The Star Diaries (3 page)

“Stop that gargling!” I roared, out of patience. “Every second is precious—come out at once, we have to fix the rudder!”

“For that you don’t need me,” he said phlegmatically from behind the door. “The Thursday me must be around here somewhere, go with him…”

“What Thursday me? That’s not possible…”

“I ought to know whether it’s possible or not, considering that I’m already in Friday and consequently have lived through your Wednesday as well as his Thursday…”

Feeling dizzy, I jumped back from the door, for yes, I did hear some commotion in the cabin: a man was standing there, pulling the toolbag out from under the bed.

“You’re the Thursday me?!” I cried, running into the room.

“Right,” he said. “Here, give me a hand…”

“Will we be able to fix the rudder this time?” I asked as together we pulled out the heavy satchel.

“I don’t know, it wasn’t fixed on Thursday, ask the Friday me…”

That hadn’t crossed my mind! I quickly ran back to the bathroom door.

“Hey there, Friday me! Has the rudder been fixed?”

“Not on Friday,” he replied.

“Why not?"

“This is why not,” he said, opening the door. His head was wrapped in a towel, and he pressed the flat of a knife to his forehead, trying in this manner to reduce the swelling of a lump the size of an egg. The Thursday me meanwhile approached with the tools and stood beside me, calmly scrutinizing the me with the lump, who with his free hand was putting back on the shelf a siphon of seltzer. So it was its gurgle I had taken for his gargle.

“What gave you that?” I asked sympathetically,

“Not what, who,” he replied. “It was the Sunday me.”

“The Sunday me? But why … that can’t be!” I cried.

“Well it’s a long story…”

“Makes no difference! Quick, let’s go outside, we might just make it!” said the Thursday me, turning to the me that was I.

“But the rocket will fall into the vortex any minute now,” I replied. “The shock could throw us off into space, and that would be the end of us…”

“Use your head, stupid,” snapped the Thursday me. “If the Friday me’s alive, nothing can happen to us. Today is only Thursday.”

“It’s Wednesday,” I objected.

“It makes no difference, in either case I’ll be alive on Friday, and so will you.”

“Yes, but there really aren’t two of us, it only looks that way,” I observed, “actually there is
one
me, just from different days of the week…”

“Fine, fine, now open the hatch…”

But it turned out here that we had only one spacesuit between us. Therefore we could not both leave the rocket at the same time, and therefore our plan to fix the rudder was completely ruined.

“Blast!” I cried, angrily throwing down the toolbag. “What I should have done is put on the spacesuit to begin with and kept it on. I just didn’t think of it—but you, as the Thursday me, you ought to have remembered!”

“I had the spacesuit, but the Friday me took it,” he said.

“When? Why?”

“Eh, it’s not worth going into,” he shrugged and, turning around, went back to the cabin. The Friday me wasn’t there; I looked in the bathroom, but it was empty too.

“Where’s the Friday me?” I asked, returning. The Thursday me methodically cracked an egg with a knife and poured its contents onto the sizzling fat.

“Somewhere in the neighborhood of Saturday, no doubt,” he replied, indifferent, quickly scrambling the egg.

“Excuse me,” I protested, “but you already had your meals on Wednesday—what makes you think you can go and eat a second Wednesday supper?”

“These rations are mine just as much as they are yours,” he said, calmly lifting the browned edge of the egg with his knife. “I am you, you are me, so it makes no difference…”

“What sophistry! Wait, that’s too much butter! Are you crazy? I don’t have enough food for this many people!"

