And so, what we were dealing with was a so-called “unchangeable” five-kopeck piece in action. In itself the fact of unchangeability did not interest me very much. What astounded me most of all was the possibility of extraspatial displacement of a physical body. It was absolutely clear to me that the mysterious transference of the coin from the seller to the buyer represented a clear case of the notorious “zero-transport,” well known to lovers of science fiction under its various pseudonyms: hypertransit, repagular leap, Tarantoga’s phenomenon, etc. The possibilities in prospect were dazzling.
I had no scientific instruments. A basic laboratory thermometer would have been very useful, but I didn’t even have that. I was obliged to restrict myself to purely visual, subjective observation. I began my final round of the square with the following objective in mind: Placing the five-kopeck piece beside the saucer for small change and as far as possible preventing the salesperson from putting it in with the other money until he or she hands me my change, visually monitor the process of the coin’s displacement in space, while at the same time attempting to determine, at least qualitatively, the change in temperature in the vicinity of the presumptive trajectory of transit. However, the experiment was interrupted before it had even begun.
When I approached the sales assistant Manya, now an acquaintance of mine, the youthful militiaman with the rank of sergeant was already waiting for me. “All right, then,” he said in his professional voice.
I gave him an inquiring look, feeling an uneasy presentiment.
“Your papers, if you don’t mind, citizen,” said the militiaman, saluting and looking straight past me.
“What’s wrong?” I asked as I took out my passport.
“And the coin too, if you don’t mind,” the militiaman said as he took the passport. I handed him the five-kopeck piece without speaking. Manya watched me with angry eyes. The militiaman inspected the coin, said “Aha . . .” in a satisfied tone of voice, and opened my passport, which he studied the way a bibliophile studies a rare incunabulum. I waited in torment. A crowd was gathering around me, and some members of it were already expressing various opinions concerning my character.
“You’ll have to come with me,” the militiaman said eventually. I went with him. While we were on our way, the crowd that escorted us concocted several different versions of my troubled life history and proposed a large number of hypotheses concerning the reasons for the investigation that was beginning before their very eyes.
In the station the sergeant handed on the five-kopeck piece and the passport to a lieutenant, who inspected the five-kopeck piece and invited me to sit down. I sat down. The lieutenant said casually, “Hand over your small change,” and then also immersed himself in the study of my passport. I raked the coppers out of my pocket. “Count it, Kovalyov,” said the lieutenant, and setting aside the passport began looking into my eyes.
“Buy a lot, did you?” he asked.
“Yes,” I replied.
“Hand that over too,” said the lieutenant.
I set out on the table in front of him four copies of the day before yesterday’s issue of Pravda, three issues of the local newspaper the Fisherman, two issues of the Literary Gazette, eight boxes of matches, six Golden Key toffees, and a reduced-price wire brush for cleaning Primus stoves.
“I can’t hand over the water,” I said dryly. “Five glasses with syrup and four without.”
I was beginning to understand what the problem was, and the realization that I would have to justify my actions gave me an extremely awkward and unpleasant feeling.
“Seventy-four kopecks, comrade Lieutenant,” the youthful Kovalyov reported.
The lieutenant contemplated the heap of newspapers and boxes of matches. “Just having fun were you, or what?” he asked me.
“What,” I said morosely.
“Careless,” said the lieutenant. “Very careless, citizen. Tell me about it.”
I told him. At the end of my story I earnestly requested the lieutenant not to interpret my actions as an attempt to save up the money to buy a Zaporozhets car. My ears were burning. He laughed.
“Why shouldn’t I?” he inquired. “Some people have managed it.”
I shrugged. “I assure you, the idea could never even have entered my head . . . I mean it really never did!”
The lieutenant maintained a long pause. The youthful Kovalyov took my passport and began studying it again.
“I can’t even imagine it . . .” I said in dismay. “An absolutely crazy idea . . . Saving up kopeck by kopeck . . .” I shrugged again. “You’d be better off standing out on the church porch . . .”
