Less than two weeks went by before Andrei realized, with a certain degree of envy, that they all loved Izya. Everyone. Even the soldiers, which was absolutely incredible. During the halts, they jostled around him and listened openmouthed to his prattle. Without being asked, they lugged his metal crates of documents from place to place, taking pleasure in it. They complained to him and showed off to him like schoolboys with their favorite teacher. They hated Vogel, they were in awe of the colonel, they fought with the scientific staff, but with Izya, they laughed. And not at him but with him! “You know, Katzman,” the colonel said one day, “I never understood what commissars were needed for in an army, but I think I’d take you on for that job.”
Izya finished sorting out one batch of documents and extracted another one from under his jacket. “Is there anything interesting?” Andrei asked. He didn’t ask because he was really curious but simply because he wanted somehow to express the affection he suddenly felt at this moment for this clumsy, absurd man with his sleazy appearance.
Izya barely had time to give a brief nod. Before he could reply, the door swung open and St. James stepped into the room.
“With your permission, Counselor?” he said.
“Please come in, Colonel,” said Andrei, getting up. “Good evening.”
Izya jumped to his feet and moved up an armchair for the colonel.
“Most kind of you, Commissar,” the colonel said, and sat down slowly, in two stages. He looked the same as usual—trim and fresh, with a fragrance of eau de cologne and good tobacco—only his cheeks had become a little hollower just recently and his eyes had sunk in quite startlingly. And he didn’t walk around with his distinctive swagger stick any longer but with a long black cane, on which he noticeably leaned when he had to remain standing.
“That disgraceful fight under the windows . . .” said the colonel. “I apologize for my soldier, Counselor.”
“Let’s hope that was the last fight,” Andrei said morosely. “I don’t intend to tolerate this any longer.”
The colonel nodded absentmindedly. “Soldiers always fight,” he remarked casually. “In the British Army it’s actually encouraged. Fighting spirit, healthy aggression, and so on . . . But you are right, of course. In such arduous field conditions it’s quite intolerable.” He leaned back in his chair, took out his pipe, and started filling it. “But the potential enemy is still nowhere to be seen, is he, Counselor?” he said humorously. “In this connection, I foresee great complications for my poor general staff. And also for the Messrs. Politicians, to be frank.”
“On the contrary!” Izya exclaimed. “The hectic times are just about to start for all of us! Since no genuine enemy exists, he has to be invented. And as universal experience demonstrates, the most terrible enemy is an invented one. I assure you, it will be an incredibly gruesome monster. The army will have to be doubled in size.”
“So that’s how it is?” said the colonel, still in humorous vein. “I wonder who will invent him? Could it possibly be you, my commissar?”
“You!” Izya said triumphantly. “You, first and foremost.” He started counting on his fingers. “First, you will have to set up a department of political propaganda attached to the general staff—”
There was a knock at the door, and before Andrei could answer, Quejada and Ellisauer walked in. Quejada was sullen and Ellisauer was smiling down vaguely from somewhere right up under the ceiling.
“Please be seated, gentlemen.” Andrei greeted them coolly. He rapped his knuckles on the table and told Izya, “Katzman, we’re starting.”
Izya broke off in midword and eagerly turned his face toward Andrei, flinging one arm over the back of his chair. The colonel drew himself erect again and folded his hands on the knob of his cane.
“You have the floor, Quejada,” Andrei said.
The head of the science section was sitting right in front of him, with his fat weightlifter’s legs set wide apart to avoid getting damp in the crotch, and Ellisauer, as always, had installed himself behind Quejada’s back, hunching right over there so he wouldn’t stick out too much.
“Nothing new on the geology,” Quejada said sullenly. “The same clay and sand as before. No signs of water. The local water main here dried out a long time ago. Maybe that’s the reason why they left, I don’t know . . . The data on the sun, the wind, and so on . . .” He took a sheet of paper out of his breast pocket and tossed it across to Andrei. “That’s all I have for now.”
Andrei didn’t like that “for now” at all, but he just nodded and started looking at Ellisauer.
“And on transport?”
Ellisauer straightened up and started talking over Quejada’s head. “Today we covered thirty-eight kilometers. The motor of tractor number two needs to be laid up for a major overhaul. I very much regret, Mr. Counselor, but—unfortunately . . .”
“I see,” said Andrei. “What does that mean, a major overhaul?”
