The Doomed City

  “And so do I,” said Andrei. He picked up the phone. “Do you have anything else for me, Vareikis?”

  Vareikis got up. “No,” he said. “Nothing else. May I go?”

  Andrei benevolently nodded to him and spoke into the receiver. “Amalia, is there anyone else?”

  “Ellisauer, Mr. Counselor.”

  “What Ellisauer?” Andrei asked, observing Vareikis cautiously exiting the office, one part at a time.

  “The deputy head of the transport department. Concerning the subject of ‘Aquamarine.’”

  “Let him wait. Bring in the mail.”

  Amalia appeared in the doorway a minute later, and Andrei spent that entire minute moaning gently as he massaged his biceps and squirmed his waist about; everything ached pleasantly after an hour of intensive work with a spade in his hands, and as always he absentmindedly thought what good exercise it was for a man who led a mostly sedentary life.

  Amalia closed the door firmly behind her, clattered across the parquet floor in her high heels, stopped beside him, and put the correspondence file on the desk. In a habitual gesture, he put his arm around her firm, narrow hips sheathed in cool silk and patted her on the thigh while he opened the file with his other hand.

  “Right, then, what do we have here?” he said cheerfully.

  Amalia simply dissolved under his palm—she actually stopped breathing. A funny girl, and devoted as a dog. And she knows her job. He looked up at her. As always happened in these tender moments, her face had turned pale and frightened. When their eyes met, she hesitantly laid her hot, slim hand on his neck below the ear. Her fingers were trembling.

  “Well then, babe,” he said endearingly. “Is there anything important in this trash? Or shall we lock the door right now and assume a different position?” That was their code name for fun and games in the armchair and on the carpet. He could never have told anyone what Amalia was like in bed. He had never been in bed with her even once.

  “Here are the draft budget figures,” Amalia said in a weak little voice. “Then all sorts of proposals and submissions . . . Well, and the personal letters—I haven’t opened them.”

  “Quite right too,” said Andrei. “What if there was one from some little cutie . . .”

  He let go of her and she gave a feeble sigh.

  “Sit down for a moment,” he said. “Don’t go, I’ll be quick.”

  He took the first letter that came to hand, tore open the envelope, rapidly glanced through it, and frowned. The technician Yevseenko informed Andrei that Yevseenko’s immediate superior, Quejada, “passes remarks concerning the administration and concerning Mr. Counselor Voronin personally.” Andrei knew this Yevseenko well. He was an extremely strange individual and a hopeless loser—nothing he tried ever went right. He had once stunned Andrei by singing the praises of life in the year 1942 near Leningrad. “Those were good times,” he had said in a strange, dreamy kind of voice. “Just living, without thinking about anything, and if you need something—just tell the men and they’ll get it.” He had served his time as a captain, and in the entire war he had killed only one man—his own political commissar. They were fighting their way out of encirclement at the time. Yevseenko saw the Germans had caught the political commissar and were rummaging through his pockets. He fired at them out of the bushes, killing the political commissar, and then took to his heels. He thought very highly of himself for this exploit: they would have tortured him to death.

  Well, what can I do with this fool? This is the sixth denunciation he’s written. And he doesn’t write to Ruhmer, does he, or to Vareikis, but to me. A very amusing psychological twist, that. If he writes to Vareikis or Ruhmer, Quejada will be held accountable for his words. But I won’t touch Quejada—I know all about him, but I won’t touch him, because I value him and I forgive him, everyone knows that. So this way it turns out that Yevseenko has sort of fulfilled his civic duty but no one’s life has been ruined . . . God almighty, what a creep he is!

  Andrei crumpled up the letter, flung it in the wastebasket, and picked up the next one. The writing on the envelope looked familiar to him; it was very distinctive. There was no return address. Inside the envelope was a sheet of paper with text written on a typewriter—a carbon copy, not the top sheet—and below the text a note had been added by hand. Andrei read it without understanding a thing, read it again, turned cold, and glanced at his watch. Then he grabbed the receiver off the white phone and dialed a number.

  “Counselor Ruhmer, urgently!” he barked in an altered voice.

