‘Willem lowered his eyes sheepishly and replied: “Yes, Herr Franz, but it wasn’t my hand.”’
The audience collapsed in paroxysms of laughter, even louder than before. I sighed, slumped against the wall and waited.
It took a couple of minutes for order to be restored. After that Olga, evidently considering that she had the audience eating out of the palm of her hand, announced: ‘And now meet our guest, Senior Police Sergeant Dmitry Pastukhov!’
This was getting more and more interesting! Mentally congratulating myself on taking up the strategically correct position by the door, I squatted down on my haunches. And when Olga stepped down off the dais, clapping her hands, my old, if rather superficial, acquaintance Dmitry Pastukhov mounted it with an embarrassed expression on his face.
‘Hello,’ Dmitry said, with a smile that was awkward but basically friendly and sincere. ‘I am very pleased, I really am, to have been invited here.’
The audience suddenly burst into applause.
‘Of course, I’m not Franz, and I’m not Willem,’ Pastukhov continued, encouraged by this approval. ‘But a job’s a job, in any country at any time. Right? So ask what you like, and I’ll answer – only don’t forget, I’m a senior sergeant, not some high-up . . .’
‘Why have you been stuck as a sergeant for so long?’ a young girl from the research department piped up from the audience.
‘If I’d known you were going to invite me to speak, I’d have become a general!’ said Pastukhov, laughing the question off. He didn’t seem very keen to discuss the leisurely progress of his career.
But the audience was in a friendly mood. Alisher was the first to get up and ask a question.
‘Dima – may I call you Dima?’
‘Of course!’
‘Let’s discuss the following situation. There’s some kind of disturbance taking place in a city. The police are trying to restore order. They haven’t got enough men. The crowd is setting fire to cars, looting shops, beating up peaceful passers-by. And then two men approach you, an ordinary sergeant on patrol duty. One says he can pacify the crowd, the people will feel ashamed and all go home. The other says he can frighten the crowd, make the people feel pain and they will go running home. Whose help would you accept?’
‘The first to approach me!’ Pastukhov replied without a moment’s thought.
‘But if they both approach you at once?’ Alisher persisted. ‘And you can only accept help from one of them?’
Pastukhov pondered for literally a second. Then he said confidently: ‘The one who will frighten them and cause them pain. Would you like to know why?’
Well, would you believe it! There was a pretty decent speaker hiding away inside my police acquaintance! Or had Olga somehow, before his appearance, stimulated his ability to communicate with the audience?
‘Why?’ Alisher asked sympathetically.
‘Because feeling ashamed is for kids who’ve scrawled four-letter words on a fence!’ Pastukhov declared confidently. ‘And even then . . . these days, not even a kid feels ashamed of that. People who feel ashamed and go on their way . . . they’ll just get up to no good all over again! But if they feel pain and fear – that gets through to their brains, and their livers, that gets stored in their subconscious minds. Especially since . . . well, you know who we’re talking about here?’
‘Who?’ asked Alisher, fascinated.
‘Individuals involved in committing group criminal offences!’ said Pastukhov, energetically waving one hand through the air. ‘Mass disturbances, breaches of the rules of conduct of gatherings and demonstrations, an unsanctioned public assembly, the destruction of private property, delinquency, thuggery, robbery, hooliganism, bodily harm . . . Basically, the whole works! And can you find them all afterwards, arrest them and put them on trial for what they’ve done? No way! Probably ten fall guys will be picked and given a good beating as an example, and the rest will get away with a bit of a fright. So it would be good to punish them in the process of suppressing the illegal activity. So, one – let it be painful! And, two – let it be frightening!’
He glanced triumphantly round the hall.
The audience was silent. Thinking. But this was far from being the censorious silence of Light Others appalled by human cruelty. Everyone was simply silent as they thought over his words. And it seemed as if they were willing to agree with them.
And by and large I agreed with Pastukhov too.
I didn’t like it! But I agreed with him.