The skillet flew out of his hand, and I went crashing into a wall: we had fallen into a new vortex. Once again the ship shook, as if in a fever, but my only thought was to get to the corridor where the spacesuit was hanging and put it on. For in that way (I reasoned) when Wednesday became Thursday, I, as the Thursday me, would be wearing that spacesuit, and if only I didn’t take it off for a single minute (and I was determined not to) then I would obviously be wearing it on Friday also. And therefore the me on Thursday and the me on Friday would both be in our spacesuits, so that when we came together in the same present it would finally be possible to fix that miserable rudder. The increasing thrust of gravity made my head swim, and when I opened my eyes I noticed that I was lying to the right of the Thursday me, and not to the left, as I had been a few moments before. Now while it had been easy enough for me to develop this plan about the spacesuit, it was considerably more difficult to put it into action, since with the growing gravitation I could hardly move. When it weakened just a little, I began to inch my way across the floor—in the direction of the door that led to the corridor. Meanwhile I noticed that the Thursday me was likewise heading for the door, crawling on his belly towards the corridor. At last, after about an hour, when the vortex had reached its widest point, we met at the threshold, both flattened to the floor. Then I thought, why should I have to strain myself to reach the handle? Let the Thursday me do it. Yet at the same time I began to recall certain things which clearly indicated that it was I now who was the Thursday me, and not he.

“What day of the week are you?’’ I asked, to make sure. With my chin pressed to the floor I looked him in the eye. Struggling, he opened his mouth.

“Thurs—day—me,” he groaned. Now that was odd. Could it be that, in spite of everything, I was
still
the Wednesday me? Calling to mind all my recollections of the recent past, I had to conclude that this was out of the question. So he must have been the Friday me. For if he had preceded me by a day before, then he was surely a day ahead now. I waited for him to open the door, but apparently he expected the same of me. The gravitation had now subsided noticeably, so I got up and ran to the corridor. Just as I grabbed the spacesuit, he tripped me, pulling it out of my hands, and I fell flat on my face.

“You dog!” I cried. “Tricking your own self—that’s really low!"

He ignored me, stepping calmly into the spacesuit. The shamelessness of it was appalling. Suddenly a strange force threw him from the suit—as it turned out, someone was already inside. For a moment I wavered, no longer knowing who was who.

“You, Wednesday!” called the one in the spacesuit. “Hold back Thursday, help me!"

For the Thursday me was indeed trying to tear the spacesuit off him.

“Give me the spacesuit!” bellowed the Thursday me as he wrestled with the other.

“Get off! What are you trying to do? Don’t you realize I’m the one who should have it, and not you?!” howled the other.

“And why is that, pray?”

“For the reason, fool, that I’m closer to Saturday than you, and by Saturday there will be two of us in suits!”

“But that’s ridiculous,” I said, getting into their argument, “at best you’ll be alone in the suit on Saturday, like an absolute idiot, and won’t be able to do a thing. Let
me
have the suit: if I put it on now, then you’ll be wearing it on Friday as the Friday me, and I will also on Saturday as the Saturday me, and so you see there will then be two of us, and with two suits… Come on, Thursday, give me a hand!!”

“Wait,” protested the Friday me when I had forcibly yanked the spacesuit off his back. “In the first place, there is no one here for you to call ‘Thursday,’ since midnight has passed and
you
are now the Thursday me, and in the second place, it’ll be better if I stay in the spacesuit. The spacesuit won’t do you a bit of good.”

“Why not? If I put it on today, I’ll have it on tomorrow too.”

“You’ll see for yourself … after all, I was already you, on Thursday, and
my
Thursday has passed, so I ought to know…”

“Enough talk. Let go of it this instant!” I snarled. But he grabbed it from me and I chased him, first through the engine room and then into the cabin. It somehow worked out that there were only two of us now. Suddenly I understood why the Thursday me, when we were standing at the hatch with the tools, had told me that the Friday me took the spacesuit from him: for in the meantime I myself had become the Thursday me, and here the Friday me was in fact taking it. But I had no intention of giving in that easily. Just you wait, I thought, I’ll take care of you, and out I ran into the corridor, and from there to the engine room, where before—during the chase—I had noticed a heavy pipe lying on the floor, which served to stoke the atomic pile, and I picked it up and—thus armed—dashed back to the cabin. The other me was already in the spacesuit, he had pulled on everything but the helmet.

