"Well, well, now..." rumbled Winnie the Pooh. "On the whole, yes. Of course ... only... Hmm..."
"It's all true!" observed a new voice, ringing and cheerful. "The little girl's right. There's no real work..."
"Real work, real work!" creaked the old man venomously. "All of a sudden whole seams of real work. Eldorado! King Solomon's mines! They're all around me with their sick insides, sarcomas, delightful fistulas, appetizing adenoids and appendixes, ordinary but so attractive. Let us speak frankly. They get in the way, they prevent you from working. I don't know what the matter is here, perhaps they give off some sort of special odor or they radiate an unknown field, but whenever they're near I go schizophrenic. I become two persons. One half of me longs for enjoyment, yearns to seize hold of and accomplish the necessary, the sweet, the desirable, the other falls into prostration and hammers away at the eternal questions - is it worth it, why, is it moral? ... You, it's you I'm talking about, what are you doing, working?"
"Me?" said Winnie the Pooh. "Of course ... why not? It's odd to hear that from you, I didn't expect. I'm finishing a helicopter design and after that ... I was telling you I'd created a marvelous tractor, such pure enjoyment that was... I believe you have no grounds for doubting that I'm working."
"No, I don't doubt it, don't doubt it at all," the old one ground out. (Horrible boneless old man, between a goblin and an astrologer, wearing a black plush shawl with gold spangles.) "If you'll just tell me where this tractor is?"
"Well now ... I don't quite understand... How do I know? What business is it of mine? The helicopter interests me now..."
"That's just what I'm talking about!" said the Astrologer. "Nothing's your business, seemingly. You're satisfied with everything. Nobody's in your way. They even help you! You gave birth to a tractor, choking with sheer pleasure, and the people took it away from you at once, to keep you concentrating on your main job, so's you didn't enjoy yourself over much. You just ask him whether people help him or not..."
"You talking to me?" Tank bellowed. "Crap! Dismissed! Whenever somebody goes out on the testing area and decides to stretch his legs a bit, keeping his pleasure going, playing about, taking aim on the azimuth, or let's say the vertical bracket, they raise a racket and uproar, their shouting makes^you feel awful, anybody can get upset by it. But I didn't say that anybody was - me, did I? No! You'll have a long wait to hear that from me. Is that clear? Repeat!"
"Me, too, me as well!" Jeanne began chattering. "I've wondered lots of times, why do they exist? Now everything in the world has a meaning, hasn't it? I don't think they do. Probably they're not there, it's a hallucination. When you try to analyze them, and take a sample from the lower parts, then the upper, then the middle, you're sure to run into a wall or go right past them or you fall asleep all of a sudden..."
"Of course they exist, you stupid hysteric!" creaked the Astrologer. "They've got upper, lower, and middle parts, and all the parts are full of diseases. I know nothing more delightful than people, no other creature has so many objects of enjoyment within itself. What can you know about the meaning of their existence?"
"Oh, stop complicating matters!" said the gay, ringing voice. "They're simply beautiful. It's a genuine pleasure to look at them. Not always, of course, but just imagine a garden. It can be as beautiful as you like, but without people it won't be perfect, won't be complete. Just one sort of people would be enough to give it life, they can be little people with bare extremities that never walk but just run and throw stones ... or middling people picking flowers ... it doesn't matter. Even hairy people will do, running about on four extremities. A garden without them is no garden."
"That sort of nonsense could make somebody feel sick," announced Tank. "Bunkum! Gardens reduce visibility, and as for people, they get in a certain person's way all the time, and you can't say anything good about them. Anyhow, if a certain person were to send over a damn good salvo on a building where for some reason people were located, all his desire for work would disappear, he'd feel sleepy, and anybody would fall asleep. Naturally, I don't speak of myself, but if someone were to say it of me, would you object?"
"You've taken to talking a lot about people just lately," said Winnie the Pooh. "Whatever the conversation starts on, you get it around to people."
"Well why on earth not?" the Astrologer jumped in at once. "What's it to you? You're an opportunist! If we feel like talking, then we'll talk. Without asking your permission."
"Please, please," Winnie the Pooh said gloomily. "It's just that before we used to talk mainly about living creatures, enjoyments, plans, but now, I note that people are beginning to occupy a larger and larger part of our conversations and therefore of our thoughts."