  “Counselor Ruhmer is busy.”

  “This is Counselor Voronin! I said—urgently!”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Counselor, Counselor Ruhmer is with the president—”

  Andrei flung down the receiver, pushed aside dumbfounded Amalia, and dashed for the door. He had already grabbed the plastic handle before he realized it was too late—he couldn’t get there in time anyway. If it was all true, of course. If it wasn’t all an idiotic hoax . . .

  He walked slowly across to the window, took hold of the velvet-covered handrail, and started watching the plaza. It was empty, as it always was. Light blue uniforms hovering, idle onlookers mooching under the trees, an old woman hobbling past, pushing a baby stroller along in front of her. A car driving past. Andrei waited, clutching the handrail.

  Amalia came up to him from behind and gently touched him on the shoulder. “What’s happened?” she asked in a whisper.

  “Move away,” he said without turning around. “Sit in the chair.”

  Amalia disappeared. Andrei looked at the time again. On his watch an extra minute had already gone by. Of course, he thought. It’s not possible. An idiotic hoax. Or blackmail . . . And just at that moment a man appeared from under the trees. He looked very small from this height and this distance, and Andrei didn’t recognize him. He remembered the man as being slim and erect, but this man looked bulky and swollen, and Andrei only realized why at the very last moment. He squeezed his eyes shut and backed away from the window.

  A short, rumbling boom shattered the silence of the plaza. The windows shuddered and jangled and somewhere below him shards of glass scattered with an irritating tinkling sound. Amalia gave a stifled screech and down below in the plaza frantic voices started shrieking.

  With one hand Andrei pushed aside Amalia, who was straining to get to him, or maybe to the window, then forced himself to open his eyes and look. Where the man had been there was a yellowish column of smoke, and he couldn’t see anything beyond it. From every direction light blue uniforms were running toward the spot, and farther away, under the trees, a crowd was rapidly gathering. It was all over.

  Andrei walked back to the desk with no feeling in his legs, sat down, and picked up the letter again:

  To all the powerful of this trashy world!

  I hate lies, but your truth is worse than lies. You have transformed the City into a well-organized pigsty, and the citizens of the City into gorged swine. I don’t want to be a gorged swine, but I don’t want to be a swineherd either, and in your chomping, champing world, there is no other choice. You are smug and mediocre in your correctness, although there was a time when many of you were real human beings. Some of my former friends are among you, and I am writing to them first. Words have no effect on you, and I shall reinforce them with my death. Maybe you’ll feel ashamed, maybe you’ll feel afraid, or maybe you’ll simply stop feeling so comfortable in your pigsty. This is all I have left to hope for. May God punish your boredom! These are not my words, but I fervently subscribe to them.

  Denny Lee

  All this was typed with carbon paper—the third or even fourth copy. And below it was a note added by hand:

  Dear Voronin, good-bye!

  I’m going to blow myself up today at 1300 in the plaza in front of the Glass House. If this letter doesn’t arrive too late, you can watch it happen, but don’t try to stop me—that would only cause unnecessary casualties.

  Your former friend and head of th
e letters department in your former newspaper,

  Denny

  Andrei raised his eyes and saw Amalia. “Do you remember Denny?” he asked. “Denny Lee, our letters editor . . .”

  Amalia nodded without speaking, then her face suddenly crumpled in horror. “It’s not possible!” she said hoarsely. “It’s not true . . .”

  “He blew himself up,” said Andrei, finding it hard to move his lips. “Probably strapped dynamite around himself. Under his jacket.”

  “What for?” said Amalia. She bit on her lip and tears welled up in her eyes, overflowing and running down her little white face and hanging from her chin.

  “I don’t understand,” said Andrei. “I don’t understand anything . . .” He stared blankly at the letter. “We saw each other not long ago . . . Sure, we cussed and swore at each other; sure, we quarreled . . .” He looked at Amalia again. “Maybe he tried to get in to see me? Maybe I wouldn’t see him?”

  Amalia put her hands over face and shook her head.

