The Doomed City

1

Four daily newspapers had been published in the City since time out of mind, but first of all Andrei picked up the fifth, which had put out its first issue about two weeks before the onset of the “Egyptian darkness.” It was a small newspaper, only one double sheet—not so much a newspaper, more of a handbill, and this handbill was published by the Party of Radical Rebirth, which had broken away from the left wing of the Radical Party. Bearing the title Under the Banner of Radical Rebirth, the handbill was vitriolic, vituperative, and aggressive, but the people who put it out were always superbly well informed: as a general rule, they knew what was going on in the City as a whole and in the government in particular.

Andrei reviewed the headlines: “Friedrich Heiger warns: You have plunged the City into darkness, but we are on the alert”; “But really, Mr. Mayor, what did happen to the grain from the municipal granaries?”; “Forward shoulder to shoulder! Friedrich Heiger meets the leaders of the Peasants’ Party”; “Steel plant workers say: String up the grain dealers!”; “That’s the way, Fritz! We’re with you! PRR housewives’ rally”; “Baboons again?” A cartoon: the fat-assed mayor, enthroned on a heap of grain—presumably the same grain that had disappeared from the municipal granaries—handing out guns to lugubrious characters of criminal appearance. Caption: “Come on now, guys, you tell them where the grain went!”

Andrei dropped the handbill on his desk and scratched his chin. Where the hell did Fritz get all the money for the fines? God, how sick Andrei was of everything. He got up, walked across to the window, and glanced out. In the dense, damp darkness, only faintly backlit by the streetlamps, he heard carts rumbling past, gruff voices swearing, and the loud hacking of a smoker’s cough. Every now and then a horse gave a high-pitched whinny. For the second day in a row the farmers were flocking into the City.

There was a knock at the door and his secretary came in with a bundle of proofs. Andrei peevishly waved her away. “Ubukata. Give them to Ubukata.”

“Mr. Ubukata is with the censor,” the secretary replied timidly.

“He’s not going to spend the night in there,” Andrei said irritably. “Give them to him when he comes back—”

“But the compositor—”

“That’s all!” Andrei said rudely. “On your way.”

The secretary withdrew. Andrei yawned, wincing at the pain in the back of his head, went back to the desk, and lit a cigarette. His head was splitting open and he had a foul taste in his mouth. And in general everything was murky, foul, and scummy. Egyptian darkness… Andrei heard the sound of shots somewhere in the distance—a faint crackling, like someone breaking dry branches. He winced again and picked up the Experiment, the government newspaper printed on eight double sheets:

Andrei raked all these sheets of paper together in a heap, clumped them into a tight ball, and tossed it into the corner. All that seemed unreal. What was real was the darkness, now hanging over the City for the twelfth day. Reality was the lines of people in front of the bread stores; reality was that ominous rumbling of rickety wheels below the windows, the little red sparks of crude hand-rolled cigarettes flaring up in the darkness, the dull, metallic clanking under the tarpaulins in the heavy country carts. Reality was the shooting, although so far no one really knew who was shooting at whom… And the most hideous reality of all was that blunt, hungover buzzing in his own poor head and the huge, furry tongue that he wanted to spit out because it didn’t fit into his mouth. Fortified port and raw spirit—they must have been out of their minds! It was fine for her, lounging under the blanket, sleeping it off, but he had to hang around here… If only the whole damn kit and caboodle would just fall apart, collapse… I’m sick and tired of wasting my life away; they can stick all their experiments, mentors, radical rebirths, mayors, farmers, and that lousy stinking grain right up their ass… Some great experimenters they are—they can’t even guarantee the sun will shine. And today I’ve still got to go to the jail and take Izya his food parcel… How much time has he got left to do? Four months… No, six. That bastard Fritz—if only all that energy could be put to peaceful purposes! Now there’s a man who never loses heart. It’s all grist to his mill. They flung him out of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, so he set up a party, he’s laying plans of some sort, the fight against corruption, all hail the new rebirth—he’s locked horns with the mayor now. Right now it would be good to go to City Hall, grab Mr. Mayor by his shock of noble gray hair, and smash his face into the desk: “Where’s the grain, you creep? Why isn’t the sun shining?” and then land a good kick on his ass—and again, and again…

The door swung open and crashed into the wall, and little Kensi came tearing in. Andrei could see immediately that he was in a fury—eyes narrowed to slits, teeth bared, raven black thatch standing up on end. Andrei groaned to himself. Now he’ll drag me into another fight with someone, he thought drearily.

Kensi walked over and slammed down a pile of proofs, savagely crisscrossed with red pencil, onto Andrei’s desk. “I’m not going to print this!” he declared. “It’s sabotage.”

“Now what’s your problem?” Andrei asked. “Been scrapping with the censor, have you?” He took the proofs and stared at them without understanding anything, without even seeing anything apart from the red lines and squiggles.

“The pick of the letters—with one letter!” Kensi said furiously. “The editorial won’t do—too provocative. The comments on the mayor’s speech won’t do—too trenchant. The interview with the farmers won’t do—a sensitive issue, now’s not the right time… I can’t work like this, Andrei, it’s up to you. You have to do something. Those bastards are killing the paper!”

“Hang on now,” said Andrei, wincing. “Hang on, let’s figure this out…”

A large, rusty bolt was suddenly screwed into the back of his head, right into the little depression at the base of his skull. He closed his eyes and gave a quiet moan.

“Moaning won’t do any good here!” said Kensi, slumping into the chair for visitors and nervously lighting up a cigarette. “You moan and I groan, but that bastard’s the one who should be moaning, not you and me.”

The door swung open again. The fat censor tumbled into the room, sweating and breathing heavily, with his face covered in red blotches. He yelled stridently on his way in, “I refuse to work in such conditions! I’m not some little kid, Mr. Senior Editor. I’m a government employee! I don’t sit here because I get any pleasure out of it, and I don’t intend to tolerate obscene language from your colleagues! Or let them call me abusive names!”

“Why, you ought to be strangled, not just called names!” Kensi hissed from his chair, with his eyes glinting like a snake’s. “You’re a saboteur, not a government employee!”

The censor’s face turned to stone, and he shifted his eyes from Kensi to Andrei and back again. Then he suddenly spoke in a very calm, solemn voice: “Mr. Senior Editor, I wish to register a formal protest!”

At that point Andrei finally pulled himself together with a horrendous effort, slapped his hand down on the desk, and said, “Will you please be quiet! Both of you! Please sit down, Mr. Paprikaki.”

Mr. Paprikaki sat down facing Kensi. No longer looking at anyone, he tugged a large checkered handkerchief out of his pocket and started mopping at his sweaty neck, his cheeks, the back of his head, and his Adam’s apple.

“Right, then…” said Andrei, leafing through the proofs. “We prepared a selection of ten letters—”

“It’s a biased selection!” Mr. Paprikaki immediately declared.

Kensi hit the roof. “Yesterday alone we received nine hundred letters about bread!” he bellowed. “And the tone was the same in all of them, if not harsher!”

“Just a moment!” said Andrei, raising his voice and slapping his hand down on the desk again. “Let me speak! And if you don’t want to, you can both go out in the corridor and carry on haggling there. Well now, Mr. Paprikaki, our selection is based on a thoroughgoing analysis of the letters received by our office. Mr. Ubukata is absolutely right. We are in possession of correspondence that is far harsher and far less restrained in tone. And furthermore, we have even included in the selection one letter that directly supports the government, although it was the only one of its kind in all the seven thousand letters that we—”

“I have no objection to that letter,” the censor interrupted.

“I should think not,” said Kensi. “You wrote it yourself.”

“That’s a lie!” the censor exclaimed in a squeal that screwed the rusty bolt back into that little depression under Andrei’s skull.

“Well, if not you then someone else from your mob,” said Kensi.

“You’re the blackmailer!” the censor shouted, breaking out in red blotches again. This was a strange outburst, and for a while there was silence.

Andrei picked through the proofs. “So far we have worked with you reasonably well, Mr. Paprikaki,” he said in a conciliatory tone. “I’m sure we just need to find a compromise of some kind now too.”

The censor flapped his cheeks. “Mr. Voronin!” he said soulfully. “What does all this have to do with me? Mr. Ubukata is an intemperate individual, always looking for a chance to vent his spleen, and he doesn’t care who he vents it on. But you must understand that I am acting strictly in accordance with my instructions. A rebellion is brewing in the City. The farmers are ready to launch a massacre at any moment. The police are unreliable. Do you really want blood? Conflagrations? I have children, I don’t want any of that. And you don’t want it either! At times like this the press should serve to alleviate the situation, not exacerbate it. That’s the official position, and I must say that I entirely agree with it. But even if I didn’t agree, I am obliged—it is my official responsibility… Only yesterday the censor of the Express was arrested for collusion, for aiding and abetting subversive elements.”

“I understand you perfectly, Mr. Paprikaki,” Andrei said with every last ounce of goodwill that he could muster. “But after all, you must see that the selection is perfectly moderate. And you must understand that precisely because these are such difficult times, we cannot act as the government’s yes-men. Precisely because there is a danger of insurgency by the déclassé elements and the farmers, we must do everything we can to bring the government to its senses. We are performing our duty, Mr. Paprikaki.”

“I won’t sign the selection,” Paprikaki said in a quiet voice.

Kensi swore in a whisper.

“We shall be forced to put the paper out without any sanction from you,” said Andrei.

“Oh, very good,” Paprikaki said wearily. “Very nice. Absolutely charming. The paper will be fined, I shall be arrested. The edition will be impounded. And you’ll be arrested too.”

Andrei picked up the broadsheet Under the Banner of Radical Rebirth and waved it under the censor’s nose. “And why don’t they arrest Fritz Heiger?” he asked. “How many censors of this little paper have been arrested?”

“I don’t know,” Paprikaki said in quiet despair. “What business is that of mine? They’ll get around to arresting Heiger too—he certainly has it coming.”

“Kensi,” said Andrei. “How much do we have in the kitty? Will it cover the fine?”

“We’ll take up a collection among the staff,” Kensi said briskly, getting to his feet. “I’ll tell the compositor to start typesetting the edition. We’ll scrape through somehow.” Kensi set off toward the door.

The censor sighed and blew his nose as he watched him go. “You’ve got no heart,” he muttered. “And no brains either. Greenhorns…”

Kensi stopped in the doorway. “Andrei,” he said. “If I were you, I’d go to City Hall and try pulling all the levers I can.”

“What levers?” Andrei inquired morosely.

Kensi immediately came back to the desk. “Go to the deputy political consultant. After all, he’s Russian too. You used to drink vodka with him.”

“And I used to smash his face too,” Andrei said cheerlessly.

“That’s OK, he doesn’t bear grudges,” said Kensi, “and then, I know for certain that he’s on the take.”

“Who isn’t on the take in City Hall?” said Andrei. “That’s not the problem, is it?” he sighed. “OK, I’ll go. Maybe I’ll find out something… But what are we going to do about Paprikaki? He’ll just go running off and call in—you will, won’t you?”

“Yes,” Paprikaki agreed without any great enthusiasm.

“I’ll tie him up right now and dump him behind the safe!” said Kensi, his teeth glinting in a grin of delight.