‘Dmitry, may I ask you another question, then?’ said Olga, rejoining the conversation. ‘On a slightly different subject, but nonetheless . . . There’s a ship sailing over the sea. A large one, with many passengers on board, very many. The hold springs a leak. There aren’t enough lifeboats. They can’t wait for help – it simply won’t get there in time. The captain realises they won’t be able to save everyone, but the passengers aren’t yet aware of the situation. What would you do?’
Pastukhov knitted his brows. Then he asked hopefully: ‘This is a kind of test, right? We had a visit from a psychologist, he asked questions like that . . .’
‘No, no!’ Olga said, shaking her head. ‘It’s not a test, not that. Simply a question. What do you think should be done in a situation like that?’
‘Well, probably they should put the children in the lifeboats,’ said Pastukhov, after thinking for a moment. ‘And the women, if they’ll fit.’
He was speaking sincerely, I could see that. And I immediately started to like the senior sergeant a lot more than when he was talking about the corrective power of pain and fear.
‘Not even all the children will fit in!’ said Olga. ‘And it’s by no means certain that they’ll survive in the lifeboats without any grown-ups, anyway.’
Pastukhov knitted his brows.
‘They could save those who are most deserving . . .’ he said thoughtfully. ‘You know, distinguished people with special honours and such . . .’ He rubbed the bridge of his nose and objected to his own idea. ‘No, that’s no good. Who’s going to decide, eh? Who’s worthy, who isn’t . . . you’d end up with a real set-to. I’d probably do nothing.’
‘Nothing?’ asked Olga. Curiously, not judgementally.
‘Nothing!’ Pastukhov replied, speaking firmly this time. ‘Well, you know, of course I’d order the crew to pump the water out, block off the hole with some kind of plug . . .’
‘They use patches for that!’ someone well informed on maritime matters told him from the hall.
‘With a patch, then,’ Pastukhov agreed. ‘But otherwise – let the musicians play and the waiters serve the food . . .’
He must have watched Titanic just recently, I thought.
‘But who’s going to be saved?’ Olga carried on questioning him.
‘Whoever manages to get away,’ Pastukhov said, with a shrug. ‘Whoever realises that the ship is sinking, that there aren’t enough lifeboats. That would be the fairest way of all. Afterwards, when everybody realises, you could try to impose some kind of order.’
‘Thank you, that’s a very valuable opinion,’ said Olga. ‘Any more questions?’
‘Dmitry, this is a different situation . . .’ said someone in the audience. ‘You’re an ordinary person, a cop, I mean, a polizei . . . uh, sorry. An ordinary policeman who knows nothing about Others. At night you come across a creature who behaves exactly as if he’s a vampire – or a werewolf, say. What would you do?’
‘Take out my pistol and attempt to detain him,’ Pastukhov replied.
The audience seemed to be surprised. There was total silence. Pastukhov shuffled his feet.
‘Don’t go thinking that I’m some crazy, gung-ho kind of hero,’ he said guiltily. ‘But what would I think? That it was some sort of psycho who’d dressed himself up as a vampire or a werewolf. That means he can be arrested. What can he do against a pistol? But if I know – the way I know a little bit about you – well then, of course, no. I’d run for it! But you wanted to know how an ordinary cop
– a policemen, that is, would react . . .’
I quietly opened the door a bit and walked out of the hall.
Somehow I didn’t like what was going on. Since when had they started preparing the Night Watch for interacting with the human agencies of law enforcement? The humans were on their own and we were on our own. That was the way it had always been. Or maybe not always?
No, I definitely didn’t like this.
I looked round. Over at one side, beside a little projecting wall, Las was standing, smoking stealthily and hiding the cigarette in his fist like a schoolboy.
‘What are you up to?’ I asked, taken by surprise.
‘What can a cop tell me that I don’t already know?’ Las asked rhetorically. ‘Though I remember I met one cop who played a Vivaldi concerto on the flute. Now that did surprise me!’
‘Well, why shouldn’t a man have a hobby like that?’ I asked, shrugging. ‘No matter if he’s a policeman to the depths of his soul – if he enjoys playing, let him!’
