The Doomed City

  “Do you know what’s really in this file?” said Izya. “I discovered the old City Hall—it’s about fifteen kilometers from here. I was rummaging around in there all day long; they switched the sun off and it was as dark as hell—you know there hasn’t been any lighting there for about twenty years now . . . I wandered round and round in circles, barely managed to find the way out onto Main Street—ruins on all sides, these wild voices yelling . . .”

  “I see,” said Andrei. “Didn’t you know it’s forbidden to rummage around in the old ruins?”

  The glint of excitement faded from Izya’s eyes and he looked intently at Andrei, as if he were beginning to catch on.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Andrei continued. “Do you want to carry an infection back into the City?”

  “I don’t much like the tone of your voice,” Izya said with a crooked smile. “The way you’re talking to me, it’s not right somehow.”

  “And I don’t like anything at all about you!” said Andrei. “Why did you hammer it into my head that the Red Building was a myth? You knew it wasn’t a myth. You lied to me. What for?”

  “What is this, an interrogation?” Izya asked.

  “What do you think?” said Andrei.

  “I think you’ve taken a hard knock on the head. I think you need to wash your face with cold water and generally pull yourself together.”

  “Give me that file,” said Andrei.

  “You go to hell!” said Izya, getting up. He had turned very pale.

  Andrei got up too. “You’re coming with me,” he said.

  “No damned way,” Izya said abruptly. “Show me the arrest warrant.”

  And then Andrei, his blood running cold with hatred, slowly unbuttoned his holster and pulled out the pistol, keeping his eyes fixed on Izya. “Walk forward,” he ordered.

  “You idiot . . .” Izya muttered. “You’ve totally lost your mind.”

  “Silence!” Andrei barked. “Walk!”

  He prodded Izya in the side, and Izya obediently hobbled across the street. Apparently his feet were badly chafed and he limped heavily. “You’ll die the death of shame,” he said over his shoulder. “When you’ve had some sleep, you’ll burn up with shame.”

  “No talking!”

  They reached the motorcycle, the policeman deftly flung back the flap of the sidecar, and Andrei pointed into it with the barrel of the pistol.

  “Get in.”

  Izya got in and sat down very clumsily, without saying a word. The policeman quickly leaped into the saddle. Andrei sat behind him, shoving the pistol into its holster. The engine roared and backfired; the motorcycle swung around and set off back to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, bouncing over the potholes and scattering the loonies who were wearily and senselessly wandering around the street, which was damp with fresh dew.

  Andrei tried not to look at Izya hunched up in the sidecar. The first blast of anger had passed, and what he felt now was something like embarrassment—it had all happened too fast somehow, too hastily, in a rush, like that joke about the bear rocking the hare in a cradle with no bottom. Well, OK, we’ll get things straightened out . . .

  In the lobby of the Public Prosecutor’s building, without looking at Izya, Andrei ordered the policeman to register the arrested man and take him upstairs to the duty guard. Andrei himself went up to his office, taking three steps at a time.

  It was about four o’clock, the most hectic time of all. In the corridors suspects and witnesses stood along the walls or sat on the benches polished bright by backsides. They all looked equally hopeless and sleepy; almost all of them were yawning convulsively, with their eyes goggling blearily. Every now and then the duty guards bawled from their little desks: “Quiet! No talking!” From behind the office doors upholstered in leatherette, Andrei heard the clatter of typewriters, the droning of voices, and tearful wailing. It was stifling, dirty, and gloomy. Andrei suddenly felt nauseous—he wanted to drop into the cafeteria and drink something bracing: a cup of strong coffee, or at least a shot of vodka. And then he saw Wang.

  Wang was squatting down, leaning back against the wall, in a pose of infinitely patient waiting. He was wearing his distinctive wadded jacket and his head was pulled down into his shoulders, so that the collar of the jacket pushed his ears out. His round, hairless face was calm. He was dozing.

  “What are you doing here?” Andrei asked in amazement

  Wang opened his eyes, got up smoothly, and said with a smile, “I’ve been arrested. I’m waiting to be called.”

