(Ìîé ðàññêàç "Íàãëûé ñëóãà" ïåðåâåëà íà àíãëèéñêèé Ìàðèÿ Ïîïîâà)
Uno gave me a warm welcome, his servant Jukhan was quick on the draw – he poured cognac, brought a plate with sliced lemons, and chocolates. Still, I had the strangest feeling that Uno could hardly wait for me to leave.
We were sitting in the fireplace lounge of his Paris apartment. A broached bottle of Martel cognac was standing in front of us on the green marble-top table. The top of the Eiffel Tower could be seen in the distance through the huge, floor-to-ceiling window of the room.
We, Uno’s fellow students, knew that he had build a brilliant career and now lived in Paris. Reaching him over the phone was practically impossible, not to mention paying him a visit. He was either in Peking or in Tokyo – and was always “very, very busy”. He answered his emails after a very long while.
When in Paris, I always called him – our course mate Tiyna had divorced her husband and literally begged me to find Uno and check if he was single. Well, what can I say… True love never gets old.
And finally, I was lucky, and he invited me over to his place.
Everything was seemingly just like old times, in the university dorm in Tartu when Uno and I would argue with other physics and math students about the fate of our civilization for nights on end.
But the behavior of his servant, Jukhan…I would have kicked out such an attendant a long time ago.
Without permission, the brazen youngster took a seat on the sofa next to me, crossed his legs, and started chipping into our conversation now and then. And that’s not all. You should have seen how admiringly Uno looked at the guy, how loudly he laughed at his ridiculous comments!
Uno and I were discussing whether they would manage to carry out the well-known project of partly colonizing the Moon by the year 3000.
“It appears Estonians don’t send their opponents to the Moon for nothing when they’re angry,” I joked. “Good old Skype is our invention, while sending to the Moon is our, so to say, curse. Which is apparently beginning to come true. Check this out, curses actually work!”
“But you won’t live to see that,” the servant interrupted. “By the way, Estonians also send you mushrooming when they’re angry. But there’s fewer and fewer mushrooms in Estonian woods. Probably because they send there often.”
Uno cracked up laughing.
“What do you think, Jukhan?” he asked, wiping away tears. “Will there be a colony on the Moon in the beginning of the next millennia?”
Jukhan made himself more comfortable on the sofa, flicked a lighter while lighting a cigarette, unceremoniously blew smoke directly in my face, and casually dropped, “Sure thing. Things are the shadows of ideas.”
Would you believe it? A servant had read Plato!
Uno was so ecstatic with the servant’s response as though Plato and Socrates had personally appeared in his apartment, stretched out on the couch by the fire, and launched into philosophy.
“Things are the shadows of ideas,” I said. “That’s just an epigram! What exactly do you mean, Jukhan?”
“An epigram,” the servant agreed calmly, “means generality. There’s no need to explain generalities. All you have to do is study life more closely, and you’ll see that they are true! Has there been an idea to send someone to the Moon? There has! I’ll tell you more – now the ideas are the shadows of things!”
“How’s that?” I asked, perplexed.
“For instance, if it were up to me, I’d give out books of epigrams, proverbs and aphorisms to first graders, and I’d force them to learn them by heart. And that would be the entire educational course! They should know from an early age that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. What do you think of the idea?”
You’re such a smarty pants! I snapped to myself and decided to switch the subject. I remembered Tiyna’s humble petition to remind Uno of old times when they’d had a student crush on each other.
“Uno, Tiyna told me to say hi. Remember you used to play that record called Oh, those good old times from the Horoscope TV-show? Only now that we’ve turned fifty have we actually realized what “good old times” means…”
“I’m not the nostalgic type,” Uno said, keeping a close eye on the servant pouring cognac into his glass. “Ukhan, would you slice more lemons and bring them here?”
“You see, Andrus,” he went on, taking a sip of cognac, “life has become way more interesting than in our young days. Technical progress works wonders. Just remember the old huge vinyl records for record players.”
He stood up from his armchair, came up to the fireplace, and took a small plastic black ball in his hands. “Take a guess how many megabytes of data can fit in here. You’ll be surprised.”
But the servant didn’t let him finish.
Loudly and umpudently, he sang, “Oh you old times, oh you beautiful, unforgettable times! Oh you’re wonderful, how I wish you came back sometimes!”
I must admit he had a pleasant voice and, I’m pretty sure, he was pitch-perfect. Uno was listening to him with admiration.
And the penny dropped. This fellow had simply bewitched Uno! He no longer needed me, nor did he need Tiyna, or marriage, or children, I realized.
“If you’ll excuse me, I’ll listen to the concert some other time,” I said, rising from the sofa with determination. “I must be going.”
Uno didn’t talk me out of it.
“There are no better or worse times – there’s only a moment we live in ,” the servant announced with an evil grin, throwing the front door wide open before me.
“Why don’t you go mushrooming,” I gritted in reply quietly so that Uno wouldn’t hear it, slammed the door behind me, and quickly trotted to the M;tro Passy. I felt anger boiling up inside me. The most prestigious 16th endorsement of Paris! And the servant is so terribly mannered! Rags to riches! How on Earth does Uno cope with it! He’s always been so polite, so reserved! Our course mates even dubbed him ‘Englishman’!
Once back in Tallinn, I met up with Tiyna and told her that Uno wasn’t planning to start a family. His only passion was his work.
“Our ‘Englishman’ is probably seeing someone,” she sighed.
“Didn’t look like that to me,” I confessed.
Then I emailed Uno:
Sorry for having wasted a whole hour and a half of your precious time. You were bored with me. Sure enough, my IQ is immeasurably lower than your perfectly trained servant’s. But I’m already improving – I have learned by heart whole five epigrams. I didn’t mention anything to Tiyna about your servant. Andrus.
His response came surprisingly fast.
Hi Andrus. I didn’t mean to upset you. The thing is, I have succeeded in life and I could afford to materialize my id;e fixe. It had taken years. It has just come true. I’m sorry, but you became my, so to say, test object. The electronic brain of my servant contains the entire Internet – both the data and the search engines. Jukhan is, in effect, the materialization on the Internet. I have created a robot with the appearance of a human, which is not so new nowadays. I just brought the similarity to perfection. You’ve got to admit, it’s cool not to have to fix yourself a morning coffee and take it to the computer – but instead to have the entire Internet serving you in person. You’re right – I am bored with people. My servant is the best dialogue partner in the world. In the blink of an eye, he has access to almost all the available world-wide information. As for his being so brazen… Well, I’ve always wanted to be like that. My best, Uno.
***
So that’s how it is… So now, the ideas are the shadows of things…
Still, if it were up to me, I’d make those robots shorter! I’d legislate against them being higher than, say, four feet two...