The Atom Station Read Free Page B

in hospital,” said the god. “She was bad.”
    â€œI do not know what you mean,” said the organist.
    â€œIll,” said the god.
    â€œA person is never too ill,” said the organist.
    â€œShe was screaming,” said the god.
    â€œSuffering and happiness are two matters so alike that it is impossible to distinguish between them,” said the organist. “The greatest enjoyment I know is to be ill, especially very ill.”
    Then a voice was heard from the doorway, saying in fanatically religious tones, “How I wish I could at last get that cancer now.”
    The newcomer was so young that his face was the color of ivory, with only a trace of down on his cheeks: a youthful portrait of a foreign genius, a postcard like the ones that hang above the harmonium in the country and which can be bought in the village of Krok—a mixture of Schiller, Schubert, and Lord Byron, with a bright red tie and dirty shoes. He looked around with the sudden strained expression of the sleepwalker, and every object, whether animate or inanimate, affected him like an overwhelming mystical vision. He offered me his long thin hand, which was so limp that I felt I could crush it into pulp, and said, “I am Benjamin.”
    I looked at him.
    â€œYes, I know it,” he said. “But I can’t help it. This little brother, it is I; this terrible tribe, it is my people; this desert—my country.”
    â€œThey have read the Holy Scriptures,” said the organist, “and the Holy Spirit has enlightened them in their reading, in accordance with the precepts of our friend Luther: they have found the godhead without the mediation of the Pope. Have a cup of coffee, atom poet.”
    â€œWhere’s Cleopatra?” asked Benjamin the atom poet.
    â€œNever mind that,” said the organist. “Help yourselves to sugar with your coffee.”
    â€œI admire her,” said the atom poet.
    â€œAnd I need to see her too,” said the god Brilliantine.
    â€œWhy should she be wanting to run around with two gods?” said the organist. “She wants to have her thirty men.”
    I could no longer contain myself and blurted out, “Now really!—I am no model of virtue, but never have I heard tell of so immoral a woman, and I permit myself to doubt whether such a woman exists.”
    â€œImmoral women do not exist,” said the organist. “That is only a superstition. On the other hand there exist women who sleep thirty times with one man, and women who sleep once with thirty men.”
    â€œAnd women who don’t sleep with a man at all,” I said, meaning myself in fact, and had begun to sweat; and there was a mist before my eyes and I was undoubtedly blushing all the way down to my neck and making myself utterly absurd.
    â€œAugustine, one of the Fathers of the Church, says that the sexual urge is beyond the will,” said the organist. “Saint Benedict gratified it by throwing himself naked into a bed of nettles. There are no sexual perversions other than celibacy.”
    â€œMay I see you home?” said the god Brilliantine.
    â€œWhat for?” I asked.
    â€œThere are Yanks around at night,” he said.
    â€œWhat does that matter?” I said.
    â€œThey have guns.”
    â€œI’m not scared of guns.”
    â€œThey will rape you,” he said.
    â€œAre you going to fight for me?”
    â€œYes,” he said, and smiled his piercing smile.
    â€œWhat about the children?”
    â€œBenjamin can take them in the Cadillac,” he said. “Or if you like I shall beat Benjamin up and take the Cadillac off him. I have just as much right to steal the Cadillac as he has.”
    â€œI’m going to look for Cleopatra,” said Benjamin the atom poet.
    â€œOne tune first,” said the organist, “There’s no hurry.”
    The god Brilliantine rose to his feet and brought out the flat triangular object