  “What do you mean, arrested? What for?”

  “Sabotage,” Wang said in a quiet voice.

  A huge thug in a filthy raincoat who was dozing nearby also opened his eyes—or, rather, one eye, because the other had swollen up in a bright purple bruise. “What sabotage?” Andrei exclaimed, dumbfounded.

  “Avoidance of the right to work—”

  “Article 112, paragraph 6,” the thug with the shiner explained briskly. “Six months of swamp therapy—and you’re done.”

  “You keep quiet,” Andrei told him.

  The thug flashed his purple eye at him and chuckled (immediately remembering the bump on his own forehead, Andrei felt it quite distinctly) and wheezed peaceably, “I can keep quiet. Why not keep quiet, when everything’s clear without words anyway?”

  “No talking!” the duty guard bawled menacingly. “Who’s that there slouching against the wall? Right, unslouch yourself!”

  “Wait,” Andrei said to Wang. “Where have you been summoned to? Here?” He pointed to the door of room number 22, trying to recall whose office that was.

  “That’s right,” the thug wheezed helpfully. “We’re for number 22. We’ve been propping up the wall for an hour and a half already.”

  “Wait,” Andrei said to Wang again, and pushed open the door.

  Ensconced at the desk was Heinrich Ruhmer, a junior investigator and Friedrich Heiger’s personal bodyguard, formerly a middleweight boxer and Munich bookmaker. Andrei asked, “May I come in?” but Ruhmer didn’t reply. He was very busy. He was sketching something on a large sheet of drawing paper, leaning down his brutish physiognomy with the flattened nose to each shoulder by turns, panting and even moaning in his creative efforts. Andrei closed the door behind himself and walked right up to the desk. Ruhmer was copying a pornographic postcard. The sheet of drawing paper and the postcard were ruled off into squares. The work had only just begun, and so far only the general outlines had been plotted out on the paper. The job in prospect was titanic in scope.

  “What’s this you’re doing during working hours, you vile brute?” Andrei asked reproachfully.

  Ruhmer started visibly and looked up. “Ah, it’s you . . .” he said with evident relief. “What do you want?”

  “Is this the way you work?” Andrei asked mournfully. “People are waiting for you out there, and you—”

  “Who’s waiting?” Ruhmer asked, startled. “Where?”

  “Your suspects are waiting!” said Andrei.

  “Aah . . . Well, what of it?”

  “Never mind,” Andrei said malignly. What he probably should do was make this character feel ashamed somehow, remind the brute that Fritz had vouched for him, after all, vouched on his own good name for an idle cretin, for a bonehead, but Andrei felt he didn’t have the strength for that right now.

  “Who lamped you on the forehead?” Ruhmer asked with professional interest, examining Andrei’s bump. “Someone lamped you handsomely.”

  “It’s not important,” Andrei said impatiently. “I’ll tell you why I called in: Have you got Wang Li-hung’s case?”

  “Wang Li-hung?” Ruhmer stopped examining the bump and thoughtfully stuck one finger into his right nostril. “Why, what’s up?” he asked warily.

  “Have you got it or not?”

  “And why are you asking?”

  “Because he’s sitting outside your door and waiting while you’re working on this filthy smut in here!”

  “W
hy is it filthy smut?” Ruhmer asked resentfully. “Just look at the tits on her! Moooo! Eh?”

  Andrei fastidiously pushed the photograph aside. “Hand over the case file,” he demanded.

  “What case?”

  “Hand over the Wang Li-hung case!”

  “I haven’t got any such case,” Ruhmer said angrily. He pulled out the middle drawer of his desk and glanced into it. Andrei glanced into the drawer too. The drawer really was empty.

  “Where are all your case files anyway?” Andrei asked, restraining himself.

  “What’s that to you?” Ruhmer asked aggressively. “You’re not my boss.”

  Andrei grabbed the receiver of the phone with a resolute gesture.

  Alarm glinted in Ruhmer’s piggy little eyes. “Hang on,” he said, hastily setting his huge mitt on the base of the phone. “Where are you going to take it? What for?”

