After that Andrei blacked out and the curtain came down again; then there were savage voices and shrieks that didn’t sound human, and the tramping of a multitude of feet. The burning armored car gave off a stink of red-hot iron and gasoline. Fritz Heiger, surrounded by a crowd of men with white armbands on their sleeves and towering head and shoulders above them, was shouting out commands, gesturing abruptly in various directions with his long arms, with his face and mussed blond hair covered in soot. Other men with white armbands, who had clustered around the streetlamps in front of the entrance to City Hall, climbed up the streetlamps for some reason and lowered long ropes that dangled in the wind. Someone was dragged down the steps, struggling and jerking his legs about, someone squealed in a high womanish voice that left Andrei’s ears blocked, and suddenly the steps were completely covered with people. Andrei glimpsed black-bearded faces and heard the clatter of gun bolts. The squealing stopped and a dark body crept upward along the column of the streetlamp, squirming and shuddering convulsively. Shots were fired out of the crowd, the jerking legs went limp, stretching out full length, and the dark body started slowly twisting and turning in the air.
And afterward Andrei was shaken awake by a terrible jolting. His head was bobbing about on coarse, smelly knots of sackcloth; he was being driven away, being taken somewhere, and a familiar, frenzied voice was shouting, “Gee-up now! Gee-up there, you damned whore! Move on!” And right there in front of him, against the backdrop of the black sky, City Hall was burning. Hot tongues of flame burst out of windows, scattering sparks into the darkness, and he saw long, stretched bodies dangling from the streetlamps, swaying to and fro.
2
Washed and changed, with a bandage over his right eye, Andrei was reclining in an armchair, watching morosely as Uncle Yura and Stas Kowalski, with his head also swathed in bandages, greedily slurped down some kind of steaming slop, spooning it straight from the saucepan. Selma was sitting beside him, sighing tearfully, and she kept trying to take hold of his hand. Her hair was mussed, the mascara from her lashes was smeared across her cheeks, and her face was puffy and covered with hot, red blotches. And her frivolous, transparent little robe looked freakish on her, with its front soaked in soapy water.
“. . . He was going to finish you off,” Stas explained, carrying on slurping. “Working you over carefully, you know, dragging it out as long as possible. I know that trick; the state’s blue hussars worked me over the same way too. Only I got the full treatment, you see—they’d already started stamping on me and then, thanks be to God, it turned out that I was the wrong one; it was someone else they wanted.”
“They broke your nose—that’s nothing,” Uncle Yura confirmed. “The nose isn’t the most important thing . . . and a broken one will do. And the rib . . .” He waved the hand holding his spoon. “I’ve broken so many of them ribs. The important thing is, your innards are in good shape: liver, spleen, kidneys . . .”
Selma sighed fitfully and tried once again to take hold of Andrei’s hand. He looked at her and said, “Stop bawling. Go and get changed, and anyway . . .”
She obediently got up and went into the other room. Andrei felt around in his mouth with his tongue, came across something hard, and pushed it out onto his finger.
“They broke out a filling,” he said.
“Oh really?” said Uncle Yura, surprised.
Andrei showed him. Uncle Yura inspected it and shook his head. Stas shook his head too and said, “Unusual thing, that. Only when I was recuperating afterward, for instance—I spent three months in bed, you know—it was mostly teeth I spat out. My woman steamed my ribs every day. She died later, but here I am, still alive. And as right as rain.”
“Three months!” Uncle Yura said contemptuously. “After they blew my backside off at Yelnya, I was knocking around the hospitals for half a year. It’s a terrible thing, brother, to have your buttock ripped off. You see, all the major blood vessels are interwoven in the buttock. And that slab of iron sliced it right off me at a tangent! Boys, I asked, what is this, where’s my backside got to? And would you believe it, my trousers were ripped off too, right down to the tops of my boots, as if I never had any trousers . . . There was something left in my boots, but above that . . . well, nothing!” He licked his spoon. “Fedka Cheparev got his head ripped off that time,” he announced. “Ripped off by the very same slab.”
Stas licked his spoon too, and they sat there for a while in silence, looking into the saucepan. Then Stas delicately cleared his throat and lowered his spoon into the steam again. Uncle Yura followed his example.
Selma came back. Andrei glanced at her and turned his eyes away. The fool had dolled herself up. Stuck on her gigantic earrings and a dress with a plunging neckline, and painted herself like whore again . . . She was a whore . . . He couldn’t look at her—to hell with her anyway. First that shameful scene in the hallway, then the shameful scene in the bathroom when she wailed out loud as she pulled off his urine-soaked shorts, and he looked at the blue-black patches on his belly and his sides and wept again—out of pity for himself and sheer helplessness . . . And of course she was drunk, drunk again, every single day she was drunk, and now, while she was getting changed, she was sure to have taken a swig from the bottle . . .
“That doctor . . .” Uncle Yura said pensively. “The bald one who was just here—where have I seen him before?”
“You could easily have seen him here,” said Selma, smiling seductively. “He lives in the next entrance. What job is he doing now, Andrei?”
“He’s a roofer,” Andrei said dismally.
