“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 the
m 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 al
l 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 . . .”