“Well, how is your Integral ? Will you soon hop off to enlighten the inhabitants of the planets? You’d better hurry up, my boy, or we poets will have produced such a devilish lot that even your Integral will be unable to lift the cargo. ‘Every day from eight to eleven’⁠ ⁠…” R- wagged his head and scratched the back of it. The back of his head is square; it looks like a little valise (I recalled for some reason an ancient painting In the Cab ). I felt more lively.

“You too are writing for the Integral ? Tell me about it. What are you writing about? What did you write today, for instance?”

“Today I did not write; today I was busy with something else.” “B-b-busy” sprinkled straight into my face.

“What else?”