  “I’m going to call Heiger now,” Andrei said spitefully. “And he’ll give you a roasting, you idiot.”

  “Wait,” Ruhmer muttered, trying to take the receiver away from him. “Ah, come on, will you . . . Why call Heiger? We can settle this between the two of us, can’t we? First of all, you explain properly what you want.”

  “I want to take the case of Wang Li-hung.”

  “That Chinese, you mean? The caretaker?”

  “Yes!”

  “Well, why didn’t you say so to begin with? There isn’t any case against him. They’ve only just brought him in. I’m going to take his initial interrogation.”

  “What was he arrested for?”

  “Refuses to change his profession,” said Ruhmer, gently pulling the telephone receiver toward himself, along with Andrei. “Sabotage. He’s on his third term as a caretaker. Do you know article 112?”

  “Yes,” said Andrei. “But this is a special case. They’re always fouling something up. Where’s the accompanying letter?”

  Wheezing loudly, Ruhmer finally got the phone away from Andrei, put it back in its place, and turned back to the desk. This time he opened the drawer on the right, rummaged around in it, concealing the contents behind his gigantic shoulders, pulled out a piece of paper, and handed it to Andrei. He was running with sweat. Andrei ran his eyes over the letter.

  “It doesn’t say here that he’s been allocated to you specifically,” he stated.

  “So what?”

  “So I’m taking him,” said Andrei, sticking the sheet of paper in his pocket.

  Ruhmer was bothered by that. “He’s been registered to me! At the duty desk.”

  “Well, call the duty officer and tell him that Wang Li-hung has been taken by Voronin. He can reregister him.”

  “You can call him yourself,” Ruhmer said pompously. “Why should I bother to call him? You’re taking him, so you call. And give me a receipt to say you took him.”

  Five minutes later all the formalities had been completed. Ruhmer put the receipt in a desk drawer and looked at Andrei, and then at the photograph. “Oh, those tits!” he said. “Real udders!”

  “You’ll come to a bad end, Ruhmer,” Andrei promised on the way out.

  In the corridor he took Wang by the elbow without saying a word and drew him along. Wang submitted without asking any questions, and it occurred to Andrei that Wang would have gone just as silently and uncomplainingly to the firing squad, the torture chamber, and any other form of humiliation. Andrei couldn’t understand that. There was something bestial and subhuman about this resignation, and at the same time something exalted that aroused an inexplicable respect, because vaguely discernible behind this resignation was some unearthly kind of understanding of the profound, hidden, eternal, essential nature of what was happening, an understanding of its eternal futility, and therefore of the unworthiness of resistance. East is East and West is West. A deceitful and unjust line, but somehow in this case it seemed apt.

  “Well, what’s this that’s happened to you? Tell me about it.”

  And Wang was immediately telling the story in his measured storytelling voice. “A week ago the district employment officer came to my caretaker’s lodge and reminded me that I was in blatant contravention of the law on diversified labor. He was right, I really am in blatant contravention of that law. The labor exchange has sent me a notification three times, and three times I have thrown it in the trash. The officer informed me that if I continued to shirk my responsibilities, I could be in serious trouble. And then it occurred to me that there were cases when the machine left someone in their former job. So that day I went to the labor exchange and put my record card in the machine. I was unlucky. I was given a job as director of a footwear plant. But I had decided in advance that I wouldn’t move to a new job, and I stayed on as a caretaker. This evening two policemen came for me and brought me here. That’s how it all happened.”

  “I get it,” Andrei drawled. But he didn’t really get anything. “Listen, would you like some tea? We can order tea and sandwiches here. For free.”

  “That would be a great inconvenience,” Wang protested. “Please don’t bother.”

  “What do you mean, inconvenience!” Andrei said angrily, and ordered two glasses of tea and sandwiches over the phone. After he put the phone down, he looked at Wang and asked cautiously, “Wang, I still don’t completely understand why you didn’t want to work as the director of a footwear plant. It’s a respectable position; you would have acquired a new profession and made a real difference—after all, you’re a very efficient and industrious person . . . And I know that footwear plant—pilfering goes on there all the time; they carry out shoes by the crateful . . . That wouldn’t happen with you there. And then the pay’s much better there, and you have a wife and a child, don’t you? What’s the problem?”