“Don’t get carried away, now,” said Andrei. “Tying him up, dumping him… Just lock him in the archive room, there’s no phone in there.”

“That would be coercion,” Paprikaki remarked in a dignified voice.

“And if they arrest you, won’t that be coercion?”

“Well, I’m not actually objecting!” said Paprikaki. “It was just a comment.”

“Go on, Andrei, go on,” Kensi said impatiently. “I’ll see to everything here while you’re gone, don’t worry.”

Andrei got up with a grunt, shambled over to the coat stand, dragging his feet, and took his raincoat. His beret had disappeared, and he searched for it on the floor, among the galoshes forgotten by visitors in the good old days, but failed to find it, swore abruptly, and walked out into the front office. The weedy secretary cast a rapid glance at him with her frightened gray eyes. Scraggy little slut. What was it that her name was?

“I’m going to City Hall,” he said morosely.

Out in the newsroom everything seemed to be carrying on as usual. People yelling on the phone, people perching on the edges of desks writing something, people examining damp photographs and drinking coffee, office boys dashing about with files and documents. The whole area was thick with smoke and littered with trash, and the head of the literary section, a phenomenal ass in a gold pince-nez, a former draftsman from some quasi-state or other like Andorra, was holding forth pompously to a mournful-looking author: “There are places where you’ve tried too hard, places where you lack a sense of measure, where the material has proved too powerful and volatile for you…”

A good kick right on the ass, and again, and again, Andrei thought as he walked by. He suddenly recalled how dear to his heart all this had been only a very short time ago, how new and fascinating! How challenging, necessary, and important it had all seemed… “Boss, just a moment,” shouted Denny Lee, the head of the letters department, all set to dash after him, but Andrei just waved him away without even looking back. Right on the ass, and again, and again…

Once outside the door, he stopped and turned up the collar of his raincoat. Carts were still rumbling along the street—and all in the same direction, toward the center of the City, toward City Hall. Andrei thrust his hands as deep into his pockets as he could and set off in the same direction, slouching over. About two minutes later he noticed he was walking along beside a monstrously huge cart with wheels the height of a man. The cart was being drawn along by two gigantic cart horses that were obviously tired after a long journey. He couldn’t see the load in the cart behind the high wooden sides, but he did have a good view of the driver at the front—or, rather, not so much the driver as his colossal tarpaulin raincoat with a three-cornered hood. All Andrei could make out of the driver himself was a beard jutting forward, and through the creaking of the wheels and clatter of hooves, he could hear the driver making incomprehensible sounds of some kind: he was either urging on his horses or releasing excess gas in his simpleminded country manner.

He’s going into the City too, thought Andrei. What for? What do they all want here? They won’t get any bread here, and they don’t need bread anyway—they’ve got bread. They’ve got everything, in fact, not like us city folks. They’ve even got guns. Do they really want to start a massacre? Makhno’s peasant anarchists… Maybe they do. Only what will they get out of it? A chance to pillage the apartments? I don’t understand a thing.

He remembered the interview with the farmers, and how disappointed Kensi had been with it, even though he did it himself, questioning almost fifty peasants on the square in front of City Hall. “What the people think, that’s what we’re for”; “Well, I had a bellyful, you know, sitting out there in the swamps—why don’t I take a trip, I thought…”; “You said it, mister, why are the people all piling in, what for? We’re as surprised as anyone…”; “Well, I see everyone’s going into the City. So I came into the City. I’m as good as the rest, ain’t I?”; “The machine gun? How could I manage without the machine gun? In our parts you can’t set one foot in front of the other without a machine gun…”; “I come out to milk the cows this morning and I see they’re all going. Syomka Kostylin’s going, Jacques-François is going, that… what’s-his-name… ah, darn it, I’m always forgetting what he’s called, lives out beyond Louse Head Hill… He’s going too! I ask, where’re you going, guys? Look here, they say, there’s been no sun for seven days, we ought to pay the City a visit…”; “Well, you ask the bosses that. The bosses know everything”; “They said, didn’t they, they were going to give us automatic tractors! So we could sit at home, scratching our bellies, and it would do the work for us… More than two years now they’ve been promising…”

Evasive, vague, unclear. Ominous. Either they were simply being cunning, or they were all being whisked together in a heap by some kind of instinct, or maybe some kind of secret, well-camouflaged organization… So what was it… peasant insurrection, like the Jacquerie? Maybe like the Tambov partisan army? In some ways he could understand them: there hadn’t been any sun for twelve days now, the harvest was going to ruin, no one knew what was going to happen. They’d been blown off their warm, comfortable perches…

Andrei passed a short, quiet line of people waiting outside a meat market, then another line outside a bakery. Most of the people standing there were women, and for some reason many of them had white armbands on their sleeves. Of course, Andrei immediately thought of the events of Saint Bartholomew’s Eve—then it occurred to him that it was daytime now, not nighttime; it was one o’clock in the afternoon, but the stores were still closed. Three policemen were standing bunched together on a corner, below the neon sign of the Quisisana Night Café. They looked strange somehow—uncertain, was that it? Andrei slowed down, listening.

“So now what do we do, will they order us in to fight them? Why, there’s twice as many of them.”

“We’ll just go and report: there’s no way through there and that’s it.”

“And he’ll say, ‘How come there’s no way through? You’re the police.’”

“The police—so what? We’re the police, and they’re the militia…”

So there’s some kind of militia now, Andrei thought as he walked on. I don’t know any militia… He passed another line of people and turned onto Main Street. Up ahead he could already see the bright mercury lamps of Central Square, its wide-open space completely filled with something gray that was stirring about, enveloped in steam or smoke, but just then he was stopped.

A big, strapping young man—or, rather, a youth, an overgrown juvenile, wearing a flat peaked cap pulled down right over his eyes, blocked the way and asked in a low voice, “Where are you going, sir?”

The youth held his hands at his sides, with white armbands on both sleeves, and several other men, all very different but also with white armbands, were standing by the wall behind him.

Out of the corner of his eye Andrei noticed that the countryman in the tarpaulin raincoat drove straight on unhindered in his unwieldy cart.

“I’m going to City Hall,” Andrei said when he was forced to stop. “What’s the problem?”

“To City Hall?” the youth repeated loudly, glancing back over his shoulder at his comrades. Two other men detached themselves from the wall and walked up to Andrei.

“Do you mind if I ask what you’re going to City Hall for?” inquired a stocky man with unshaven cheeks, wearing greasy overalls and a helmet with the letters G and M on it. He had a vigorous, muscular face with cold, piercing eyes.

“Who are you?” asked Andrei, feeling in his pocket for the brass kitchen pestle he had been carrying for four days now because the times were so uncertain.

“We’re the voluntary militia,” the stocky man replied. “What business have you got in City Hall? Who are you?”

“I’m the senior editor of the City Gazette,” Andrei said angrily, clutching the pestle tightly in his hand. He didn’t like the way the juvenile approached him from the left while he was speaking and the third volunteer militiaman, another young guy who was obviously strong too, wheezed into his ear from the right. “I’m going to City Hall to protest against the actions of the censor.”

“Ah,” the stocky man said in an indefinite tone of voice. “I see. Only why go to City Hall? You could arrest the censor and put out your newspaper, no bother.”

Andrei decided to act brazenly for the time being. “Don’t you go telling me what to do,” he said. “We’ve already arrested the censor without any advice from you. Anyway, just let me through.”

“A representative of the press…” growled the one who was wheezing in his right ear.

“Why not? Let him go in,” the youth on Andrei’s left said condescendingly.

“Yes,” said the stocky man. “Let him go in. Only don’t let him try to blame us afterward… Have you got a gun?”

“No,” said Andrei.

“That’s a mistake,” said the stocky man, stepping aside. “Go on through.”

Andrei walked through. Behind him he heard the stocky man say in a high, squeaky voice, “Jasmine is a pretty little flower! And it smells very good too…” and the militiamen laughed. Andrei knew that little rhyme, and he felt an angry urge to turn back, but he only lengthened his stride.

There were quite a lot of people on Main Street. Most of them were sticking close to the walls or standing bunched together in courtyard entrances, and they all had white armbands. A few were loitering in the middle of the road, approaching the farmers driving past and telling them something before the farmers drove on. The stores were all closed, but there were no lines in front of them. Outside one bakery an elderly militiaman with a knotty walking stick was trying to get through to an old woman who was standing on her own: “I assure you quite definitely, madam. The stores will not open today. I myself am the owner of a grocery store, madam—I know what I’m talking about.” But the old biddy replied in a screechy voice to the effect that she would die right here on these steps before she gave up her place in line…

Trying hard to smother his mounting sense of alarm and a strange feeling that everything around him was somehow unreal—it was all like in a movie—Andrei reached the square. Where the mouth of Main Street opened out onto the square, it was choked with carts great and small, farm wagons and drays. The air stank of horse sweat and fresh dung, and horses of every shape and size swung their heads to and fro, while the sons of the swamps shouted to each other in deep, loud voices and crude hand-rolled cigarettes glimmered on all sides. Andrei caught the smell of smoke—somewhere nearby they were lighting a campfire. A fat man with a mustache and a cowboy hat came out of an archway, buttoning up his fly as he walked, and almost ran into Andrei. The man swore good-naturedly and started picking his way between the carts, calling out in a barking voice to someone named Sidor: “Come this way, Sidor! Into the yard, you can do it there! Only watch your step, don’t put your foot in it!”

Biting on his lip, Andrei walked on. At the very entrance to the square the carts were already standing on the sidewalk. Many of the horses had been unharnessed and hobbled, and they were shuffling around, sniffing dejectedly at the asphalt. In the carts people were sleeping, smoking, and eating—Andrei could hear the appetizing sounds of liquid glugging and lips smacking. He climbed up onto the porch of a building and looked across the vast camp. It was only about fifty paces to City Hall, but it was a maze. Campfires crackled and smoked, and the smoke, tinted gray-blue by the mercury lamps, drifted over the covered wagons and massive carts and was drawn into Main Street, as if into some gigantic chimney. Some motherfucker buzzed as it settled on Andrei’s neck and bit, like a pin being thrust into his skin. With a feeling of loathing Andrei swatted something large and prickly that crunched juicily under his palm. They’ve dragged all the damned bugs in with them from the swamps, he thought angrily, catching a distinct whiff of ammonia coming from under the building’s half-open front door. Jumping down onto the sidewalk, he set off decisively into the maze of horses, stepping in something soft and crumbly in his first few strides.

The ponderous, rounded form of City Hall towered up over the square like a five-story bastion. Most of the windows were dark, with only a few lit up, and the elevator shafts set on the outside of the walls glowed a dim yellow. The farmers’ camp surrounded the building in a ring, and between the carts and City Hall there was an empty space, illuminated by bright streetlamps on fancy cast-iron columns. Farmers, almost all of them armed, were jostling together under the streetlamps, and at the entrance to City Hall a line of policemen stood facing them, their badges of rank indicating that they were mostly sergeants and officers.

Andrei was already pushing his way through the armed crowd when someone called his name. He stopped and turned his head.