  And suddenly Andrei felt anger. Not even anger but the same furious exasperation he had felt earlier that day in the locker room after his shower. What the hell! What more do they damn well want? What else do they need, these riffraff? The idiot! What has he proved with this? He doesn’t want to be a swine, he doesn’t want to be a swineherd . . . He’s bored! Well you can go to hell and take your damned boredom with you! “Stop bawling!” he yelled at Amalia. “Wipe off your nose and get back to your place.”

  He tossed the sheet of paper away, jumped up, and went over to the window again.

  A huge, dark crowd filled the plaza. At the center of the crowd was an empty, gray space, cordoned off by light blue uniforms, with people in white coats swarming about in it. An ambulance was hysterically howling with its siren, trying to clear a path for itself . . .

  And just what have you really proved? That you don’t want to live with us? What did you have to prove that for, and to whom? That you hate us? You shouldn’t. We do everything that has to be done. It’s not our fault they’re swine. They were swine before us, and they’ll still be swine after us. We can only feed and clothe them, and relieve them of brutish animal suffering, but they’ve never known any spiritual suffering in their lives and they never can. Have we done so very little for them? Look what the City is like now. Clean and orderly, without a trace of the old shambles, chow to spare, duds to spare, soon there’ll be amusements to spare, just give us time—and what else do they need? And you, what have you achieved? Now the ambulance men will scrub your guts off the asphalt—and you’re done . . . But we have to keep on and on working, keeping the whole behemoth moving, because everything we’ve achieved so far is only the beginning—it still has to be secured, my friend, and once it has been secured, increased . . . Because maybe on Earth there’s neither God nor devil standing above people, but here there is . . . You stinking democrat, populist weasel, the brother of my brothers . . .

  But Denny was still there in front of his eyes, the way he was the last time they met, a month or two ago—completely withered somehow, ground down, as if he were ill, and some kind of secret horror was lurking in his sad, extinct eyes—and the words he said right at the end of their rowdy, senseless argument, after he had already gotten up and tossed the crumpled bills onto the little silver dish: “God, what have you been bragging about to me? He’s laying his life on the altar . . . What for? To stuff people’s bellies! But is that really the goal? In crummy little Denmark they’ve known how to do that for years and years already. OK, so maybe I don’t have the right, as you put it, to crucify myself in the name of everyone. Maybe not everyone knows, but you and I certainly do—that’s not what people need; you’ll never build a genuinely new world that way!”

  “And just how, damn and blast it, do you build it? How?” Andrei had bellowed, but Denny merely waved that aside and wouldn’t talk anymore after that.

  The white phone rang. Andrei reluctantly went back to the desk and picked it up.

  “Andrei? This is Heiger here.”

  “Hello, Fritz.”

  “Did you know him?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what do you think about this?”

  “A hysterical wimp,” Andrei said through his teeth. “Trash.”

  Heiger said nothing for a moment. “Did you get a letter from him?”

  “Yes.”

  “A strange man,” said Heiger. “All right, then. I’m expecting you at two.”

  Andrei put down the receiver, and the phone rang again. This time it was Selma calling. She was badly shaken. Rumors of the explosion had already reached White Court; naturally, along the way they had been distorted beyond all recognition, and now all White Court was in a state of quiet panic.

  “Fine, everyone’s safe and sound,” said Andrei. “I’m fine, and Heiger’s fine, and the Glass House is fine . . . Did you call Ruhmer?”

  “To hell with Ruhmer!” Selma exclaimed, infuriated. “I ran back from the salon almost out of my mind—Madam Dolfuss burst in, as white as a ghost, and set the walls shaking, howling that someone had tried to kill Heiger and half the building had been blown to pieces . . .”

  “Oh, come on,” Andrei said impatiently. “I haven’t got time.”

  “Can you tell me what happened?”

  “Some psychopath—” Andrei stopped, realizing what he was saying. “Some blockhead was lugging explosives across the plaza and he dropped them, probably.”

  “It definitely wasn’t an assassination attempt?”

  “I don’t know, do I? Ruhmer’s handling it, but I don’t know anything.”