  “Well, I think it will be hard for you to understand,” Wang said thoughtfully.

  “What is there to understand?” Andrei asked impatiently. “It’s obvious that it’s better to be the director of an industrial plant than to spend your whole life raking up trash . . . Or even worse, to slave away in the swamps for six months . . .”

  Wang shook his round head. “No, it isn’t better,” he said. “The best place of all to be in is one from which you can’t fall. You can’t understand that, Andrei.”

  “Why do you have to fall at all?” asked Andrei, puzzled.

  “I don’t know why. But it’s bound to happen. Or you have to make such a great effort to hold on that it’s better to fall immediately. I know, I’ve been through all that.”

  A policeman with a sleepy face brought the tea and saluted, swaying on his feet, then edged back out into the corridor. Andrei set a glass of tea in a tarnished metal glass-holder in front of Wang and pushed the plate of sandwiches toward him. Wang thanked him, took a sip from the glass, and took the very smallest sandwich. “You’re simply afraid of responsibility,” Andrei said disappointedly. “I’m sorry, but I have to say that’s not entirely fair to everybody else.”

  “I always try to do only good for people,” Wang objected calmly. “And as for responsibility, I bear a supreme responsibility. My wife and child.”

  “That’s true,” said Andrei, feeling rather confused again. “That’s right, of course. But you must agree that the Experiment demands from every one of us . . .”

  Wang listened carefully, nodding. When Andrei finished, he said, “I understand you. You are right in your own way. But then, you came here to build, didn’t you? And I ran away to get here. You seek battle and victory, I seek repose. We are very different, Andrei.”

  “What does that mean—repose? You’re slandering yourself. If you sought repose, you would have found a cozy little corner somewhere and lived there like a pig in clover. Cozy little corners are ten a penny around here. But you’ve chosen the dirtiest, most unpopular job of all, and you work honestly, without begrudging the effort or the time . . . What sort of repose is that?”

  “Repose of the soul, Andrei. Inner repose,” said Wang. “At peace with oneself and the universe.”
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  Andrei drummed his fingers on the table. “Well then, do you intend to be a caretaker for the rest of your life?”

  “Not necessarily a caretaker,” said Wang. “When I arrived here, I was a laborer in a warehouse at first. Then the machine appointed me the mayor’s secretary. I refused and I was sent to the swamps. I worked off my six months and came back, and by law, as a punished convict, I was given the very lowest job. But then the machine started pushing me upward again. I went to the director of the labor exchange and explained everything to him, as I have to you. The director of the exchange was a Jew, he had arrived here from an extermination camp, and he understood me very well. For as long as he was the director, they didn’t bother me.” Wang paused. “About two months ago, he disappeared. They say he was found murdered, you probably know about that. And it all started all over again . . . Never mind, I’ll do my time in the swamps and go back to being a caretaker. It will be a lot easier for me now—my son’s a big boy now, and Uncle Yura will help me out in the swamps . . .”

  At this point Andrei caught himself gawping wide-eyed at Wang in a way that was incredibly rude, as if it weren’t Wang sitting there in front of him but some strange, outlandish creature. But then, Wang really was outlandish. My God, thought Andrei, what kind of life must a man have had to be reduced to a philosophy like this? Yes, I have to help him. I’m duty bound. But how? “Well, all right,” he said eventually. “Have it your own way. Only there’s absolutely no point in you going to the swamps. Do you happen to know who’s the director of the labor exchange now?”

  “Otto Friese,” said Wang.

  “What? Otto? Then what’s the problem?”

  “Yes, I would go to him, only he’s such a little child, isn’t he? He doesn’t understand anything and he’s afraid of everything.”

  Andrei grabbed the telephone directory, found the number, and picked up the phone. He had to wait a long time; Otto was obviously sleeping like a log. Eventually he answered in a halting voice that was angry and frightened. “Director Otto Friese here.”