“Here I am, over this way!” barked a familiar voice, and Andrei finally spotted Uncle Yura.

Uncle Yura was waddling toward him, already holding out his hand to be shaken—still in the same old tunic, with his fore-and-aft cap cocked to one side, and the machine gun that Andrei knew so well hanging on a broad strap over his shoulder.

“Howdy-do, Andriukha, you old townie!” he exclaimed, slapping his rough hand loudly into Andrei’s palm. “Here I’ve been looking for you everywhere; there’s a ruckus on, I think, no way our Andriukha’s going to miss that! He’s a spunky fellow, I think, he’s got to be hanging around here somewhere.”

Uncle Yura was pretty plastered. He tugged the machine gun off his shoulder, leaned his armpit on the barrel like a crutch, and carried on talking with the same vehement passion. “I go this way, I go that way—and still no Andriukha. Son of a bitch, I think, what the hell’s going on? That blond-haired Fritz of yours—he’s here. Rubbing shoulders with the country folk, making speeches… But I can’t find you anywhere.”

“Hang on, Uncle Yura,” said Andrei. “What did you come here for?”

“To demand my rights!” Uncle Yura chuckled, his beard splaying out like a twig broom. “That’s what I came here for, and only for that—but it doesn’t look like we’re going to get anywhere here.” He spat and scraped the gobbet into the ground with his immense boot. “The people are lousy vermin. They don’t know themselves what they came here for. Whether they came to ask or they came to demand, or maybe neither one thing nor the other, just because they missed the big-city life—we’ll camp here for a while, shit all over your City, and then go back home. The people are shit. Look…” He swung around and waved to someone. “For instance, take Stas Kowalski, my little friend here… Stas! Stas, fuck it… Come over here!”

Stas came over—a skinny, round-shouldered man with mournfully dangling ends to his mustache and a sparse head of hair. He gave off a devastating reek of home brew and only stayed on his feet by instinctive reflex response, but every now and then he defiantly flung up his head, grabbed at the strange-looking short-barreled machine gun hanging around his neck, raised his eyelids with an immense effort, and glanced around menacingly.

“This here is Stas,” Uncle Yura went on. “Stas fought in the war, he did—tell him! No, tell him: Did you fight or didn’t you?” Uncle Yura demanded, fervently grasping Stas around the shoulders and swaying in time with him.

“Heh! Ho!” Stas responded, straining every fiber to demonstrate that he did fight, that he fought real hard, that no words could express how hard he fought.

“He’s drunk right now,” Uncle Yura explained. “He can’t stand it when there’s no sun… Where was I? Right! You ask this fool what he’s doing hanging around here… There are guns. There are boys with fire in their belly. What more do you need, I ask you?”

“Hang on,” said Andrei. “What is it you want?”

“That’s what I’m telling you!” Uncle Yura said intensely, letting go of Stas, who immediately drifted off to one side, following a long, gentle curve. “What I’m trying to get through to you! Hammer the bastards just once, that’s all! They haven’t got any machine guns! We’ll trample them with our boots, smother them under our caps.” He abruptly stopped talking and slung his machine gun back over his shoulder: “Let’s go.”

“Where to?”

“We’ll go have a drink. We’ve got to drink this damned nonsense to hell and get out of here, go back home. What’s the point in wasting time? I’ve got potatoes rotting back there… Let’s go.”

“No, Uncle Yura,” Andrei said in an apologetic voice. “I can’t right now. I’ve got to go into City Hall.”

“Into City Hall? Let’s go! Stas! Stas, fuck you…”

“Hang on there, Uncle Yura! You’re… you know… they won’t let you in.”

“Mmme?” Uncle Yura roared with his eyes glittering. “Right, let’s go! We’ll see who’s not going to let me in. Stas!”

He put his arm around Andrei’s shoulder and dragged him across the empty, brightly lit space, straight toward the line of policemen.

“Understand this,” he muttered ardently straight into Andrei’s ear as Andrei tried to resist. “I’m afraid, OK? I haven’t told anyone, but I’ll tell you. Terrified! What if the fire never flares up again, eh? They’ve dragged us here and dumped us… No, let them explain, let them tell us the truth, the bastards—we can’t live like this. I’ve stopped sleeping, got it? That never happened to me even at the front… You think I’m drunk? No damned way am I drunk—I’ve got fear running through my veins.”

Andrei felt a shiver run down his spine at this delirious muttering. He stopped about five steps from the police line, feeling as if everyone in the square had gone silent and all of them, policemen and farmers, were watching him. Trying hard to sound convincing, he declared, “I’ll tell you what, Uncle Yura. I’ll just go in for a minute and settle one question to do with my paper, and you wait for me here. Then we’ll go to my place and have a proper talk about everything.”

Uncle Yura shook his beard furiously. “No, I’m with you. There’s a certain question I have to settle too.”

“But they won’t let you in. And because of you they won’t let me in!”

“Come on, let’s go… Let’s go…” Uncle Yura repeated. “What does that mean—they won’t let us in? Why not? We’ll be quiet… and dignified.”

They were already right beside the line, and a stout police captain in a natty uniform, with an unbuttoned holster on the left side of his belt, stepped toward them and inquired drily, “Where are you going, gentlemen?”

“I am the senior editor of the City Gazette,” said Andrei, furtively shoving away Uncle Yura so that he wouldn’t embrace him. “I have to see the deputy political consultant.”

“May I see your credentials?” A palm clad in kidskin was extended toward Andrei.

Andrei took out his editor’s pass, handed it to the captain, and squinted at Uncle Yura. To his surprise, Uncle Yura was now standing there calmly, sniffing and occasionally adjusting the strap of his machine gun, although there was absolutely no need for that. His eyes, which didn’t look drunk at all, ran along the police line in casual curiosity.

“You can go through,” the captain said politely, handing back the pass. “Although I should tell you…” But without finishing what he was saying, he turned to Uncle Yura. “And you?”

“He’s with me,” Andrei said hastily. “A representative, so to speak… er… from the farmers.”

“Credentials!”

“What kind of credentials can a peasant have?” Uncle Yura asked bitterly.

“I can’t let you in without credentials.”

“Why can’t I go in without credentials?” asked Uncle Yura, totally distressed now. “Without some lousy piece of paper, I’m not even a human being, is that it?”

Someone breathed hotly on the back of Andrei’s neck. It was Stas Kowalski, still twitching belligerently and swaying about as he brought up the rear. Several more men were feebly straggling across the brightly lit space, as if reluctant to cross it.

“Gentlemen, gentlemen, don’t group together!” the captain said nervously. “You go through, sir!” he shouted angrily at Andrei. “Gentlemen, go back. Congregating is forbidden!”

“So, if I haven’t got a piece of paper with scribble on it,” Uncle Yura lamented despondently, “that means I won’t be let through anywhere at all.”

“Smash him in the face!” Stas suggested from behind in a surprisingly clear voice.

The captain grabbed Andrei by the sleeve of his raincoat and jerked, so that Andrei immediately found himself behind the backs of the police line. The line quickly closed up, blocking out the farmers who had crowded together in front of the captain, and without waiting to see how events developed, Andrei strode quickly toward the gloomy, feebly lit portal. He heard a buzz of voices behind him.

“Give them grain, give them meat, but if we want to get in anywhere…”

“If you please, do not congregate! I have orders to arrest…”

“Why won’t you let our representative through, eh?”

“The sun! The sun, you bastards, when are you going to light it again?”

“Gentlemen, gentlemen! Now what has that got to do with me?”

More police came spilling down the snow-white marble steps toward Andrei, with their metal boot tips clattering. They were armed with rifles with bayonets fixed. A tense voice ordered, “Grenades at the ready!” Andrei reached the top of the steps and looked back. Men were scattered across the brightly lit space now. Farmers, some moving slowly and some at a run, were advancing from their camp toward the large black throng that was gathering.

With an effort, Andrei pulled open the door—tall and heavy, bound in copper—and walked into the vestibule. It was dark in here too, and the air had the distinctive harsh smell of a barracks. Policemen were sleeping jammed up against each other, covered with their greatcoats, in the luxurious armchairs, on the sofas, and right there on the floor. Indistinct figures of some kind hovered on the feebly lit gallery that ran around three sides of the vestibule below the ceiling. Andrei couldn’t make out if they had guns or not.

He ran up the soft carpet runner to the second floor, where the press office was, and set off along the broad corridor. He suddenly felt overwhelmed by doubt. There was something too quiet about this huge building today. Usually there were scads of people hanging around here, typewriters clacking, telephones jangling, the air was filled with the buzz of conversation and imperious shouting, but now there was none of that. Some of the offices were wide open, with darkness inside, and even in the corridor only every fourth lamp was lit.

His premonition hadn’t deceived him: the political consultant’s office was locked, and two strangers were sitting in the deputy’s office, wearing identical gray coats, buttoned right up to the chin, and identical bowler hats, tipped forward over their eyes.

“Excuse me,” Andrei said angrily. “Where can I find the deputy political consultant?

The heads in the bowler hats lazily turned in his direction. “What do you want him for?” asked the shorter of the two men.

Suddenly this man’s face didn’t seem so very unfamiliar, and neither did his voice. And suddenly it seemed strange and worrying that this man was here. He had no business being here… Andrei stooped down and, trying to speak curtly and resolutely, explained who he was and what he wanted.

“Well, come in, will you?” said the half-familiar man. “Why are you standing in the door like that?”

Andrei stepped inside and looked around, but he didn’t see anything; that smoothly shaved eunuch’s face was hovering in front of his eyes. Where have I seen him before? An unsavory kind of character… and dangerous… I shouldn’t have come in here, I’m just wasting time.

The little man in the bowler hat was studying him intently too. It was quiet. The tall windows were covered with heavy drapes, and the noise from outside barely even reached them in here. The small man in the bowler hat suddenly jumped to his feet and moved right up close to Andrei. His little gray eyes, with almost no lashes, blinked repeatedly, and a massive, gristly Adam’s apple skipped up from the top button of his coat all the way to his chin and slid back down again.

“Senior editor?” said the little man, and at that moment Andrei finally recognized him, and he felt his legs turn numb under him as he realized with paralyzing anguish that he had been recognized too.

The eunuch’s face grinned, revealing sparse, bad teeth, the little man crouched down, and Andrei felt a vicious pain in his belly, as if all his insides had burst, and through the nauseous haze in his eyes he suddenly saw the waxed floor… Run, run… A display of fireworks flared up in his brain, and the dark, distant ceiling, cobwebbed with cracks, started swaying and slowly revolving high above him… White-hot spikes thrust out of the suffocating darkness that had descended on him and jabbed into his ribs… He’ll kill me… he’s going to kill me! Andrei’s head suddenly swelled up and jammed itself into a narrow, stinking crack, skinning his ears, and a thunderous voice kept repeating languidly, “Cool it, Tailbone, cool it, not all at once…” Andrei shouted out with all his might, a thick, warm slush filled his mouth, and he choked on it and puked.

