us videotaping them.”
“At the same time, in spite of my disability, I do manage to enjoy a pleasure or two in life.”
“How empty, though, Stig, our pleasures must be,” said Signe Söderblad, “compared to those of the Nygrens.”
“Yes, they do seem to experience the deep and lasting pleasures of the mind. At the same time, Signe, this is a very flattering dress you are wearing this morning. Even Mr. Nygren has been admiring this dress, in spite of the deep and lasting pleasures he finds elsewhere.”
“Per, come along,” said Mrs. Nygren. “We are being insulted.”
“Stig, did you hear? The Nygrens have been insulted and are leaving us.”
“It is a great pity. They are such fun to be with.”
“Our children are all easterners now,” Enid said. “Nobody seems to like the Midwest anymore.”
“Biding my time here, fella,” said a familiar voice.
“The cashier at the Du Pont executive dining room was an Uzbek girl. I’ve probably seen Uzbeks at the IKEA store in Plymouth Meeting. These aren’t extraterrestrials we’re talking about. Uzbeks wear bifocals. They fly on planes.”
“We’re stopping in Philadelphia on the way home so we can eat at her new restaurant. It’s called the Generator?”
“Enid, my gosh, that’s her place? Ted and I were there two weeks ago.”
“It’s a small world,” Enid said.
“We had a terrific dinner. Really memorably good.”
“So in effect we’ve spent six thousand dollars to be reminded of what a pit toilet smells like.”
“I’ll never forget it,” Alfred said.
“And are grateful for that pit toilet! In terms of the actual benefits of foreign travel. In terms of what TV and books can’t give you. In terms of what you can only experience firsthand. Take away the pit toilet and we’d feel like we’d wasted six thousand dollars.”
“Shall we go rot our brains on the Sun Deck?”
“Oh, Stig, let’s. I am intellectually exhausted.”
“Thank God for poverty. Thank God for driving on the left side of the road. Thank God for Babel. Thank God for strange voltages and oddly shaped plugs.” Dr. Roth lowered his glasses and peered over them, observing the Swedish exodus. “I note in passing that every dress that woman owns is designed for quick removal.”
“I’ve never seen Ted so eager to get to breakfast,” Sylvia said. “And lunch. And dinner.”
“Stunning northern scenery,” Roth said. “Isn’t that what we’re here for?”
Alfred lowered his eyes uncomfortably. A little fishbone of prudery was stuck in Enid’s throat as well. “Do you think he really has an eye problem?” she managed to say.
“His eye is excellent in at least one respect.”
“Ted, though, stop.”
“That the Swedish bombshell is a stale cliché is itself a stale cliché.”
“Please stop.”
The retired vice president of Compliance pushed his glasses back up his nose and turned to Alfred. “I wonder if we’re depressed because there’s no frontier anymore. Because we can’t pretend anymore there’s a place no one’s been. I wonder if aggregate depression is on the rise, worldwide.”
“I feel so wonderful this morning. Slept so well.”
“Lab rats become listless in overcrowded conditions.”
“You do, Enid, seem transformed. Just tell me this isn’t related to that doctor on the ‘D’ Deck. I hear stories.”
“Stories?”
“The so-called cyber frontier,” said Dr. Roth, “but where’s the wilderness?”
“A drug called Aslan,” Sylvia said.
“Aslan?”
“The so-called space frontier,” said Dr. Roth, “but I like this earth. It’s a good planet. There’s a scarcity of atmospheric cyanide, sulfuric acid, ammonia. Which is a boast by no means every planet can make.”
“Grandmother’s little helper, I think they call it.”
“But even in your big quiet house you feel crowded if there’s a big quiet house at the antipodes and every point in between.”
“All I ask is a little privacy,” Alfred said.
“No beach between Greenland and the Falklands that isn’t threatened with development. No acre uncleared.”
“Oh dear, what time is it?” Enid said. “We don’t want to miss that lecture.”
“Sylvia’s different. She likes the hubbub at the docks.”
“I do like the hubbub,” Sylvia said.
“Gangways, portholes, stevedores. She likes the blast of the horn. To me this is a floating theme park.”
“You have to put up with a certain amount of fantasy,” Alfred said. “It can’t be helped.”
“Uzbekistan didn’t agree with my stomach,” Sylvia said.
“I like all the waste up here,” said Dr. Roth. “Good to see such vast useless mileage.”
“You romanticize poverty.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“We’ve traveled in Bulgaria,” Alfred said. “I don’t know about Uzbekistan, but we’ve traveled in China. Everything, as far as you could see from the railroad — if it were up to me, I’d tear it all down. Tear it down and start over. The houses don’t have to be pretty, just make them solid. Get the plumbing indoors. A good concrete wall and a roof that doesn’t leak — that’s what these people need. Sewers. Look at the Germans, what they did to rebuild. There’s a model of a country.”
“Wouldn’t want to eat a fish out of the Rhine, though. If I could even find a fish in it.”
“That’s a lot of environmentalist nonsense.”
“Alfred, you’re too smart a man to call it nonsense.”
“I am in need of a bathroom.”
“Al, when you’re done, why don’t you take a book outside and read for a while. Sylvia and I are going to the investment lecture. You just sit. In the sun. And relax relax relax.”
He had good days and bad days. It was as if when he lay in bed for a night certain humors pooled in the right or wrong places, like marinade around a flank steak, and in the morning his nerve endings either had enough of what they needed or did not; as if his mental clarity might depend on something as simple as whether he’d lain on his side or on his back the night before; or as if, more disturbingly, he were a damaged transistor radio which after a vigorous shaking might function loud and clear or spew nothing but a static laced with unconnected phrases, the odd strain of music.