“We’re waging a campaign against begging,” the lieutenant said emphatically.
“Quite right, of course . . . I just don’t understand what it’s got to do with me, and—” I realized that I was shrugging my shoulders a lot and promised myself not to do it anymore.
The lieutenant maintained another excruciatingly long pause while he examined the five-kopeck piece. “We’ll have to draw up a report,” he said eventually.
I shrugged. “By all means . . . although . . .” But I didn’t actually know “although” what.
The lieutenant carried on looking at me for a while, waiting for me to continue, but I was trying to work out which article of the criminal code my activities came under. Then he pulled across a sheet of paper and began writing.
The youthful Kovalyov returned to his post. The lieutenant scraped his pen across the paper, frequently dipping it into the inkwell with a bang. I sat there, idiotically examining the posters hanging on the walls and thinking vaguely that in my place Lomonosov, for instance, would have grabbed his passport and leaped out of the window. What is the essential point here? I thought. The essential thing is whether or not a person thinks of himself as guilty. In that sense I am not guilty. But guilt, it seems, may be either objective or subjective. And a fact is a fact: all those copper coins amounting to seventy-four kopecks are from a legal point of view the fruit of theft committed with the use of a technical device—to wit, one unchangeable five-kopeck piece . . .
“Read that and sign it,” said the lieutenant.
I read it. It emerged from the report that I, the undersigned A. I. Privalov, had in a manner unknown to me come into possession of a working model of an unchangeable five-kopeck piece of type State Standard 718-62, of which I had made improper use; that I, the undersigned A. I. Privalov, asserted that I had acted in this way solely for purposes of scientific experimentation and entirely unmotivated by the pursuit of personal gain; that I was prepared to reimburse the state for the losses inflicted on it in the sum of one ruble and fifty-five kopecks; and finally, that I had, in accordance with Solovets Municipal Soviet decree of March 22, 1959, surrendered the aforesaid working model of an unchangeable five-kopeck piece to the duty officer at the local militia station, Lieutenant U. U. Sergienko, and received in exchange five kopecks in the valid currency of the Soviet Union. I signed it.
The lieutenant checked my signature against the signature in my passport, counted the copper coins carefully once again, phoned somewhere to confirm the cost of the toffees and the Primus stove brush, then wrote out a receipt and handed it to me together with five kopecks in valid currency. As he gave me back the newspapers, matches, sweets, and brush, he said, “On your own admission, you drank the water. So altogether you owe another eighty-one kopecks.”
I settled my debt with a tremendous sense of relief. The lieutenant leafed carefully through my passport once again and handed it back to me.
“You can go, citizen Privalov,” he said. “And take more care from now on. Are you going to be in Solovets long?”
“I’m leaving tomorrow,” I said.
“Well, try to be more careful until tomorrow.”
“Oh, I’ll do my best,” I said, putting away my passport. Then, on a sudden impulse, I asked him in a quiet voice, “But tell me, comrade Lieutenant, don’t you find things a bit strange here in Solovet
s?”
The lieutenant was already looking through some papers. “I’ve been here a long time,” he said absentmindedly. “I’m used to it.”
5
“But do you yourself believe in ghosts?” one of the students asked the lecturer.
“No, of course not,” the lecturer replied as he slowly dissolved into thin air.
—A true story
Until that evening I tried to be extremely careful. From the militia station I set off straight back home to Curving Seashore Street, and once there I climbed straight under the car. It was very hot. A menacing black cloud was slowly advancing from the west. While I was lying under the car covering myself with grease, old Naina Kievna, who had suddenly become very attentive and polite, came toadying up to me with a request to give her a lift to Bald Mountain. “They do say, dear guest, that it’s bad for a car to be standing around idle,” she cooed in her rasping voice, glancing in under the front bumper. “They say it’s good for it to go driving about. And I’d pay you, you can be sure of that.” I didn’t want to drive to Bald Mountain. In the first place, the boys might turn up at any moment. In the second place, I found the old woman’s unctuous persona even less endearing than her cantankerous one. And then it turned out that the journey to Bald Mountain was ninety versts in one direction, and when I asked the old granny how good the roads were, she declared happily that I needn’t worry about that—the road was smooth and if there was a problem she’d push the car herself. “Don’t you worry about me being old, dear guest, I’m still fit and strong,” she said.
