We are all naïve materialists, I thought, and also rationalists. We demand that everything should be explained immediately in rationalist terms; that is, reduced to fit in with the handful of known facts. No one applies a penny’s worth of dialectics. It enters nobody’s head that between the known data and some new phenomena, there could be an ocean of unknowns, and so we declare the new phenomenon to be supernatural and therefore impossible. Say, for instance, the way Maître Montesquieu would take the message about the resuscitation of a dead man forty-five minutes after his heart stopped beating. With a bayonet counterattack, that’s how he would take it. Toss it on pikes, so to speak. He would no doubt dub it obscurantism and clericalism. That is, if he would not just wave such a datum away. If it happened right in front of his own eyes, he would be placed in an extremely difficult position. Such as my own at the moment, except that I was more accustomed to it. But for him, it would be necessary either to consider it a fraud, or to disbelieve his senses or even to renounce materialism. Most likely he would opt for fraud. Nevertheless, to the end of his days the memory of this adroit trick would irritate his thinking, like a mote in the eye… But we, we are the children of a different age. We have seen a lot: the live head of a dog sewn to the body of another; the artificial kidney as big as a closet; the iron hand operated by the nerve signals from a live one; the people who can say, casually, “This was after I had died for the first time…”
Yes, in our times Montesquieu would have had a poor chance of remaining a materialist. Nonetheless we remain materialists and there is no harm done! True enough, this can get to be difficult sometimes when a chance wind, blowing across the ocean of the unknown, will carry our way some strange petals from unexplored continents. Most often it happens when one finds that which one was not looking for. Soon enough there will appear new and amazing animals from Mars or Venus in our zoos. Of course, we will be ogling them and slapping our sides, but we have been waiting for them a long time, and we are prepared for their appearance. We would be much more astounded and disappointed if there would not be any such animal or if they would be like our cats and dogs. As a rule, science, in which we have faith (and often, blind faith), prepares us well in advance for the coming miracles, so that a psychic shock occurs in us only when we collide with something unpredicted—some hole into a fourth dimension, or biological radio communication, or a living planet… Or, say, a cottage on hen’s legs… Anyway, that hawk-nosed Roman was right with a vengeance; it’s very, very, and very fascinating here with them.
I came out on the square and stopped by the soft-drink kiosk. I remembered that I didn’t have any change and that I would have to break a bill. I was formulating an ingratiating smile, knowing full well that the girls who sold the drinks couldn’t stand changing bills, when I felt a five-kopeck piece in my jeans pocket. I was both astonished and delighted, but more the latter. I drank up my soda water with fruit syrup, accepted a wet kopeck in change, and chatted with the girl about the weather. Next I set out homeward with great determination so as to finish with the DC and the TS and be free to continue with my dialectic and rationalistic explanations. I shoved the kopeck down into my pocket and stopped, discovering that there was another five-kopeck piece already in it. I took it out and studied it. It was somewhat damp and on it was stamped 5 kopecks, 1961, and the numeral 6 was marred with a small gouge. It may be that even then I would not have paid this little incident any attention, except for that instant feeling, with which I was already familiar, that I was simultaneously standing in the Prospect of Peace and sitting on the sofa looking at the wardrobe. And just as before the feeling disappeared when I shook my head.
For a while I kept on walking slowly, absentmindedly tossing the piece (it kept landing heads-up in my palm) and attempting to focus my thoughts. Then I saw the food store where I had fled from the kids in the morning, and entered. Holding the coin between two fingers, I went up to the counter and drank, this time without any pleasure at all, a glass of plain seltzer. Next, gripping the change in my hand, I went aside and checked the pocket.
It was one of those cases where there was no psychic shock. More likely I would have been surprised if the piece had not been in my pocket. But it was—damp, 1961, and with a gouge in the numeral 6. Someone bumped into me and inquired as to whether I was taking a nap. Apparently I was standing in the line for the cashier. I said I wasn’t and punched a ticket for three boxes of matches. Standing in line for the matches, I verified that the piece was back again in my pocket. I was absolutely calm. Having received my three boxes of matches, I returned to the square and proceeded to experiment.
The experiment took about an hour. During this hour, I circumnavigated the square ten times, swelled up from the seltzer, accumulated match boles and newspapers, got acquainted with all the clerks, male and female, and arrived at a series of interesting conclusions. The five-kopeck piece came back if you paid with it. If you just simply threw it away, or dropped it, it stayed where it fell. The coin returned to pocket at the moment when the change moved from the hands of the seller to the hands of the buyer. If you kept your hand in one pocket, it appeared in the other. It never appeared in a zippered pocket. If you kept a hand in each pocket, and accepted the change with your elbow, the coin appeared anywhere on your body. (In my case, it turned up in my shoe.) The disappearance of the piece from the saucer with the coppers cannot be observed: it is immediately lost to sight in the pile of other coppers, and no motion of any kind takes place in the instant of the transfer to the pocket.
