My name, said the mattress, is Zem. We could discuss the weather a little.
Marvin paused again in his weary circular plod.
The dew, he observed, has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning.
He resumed his walk, as if inspired by this conversational outburst to fresh heights of gloom and despondency. He plodded tenaciously. If he had had teeth he would have gritted them at this point. He hadn’t. He didn’t. The mere plod said it all.
The mattress flolloped around. This is a thing that only live mattresses in swamps are able to do, which is why the word is not in more common usage. It flolloped in a sympathetic sort of way, moving a fairish body of water as it did so. It blew a few bubbles up through the water engagingly. Its blue and white stripes glistened briefly in a sudden feeble ray of sun that had unexpectedly made it through the mist, causing the creature to bask momentarily.
Marvin plodded.
You have something on your mind, I think, said the mattress floopily.
More than you can possibly imagine, dreaded Marvin. My capacity for mental activity of all kinds is as boundless as the infinite reaches of space itself. Except of course for my capacity for happiness.
Stomp, stomp, he went.
My capacity for happiness, he added, you could fit into a matchbox without taking out the matches first.
The mattress globbered. This is the noise made by a live, swamp-dwelling mattress that is deeply moved by a story of personal tragedy. The word can also, according to The Ultra-Complete MaxiMegalon Dictionary of Every Language Ever, mean the noise made by the Lord High Sanvalvwag of Hollop on discovering that he has forgotten his wife’s birthday for the second year running. Since there was only ever one Lord High Sanvalvwag of Hollop, and he never married, the word is only ever used in a negative or speculative sense, and there is an ever-increasing body of opinion which holds that The Ultra-Complete MaxiMegalon Dictionary is not worth the fleet of lorries it takes to cart its microstored edition around in. Strangely enough, the dictionary omits the word “floopily”, which simply means “in the manner of something which is floopy”.
The mattress globbered again.
I sense a deep dejection in your diodes, it vollued (for the meaning of the word “vollue”, buy a copy of Squornshellous Swamptalk at any remaindered bookshop, or alternatively buy The Ultra-Complete MaxiMegalon Dictionary, as the University will be very glad to get it off their hands and regain some valuable parking lots), and it saddens me. You should be more mattresslike. We live quiet retired lives in the swamp, where we are content to flollop and vollue and regard the wetness in a fairly floopy manner. Some of us are killed, but all of us are called Zem, so we never know which and globbering is thus kept to a minimum. Why are you walking in circles?
Because my leg is stuck, said Marvin simply.
It seems to me, said the mattress eyeing it compassionately, that it is a pretty poor sort of leg.
You are right, said Marvin, it is.