There was no one in the room. The immense drapes had been pulled back, the window was open, there was a draft of damp, cold air, and he could hear a distant roaring. Andrei struggled up onto all fours and crept along the wall. Toward the door. He had to get out of here…

In the corridor Andrei puked again. He lay on the floor for a while in blank, mindless exhaustion, then tried to get up onto his feet. I’m in a bad way, he thought. A really bad way. He sat down and felt at his face, and it was damp and sticky, then he discovered that he could only see with one eye. His ribs hurt and it was hard to breathe. His jaws hurt, and his lower belly was cramped in appalling, unbearable agony. That bastard, Tailbone. He’s maimed me… Andrei burst into tears. He sat on the floor in the empty corridor, leaning back against the gilded flourishes, and cried. He simply couldn’t help himself. Weeping, he tugged up the hem of his raincoat with a struggle and reached in under his trouser belt. The pain was appalling, but not down there, higher up. His entire belly hurt. His shorts were wet.

Someone came running out of the depths of the corridor with his boots thudding heavily and stopped, standing over him. Some policeman—sweaty and red faced, with no cap and bewildered eyes. He stood there for a few seconds as if uncertain what to do, then suddenly went dashing on, and a second policeman came running out of the depths of the corridor, tearing off his tunic as he ran.

And then Andrei realized there was a roaring, multitudinous hubbub coming from the same direction they’d come from. He got up with a struggle and dragged himself toward that hubbub, clinging to the wall, still sobbing, feeling in horror at his face and repeatedly stopping to stand for a while, hunching over and clutching his belly.

He reached the stairway and grabbed at the slippery marble banister. Down below a thick human mush was heaving about in the immense vestibule. It was impossible to understand what was happening. Searchlights installed along the gallery illuminated the mush with a cold, blinding light, and Andrei glimpsed beards of various shapes and sizes, uniform caps, the gold laces of police shoulder knots, fixed bayonets, hands with splayed fingers and pale bald patches, and from all this a warm, moist stench rose up toward the ceiling.

Andrei closed his eyes in order not to see any of it and started moving down, feeling his way, hand over hand, along the banister, advancing any way he could—backward, sideways—not really understanding why he was doing this. He stopped several times to catch his breath and groan, opened his eyes and looked down, and the sight made his agony unbearable again; he squeezed his eyes shut and started moving again, hand over hand along the banister. At the bottom of the stairs his arms finally gave out and he fell and tumbled down the last few steps onto a marble landing decorated with immense bronze spittoons. Through the haze and hubbub he suddenly heard a hoarse, strident roar: “Lookee here, it’s Andriukha! Boys, they’re killing our people up there!” Opening his eyes, Andrei saw Uncle Yura only a short distance away, mussed and disheveled, still in his dilapidated tunic, with his eyes goggling wildly and his beard splayed out, and Andrei saw Uncle Yura raise his machine gun in his outstretched hands, still roaring like a bull, and fire a long burst along the gallery, at the searchlights, at both tiers of windows in the broad hall of the vestibule…

After that there were fragmentary impressions, because consciousness ebbed and flowed together with the ebb and flow of the pain and the nausea. First he found himself at the center of the vestibule and discovered that he was stubbornly crawling on all fours toward the wide-open door in the distance, clambering over motionless bodies, with his hands skidding in something wet and cold. Someone was moaning monotonously right beside him, intoning, “Oh God, oh God, God…” The carpet was thickly strewn with splinters of glass, spent cartridges, and lumps of plaster. Some terrible men with blazing torches in their hands burst in through the open door and ran straight toward him…

Then he came to outside, in the portal. He was sitting there with his legs spread wide, propping himself up with his palms pressed against the cold stone, and there was a rifle with no bolt lying on his knees. He could smell fresh smoke, somewhere on the edge of consciousness a machine gun was roaring, and horses were squealing frantically, and he kept monotonously repeating out loud, hammering the words into his own head: “They’ll trample me to death here, they’re bound to trample me to death…”

But they didn’t trample him. He came to again in the road, at one side of the steps. He was pressing his cheek against the rough granite, a mercury lamp was glowing brightly above his head, the rifle was gone, and it felt as if he didn’t have a body, as if he were suspended in the air with his cheek pressed against the granite, and some kind of grotesque tragedy was being played out on the square in front of him, as if it were a stage.

He saw an armored car hurtling along, clanking and roaring, following the line of streetlamps bordering the square and the ring of interlocked carts and wagons, swinging its machine gun turret from side to side, belching out fire and sending glittering trails spurting right across the square, and there was a horse galloping along in front of the armored car with its head thrown back, dragging its snapped traces. Then suddenly a covered wagon trundled out from among the thick mass of carts, right across the armored car’s path; the horse jerked aside wildly, crashing into a streetlamp, the armored car braked sharply and skidded, and at that moment a tall man in black ran out into the open space, swung his arm, and fell full length on the asphalt. There was a flash of flame under the armored car, a low, rumbling blast, and the entire metal bulk subsided heavily to the rear. The man in black was running again. He rounded the armored car, thrust something into the driver’s observation port, and jumped aside, and then Andrei saw that it was Fritz Heiger, and the observation port was lit up from the inside; there was a loud blast inside the armored car and a long, smoky tongue of flame flew out of the observation port. Moving on half-bent legs, with his long arms stretched right down to the ground, Fritz sidled around the vehicle like a crab, and then the armored door opened and a shaggy bale of something enveloped in flames tumbled out onto the asphalt and started rolling about, howling piercingly and scattering sparks…

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.

“That’s an end to its suffering, poor creature,” Stas said hoarsely, and Andrei finally realized that it was a baboon, a burning baboon. What crazy nonsense was this… Now it was lying there, hanging off the edge of the sidewalk, still burning slowly, and the heavy stench it gave off was spreading along the street.

Uncle Yura set the horse moving, the cart pulled away, and Stas set off beside it on foot, with his hand resting on the planking side. Andrei strained his neck out, looking forward into the pink, glimmering fog, which had turned very bright. Yes, something was happening up there, something absolutely incomprehensible—they could hear strange howling from that direction, shots, the roar of engines, and every now and a bright flash of crimson flared up and immediately faded away.

“Listen, Stas,” Uncle Yura said suddenly, without looking around. “You run on ahead, brother, take a look at what’s happening up there. And I’ll follow on after you, softly, softly…”

“OK,” said Stas, taking his automatic under his arm, and he jogged forward, sticking to the wall of the building. Very soon he was lost to sight in the glimmering fog, and Uncle Yura carried on pulling the horses up until they stopped completely.

“Sit more comfortably,” Selma whispered.

Andrei jerked his shoulder.

“Nothing like that happened,” Selma went on, still whispering. “It was the building manager, he was going round all the apartments, asking if anyone was concealing weapons—”

“Shut up,” Andrei said through his teeth.

“Honestly,” Selma whispered. “He only called in for a moment, he was just on his way out—”

“So he was leaving without his trousers?” Andrei inquired icily, desperately struggling to drive away the hideous memory of hanging on Yura and Stas in limp exhaustion while he watched the scene in the hallway of his own apartment: some short-ass with white eyes furtively closing his robe, with his flannel long johns showing underneath it. And then watching Selma’s revoltingly innocent, drunken face over the short-ass’s shoulder as the expression of innocence on that face changed to fright, and then to despair.

“But that’s how he was going round the apartments, in his robe!” Selma whispered.

“Listen, just shut up,” said Andrei. “Shut up, for God’s sake. I’m not your husband, you’re not my wife. What concern is all this of mine?”

“But I love you, honey,” Selma whispered despairingly. “Only you.”

Uncle Yura started loudly clearing his throat. “Someone’s coming,” he announced.

A huge, dark shape loomed out of the darkness ahead and came toward them, then bright headlamps flashed—it was a truck, a massive dump truck. It stopped about twenty paces from the cart, with its engine rumbling. They heard a raucous voice giving orders, then some men clambered out over the side of the truck and started dejectedly wandering around in the road. A door slammed and another dark figure separated from the truck, stood still for a moment, then headed straight toward the cart at a stroll.

“He’s coming this way,” Uncle Yura announced. “I tell you what, Andrei… don’t you interfere in the conversation. I’ll do the talking.”

The man reached the cart. He was clearly one of the so-called militiamen, wearing a short little coat with white armbands on the sleeves. He had a rifle hanging over his shoulder, barrel downward.

“Ah, farmers,” said the militiaman. “Howdy, guys.”

“Howdy, if you’re not joking,” Uncle Yura responded after a short pause.

The militiaman hesitated, twisted his head this way and that, as if he were uncertain, then asked diffidently, “Have you got any bread to sell?”

“No bread,” said Uncle Yura.

“Well maybe you’ve got some meat, a few potatoes…”

“Potatoes he wants,” said Uncle Yura.

The militiaman became completely embarrassed; he sniffed, sighed, looked in the direction of his truck, and then roared, as if in sudden relief, “It’s over there, still lying over there! You blind assholes! It’s lying over there, all burned up!” Then he darted off, tramping noisily on his flat feet, and ran along the roadway. They saw him waving his arms about and giving instructions, and heard the dejected men snarling back feebly and indistinctly, as they dragged along something dark, strained hard to swing it to and fro, then tossed it into the back of the dump truck.

“Potatoes he wants,” Uncle Yura growled. “Meat!”

The truck set off and drove past them, right up close. It gave off a terrible smell of scorched fur and flesh. It was loaded right up to the top; appalling, twisted silhouettes drifted by against the background of the faintly illuminated wall of a building, and Andrei suddenly felt a cold frost creep across his skin: sticking up out of this appalling heap was a distinctly white, human hand with the fingers splayed out. The dejected men standing in the truck clutched at each other and the sides of the truck, and huddled close to the cab. There were five or six of them, respectable-looking men in hats.

“The burial detail,” said Uncle Yura. “That’s right. Now they’ll take them to the dump—all done and dusted… Hey, that’s Stas waving to us over there! Gee-up!”

They could see Stas’s ungainly figure in the illuminated mist ahead of them. When the cart drew level with him, Uncle Yura suddenly leaned down from the front edge and asked, almost as if he were frightened, “What’s the problem, brother? What’s wrong with you?”

Without answering, Stas tried to jump up sideways onto the cart, fell off, gritted his teeth loudly, took hold of the side with both hands, and started muttering in a stifled voice.

“What’s wrong with him?” Selma asked in a whisper

The cart moved slowly toward the roaring of engines and crackling of shots, and Stas held on to the cart with both hands, walking alongside, as if he didn’t have the strength to climb up, until Uncle Yura leaned down from the cart and dragged him up onto the front.

“So what is wrong with you?” Uncle Yura asked in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear. “Can we drive on? Just tell me what you’re mumbling about, will you?”

“Mother of God,” Stas said in a clear voice. “What are they doing it for? Who could have ordered that?”

“Whooah!” Uncle Yura called, loud enough for the whole City to hear.

“No, you keep going, keep going,” said Stas. “We can drive on. Only it’s best not to look… Pani,” he said, turning to Selma, “turn away, you mustn’t look, look over that way… better still, don’t look at all.”

Andrei felt his throat tighten; he looked at Selma and her eyes were open so wide, they seemed to cover her entire face.

“Go on, Yura, go on…” Stas muttered. “Drive her on, the bitch, stop plodding along! Move fast!” he roared. “Gallop on! Gallop on!”