‘Right, but not standing under the falling snow in winter, on duty!’ Las protested. He thought for a second and added. ‘His playing was lousy anyway, I tell you honestly. Definitely a C-minus.’
I shook my head. I had never encountered any militiamen or policemen who played the flute. In general I hadn’t come across even a tenth as many amusing little scenes as Las saw all around him. I’d come across plenty that were beastly and abominable, but not the amusing kind.
‘In the first place,’ I began, ‘I wasn’t invited to the lecture.’
Las nodded understandingly and whispered: ‘Yes, I would have been offended too!’
‘In the second place, I find the whole subject rather strange,’ I went on, ignoring the jibe. ‘Are we preparing for a series of cataclysms or something?’
‘There’s no stability,’ said Las. ‘The terrorists have seized another plane.’
‘What plane?’ I asked, pricking up my ears.
Las looked at me suspiciously. Then he shut his cigarette end in a pocket ashtray and waved his hand about to disperse the smoke.
‘Forget it. It’s just a figure of speech. Anton, take a look around you! At the human world. You’re all Great Ones, mighty magicians, you’re not interested in watching ordinary life. But the world’s in a fever, financial crisis after financial crisis, currencies skipping up and down, governments falling in countries all over the place, revolution after revolution in the underdeveloped countries. And meanwhile our enemy is cunning and powerful, he’s on the offensive.’
‘We’re supposed to have a truce with the Dark Ones,’ I remarked. ‘And Zabulon’s not being any more malign than usual . . .’
‘Zabulon! Ha!’ said Las and laughed sarcastically. ‘He’s small fry. Our enemy is the Prince of Darkness.’
‘The devil?’ I said. ‘Well, there are no specific grounds for believing that he exists . . . Did you get baptised, then?’
‘Do you need to ask?’ Las proudly pushed his fingers in behind his collar and showed me a brand new shiny little cross. ‘I got baptised, I confessed, took the sacrament – the works!’
‘A good job you didn’t receive extreme unction,’ I quipped. ‘That’s it, then. The forces of evil are doomed now.’
‘Don’t mock,’ Las said in an offended voice.
I suddenly felt awkward. In the final analysis, faith is every individual’s personal matter. Whether he’s an Other or a human being . . . Take Arina, the witchiest of witches, but she still believed!
‘Sorry, I was wrong,’ I said. ‘Since it’s impossible in principle to prove that God does or doesn’t exist . . .’
Las patted me on the shoulder patronisingly.
‘That’s okay. I understand. But you won’t deny that the world is seeing an increase in conflicts between countries that can’t be resolved by peaceful methods, financial instability is on the increase and all the traditional economic, political and social models are imploding?’
‘I won’t,’ I admitted.
‘Well then, in these conditions the Watch is absolutely obliged to prepare to take measures for the protection of the human herd.’
I thought I must have misheard.
‘The human what?’
‘Herd. Well, population,’ Las said, frowning.
‘You’re not very polite about human beings,’ I said.
‘Well, have they deserved any better?’ Las asked in surprise. ‘Two thousand years since people were given the Good News! And what’s changed in all that time? We have the same old wars and violence, infamy and abomination!’
‘Overall there has been some progress,’ I said, disagreeing. ‘In wartime they used to annihilate people or turn them into slaves, the peasants starved to death . . .’
‘And now in wartime they torture them and poison them with gas in concentration camps, bomb them with high-precision smart bombs or, in the very best of cases, they occupy countries economically and turn them into powerless satellites. And where there is no war – they dumb down their own people and treat them like cattle.’ Las spread his hands emphatically. ‘All those Genghis Khans, Xerxeses and Caligulas were more honest, I reckon. So far, there is nothing to respect human beings for.’
I started getting a bit wound up at this point.
‘Las, we’re the Night Watch. We protect people, we don’t despise them.’
Las pulled a wry face.
‘Listen, Anton. You’re, you know . . . a Higher Magician and all that. One of the high-ups. But can we talk off the record, just as friends?’
‘Sure, go on.’
