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:
MAYOR WARNS PRR: THE GOVERNMENT IS VIGILANT, THE GOVERNMENT SEES EVERYTHING!
THE EXPERIMENT IS THE EXPERIMENT. Our science correspondent considers solar phenomena.
DARK STREETS AND SHADY CHARACTERS. The municipality’s political consultant comments on Friedrich Heiger’s latest speech.
A JUST SENTENCE. Alois Tender sentenced to death for carrying a firearm.
“SOMETHING UP THERE’S BROKEN. IT’S OK, THEY’LL FIX IT,” says master electrician Theodore U. Peters.
TAKE CARE OF THE BABOONS—THEY’RE GOOD FRIENDS OF YOURS! A resolution from the latest meeting of the Society for the Protection of Animals.
FARMERS ARE THE STAUNCH BACKBONE OF OUR SOCIETY. The mayor meets the leaders of the Peasants’ Party.
THE MAGICIAN FROM THE LABORATORY ON THE EDGE OF THE ABYSS. Dispatches on the latest research into cultivating plants without light.
“FALLING STARS” AGAIN?
WE HAVE ARMORED VEHICLES. An interview with the commandant of police.
CHLORELLA: NOT A PALLIATIVE, BUT A PANACEA.
ARON WEBSTER LAUGHS, ARON WEBSTER SINGS! The celebrated comic’s fifteenth charity concert . . .
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.