And so, we were faced with a so-called unspendable five-kopeck piece in the process of its functioning. In itself the fact of the unspendability did not interest me. My imagination was primarily overwhelmed by the possibility of an extra-dimensional transference of a material object. It was abundantly clear that the mysterious move of the coin from seller to buyer represented none other than a special case of the legendary matter transmission, so well known to the friends of science-fiction under the pseudonyms of hyper transposition, similarization, Tarantog’s phenomenon… The unfolding perspectives were overpowering.
I didn’t have any instruments. An ordinary minimum-recording lab thermometer could tell a lot, but I didn’t even have that. I was forced to limit myself to purely visual subjective observations. I started my last tour of the square, with the following self-assigned task: “Having placed the coin next to the change saucer, and impeding to the maximum possible extent the cashier’s mixing it with the rest of the coins before passing the change, to trace visually the process of transference in space, attempting simultaneously to determine, even qualitatively, the change in the temperature of the air near the presumed Trajectory of Transit.” However, the experiment was cut short right at the start.
When I approached Manya, my first seller, I was already expected by the same young police sergeant whom I had met before.
“So,” he said in a professional tone.
I looked at him searchingly, with a premonition of disaster.
“May I see your papers, citizen,” he said, saluting and looking past me.
“What’s the problem?” I asked, taking out my passport.
“And I’ll be asking you for the coin, too,” said the policeman, accepting the passport.
I handed him the five-kopeck piece in silence. Manya was regarding me with accusing eyes. The policeman studied the coin and, stating with satisfaction, “Aha,” opened the passport. He studied that passport like a bibliophile would study a rare incunabulum. I waited, mortified. A crowd grew slowly around us. Various opinions about me were expressed by its members.
“We’ll have to take a walk,” the policeman finally said.
We took a walk. While we walked, several variants on my unsavory biography were created in the accompanying crowd, and a series of antecedents was formulated for the court case that was initiated right in front of everybody’s eyes.
In the station house, the policeman handed the passport and the five-kopeck piece to the
lieutenant on duty. He examined the coin and offered me a chair. I sat down. The lieutenant said disdainfully, “Hand in the change,” and also immersed himself in the study of my passport. I shoveled out the coppers. “Count them, Kovalev,” said the lieutenant and looked at me steadily.
“Bought much?” he asked.
“A lot,” I answered.
“Hand it in, too,” said the lieutenant.
I laid out four issues of two-day-old Pravdas, three issues of the local Fisherman, two issues of the Literary Gazette, eight boxes of matches, six pieces of Golden Key toffee, and a marked-down wire brush for cleaning kerosene stoves.
“I can’t hand in the drinks,” I said dryly. “Five glasses with syrup and four without syrup.”
I was beginning to comprehend what was involved, and I was extremely nauseated and discomfited at the idea that it would be necessary to find excuses for myself.
“Seventy-four kopecks, comrade Lieutenant,” reported the youthful Kovalev.
The lieutenant pensively regarded the pile of newspapers and match boxes.
“Were you amusing yourself, or what?” he asked me.
“Or what,” I said gloomily.
“Not prudent of you,” said the lieutenant. “Not prudent, citizen. Tell me about it.”
I told. At the end of the story, I asked the lieutenant most earnestly not to interpret my actions as an attempt to save up the price of a car. My ears were burning. The lieutenant chuckled.
“And why not so interpret it?” he inquired. “Cases of it have been attempted.”
I shrugged.
“I can assure you such a thought couldn’t enter my head… What am I saying? It couldn’t, when, in fact, it didn’t!”
The lieutenant was silent for a long time. The young Kovalev took my passport and again set to studying it.
“It would be rather ridiculous to suppose…” I said, distraught. “An altogether loony concept…to save by the kopeck…” I shrugged again. “You’d be better off begging on the church steps, as they say…”
“As to begging, we try to combat that,” said the lieutenant significantly.
“And that’s correct and only natural… I just don’t understand what that has to do with me…” I caught myself shrugging once more, and resolved not to do it again.
The lieutenant was silent for a tiresomely long time, examining the coin.
“We’ll have to make out a report,” he said finally.
“Please, of course…although…” I didn’t know exactly what followed the “although.”
For a while, the lieutenant looked at me in expectation of a continuation. But I was busy figuring as to which section of the criminal code my actions came under, so he drew a sheet of paper toward him and set to writing.
The young Kovalev returned to his post. The lieutenant was squeaking away with his pen, and dipping it often and noisily into the inkwell. I sat, dully staring at the posters hung on the walls and thinking, listlessly, how, in my place, Lomonosov, for example, would have grabbed his passport and jumped out the window. What’s at the core o/ it all? I thought. The essence of the matter is that a man does not regard himself as guilty. In that sense, I was not guilty. But guilt, it seems, can be objective and subjective. And a fact is a fact: all that copper money in the amount of seventy-four kopecks, juridically speaking, was the result of theft, carried out by technical means in the form of an unspendable coin.
“Read it and sign, please,” said the lieutenant.