After her first unsuccessful sally the old woman beat a temporary retreat, withdrawing into the house. The cat Vasily came and joined me under the car. He watched my hands closely for about a minute and then pronounced in a low but clearly audible voice, “I wouldn’t advise it, citizen . . . mmnaa . . . I wouldn’t advise it. They’ll eat you up.” Then he immediately left, twitching his tail. I was still trying to be very careful, so as soon as the old woman launched her second assault, I asked her for fifty rubles in order to put an end to the whole thing there and then. She retreated immediately, giving me a respectful look.
I carried out the DM and the TS, drove to the gas station with extreme caution to fill the tank, ate lunch in cafeteria number 11, and had my papers inspected once again by the vigilant Kovalyov. Just to make sure my conscience was clear, I asked him which was the road to Bald Mountain. The youthful sergeant gave me a very suspicious look and said, “Road? What are you talking about, citizen? What road? There isn’t any road there.” I drove back home in pouring rain.
The old woman had gone. The cat Vasily had disappeared. In the well two voices were singing a duet, and the effect was terrifying and dismal. The heavy rain was soon replaced by a dreary drizzle. It got dark.
I went into my room and tried to experiment with the whimsical book, but something in it had gotten jammed. Perhaps I was doing something wrong, or perhaps it was the influence of the weather, but no matter what I tried it stayed the way it was—F. F. Kuzmin’s Practical Exercises in Syntax and Punctuation. Reading a book like that was absolutely out of the question, so I tried my luck with the mirror. But the mirror reflected anything and everything and said nothing. Then I just stretched out on the sofa and lay there. I was on the point of nodding off from the boredom and the sound of the rain when the telephone suddenly started ringing. I went out into the hall and picked up the receiver. “Hello . . .”
The only sound in the earpiece was crackling.
“Hello,” I said, and blew into the mouthpiece. “Press the button.” There was no reply.
“Give it a bang,” I advised the silence. I blew into the phone again, tugged on the wire, and said. “Try calling again from a different phone.”
Then a voice in the receiver suddenly inquired, “Is that Alexander?”
“Yes,” I said, astonished.
“Why don’t you answer?”
“I am answering. Who’s this?”
“This is Petrovsky calling. Go down to the pickling shop and tell the foreman to give me a call.”
“What foreman?”
“Well, who have you got in today?”
“I don’t know . . .”
“What d’you mean, you don’t know? Is that Alexander?”
“Listen, citizen,” I said. “What number are you trying to call?”
“Seven two . . . Is that seven two?”
I didn’t know. “Apparently not,” I said.
“Then why did you say you were Alexander?”
“Because that’s who I am!”
“Pah! . . . Is this the manufacturing plant?”
“No,” I said. “This is the museum.”
“Ah . . . Then I beg your pardon. You can’t call the foreman, then . . .”
I hung up and went on standing there for a while, examining the hallway. There were five doors: the ones leading to my room, the yard, the old woman’s room, and the bathroom, and one covered in metal sheeting with a huge padlock. Boring, I thought. Lonely. And the lamp’s dim and dusty too . . . Shuffling my feet, I went back to my room and stopped in the doorway.
The sofa was gone.
Everything else was exactly the way it had been: the table, the brick oven, the mirror, the clothes hooks, and the stool. And the book was lying on the windowsill exactly where I’d left it. But where the sofa had been there was nothing now but a rectangle of thick dust on the floor, littered with rubbish. Then I saw the bedsheets lying neatly folded under the set of hooks.
