FRITZ and Emma were sitting side by side in the cot in her inner room-Emma tensely, with her hands tightly covering her knob, the biped leaning toward her, an arm around her body, speaking earnestly into her ear.
“You know, Emma, that I didn’t mean any harm. You do believe it, don’t you?”
“It isn’t that,” she said in a muffled voice. “It’s the way they all treat me-as if I were only an animal. They say I am not human, and so it is correct to keep me in a cage all my life.” She looked up. “But what is it to be human? I think, I have feelings, I talk. I even type their letters for them, and still it’s not enough.”
Her slender body shivered. “It’s bad enough to hear them talk about me as if I were some creature that couldn’t speak or hear. But when you-”
“Emma, don’t, please,” said the biped, overcome by tenderness and remorse. “Of course you’re right, you’re as human really as any of them. What does it matter if you have a different shape? It’s the mind inside, the soul that counts, isn’t it? Why can’t they understand that?”
She looked up again. “Do you really-”
“Of course,” said the biped, hugging her closer. Warm, new emotions were coursing through him. “Some day they must all see it, Emma. We’ll make them listen, you’ll see. There, Emma. It’s going to be all right. We’re friends now, aren’t we?”
She looked up again, timidly. Her body stopped shivering. “Yes, Fritz,” she said.
The biped hugged her still closer. Along with the protectiveness he felt, there was a fierce joy, a sense of rightness. For some moments they did not speak.
“Emma?”
“Yes?”
“We’re really friends now? You’re not afraid of me any more?”
“No, not any more, Fritz.”
“Then why keep your hands over your knob? Isn’t it uncomfortable? Don’t you trust me?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know why … it’s just - Of course, I trust you, Fritz.”
“Well then.”
After a moment’s hesitation, she dutifully lowered her hands to her lap. Her knob was large, purplish-red, and had a faint spicy scent.
“Now isn’t that better? Has anything dreadful happened because you uncovered it?”
“No, Fritz,” she said. She laid her muzzle against his shoulder. “I feel so much better now.”
“So do I, Emma. Oh, so do I. Bursting with emotion, the biped bent his head closer; and with an instinctive deftness which took them both by surprise, he bit her knob off.
X
THE WORLD vanished, leaving a greenish glow. The young man became aware of his body, cramped into the cushioned seat.
Around him in the great bowl, other figures were stirring.
His buttocks were numb and his head ached. He struggled to his feet. It was hard to become used to the silence, and the smallness of things.
Reeling, dizzy, he came out into the hot afternoon sunlight.
He passed the bakery with its gigantic, fragrant stereo-loaf forever swelling over the doorway. Three darkskinned men in funny little white hats and baggy white trousers came toward him, all talking at once in a foreign language.
A cat ran across the plaza, pursued by something small and green, with many scuttling legs. The sun was hot on the paving stones; heat waves swam in the air.
At the next corner, a crowd had gathered around a little man in green and a gigantic, barrelchested creature with sparse pinkish feathers, which the little man held by a leash. Coins tinkled in a cup. Prodded by its owner, the huge creature did a clumsy, shuffling dance. Its face was part human, part jelly-fish, moronic and blank. “Thank you, sir, thank you, lady,” said the little man, tipping his cap. Tinkle. “Thank you, sir.”
The young man kept walking. After all, in the cinema one saw bigger monsters than that.
He paused at the newsstand at the end of the plaza, bought the Berliner Zeitung and the Hamburger Tageblatt, folded the crisp sheets pleasurably under his arm. The next stall was a fruit stand. The young man passed it nearly every day, and sometimes bought bananas or oranges. But today it was different. In the middle of the stall was a mound of greenish-yellow ovoids, bigger than pears, with a sign: “Special! Just arrived from Brecht’s Planet! Unusual! Try one!” The price was 1 mark 10.
The young man’s mouth went dry with excitement. From Brecht’s Planet! He fumbled in his pocket. He had just enough.
The bored attendant took his money, handed him one of the greenish fruits. The young man held it carefully as he walked away. It was heavy, warm and waxy to the touch.
A phrase from his lost book came back to him: “Certain greenish fruits, which the bipeds eat with avidity …”
Never before had he felt so close to the planet of his birth. It had always been a little unreal to him, something one read about in books. Now, for the first time, he felt that it really existed, that it was made up of real stones and dirt, and had real trees on it bearing real fruit.
Catching sight of Frau Beifelder in the building lobby, her little red eyes watchful and suspicious as always, the young man instinctively slipped the heavy fruit into his pocket, but he kept his hand on it.
“Good afternoon, Frau Beifelder,” he said politely, crossing to the elevator. The old woman did not reply but merely narrowed her eyes still further.
The young man stopped the elevator at every floor, as usual, peering curiously at the closed red doors. Julia’s door stood ajar, but instead of stopping, he went on up in the elevator, fourth floor, fifth, sixth. He got out, trotted over to the little stair, climbed to the roof.
Berlin lay spread out around him in the hot summer sunlight. The curved threads of the Flugbahnen glittered against the blue. Over there, rising out of a cluster of lower rooftops, bulged the golden dome of the Konzertgebaude.
A cool breeze was blowing steadily across the roof, making the newspapers flap against his arm. The young man gripped them in annoyance, not wanting to relinquish the warm fruit in his hand. A few meters away, a ventilator was turning rapidly under its little black hood. The young man turned his attention to an airplane soaring over the blue-gray horizon. He sniffed the air with interest: Diesel fuel, ozone, hot concrete.
On the parapet a large butterfly or moth was lying feebly moving its blue-and-purple wings. The young man examined it curiously. It did not seem able to fly. When he prodded it with his finger, it merely went on with the slow, spasmodic movements of its wings.
Something landed with a faint thud behind him, and he turned to see another butterfly, identical to the first. It lay quivering for a moment, then began the same slow, feeble motions. Suddenly the young man realized that the air was full of them: tiny dark shapes drifting down, landing on the rooftops all around. There were a half a dozen at his feet, then twice as many. One struck him a limp, soft blow on the neck before it dropped to the roof.
Annoyed, the young man turned to leave; but although he picked his way carefully to the stair entrance, he could not avoid crushing several of the brittle bodies under his feet.