I read. According to the report it was manifest that I, the undersigned, Privalov, A.I., had, by means unknown to me, come into the possession of a working model of an unspendable five-kopeck coin, All-union Government Standard type 718-62, and had willfully misused same; further, that I, the undersigned Privalov, A.I., allegedly carried out my operations with the aim of conducting a scientific experiment, and without any intent to defraud; that I was prepared to make restitution for the losses suffered by the state in the amount of one ruble and fifty-five kopecks; and, finally, that in accordance with the resolution of the Solovetz City Council of March 22, 1959, I had handed over said working model of the unspendable five-kopeck coin to the lieutenant on duty, Sergienko, V.V., and received in return five kopecks in monies of legal tender on the territory of the Soviet Union. I signed.
The lieutenant verified my signature with the one in the passport, again meticulously counted the coppers, rang up somebody to confirm the prices of the toffee and the wire brush, and wrote out a receipt and handed it to me together with five kopecks in monies of legal tender on the territory of the Soviet Union.
Returning the papers, matches, candies, and wire brush, he said, “As to the soft drinks, you have consumed those as you have already admitted. Altogether, you owe eighty-one kopecks.”
I paid up with a feeling of tremendous relief. The lieutenant having leafed through my passport once again, handed it back to me.
“You may go, citizen Privalov,” he said. “And be careful from now on. Are you in Solovetz for long?”
“I’ll be leaving tomorrow,” I said.
“Well then, be careful until tomorrow.”
“Oh, I will!” I said, putting the passport away. Then, responding to an impulse and lowering my voice, I asked, “Would you mind telling me, comrade Lieutenant, don’t you find it a bit strange here in Solovetz?”
But the lieutenant was already absorbed in his paperwork.
“I’ve been here a long time,” he said absentmindedly. “I’m used to it.”
Chapter 5
“And do you believe in ghosts?” asked someone from the audience.
“Of course not,” replied the speaker, and melted slowly in the air.
A Truthful Story
All the time, until the evening arrived, I concentrated on being extremely careful. I went directly home from the police station to Lukomoriye Street and immediately crawled under the car. It was very hot. A menacing dark cloud was creeping in from the west. While I was lying under the car, dripping oil on my person, old Naina Kievna become most unctuous and friendly, twice approaching me to take her to Bald Mountain.
“They tell me, governor, that it’s bad for a car to stand still,” she cooed in her creaky voice, peering under the front bumper. “They say it’s good for it to drive it around. And have no fear, I’d make sure to pay…”
I was not inclined to drive to Bald Mountain. In the first place, my friends could show up any minute. In the second place, the old woman was even more distasteful to me in her cooing version that in her snarling mode. Further, it developed that it was ninety versts7 one way to Bald Mountain, and when I asked the old lady about the condition of the road, she joyfully told mc not to worry—that it was quite smooth, but that in case of any trouble, she would push it out herself. (“Don’t assume that I am plain old, governor; I am still quite vigorous.”) After the first unsuccessful assault, the crone retreated temporarily and went off into the cottage. At which point Basil the tomcat came to visit me under the car. For a long minute, he watched my manipulations and then enunciated in a low voice, but very clearly, “I don’t advise it, citizen, mn-e-eh… I don’t advise it. You’ll be eaten,” after which he departed precipitately, tail a-quiver. I wanted badly to be very careful, and so when the crone launched her second attack, I demanded fifty rubles, so as to put an end to the game once and for all. She desisted at once, regarding me with fresh respect.
I did the DC and the TS, drove to the gas station to fill up with the greatest of care, had dinner in dining room No. 11, and was once again subjected to document inspection by the vigilant Kovalev. To clear my conscience, I inquired of him the state of the road to Bald Mountain. The young sergeant considered me with vast disbelief and said, “Road? What are you talking about, citizen? What road? There isn’t any road.” When I returned home, it was already raining heavily.
The crone had departed. Tomcat had disappeared. In the well, someone sang in duet voices, and that was both frightening and someh
ow woeful. Soon the shower was replaced with a dismal fine rain. It grew dark.
I retreated to my room and attempted to experiment with the changeling book. However, it had somehow broken down. Maybe I was doing something wrong, or the weather influenced it, but it remained as it had been, Practical Exercises in Syntax and Punctuation by F.F. Kuzmin, no matter what I tried. Reading such a book seemed simply impossible, so I tried my luck with the mirror. But it reflected anything at all and remained silent. Nothing to do but lie down on the sofa.
Lulled by boredom and the sound of the rain, I was beginning to doze when the telephone rang. I went out in the hall and picked up the receiver.
“Hello.”
There was a silence against a background of static.
“Hello,” I said, blowing into the mouthpiece. “Press the button.”
There was no reply.
“Tap on the set,” I counseled. The receiver was quiet. I blew again, pulled on the cable, and said, “Call again from a different set.”
Then there was a rude query.
“Is this Alexander?”
“Yes.” I was surprised.
“Why don’t you answer?”
“I am answering. Who’s this?”
“This is Petrovski, bothering you. Go on over to the pickling shop and tell the master to give me a call.”
“What master?”
“Well, who’s there today?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean ‘I don’t know’? Is this Alexander?”