“There was a sofa here a moment ago,” I said out loud. “I was lying on it.”
Something in the house had changed. The room was filled with an unintelligible hubbub—someone holding a conversation, music, people laughing, coughing, and shuffling their feet. For an instant a vague shadow obscured the light of the lamp, and the floorboards creaked loudly. Then suddenly I caught a medicinal smell like a drugstore and felt a puff of cold air in my face. I stepped back. And immediately I distinctly heard a sharp knock at the outside door. The noises instantly disappeared. Casting a glance around at the spot where the sofa had been, I went out into the hallway and opened the door.
Standing in front of me in the drizzle was a short, elegant man wearing a spotlessly clean cream raincoat with the collar turned up. He raised his hat and spoke in a dignified manner: “I’m very sorry to bother you, Alexander Ivanovich, but could you possibly spare me five minutes of your time?”
“Of course,” I said, confused. “Come in.”
It was the first time I’d ever seen this man, and the thought crossed my mind that perhaps he might be connected with the local militia. The stranger stepped into the hallway and set off straight toward my room. I blocked his way. I don’t know why I did it—probably because I didn’t want to answer any questions about the dust and rubbish on the floor.
“I’m sorry,” I babbled, “why don’t we talk here? My room’s a bit of a mess. And there’s nowhere to sit.”
The stranger jerked his head up sharply. “What do you mean?” he asked in a soft voice. “What about the sofa?”
We looked into each other’s eyes without speaking for about a minute. “Mmm . . . Yes, what about the sofa?” I asked, for some reason speaking in a whisper.
The stranger hooded his eyes. “Ah, so that’s the way it is!” he said slowly. “I understand. What a pity. Well, I’m sorry to have bothered you.”
He nodded politely, put his hat on, and strode resolutely toward the door of the bathroom.
“Where are you going?” I called. “That’s the wrong way.” Without bothering to turn around, the stranger mumbled, “Oh, it makes no difference,” and closed the door behind him. Without thinking, I switched the light on for him and stood there listening for a while, then suddenly jerked the door open. The bathroom was empty.
I gingerly took out a cigarette and lit up. The sofa, I thought. What does this have to do with the sofa? I’d never heard any fairy tales about sofas. There was a flying ca
rpet. There was a magic tablecloth. There were caps of darkness, seven-league boots, and self-playing psalteries. There was a magic talking mirror. But there wasn’t any magic sofa. People sat or lay on sofas; a sofa was a very solid object, very ordinary . . . Yes, really, what kind of fantasies could be inspired by a sofa?
Going back into my room, I immediately saw the Little Man. He was sitting on the brick oven up by the ceiling, doubled over into a very uncomfortable position. His wrinkled face was unshaven and his gray ears were hairy.
“Hello,” I said wearily.
The Little Man twisted his long lips into a woeful grimace. “Good evening,” he said. “I do beg your pardon, I’m not quite sure how I came to be up here . . . I’ve come about the sofa.”
“Then you’ve come too late,” I said, sitting down at the table.
“So I see,” the Man said in a quiet voice, shifting awkwardly. Flakes of whitewash showered down.
I smoked and looked him over thoughtfully. The Little Man glanced down uncertainly.
“Would you like me to help?” I asked, making a move toward him.
“No thank you,” the Man said despondently. “I’d better do it myself . . .”
He crept to the very edge of the sleeping platform, covering himself in white chalk, and launched himself awkwardly into the air, falling headfirst. My heart skipped a beat, but he stopped dead in midair and then began descending slowly, jerking his arms and legs outward. It wasn’t very elegant, but it was amusing. He landed on all fours and immediately stood up and wiped his wet face on his sleeve.
“I’m getting old,” he declared hoarsely. “A hundred years ago, or in Gonzast’s time, they’d have stripped me of my diploma for a descent like that, no two ways about it, Alexander Ivanovich.”
“Where did you graduate from?” I inquired, lighting up another cigarette.