She cheerfully slept with this bald doctor, not giving a damn for the consequences. The whole building knew it. He didn’t make any particular effort to conceal it. In fact, no one tried to conceal it.
“How come he’s a roofer?” Stas asked in amazement, and the spoon stopped halfway to his mouth.
“He just is,” said Andrei. “Covers roofs, covers women.” He got up with a groan, reached into the chest of drawers, and took out some cigarettes. Two packs were missing again.
“Never mind the women,” Stas muttered, dumbfounded. “But why roofs? What if he falls off? He’s a doctor.”
“They’re always thinking up something new in the City,” Uncle Yura said venomously. He was about to tuck the spoon into the top of his boot, but remembered just in time and put it on the table. “It’s like the way it was in Timofeevka just after the war: they sent a Georgian to be the chairman of this collective farm, a former political commissar—”
The phone rang. Selma picked it up. “Yes,” she said. “Uh-huh, uh-huh . . . No, he’s not well, he can’t come—”
“Give the phone here,” said Andrei.
“It’s the paper,” Selma said in a whisper, putting her hand over the mouthpiece
Andrei reached out his hand. “Give me the phone!” he repeated, raising his voice. “And don’t make a habit of speaking for someone else!”
Selma gave him the phone and grabbed the pack of cigarettes. Her hands were trembling—and so were her lips.
“Voronin here,” said Andrei.
“Andrei?” It was Kensi. “Where did you disappear to? I’ve been searching for you everywhere. What are we going to do? There’s a fascist coup in the City.”
“Why fascist?” Andrei asked, stunned.
“Will you come into the office? Or are you really unwell?”
“I’ll come, of course I’ll come,” said Andrei. “You just explain—”
“We have lists,” Kensi said hurriedly. “Special correspondents and all the rest of it . . . Archives . . .”
“I get it,” said Andrei. “Only why do you think the coup’s fascist?”
“I don’t think so, I know so,” Kensi said impatiently.
Andrei gritted his teeth and grunted. “Wait,” he said irritably. “Don’t be so hasty . . .” He tried feverishly to grasp the situation. “OK, you get everything ready, I’ll leave right now.”
“Yes, come
on,” said Kensi. “Only be careful on the streets.”
Andrei hung up and turned toward the farmers. “Guys,” he said, “I’ve got to go. Will you give me a ride to the office?”
“Sure we’ll give you a ride.” Uncle Yura responded. He was already getting up from the table, gluing together a roll-up on the way. “Come on, Stas, no more sitting around here. The pair of us are sitting around here and they’re taking power, aren’t they?”
“Yes,” Stas agreed regretfully, also getting up. “It’s all turning out kind of stupid. Seems like we’ve taken off the head, hanged every one of them, and there’s still damn-all sign of the sun. Screw it all, where did I stick that little shooter of mine?”
He rummaged in all the corners, searching for his ugly automatic rifle, Uncle Yura puffed on his roll-up as he lazily pulled a tattered wadded jacket over his army tunic, and Andrei was about to get a coat too, but he ran into Selma, who was standing there, blocking his way, looking very pale and very determined. “I’m going with you!” she declared in the same special, high, brazen voice that she used to start a quarrel.
“Let me through,” said Andrei, trying to move her out of the way with his good arm.
“I won’t let you go anywhere,” said Selma. “Either you take me with you or you stay at home!”
“Get out of the way,” Andrei bellowed, flying off the handle. “You’re the very last thing we need there, you fool!”
“I. Won’t. Let. You. Out!” Selma said spitefully.
Then Andrei hit her, without taking a swing but very hard, across the cheek with his open hand. Silence fell. Selma didn’t budge, but her white face with the lips stretched out into a fine thread broke into red blotches again.
Andrei came to his senses. “I’m sorry,” he said through his teeth.
“I won’t let you go . . .” Selma repeated in a very quiet voice.
Uncle Yura cleared his throat a couple of times and said, as if he were talking to no one in particular, “In general, at a time like this, a woman all alone in the apartment . . . you know . . . it’s probably not a good idea . . .”
“Definitely not,” Stas backed him up. “She wouldn’t be safe now on her own, but if she’s with us, no one will touch her, we’re farmers . . .”
But Andrei carried on standing in front of Selma, looking at her. Even at this stage he was still trying to understand something about this woman, and as usual he couldn’t understand a thing. She was a slut, a born slut, a slut by the grace of God—he understood that. He had understood that a long time ago. She loved him, she had loved him from the very first day—he knew that too, and he knew it was no obstacle to her. And staying in the apartment alone right now was no problem to her either; she’d never been afraid of anything anyway. He knew that perfectly well too. He knew all the separate things about himself and about her, but taking them all together . . .
“All right,” he said. “Put on something warm.”
“Do your ribs hurt?” Uncle Yura inquired, trying to change the subject to something as different as possible.
“It’s OK,” Andrei growled. “It’s bearable. We’ll battle through.”
Trying not to meet anyone’s eyes, he stuck the cigarettes and matches in his pocket and stood in front of the sideboard in the far corner of the room, where Donald’s pistol lay under a pile of napkins and towels. Should he take it or not? He imagined various scenes and circumstances in which the pistol could come in handy, and decided not to take it. To hell with it, I’ll manage without it somehow. I’m not planning to fight a war with anyone anyway . . .