The horse shot off at a gallop, the buildings on the left came to an end, and the mist suddenly receded and dispersed, revealing Baboon Boulevard—this was definitely the source of all the noise. A line of trucks with their engines idling blocked off the boulevard in a semicircle. Standing in the trucks and between them were men with white armbands, and running along the boulevard between burning trees and bushes, howling and screaming, were men in striped pajamas and baboons absolutely frantic with fear. They stumbled and fell, clambered up trees, tried to hide in the bushes, and all the time the men with white armbands shot at them with rifles and machine guns. The boulevard was strewn with large numbers of motionless bodies, some of them smoldering and smoking. A jet of fire enveloped in swirling black smoke gushed out of one of the trucks with a long hiss, and yet another tree hung with black clusters of baboons flared up like an immense torch. And above all the noise someone howled in an unbearably high falsetto voice, “I’m fit and well! It’s a mistake! I’m normal! It’s a mistake!”

All this went rushing past, shuddering and skipping, leaving them with a sharp pain in their ribs, scorching them with its heat and drenching them with its stink, deafening them and punching them in the eyes, and a minute later it was all behind them and the glimmering mist had closed back together, but Uncle Yura drove the horse hard for a long time, desperately whooping and brandishing the reins. “What in hell’s name is all this?” Andrei kept repeating stupidly to himself, slumping in exhaustion against Selma. “What in hell’s name is all this! They’re madmen, the blood has driven them berserk… Madmen have taken control of the City, insane butchers have taken over, now it’s the end of everything, they won’t stop, they’ll come for us next…”

The cart suddenly stopped. “Ohh no,” said Uncle Yura, swinging around bodily. “You know what this calls for…” He rummaged among the sacks in the cart, pulled out a large bottle, dragged out the cork with his teeth, spat it out, and started swigging. Then he handed the bottle to Stas, wiped his mouth, and said, “So you’re exterminating them… The Experiment… Right, then.” He took a folded sheet of newsprint out of his breast pocket, neatly tore off one corner, and reached for his tobacco. “So you’re going for broke. All the way! Really going for broke!”

Stas held out the bottle to Andrei. Andrei shook his head. Selma took the bottle, downed two gulps from it, and handed it back to Stas. No one said anything. Uncle Yura smoked his crackling roll-up, growled in his throat like an immense dog, then suddenly turned around and untangled the reins.

There was only one block left to the turn onto Stool Closet Lane when the mist ahead of them was brightly lit up again and they heard a cacophonous hubbub of voices. Right at the intersection, a huge, rumbling crowd, illuminated by searchlights, was heaving about in the middle of the street. The intersection was crammed solid; there was no way they could drive through it.

“Some kind of meeting,” said Uncle Yura, looking back over his shoulder.

“That’s the way of it,” Stas agreed despondently. “Once they start shooting people, the meetings come next… Is there no way to drive around?”

“Hang on there, brother, why would we want to drive around?” said Uncle Yura. “We ought to listen to what the people are saying. Maybe they’ll say something about the sun… Lookee, there’s plenty of our folks here.”

The rumbling died down and a furious, rasping voice, amplified through microphones, rang out over the crowd.

“…And let me say that once again: mercilessly! We will purge the City! Of filth! Of scum! Of every last, single parasite! String up the crooks!”

“Aaah!” the crowd roared.

“String up the bribe-takers!”

“Aaah!”

“Anyone who comes out against the people will dangle from a streetlamp!”

“Aaah!”

Andrei recognized the speaker now. The riveted flank of some kind of military vehicle rose up out of the very center of the crowd, with a figure rising farther up above it, clutching the riveted flank with both hands. Illuminated by the blue beam of a searchlight, the long, black-clad torso swayed back and forth as the figure opened its parched mouth in a shout—the figure of the former noncommissioned officer of the Wehrmacht and present leader of the Party of Radical Rebirth, Friedrich Heiger.

“And this will only be the beginning! We shall establish a genuine order of the people, a genuinely human order, in this, our City! We care nothing for any experiments! We are not guinea pigs! We are people! Our weapons are reason and conscience! We will not allow anyone! To control our destiny! We shall be masters of our own destiny! The destiny of the people is in the hands of the people! The people has entrusted its destiny to me! Its rights! Its future! And I swear! I shall justify this trust!”

“Aaah!”

“I shall be ruthless! In the name of the people! I shall be cruel! In the name of the people! I shall not permit the slightest discord! No more struggle between people! No more communists! No more socialists! No more capitalists! No more fascists! No more fighting against each other! We shall fight for each other!”

“Aaah!”

“No more parties! No more nationalities! No more classes! Anyone who preaches discord will be strung up!”

“Aaah!”

“If the poor continue to fight against the rich! If the communists continue to fight against the capitalists! If the blacks continue to fight against the whites! We shall be trampled down! We shall be exterminated! But if we! Stand shoulder to shoulder! Grasping our guns in our hands! Or our sledgehammers! Or the handles of our plows! Then no power will ever be found that can crush us! Our weapon is unity! Our weapon is the truth! No matter how hard it might be! Yes, we have been lured into a trap! But I swear in the name of God, the beast is too large for this trap!”

“Ah!” the crowd roared and broke off, stunned, when the sun flashed on.

For the first time in twenty days the sun flashed on: the golden disk blazed up at its usual spot, blinding them, searing their gray faces, glinting with unbearable brightness in the windowpanes, reanimating and enkindling millions of colors—the black smoke above distant roofs, the faded greenery of the trees, the red brick beneath the crumbling plaster…

The crowd roared wildly, and Andrei howled with them. Something unimaginable was happening. Caps went flying way upward, men hugged each other, some started firing wildly into the air, some flung bricks at the searchlight in their wild ecstasy, and Fritz Heiger, towering over them all like the Lord God Himself after he proclaimed, “Let there be light!” pointed his long, black arm at the sun, with his eyes glaring and his chin proudly thrust out. Then his voice rang out over the crowd again.

“Do you see? They are already frightened! They tremble at the sight of us! The sight of us! Too late, gentlemen! Too late! Do you wish to slam the trap shut again? But people have already broken out of it! No mercy for the enemies of mankind! The speculators! The parasites! The plunderers of the people’s wealth! The sun is with us again! We have torn it out of the black talons! Of the enemies of mankind! And we will never! Give it away again! Never! Not to anyone!”

“Aaah!”

Andrei came to his senses. Stas was no longer in the cart. Uncle Yura was standing on the front of the cart with his feet planted wide apart, brandishing his machine gun, and the crimson flush on the back of his neck showed that he was roaring inarticulately too. Selma was crying, hammering her little fists on Andrei’s back.

Very neat, Andrei thought coolly. All the worse for us. What am I doing sitting here? I ought to run for it, and I’m just sitting here… Fighting against the pain in his side, he stood up and jumped out of the cart. The crowd was roaring and swirling all around him. Andrei started bulldozing through it. At first he still tried to spare himself, protecting himself with his elbows, but how could he protect himself in a shambles like this! Soaked in sweat from the pain and the mounting nausea, he forced his way forward, shoving his way through, stepping on feet, even butting with his head, and eventually forced his way out onto Stool Closet Lane. And all this time he was pursued by Heiger’s thundering voice.

“Hatred! Hatred will guide us! No more false love! No more Judas kisses! From traitors to mankind! I myself set the example of sacred hatred! I blew up an armored car of murderous gendarmes! In front of your very eyes! I ordered the thieves and gangsters to be hanged! In front of your very eyes! I am sweeping the scum and the subhumans out of our City with a broom of iron! In front of your very eyes! I have not pitied myself! And I have earned the sacred right not to pity others!”

Andrei shoved his way into the entrance of the Gazette’s offices. The door was locked. He kicked it furiously, setting the panes of glass jangling. He started hammering on it with all his might, whispering appalling obscenities.

The door opened. The Mentor was standing in the doorway. “Come in,” he said, moving aside.

Andrei walked in. The Mentor bolted the door behind him and turned around. His face was pasty white, with dark circles under the eyes, and he kept licking his lips. Andrei’s heart sank—he had never seen the Mentor in such a dejected state before.

“Is everything really all that bad?” Andrei asked in a dismal voice.

“Oh yes.” The Mentor gave a wan smile. “What could be good about any of this?”

“But the sun?” said Andrei. “Why did you switch it off?”

The Mentor clasped his hands together and strode backward and forward across the hallway. “But we didn’t switch it off!” he said sorrowfully. “An accident. Totally and absolutely unplanned. No one was expecting it.”

“No one was expecting it,” Andrei repeated bitterly. He pulled off his raincoat and tossed it onto a dusty sofa. “If the sun hadn’t gone out, none of this would have happened…”

“The Experiment has run out of control,” the Mentor muttered, turning away.

“Run out of control…” Andrei repeated again. “I never thought the Experiment could run out of control.”

The Mentor cast a sullen glance at him. “Well now… That is, in a manner of speaking. You could also look at it this way… If the Experiment has run out of control, it is still the Experiment. Possibly something will have to be modified somewhat… recalibrated. And so in retrospect—in retrospect!—this ‘Egyptian night’ will come to be regarded as an integral, programmed part of the Experiment.”

“In retrospect,” Andrei repeated once again. A blind fury swept over him. “But what do you want us to do now? Try to save ourselves?”

“Yes. Save yourselves. And save others.”

“So we’ll save ourselves, and Fritz Heiger will conduct the Experiment?”

“The Experiment remains the Experiment,” the Mentor retorted.

“Oh yes,” said Andrei. “From baboons to Fritz Heiger.”

“Yes, to Fritz Heiger, and through Fritz Heiger, and regardless of Fritz Heiger. You can’t put a bullet through your brains because of Fritz Heiger! The Experiment must go on… Life goes on, doesn’t it, regardless of some Fritz Heiger or other? If you’re disenchanted with the Experiment, then think about the struggle for life…”

“The struggle for survival,” Andrei said with a crooked grin. “What sort of life is there now?”

“That will depend on you.”

“And on you?”

“Not much depends on us. There are many of you. We don’t decide everything here, you do.”

“That isn’t what you used to say before,” said Andrei.

“You were different before too!” the Mentor objected. “And you spoke differently!”

“I’m afraid I acted like a fool,” Andrei said slowly. “I’m afraid I was simply stupid.”

“That’s not all you’re afraid of,” the Mentor remarked in a sly tone of voice.

Andrei’s heart stood still, the way it does when you fall in a dream. And he answered harshly, “Yes, I am afraid. Afraid of everything. A real scaredy-cat. Has anyone ever kicked you repeatedly in the crotch with his boot?” A new idea suddenly occurred to him. “And you’re afraid yourself, aren’t you? Eh?”

“Of course! Didn’t I tell you the Experiment had run out of control—”

“Ah, come off it! The Experiment, the Experiment. It’s not a matter of the Experiment. First the baboons, then us, and then you—isn’t that right?”

The Mentor didn’t answer. The most terrible thing of all was that the Mentor didn’t say even a single word in reply. Andrei carried on waiting, but the Mentor merely prowled around the hallway without speaking, aimlessly shifting chairs from one spot to another and wiping the dust off tables with his sleeve, without even looking at Andrei.