“Out of the spacesuit!” I snapped, clenching my pipe in a threatening manner.

“Not a chance.”

“Out, I say!!”

Then I wondered whether or not I should hit him. It was a little disconcerting, the fact that he had neither a black eye nor a bump on his head, like the other Friday me, the one I’d found in the bathroom, but all at once I realized that this was the way it had to be.
That
Friday me by now was the Saturday me, yes, and perhaps even was knocking about somewhere in the vicinity of Sunday, while this Friday me inside the spacesuit had only recently been the Thursday me, into which same Thursday me I myself had been transformed at midnight. Thus I was moving along the sloping curve of the time loop towards that place in which the Friday me before the beating would change into the Friday me already beaten. Still,
he did
say, back then, that it had been the Sunday me who did it, and there was no trace, as yet, of
him.
We stood alone in the cabin, he and I. Then suddenly I had a brainstorm.

“Out of that spacesuit!” I growled.

“Keep off, Thursday!” he yelled.

“I’m not Thursday, I’m the SUNDAY ME!” I shrieked, closing in for the kill. He tried to kick me, but spacesuit boots are very heavy and before he could raise his leg, I let him have it over the head. Not too hard, of course, since I had grown sufficiently familiar with all of this to know that I in turn, when eventually I went from the Thursday to the Friday me, would be on the receiving end, and I wasn’t particularly set on fracturing my own skull. The Friday me fell with a groan, holding his head, and I brutally tore the spacesuit off him. While he made for the bathroom on wobbly legs, muttering, “Where’s the cotton … where’s the seltzer,” I quickly began to don the suit that we had struggled over, until I noticed—sticking out from under the bed—a human foot. I took a closer look, kneeling. Under the bed lay a man; trying to muffle the sound of his chewing, he was hurriedly bolting down the last bar of the milk chocolate I had stored away in the suitcase for a rainy sidereal day. The bastard was in such a hurry that he ate the chocolate along with bits of tin foil, which glittered on his lips.

“Leave that chocolate alone!” I yelled, pulling at his foot. “Who are you anyway? The Thursday me?…” I added in a lower voice, seized by a sudden doubt, for the thought occurred that maybe I already was the Friday me, and would soon have to collect what I had dished out earlier to the same.

“The Sunday me,” he mumbled, his mouth full. I felt weak. Now either he was lying, in which case there was nothing to worry about, or telling the truth, and if he was, I faced a clobbering for sure, because the Sunday me—after all—was the one who had hit the Friday me, the Friday me told me so himself before it happened, and then later I, impersonating the Sunday me, had let him have it with the pipe. But on the other hand, I said to myself, even if he’s lying and not the Sunday me, it’s still quite possible that he’s a later me than me, and if he is a later me, he remembers everything that I do, therefore already knows that I lied to the Friday me, and so could deceive me in a similar manner, since what had been a spur-of-the-moment stratagem on my part was for him—by now—simply a memory, a memory he could easily make use of. Meanwhile, as I remained in uncertainty, he had eaten the rest of the chocolate and crawled out from under the bed.

“If you’re the Sunday me, where’s your spacesuit?!” I cried, struck by a new thought.

“I’ll have it in a minute,” he said calmly, and then I noticed the pipe in his hand… The next thing I saw was a bright flash, like a few dozen supernovas going off at once, after which I lost consciousness. I came to, sitting on the floor of the bathroom; someone was banging on the door. I began to attend to my bruises and bumps, but he kept pounding away; it turned out to be the Wednesday me. After a while I showed him my battered head, he went with the Thursday me for the tools, then there was a lot of running around and yanking off of spacesuits, this to in one way or another I managed to live through, and on Saturday morning crawled under the bed to see if there wasn’t some chocolate left in the suitcase. Someone started pulling at my foot as I ate the last bar, which I’d found underneath the shirts; I no longer knew just who this was, but hit him over the head anyhow, pulled the spacesuit off him and was going to put it on—when the rocket fell into the next vortex.