“Right, are we off, then?” said Stas.
He was already standing by the door, cautiously threading his bandaged head through the strap of his automatic. Selma was standing beside him in her coarse, long sweater, which she had pulled on straight over her low-necked dress. She had a raincoat over her arm.
“Let’s go,” Uncle Yura commanded, clattering the butt of his machine gun against the floor.
“Take off the earrings,” Andrei growled to Selma, and went out onto the stairs.
They started walking down. On the landings, residents of the building were whispering to each other in the dark, and they moved aside when they saw the armed men. Someone said: “It’s Voronin . . .” and then immediately called to him, “Mr. Editor, can you tell us what’s happening in the City?”
Andrei didn’t get a chance to reply, because the man who asked was shushed from all sides, and someone said in an ominous whisper, “Can’t you see the man’s being taken away, you fool!” Selma giggled hysterically.
They came out into the courtyard and clambered into the cart, and Selma flung the raincoat across Andrei’s shoulders. Uncle Yura suddenly said, “Quiet!” and they all started listening.
“There’s shooting somewhere,” Stas said in a low voice.
“Long bursts,” Uncle Yura added. “Not sparing the ammunition. And where do they get it from? Ten cartridges is half a liter of home brew, and just listen to him blast away . . . Gee-up,” he roared. “Can’t hang around here any longer.”
The cart rumbled into the archway. Little Wang was standing on the porch of the caretaker’s lodge with his broom and shovel.
“Lookee, it’s Vanya!” Uncle Yura exclaimed. “Whooah there! Hi there, Vanya! What are you doing here, eh?”
“Sweeping up,” Wang replied with a smile. “Hello.”
“Drop that, no more sweeping up!” said Uncle Yura. “Come on, what are you up to? You come along with us, we’ll make you a minister, you know—you’ll walk around in shantung silk and ride in a swanky ‘Victory’ automobile.”
Wang laughed politely.
“All right, Uncle Yura,” Andrei said impatiently. “Let’s go, let’s go!”
His side was hurting badly, sitting in the cart was uncomfortable, and he already regretted that he hadn’t set out on foot. Without even noticing, he had slumped against Selma.
“OK then, Vanya, if you don’t want to come, then don’t,” Uncle Yura decided. “But about being a minister—you get yourself ready! Comb your hair, you know, wash your neck . . .” he flourished the reins. “Gee-up.”
They rumbled out onto Main Street.
“Whose cart is this, do you know?” Stas suddenly asked.
“Damned if I know,” Uncle Yura replied without turning around. “The horse looks like it’s that skinflint’s . . . you know, lives right on the edge of the Cliff, ginger hair and freckles . . . Canadian, I reckon . . .”
“Really?” said Stas. “He’s probably swearing a blue streak.”
“No,” said Uncle Yura. “He was killed.”
“Really?” said Stas, and left it at that.
Main Street was empty and veiled in thick night fog, although by the clock it was five in the afternoon. The fog ahead of them had a reddish tinge and it was glimmering restlessly. Every now and then bright patches of white light flared up in it—either searchlights or powerful headlamps—and from that direction, muffled by the fog but still sometimes drowning out the rumble of the wheels and clopping of hooves, they heard shooting. Something was happening up there.
In the buildings lining the street many of the windows were lit up, but mostly on the higher floors, above the second. There were no queues at the locked stores and kiosks, but Andrei noticed that people were standing in some of the courtyard entrances and doorways, cautiously glancing out then hiding again, and the most audacious came out onto the sidewalk and looked in the direction of the glittering and crackling in the fog. Objects looking like dark sacks were lying here and there on the sidewalk. Andrei didn’t realize what they were at first, and after a while he was surprised to realize that they were dead baboons. A solitary horse was grazing in a small park square beside a dark school.
The cart rumbled and rattled, and no one spoke. Selma quietly felt for Andrei’s hand and he gave way to the pain and exhaustion, slumping completely against her warm sweater and closing his eyes. I’m in bad shape, he thought
. Oh, really bad shape . . . What garbage was that Kensi was spouting—what fascist coup did he mean? It’s just that the cold, the anger, and hopelessness have driven everyone wild . . . The Experiment is the Experiment . . .
At that moment the cart gave a sudden jolt, and above the rumbling of the wheels Andrei heard a shriek so savage and piercing that he came to instantly, covered in sweat. He straightened up and started swinging his head to and fro crazily.
Uncle Yura swore fiercely, hauling on the reins with all his might to hold back the horses, which were straining hard to one side, and at the same time something on fire, a bundle of flames, hurtled along the sidewalk on the left, uttering inhuman screeches that were somehow entirely human, filled with pain and terror, and scattering splashes of fire behind it, and before Andrei could even gather his wits, Stas had jumped smartly down off the cart and cut down the living torch with two short bursts from his automatic, setting the panes of glass jangling in a shop window. The fiery bundle somersaulted along the sidewalk, tumbling over and over, gave one last pitiful squeal, and froze.