Someone knocked on the door with a fist, and then immediately started kicking it. Andrei drew back the bolt and saw Selma standing there. “You abandoned me!” she said indignantly. “I almost couldn’t fight my way through!”

Andrei glanced around in embarrassment. The Mentor had disappeared. “I’m sorry,” said Andrei. “I had other things on my mind.”

It was hard for him to speak. He was trying to suppress a terrifying sense of loneliness and vulnerability. He slammed the door shut with a crash and hastily slid the bolt home.

3

The offices were empty. The staff had obviously fled when the shooting started up around City Hall. Andrei walked through the rooms, indifferently surveying the scattered sheets of paper and overturned chairs, the dirty plates with the remains of sandwiches and cups with the remains of coffee. Loud, rousing music was coming from somewhere farther inside, and that was strange. Selma plodded after him, holding on to his sleeve. She kept saying something over and over, something shrewish, but Andrei wasn’t listening to her. What did I come here for, he thought. They’ve all bolted, every last one of them, and they were right. I should be safe at home now, lying in bed, hugging my poor battered side and dozing, not giving a rotten damn for any of this…

At first he didn’t realize it was Izya. Standing at the table farthest away, in the corner, stooped over an open binder of back issues and propping himself up on hands set wide apart, was a stranger with his hair carelessly trimmed in wedges, wearing a suspicious-looking gray garment with no buttons, and it was only when this man suddenly grinned in a familiar way a moment later and started plucking at a wart on his neck with a familiar gesture that Andrei realized he was looking at Izya.

Andrei stood in the doorway for a while, watching him. Izya hadn’t heard Andrei come in. He couldn’t hear or notice a thing—first, he was reading, and second, a loudspeaker hanging directly above his head was blasting out the thunderous jangling of a victorious march. Then Selma exclaimed in an appalling wail, “Oh, look, it’s Izya!” and she darted forward, pushing Andrei aside.

Izya quickly looked up and spread out his arms, grinning even more broadly. “Aha!” he yelled delightedly. “So here you are!”

While Izya hugged Selma, delightedly smothering her cheeks and lips in kisses, while Selma squealed something unintelligible and ecstatic and ruffled up Izya’s ugly hair, Andrei walked across to them, struggling to overcome his acute sense of awkwardness. The searing feeling of guilt and betrayal that had almost knocked him off his feet that morning in the basement had been blunted and almost forgotten over the last year, but now it transfixed him again, and after he got close, he hesitated for a few seconds before daring to hold out his hand. He would have found it perfectly natural if Izya had ignored this hand of his, or even said something witheringly contemptuous—that was probably exactly what Andrei would have done. But Izya freed himself from Selma’s embrace, grabbed Andrei’s hand with eager passion, shook it, and asked with keen interest, “Where did they give you that beautiful shiner?”

“I was beaten,” Andrei replied tersely. He was astounded by Izya. There were many things he wanted to tell him, but all he did was ask, “So how come you’re here?”

Instead of answering, Izya flipped over several pages of the bound newspapers and gestured in exaggerated fashion as he declaimed with gusto, “‘. . . No rational arguments can possibly explain the fury with which the government press attacks the Party of Radical Rebirth. But if we recall that it is precisely the PRR—this tiny, young organization—that speaks out most uncompromisingly against every case of corruption—’”

“Drop it,” said Andrei, wrinkling up his face, but Izya merely raised his voice.

“‘—lawlessness, administrative stupidity, and shiftlessness; if we recall that it was precisely the PRR that brought up the Widow Batton case, if we recall that the PRR was the first party to warn the government of the futility of the swamplands tax…’ Belinsky! Pisarev! Plekhanov! Did you write this yourself, or was it your idiots?”

“OK, OK…” said Andrei, starting to get annoyed, and he tried to take the binder away from Izya.

“No, wait!” shouted Izya, wagging his finger at Andrei and tugging the binder toward himself. “Here is yet another pearl!… Where is it now?… Ah, yes. ‘Our City has a wealth of honest people, like any city populated by working folk. However, when it comes to political factions, surely Fritz Heiger is the only one who can lay claim to the exalted title—’”

“That’s enough!” Andrei yelled, but Izya tore the binder out of his hands, darted behind Selma, who was exultant, and continued from there, still plucking and spraying.

“‘Let us not speak of words, let us speak of deeds! Friedrich Heiger rejected the post of minister of information; Friedrich Heiger voted against a law providing major privileges to distinguished employees of the Public Prosecutor’s Office; Friedrich Heiger was the only eminent public figure to oppose the creation of a regular army, in which he was offered a senior position…’” Izya flung the binder under the desk and rubbed his hands together. “You always were an incredible ass in politics! But in the last few months, you’ve become catastrophically more stupid. You deserve that ornament on your noggin! Is your eye still in one piece at least?”

“Yes, my eye’s still in one piece,” Andrei said slowly. He had only just noticed that Izya moved his left arm kind of awkwardly, and three fingers on his left hand didn’t bend at all.

“Will you turn off that damned noise!” roared Kensi, appearing in the doorway. “Ah, Andrei, you’re here already… That’s good. Hello, Selma!” He dashed across the room and jerked the plug of the speaker out of its socket.

“What did you do that for?” Izya shouted. “I want to hear the speeches of my leaders! Let the martial music thunder forth!”

Kensi merely cast a furious glance at him. “Andrei, let’s go, I’ll tell you what we’ve done,” he said. “And we have to think about what to do next.”

His face and hands were covered in soot. He dashed out and Andrei dashed after him, realizing for the first time that the offices smelled of burnt paper. Izya and Selma followed behind.

“A general amnesty!” Izya told her, hissing and gurgling. “The great leader has flung open the doors of the prisons! He needed the space for different prisoners.” He whooped and groaned. “Every single criminal has been set free, and we all know what a criminal I am, don’t we? Even the lifers have been let out.”

“You’ve gotten thin,” Selma said in a voice filled with pity. “Your clothes are hanging off you, you’ve turned kind of mangy…”

“Well, at the end—for the last three days—they didn’t give us any food, or let us get washed.”

“So you must be hungry, then?”

“No, not a damn bit—I stuffed myself full in here.”

They walked into Andrei’s office. It was appallingly hot in there: the sun was shining straight in the window and the fireplace was blazing fiercely. Andrei’s little floozy of a secretary was squatting in front of the fireplace, as smutty-faced as Kensi, stirring a heap of burning paper with a poker. Everything in the office was covered in soot and black clumps of paper ash.

When she saw Andrei, his secretary jumped up and gave him a frightened, ingratiating smile. She’s the last person I expected to stay, thought Andrei. He sat down at his desk, feeling guilty, and forced himself to nod and smile back at her.

“Lists of all the special correspondents, names and addresses of members of the editorial board,” Kensi ticked off briskly. “The originals of all political articles, the originals of weekly reviews…”

“Dupain’s articles have to be burned,” said Andrei. “He was our greatest opponent of the PRR, I think.”

“Burned already,” Kensi said impatiently. “Dupain, and Filimonov too, just to be on the safe side…”

“Why are you making all this fuss?” Izya asked merrily. “They’ll carry you shoulder high.”

“That all depends,” Andrei said morosely.

“What do you mean, it all depends? Want to bet on it? A hundred finger flicks!”

“Just hang on, will you, Izya!” said Kensi. “For God’s sake shut up for ten minutes at least! I’ve destroyed all the correspondence with City Hall, but left the correspondence with Heiger for the time being…”

“The minutes of the editorial board!” Andrei suddenly remembered. “For the last month…” He hastily reached into the bottom drawer of the desk, took out a file, and handed it to Kensi, who winced as he leafed through a few pages.

“Right, right…” he said, shaking his head. “I forgot about that… This has Dupain’s speech in it.” He took a step toward the fireplace and flung the file into the fire. “Keep stirring, keep stirring,” he testily ordered the secretary, who was listening open-mouthed to her bosses.

The head of the letters section appeared in the doorway, looking sweaty and very agitated. He was lugging a heap of files in his arms, pressing them down with his chin. “There,” he panted, dumping the heap beside the fireplace with a heavy thud. “There are some opinion polls here, I didn’t even try to sort them out… I could see names, addresses… My God, boss, what happened to you?”

“Hi, Denny,” said Andrei, “thanks for staying.”

“Is your eye OK?” asked Denny, wiping the sweat off his forehead.

“It’s OK, it’s OK,” Izya reassured him. “You’re destroying all the wrong stuff,” he declared. “No one’s going to touch you, are they? You’re a yellowish liberal opposition newspaper. You’ll just stop being liberal and oppositionist…”

“Izya,” said Kensi. “I’m asking you for the last time: stop gabbling or I’ll throw you out.”

“But I’m not gabbling!” Izya exclaimed in annoyance. “Let me finish! The letters, destroy the letters. Some intelligent people probably wrote to you…”

Kensi gaped at him. “Dammit!” he hissed, and darted out of the office. Denny raced after him, still wiping his face and neck as he went.

“You don’t understand a thing,” said Izya. “All of you here are cretins. And it’s not only intelligent people who are in danger.”

“Cretins is what we are,” said Andrei. “You’re right there.”

“Aha! You’re getting brighter!” Izya exclaimed, waving his mutilated arm about. “You shouldn’t. It’s dangerous. That’s what so tragic about the whole thing. Many, many people will get a bit brighter now, but not bright enough. They won’t realize in time that this is when they should pretend to be fools.”

Andrei looked at Selma. Selma was gazing admiringly at Izya. And the secretary was gazing admiringly at Izya too. And Izya was standing there with his feet set wide apart in their prison shoes, unshaven and dirty, a total mess, with his shirt sticking out of his trousers, because there weren’t enough buttons on the fly—standing there in all his glory, still the same as ever, not changed in the least—and pontificating and sermonizing. Andrei got up from his desk, walked over to the fireplace, squatted down beside the secretary, took the poker from her, and started stirring and turning the reluctantly burning paper.

“And so,” Izya sermonized, “you have to destroy not just the letters that abuse our leader. There are different ways of abusing someone. You have to destroy the letters written by intelligent people!”

Kensi stuck his head into the office and shouted, “Listen, someone give us a hand… Girls, why are you just hanging around in here, come on, follow me!”

The secretary immediately jumped up and ran out, straightening out her little skirt that had twisted around. Selma stood there for a moment, as if expecting someone to stop her, then stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray and walked out too.

“But no one will touch you!” Izya carried on pontificating, seeing nothing and hearing nothing, like a wood grouse singing his mating song. “They’ll say thank you to you, toss you more paper so you can increase your print run, raise your salaries, and give you more staff. But afterward, if you suddenly take it into your heads to get uppity, that’s when they’ll grab you by the balls, and then you can be sure they’ll remind you about everything—that Dupain of yours, and that Filimonov, and all your liberal opposition ravings. Only why would you want to get uppity? You won’t even think of getting uppity—on the contrary!”

“Izya,” said Andrei, looking into the flames. “Why didn’t you tell me what you had in that file?”

“What? In what file? Ah, in that file…” Izya suddenly turned quiet, came over to the fireplace, and squatted down beside Andrei.