‘Then don’t give me that razzmatazz about how we protect people,’ Las said calmly. ‘We control them – just a little bit. And we prevent the Day Watch from controlling people the way they think is right. What kind of protection is it, when we issue licences to vampires to hunt people? What kind of protection is it, if for every good deed that we do the Dark Ones are granted the right to work evil? We protect ourselves! Our way of thinking, our comfortable existence, our long lives and lack of human problems. Sure, we’re good, and the Dark Ones are bad! That’s why we don’t entirely regard human beings as cattle. But we don’t consider them equal to ourselves!’
‘We do,’ I said stubbornly.
‘Oh, yes?’ Las laughed. ‘When did you last live life as a human, Anton? So that you had to count the money left in your pocket until payday, grovel to some petty human bureaucrat to get some absurd little piece of paper with a stamp on it, wander round grimy, filthy health centres trying to get exhausted doctors to treat you, spend two hours stuck in a traffic jam because half of Moscow has been blocked off for some big shot, or dodge a car with a flashing light and “special” number plates hurtling along the wrong side of the road?’
‘There are plenty of people in Moscow who don’t count every kopeck and don’t grovel to bureaucrats . . .’ I began.
‘Of course, and they regard the people around them as cattle,’ Las said. ‘All those other people who don’t have a flashing light or a couple of credit cards from major foreign banks in their wallet. And if you behave like those who reckon they’re above the common folk – and, I’m sorry, that’s exactly how you do behave when you calculate the lines of probability, remoralise roughnecks just for a minute or two when you run into them, pay in a shop with your bank card from work, which has no limit—’
‘Why do you think our Watch bank cards don’t have any limit?’ I asked in amazement.
‘I checked it,’ Las chuckled. ‘Seems like you try to live within the pay that’s supposed to be transferred to your account. Count it all up some time, out of curiosity – you’ll soon see that you’ve been spending two or three times as much as you earn for a long time! The only limit is your internal sense of measure . . . and that has a way of getting stretched. So, Anton, if you behave like those people who are used to thinking of themselves as above everyone else you’re absolutely no different from them.’
‘I don’t drive through red ligh
ts with a flashing beacon!’ I growled.
‘Of course not. You drive through the crossroads in the Twilight, or you apply a Sphere of Inattention to your car, so that everyone brakes without even knowing why. What’s the difference between your magic and a flashing light? There isn’t any! You think of yourself as a member of a higher race too – only, of course, with greater reason. You are a member of a higher race! You’re an Other. A Light Other. So you wish people well. But it’s a long, long time since you lived the life of ordinary people and you couldn’t live that way. You wouldn’t last even a single day.’
‘I would,’ I said stubbornly.
‘That’s what you think,’ said Las, frowning. ‘Anyway . . . I like humans, I wish them well. But I don’t idealise them. And since they behave like cattle, that’s the way I have to relate to them. No way am I going to pretend that there’s no difference between me and Vasya the yard-keeper.’
‘There isn’t any difference, except that we have magical abilities,’ I said. ‘Absolutely none. We have the same morality, the same dreams . . . the whole kit and caboodle!’ I raised my hands, touched the Twilight and felt for my own aura. ‘Block for twenty-four hours.’
‘I was absolutely certain you would do that,’ Las said. ‘Well, go on, try it. Only twenty-four hours is too ambitious to start with. A couple of hours would have been enough for you.’
‘I queued for passport control in the airport for an hour,’ I said. ‘It was okay, not a peep out of me.’
‘A pity it wasn’t two,’ Las sighed. ‘Then you would have been more careful now . . . Right, then, we’ll talk tomorrow.’
‘Right, then,’ I said and nodded.
‘Shall I give you a lift home?’ Las asked.
I just snorted disdainfully and headed for the exit.
CHAPTER 3
THERE’S A SIMPLE way to understand what a blind man feels in this life: close your eyes and try to do something. Something ordinary, not difficult. Something you normally do anyway ‘without looking’ – take a spoon out of a drawer in a table, light a cigarette, put a CD in a music centre. It only takes five minutes at the most to understand everything and know that you’ll never forget it.