  Selma breathed into the phone for a while. “You’re just lying, probably, Mr. Counselor,” she said, and hung up.

  Andrei walked around the desk and glanced out into the reception office. Amalia was in her place—stern, with her lips pursed, absolutely unapproachable—and her fingers were flying over the keyboard at her usual furious speed; not a trace was left on her face of tears, snot, or any kind of emotion. Andrei looked at her tenderly. That’s my girl. Screw you, Vareikis, he thought with boundless malice. I’ll throw you out on your ass first . . . His view of Amalia was suddenly blocked off. Obsequiously looming over him at a superhuman height was a face, squashed in from both sides, that belonged to Ellisauer from the transport department.

  “Ah,” said Andrei. “Ellisauer . . . I’m sorry, I won’t see you today. Tomorrow, first thing in the morning, please.”

  Without saying a word, Ellisauer bowed, breaking himself in half, and disappeared. Amalia was already standing with her notepad and pencil at the ready. “Mr. Counselor?”

  “Come in for a moment,” said Andrei. He went back to his desk, and the white phone immediately rang.

  “Voronin?” said a nasal voice, hoarse from smoking. “It’s Ruhmer here. Well, how are you doing?”

  “Fine,” said Andrei, gesturing for Amalia to stay: Don’t go, I’ll just be a moment.

  “How’s your wife?”

  “Just fine—she told me to say hello. By the way, send her two men from the service department today, something needs to be done around the house.”

  “Two? OK. Where to?”

  “They can call her, she’ll tell them. Tell them to call right now.”

  “OK,” said Ruhmer. “I’ll do it. Not immediately, but I’ll do it . . . I’m totally swamped, you know, with this garbage. Do you know the official version?”

  “How could I?” Andrei asked angrily

  “Basically, it goes like this. An accident with explosives. While explosive substances were being carried . . . Or let’s say someone was driving them somewhere. Drunk.”

  “I get it, I get it,” said Andrei. “That’s right. Good move.”

  “Aha,” said Ruhmer. “Well, then he stumbled, or . . . Anyway, the details are being clarified. The culprits will be punished. They’ll duplicate the information in a minute and bring it to you. Only you just answer me this. You got a letter, didn’t you? Who else ther
e read it?”

  “No one.”

  “What about your secretary?”

  “I told you: no one. I always open the personal letters myself.”

  “That’s right,” Ruhmer said approvingly. “That’s the right arrangement you’ve got there. But, you know, some people have made a real rat’s nest of their letters . . . Absolutely anyone reads them . . . So no one read yours, then. That’s good. You keep it well hidden, that letter—the double-zero file. One of my flunkeys will drop by right now, you give it to him, OK?”

  “What for?” Andrei asked.

  Ruhmer was stuck for an answer. “Well, how can I put it . . .” he mumbled. “It might come in handy . . . Apparently you knew him.”

  “Who?”

  “You know, the guy.” Ruhmer giggled. “That worker . . . with the explosive . . .”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Well, we won’t talk about it on the phone; this lackey of mine will ask you a couple of questions, you answer him.”

  “I’ve got no time for that,” Andrei said angrily. “Fritz has asked me to go to see him.”

  “Ah, come on, just five minutes,” Ruhmer whined. “What bother is that to you, honest to God . . . You can’t even answer two questions now . . .”

  “OK then, OK,” Andrei said impatiently. “Is that all?”

  “I’ve already sent him over to you; he’ll be there in a minute. His name’s Cvirik. A senior adjutor . . .”

  “All right, all right, agreed.”

  “Just two questions, that’s all. He won’t hold you up.”

  “Is that all?” Andrei asked again.

  “That’s it. Now I’ve got to call around to the other counselors.”

  “Don’t you forget to send those men to Selma.”

  “I won’t forget. I’ve already noted it down here. See you.”

  Andrei hung up and said to Amalia, “Don’t forget, you didn’t see or hear a thing.”

  Amalia gave him a frightened glance and jabbed her finger toward the window without saying anything.

  “Exactly,” said Andrei. “You don’t know any names and you don’t know anything about what happened.”