For a while neither of them spoke. Then Andrei said, “Of course, I was a stupid jackass then. An absolute blockhead. But I’ve never been a rumormonger and gossip. You ought to have realized that then…”

“In the first place, you weren’t a blockhead,” said Izya. “You were worse. You were zombified. It was impossible to talk to you like a human being. I know, I was like that for a long time myself… And then—what have rumors got to do with it? You must admit that simple citizens really shouldn’t know that kind of thing. That way the whole damn shooting match could go to hell.”

“What?” Andrei asked, confused. “Because of your little love letters?”

“What little love letters?”

For a while they gazed into each other’s eyes in astonishment. Then Izya grinned. “Oh Lord, of course… What made me think he’d tell you all that? Why would he tell you? He’s our soaring eagle, our leader! He who controls information, controls the world—he learned that lesson well from me!”

“I don’t understand a thing,” Andrei muttered almost despairingly. But he could sense that he was about to learn something loathsome about this already loathsome business. “What are you talking about? Who is he? Heiger?”

“Heiger, Heiger,” said Izya, nodding. “Our great Fritz… So it was love letters I had in the file, then? Or maybe compromising photographs? The jealous widow and the womanizer Katzman… That’s right, that’s what the record I signed said too.” Izya got up with a croak and started walking around the office, rubbing his hands together and giggling.

“Yes,” said Andrei. “That’s what he told me. The jealous widow. So it was all lies?”

“Well of course, what did you think?”

“I believed it,” Andrei said curtly. He clenched his teeth and started frenziedly stirring the poker in the hearth. “And what was really in the file?” he asked.

Izya didn’t answer. Andrei glanced around. Izya was standing there, slowly rubbing his hands together, looking at Andrei with a frozen smile and glassy eyes. “Now that’s interesting…” he said uncertainly. “Maybe he simply forgot? That is, not exactly forgot…” He suddenly darted over and squatted down beside Andrei again. “Listen, I’m not going to tell you anything, got that? And if they ask you, that’s what you say: he didn’t tell me anything, he refused. All he said was that it was to do with some big secret of the Experiment; he said it was dangerous to know the secret. And he also showed me several sealed envelopes and explained with a wink that he was going to deliver those envelopes to reliable people, and the envelopes would be opened if he, Katzman, were arrested or, let’s say, his life came to a sudden end. Do you understand? He didn’t name the reliable people. That’s what you tell them, if they ask.”

“All right,” Andrei said slowly, looking into the flames.

“That will be the right thing,” said Izya, also looking into the flames. “It’s just that, if they beat you… That Ruhmer’s a real bastard, you know.” Izya shuddered. “And maybe no one will ask. I don’t know. It all needs thinking over. I can’t figure everything out at once.”

He stopped speaking. Andrei was still stirring the hot pile with its shimmering red flames, and after a while Izya started tossing files full of papers into the hearth. “Don’t throw the files themselves in,” said Andrei. “Look, they don’t burn well… But aren’t you afraid they’ll find that file?”

“What should I be afraid of?” said Izya. “Let Heiger be afraid… And they won’t find it now if they didn’t find it immediately. I tossed it into a manhole, and then I kept wondering if I’d missed or not… But what did they work you over for? I thought you and Fritz were on excellent terms.”

“It wasn’t Fritz,” Andrei said reluctantly. “I was just unlucky.”

The women and Kensi barged noisily into the room, lugging an entire mound of letters on a stretched-out raincoat. Denny walked in after them, still wiping away his sweat. “Well, I think that’s all now,” he said. “Or have you come up with something else?”

“Come on, move over!” Kensi demanded.

The raincoat was set down beside the fireplace, and everyone started throwing letters into the flames. The hearth immediately started buzzing. Izya sank his good hand into the depths of this multicolored heap of paper covered with writing, extracted someone’s letter, and grinned in anticipation as he started reading it.

“Who was it that said manuscripts don’t burn?” Denny asked, panting for breath. He sat down at the desk and lit up a cigarette. “They burn wonderfully well, in my opinion… Phew, it’s hot. Maybe I should open the windows?”

The secretary suddenly squealed, jumped to her feet, and ran out, repeating over and over, “I forgot, I completely forgot.”

“What’s her name?” Andrei hastily asked Kensi.

“Amalia!” Kensi growled. “I’ve told you a hundred times… Listen, I just phoned Dupain…”

“Well?”

The secretary came back with an armful of notebooks. “That’s all of them—your instructions, boss,” she squeaked. “I forgot all about them. We probably ought to burn them too?”

“Of course, Amalia,” said Andrei. “Thank you for remembering. Burn them, Amalia, burn them… So what did Dupain say?

“I wanted to warn him,” said Kensi, “let him know everything’s all right, all the tracks have been covered. And he was terribly surprised—what tracks? Did he ever really write anything of that kind? He’s just finished a detailed dispatch on the heroic storming of City Hall, and now he’s working on an article called ‘Friedrich Heiger and the People.’”

“What a bastard,” Andrei said in a feeble voice. “But then, we’re all bastards.”

“You speak for yourself, when you say things like that!” Kensi snarled.

“OK, I’m sorry,” Andrei said weakly. “OK, we’re not all bastards. Just the majority.”

Izya suddenly started giggling. “There, now—an intelligent man!” he proclaimed, shaking the piece of paper in his hand. “‘It is absolutely clear,’” he recited, “‘that people like Friedrich Heiger simply wait for some great disaster or other to come along, some disturbance of the equilibrium, even if it is only temporary, in order to whip up passions so that the muddy waters of turmoil will raise them up…’ Who writes that?” He looked at the reverse side of the sheet of paper. “Ah, well, who else! Into the flames with it! Into the flames!” He crumpled up the letter and flung it into the hearth.

“Listen, Andrei,” said Kensi. “Isn’t it time we thought about the future?”

“What is there to think about it?” Andrei growled, working away with the poker. “We’ll survive somehow, we’ll get by…”

“I don’t mean our future!” said Kensi. “I’m talking about the future of the paper, about the future of the Experiment!”

Andrei looked at him in amazement. Kensi was the same as he had always been. As if nothing had happened. As if absolutely nothing at all had happened in the last few sickening months. He actually seemed even more ready for a fight than usual. Only now the fight was in the name of legality and ideals. Like a cocked firing hammer. But maybe nothing really had happened to him? “Have you been talking to your Mentor?” Andrei asked.

“Yes, I have,” Kensi replied defiantly.

“Well, and?” asked Andrei, overcoming that familiar awkwardness, the way he always had to in a conversation about the Mentors.

“That’s nobody else’s business and it has no significance. What have the Mentors got to do with this? Heiger has a Mentor too. Every bandit in the City has a Mentor. That doesn’t stop any of them from thinking for themselves.”

Andrei pulled a cigarette out of a pack, kneaded it, and lit it from the red-hot poker, narrowing his eyes against the heat. “I’m fed up with the whole thing,” he said quietly.

“What are you fed up with?”

“Every damn thing… I think we need to escape, get out of here, Kensi. To hell with all of them.”

“What does that mean—escape? What are you talking about?”

“We have to clear out, before it’s too late, make tracks for the swamps, for Uncle Yura’s place, as far away as possible from this whole mess. The Experiment has run out of control, you and I can’t bring it back under control, so there’s no point even trying. In the swamps at least we’ll have weapons, we’ll have strength—”

“I’m not going to any swamps!” Selma suddenly declared.

“No one’s asking you to,” Andrei said without looking around.

“Andrei,” said Kensi, “that’s desertion.”

“In your book it’s desertion, in mine it’s a rational maneuver. Anyway, you suit yourself. You asked me what I think about the future and I’m telling you. There’s nothing for me to do here. They’ll shut down the paper anyway, and send us to clear away the dead baboons. Under armed guard. And that’s the best scenario.”

“Now here’s another intelligent individual!” Izya proclaimed admiringly. “Listen: ‘I’m an old subscriber to your newspaper and on the whole I approve of its line. But why do you always come out in defense of F. Heiger? Perhaps you are inadequately informed? I know for certain that Heiger has a dossier on anyone who is even slightly noteworthy in the City. His people permeate the entire municipal establishment. They are probably in your newspaper too. I assure you, the PRR is by no means as small as you think. I know that they have weapons too…’” Izya looked at the reverse of the letter. “Ah, that’s who it is… ‘I ask you please not to publish my name…’ Into the fire with it, into the fire.”

“Anyone would think you know all the intelligent people in the City,” said Andrei.

“Well, as it happens, there aren’t all that many of them,” Izya retorted, lowering his hand into the heap of paper again. “Not to mention the fact that intelligent people don’t often write to the newspapers.”

Silence fell. Denny, who had smoked his fill, also came over to the fireplace and started tossing large armfuls of paper into the flames. “Stir it, boss, stir it!” he said. “Put more life into it! Let me have that poker…”

“I think it’s simply cowardice, running away from the City now,” Selma said defiantly.

“Every honest man counts now,” Kensi agreed. “If we go, who’ll be left? Will you tell them to give the newspaper to the Dupains?”

“You’ll be left,” Andrei said wearily. “You can hire Selma for the paper, or Izya—”

“You know Heiger well,” Kensi interrupted. “You could use your influence…”

“I haven’t got any influence,” said Andrei. “Or if I do, I don’t want to use it. I don’t know how to do things like that and I can’t stand it.”

Again everyone fell silent, with just the flames humming in the chimney.

“I wish they’d get here soon,” Denny growled, flinging the final pile of letters into the fire. “I’m dying for a drink, and there isn’t anything here.”

“They won’t come straight round, just like that,” Izya immediately retorted. “They’ll call first!” He threw the letter he was reading into the hearth and started walking around the office. “You don’t know that, you don’t understand. It’s a ritual! A procedure developed in three countries, honed to a fine edge, tried and tested… Girls, isn’t there anything to eat here?” he suddenly asked.

Skinny Amalia immediately jumped up, squeaking, “Just a moment, just a moment!” and disappeared into the front office.

“By the way,” Andrei asked out of the blue. “Where’s the censor?”

“He really wanted to stay,” said Denny. “But Mr. Ubukata threw him out. He was screaming bloody murder, that censor. ‘Where will I go?’ he shouted. ‘You’re killing me!’ We even had to bolt the door so he couldn’t get back in. He kept throwing himself against it at first, then he gave up hope and left. Listen, I’m going to open the window after all. It’s too hot, I can’t bear it.”

The secretary came back in, smiled shyly with her pale, unpainted lips, and handed Izya a greasy paper bag of pies.

“Mmm!” Izya exclaimed, and immediately started champing on them.

“Are your ribs hurting?” Selma asked in a quiet little voice, leaning down to Andrei’s ear.

“No,” Andrei said curtly. He got up, moved her away, and walked over to the desk. And at that moment the telephone rang. Everyone turned their heads to stare at the white phone. It carried on ringing.

“Well, Andrei!” Kensi said impatiently.

Andrei picked up the receiver. “Yes?”

“The City Gazette offices?” a brisk voice inquired.

“Yes,” said Andrei.

“I’d like Mr. Voronin, please.”

“Speaking.”

There was the sound of someone breathing into the phone, followed by a loud dial tone as they hung up. Andrei carefully put down the receiver, with his heart pounding. “It’s them,” he said.

Izya champed out something unintelligible, frenziedly nodding his head. Andrei sat down. Everyone looked at him—Denny with a forced smile on his face, Kensi stooped over and tousle-headed, Amalia pitiful and frightened, Selma pale but collected. Izya looked at him too, chewing and grinning at the same time, wiping his greasy fingers on the flaps of his coat.

“Well, what are you all staring at?” Andrei asked irritably. “Come on now, all of you, clear out of here.”

No one stirred.

“What are you so worried about?” said Izya, examining the last pie. “It will be a breeze, a walk in the park, all calm and quiet, as Uncle Yura says. Calm and quiet, honest and respectable… Only don’t make any sudden movements. Just like with cobras.”

From outside they heard an engine rumbling and brakes squealing, and a strident voice commanded, “Kaiser, Velichenko, follow me! Mirovich, stay here!” A fist was immediately hammered against the door downstairs.

“I’ll go and open up,” said Denny, and Kensi sprang over to the fireplace and started stirring the heap of smoking ash with all his might. Ash flew everywhere in the room.

“Don’t make any sudden movements!” Izya shouted after Denny.

The door downstairs shuddered and its panes of glass jangled plaintively. Andrei stood up, clasped his hands behind his back, squeezing them together as hard as he could, and stood in the middle of the room. The recent sensation of dark lethargy and weakness in his legs swept over him again. The hammering and rattling downstairs ended; he heard grumbling voices and then the sound of large numbers of feet stamping in the empty offices. As if there’s an entire battalion of them, Andrei thought fleetingly. He backed away, bracing his rump against the wall. His knees were trembling repulsively. I won’t allow them to beat me, he thought in despair. Let them kill me. I didn’t bring the pistol… I should have brought it… Or maybe I was right not to bring it?

A short, stout man strode resolutely in through the door opposite Andrei. He was dressed in a good-quality coat with white armbands over it and a huge beret with a badge of some kind. His feet were encased in magnificently polished boots and his coat was pulled in slightly at the waist, in a very ugly way, by a broad belt, with a shiny, brand-new holster tugging it down heavily on the left. Some other men piled in behind him, but Andrei didn’t see them. He stared, spellbound, into the pale, puffy face with the blurred features and sour-looking little eyes. Has he got conjunctivitis, then? Andrei thought somewhere on the very edge of his consciousness. And he’s shaved so close he actually gleams, like he’s been varnished…

The man in the beret quickly glanced around the room before staring straight at Andrei. “Citizen Voronin?” he declaimed in a high, piercing voice, but with an interrogative intonation.

“Yes,” said Andrei, forcing out the word and clutching at the edge of the desk with both hands.

“Senior editor of the City Gazette?”

“Yes.”

The man in the beret saluted deftly but casually with two fingers. “I have the honor, Citizen Voronin, to present you with a personal communication from President Friedrich Heiger!”

He had obviously intended to pluck the personal communication out from under his coat in a single, smart gesture, but something in there got hooked on something else, and he had to scrabble around in the depths of his coat for a long time, skewed over slightly to the right and looking as if he were being assaulted by insects. Andrei watched him fatalistically, not understanding a thing. This was all wrong somehow. This wasn’t what he had been expecting. Maybe it will all blow over, he thought fleetingly, but dismissed the idea in superstitious haste.

Eventually the communication was extracted, and the man in the beret handed it to Andrei with a dissatisfied and rather offended air. Andrei took the crisp, sealed envelope. It was an ordinary postal envelope, a pale blue oblong bearing a stylized representation of a heart embellished with little bird’s wings. The address written on the envelope in familiar handwriting with large letters was “To Andrei Voronin, Senior Editor of the City Gazette, in person, confidential. F. Heiger, President.” Andrei tore open the envelope and pulled out an ordinary sheet of letter paper edged in blue.

Andrei read this personal and confidential missive twice, then lowered the hand holding the letter and looked around. They were all looking at him again—pale-faced, resolute, and tense. Only Izya was beaming like a newly polished samovar, and secretly releasing finger flicks into space where the others couldn’t see. The junior adjutor (dammit, what the hell could that mean, it was a familiar word… adjutor, coadjutor… something out of history… or out of The Three Musketeers)… Junior Adjutor Raymond Cvirik was looking at him too—looking sternly but protectively. And over by the door some odd-looking characters with carbines and white armbands on their sleeves were shifting from foot to foot and watching him too.

“I see,” said Andrei, folding the letter and putting it back in the envelope. He didn’t know where to begin.

Then the junior adjutor began. “Are these your colleagues, Citizen Voronin?” he inquired briskly, with a brief side-to-side gesture.

“Yes,” said Andrei.

“Hmm,” Citizen Raymond Cvirik declared dubiously, looking point-blank at Izya.

But at that moment Kensi abruptly asked him, “And who exactly might you be?”

Citizen Raymond Cvirik glanced at him, and then turned in amazement to Andrei. Andrei cleared his throat. “Gentlemen,” he announced. “Allow me to introduce to you Junior Coadjutor Citizen Cvirik—”

“Adjutor!” Cvirik corrected him indignantly.

“What? Ah yes, adjutor. Not coadjutor, but simply adjutor…” (For no reason at all Selma gave a sudden splutter of laughter and put her hand over her mouth.) “Junior adjutor and political representative at our newspaper. From now on.”

“Representative of what?” Kensi asked intransigently.

Andrei was about to look in the envelope again, but Cvirik declared in an even more indignant tone of voice, “Political representative of the Department of Information!”

“Your credentials!” Kensi said brusquely.

“What?” Citizen Cvirik’s sour little eyes started blinking indignantly.

“Your credentials, your authorization—do you have anything, apart from that idiotic holster of yours?”

“Who is this?” Citizen Cvirik exclaimed in a piercing shriek, turning back toward Andrei. “Who is this man?”

“This is Citizen Kensi Ubukata,” Andrei said hastily. “The deputy editor… Kensi, no credentials are required. He delivered a letter to me from Fritz.”

“What Fritz?” Kensi said disdainfully. “What has some Fritz or other got to do with anything?”

“Sudden movements!” Izya appealed. “I implore you, don’t make any sudden movements!”

Cvirik swung his head to and fro from Izya to Kensi and back. His face wasn’t gleaming any longer; it was slowly flooding with crimson. “Citizen Voronin,” he eventually enunciated, “I see that your colleagues do not have a very clear idea of exactly what has happened today! Or perhaps on the contrary!” He kept raising his voice. “They have some strange, distorted idea of it! I see burnt paper here, I see gloomy faces, and I do not see any readiness to set to work. At an hour when the entire City, our entire people—”

“And who are they?” Kensi interrupted, pointing to the characters with carbines. “Are they the new staff?”

“Believe it or not, they are! Citizen Former Deputy Editor! They are the new staff. I cannot promise you that they—”

“We’ll see about that,” Kensi declared in an unfamiliar, squeaky voice, taking a step toward Cvirik. “By what authority—”

“Kensi!” Andrei said helplessly.

“By what authority are you haranguing us here?” Kensi went on, taking no notice of Andrei. “Who are you? How dare you behave like this! Why don’t you present your credentials? You’re nothing but a bunch of armed bandits who have broken in to pillage the place!”

“Shut your mouth, you yellow asshole!” Cvirik suddenly howled out savagely, reaching for his holster.

Andrei swayed forward to stand between them, but at that moment someone shoved him hard on the shoulder, and Selma was suddenly standing in front of Cvirik.

“How dare you swear like that in the presence of women, you bastard!” she yelled. “You fat-assed scumbag! You ugly thug!”

Andrei was completely dazed. Cvirik and Kensi and Selma all screamed hideously at the same time. Out of the corner of his eye, Andrei noticed the characters in the doorway glancing uncertainly at each other and moving to hold their carbines at the ready, and Denny Lee suddenly appeared beside them, holding a heavy editor’s stool with a metal seat by one leg, but the most frightening and unbelievable sight of all was the little floozy Amalia, hunched over in a strange, predatory pose and baring long, white teeth that looked spine-chilling on her haggard, corpse-like face, stealthily creeping toward Cvirik, raising the smoking poker over her right shoulder, as if it were a golf club…

“I remember you, you son of a bitch!” Kensi shouted furiously. “You embezzled the money for schools, you sleazeball, and now you’ve risen to be a coadjutor!”

“I’ll trample you all into shit! I’ll make you eat shit! You enemies of mankind!”

“Shut it, you piece of scum. Shut it, while you’re still in one piece!”

“No sharp movements! I implore you!”

Like a man under a spell, Andrei followed the movement of the smoking poker, unable to stir a muscle. He could sense, he knew, that something terrible and irrevocable was about to happen, and it was already too late to prevent this terrible thing.

“We’ll string you up on a streetlamp!” the junior adjutor howled wildly, waving a huge automatic pistol around in the air. In all this hubbub and uproar he had somehow managed to pull out his pistol, and now he was brandishing it mindlessly and yelling continuously in his piercing voice, and then Kensi bounded up to him, and grabbed him by the lapels of his coat, and Cvirik started pushing him off with both hands, and suddenly a shot rang out, followed immediately by a second and a third. The poker flashed through the air without a sound, and everyone froze.

Cvirik was standing alone in the center of the office, with his crimson face rapidly turning gray. He was rubbing the shoulder bruised by the poker with one hand, and his other hand was shaking, still held out in front of him. The pistol was lying on the floor. The characters in the doorway stood there with their mouths all hanging open in the same way and their carbines lowered.

“I didn’t mean to…” Cvirik said in a trembling voice.

The stool fell out of Denny’s hand and crashed heavily against the floor, and that was when Andrei realized where everyone was looking. They were all looking at Kensi, who was tumbling backward with a strange, extremely slow movement, pressing both hands to the lower part of his chest.

“I didn’t mean to…” Cvirik repeated in a tearful voice. “As God’s my witness, I didn’t mean to!”

Kensi’s legs buckled and he collapsed gently, almost without a sound, into the heap of ash beside the fireplace, uttering an inarticulate, painful sound as he strained to pull his knees up to his stomach.

And then, with a terrible shriek, Selma sank her nails into Cvirik’s fat, gleaming, dirty-white face, and everyone else went dashing to the man lying on the floor, tramping loudly, and screened him off, piling up over him, and then Izya straightened up, turned to look at Andrei with his face strangely contorted and his eyebrows raised in astonishment, and mumbled, “He’s dead. They killed him…”

The telephone rang thunderously. Not understanding a thing, Andrei held out his hand as if this were a dream and picked up the receiver.

“Andrei? Andrei!” It was Otto Friese. “Are you alive and well? Thank God, I was so worried about you! Well, everything will be fine now. Fritz will look out for us now if need be…” He said something else—about sausage, about butter. Andrei wasn’t listening to him any longer.

Selma was squatting down on her haunches with her arms wrapped around her head and weeping uncontrollably, and Junior Adjutor Raymond Cvirik was smearing the blood from the deep, oozing scratches across his gray cheeks and repeating over and over again, like a broken piece of clockwork, “I didn’t mean to… I swear to God, I didn’t mean to…”