“Two or three days,” said Ellisauer. “Some elements will have to be replaced and others will need to be fixed. Maybe even four days. Or five.”
“Or ten,” said Andrei. “Give me your report.”
“Or ten,” Ellisauer agreed, still with the same vague smile. “I’m afraid to say exactly. We’re not in a garage here, and then my Permyak . . . he has some kind of rash, and he’s been vomiting all day long. He’s my lead mechanic, Mr. Counselor . . .”
“What about you?” asked Andrei.
“I’ll do everything I can . . . But the problem is, in our conditions . . . I mean, in field conditions . . .”
For a while he carried on babbling something about motor mechanics, about a crane that they hadn’t brought with them, although he had warned them, hadn’t he . . . about a bench drill that they didn’t have here and, unfortunately, couldn’t possibly have had here, about the motor mechanic again, and something else about wrist pins and pistons . . . With every minute that passed he spoke more and more quietly, less and less distinctly, and finally fell completely silent, and all this time Andrei stared him in the eye without looking away, and it was absolutely clear that this lanky, cowardly con artist had lied his way into a tight corner, and he’d already realized this, and he could see everyone else had realized it too, and he was trying to squirm out of it somehow, only he didn’t know how, but even so, he firmly intended to stick to his lies until the victory was won.
After that Andrei lowered his eyes and stared at Ellisauer’s report, at the slovenly lines scratched out in chicken-claw scribble, but he didn’t see or understand anything. They’ve conspired, the bastards, he thought in quiet despair. These men are in the conspiracy too. So now what do I do with them? A pity my pistol’s not here . . . Wallop Ellisauer . . . or frighten him so badly that he shits himself . . . No, it’s Quejada. Quejada’s the one in charge of them all. He wants to dump all the responsibility on me . . . He wants to dump this entire rotten, stinking lost cause on me, and only me . . . the scumbag, the fat pig . . . Andrei wanted to yell out loud and slam his fist down on the table with all his might.
The silence was becoming unbearable. Izya suddenly started nervously squirming on his chair and mumbling. “What actually is the problem here? After all, we’re not in any particular hurry to get anywhere. Let’s make a halt . . . There could be manuscripts in the buildings. There’s no water here, it’s true, but we can send a separate team on ahead for water . . .”
And at that point Quejada interrupted him. “Rubbish,” he said harshly. “No more idle talk, gentlemen. Let’s dot the i’s and cross the t’s. The expedition has failed. We haven’t found water. Or oil. And there’s no way we could have found them with the geological prospecting organized like this. We tear along like lunatics; we’ve run the men into the ground and totally wrecked our transport. Discipline in the crew is shot to hell, we feed stray girls and ferry rumormongers around with us . . . All sense of perspective was lost a long time ago; no one gives a damn for anything. The men don’t want to go on, they can’t see
why we need to go on, and there’s nothing we can tell them. The cosmographic data have simply turned out to be absolutely damned useless: we prepared for freezing polar conditions but we drove into a red-hot desert. The personnel for the expedition were badly selected, completely at random; the medical arrangements are appalling. And the result is that we get what we were bound to get: a slump in morale, a collapse of discipline, veiled insubordination, and today or tomorrow—mutiny. That’s all.”
Quejada stopped talking, took out a cigarette case, and lit up. “What are you actually suggesting, Mr. Quejada?” Andrei said in a stale, flat voice. That loathsome face with the fat mustache hovered in front of him, suspended in a web of blurred, indistinct lines. He really wanted to smash it good and hard. With the lamp. Right on that mustache . . .
“In my opinion, it’s absolutely obvious,” Quejada said contemptuously. “We have to pack it in and go back where we came from. Immediately. While we’re still in one piece.”
Keep calm, Andrei told himself. Right now, calm, nothing but calm. As few words as possible. No arguing, no matter what. Listen calmly and say nothing. Ah, how I’d love to whop him!
“Yes, really,” Ellisauer spoke up. “How long can we keep going? My men ask me, What’s going on here, Mr. Engineer? We agreed to keep going until the sun sank behind the horizon. But instead of sinking, it gets higher. And then we agreed to keep going until it reaches its zenith . . . But it doesn’t rise toward any zenith, it just keeps skipping up and down . . .”
Just don’t argue, Andrei kept telling himself. Let them babble. In fact it’s quite interesting to see what they’ll come up with . . . The colonel won’t betray me. The army decides everything. The army! Could they really have talked Vogel onto joining them, the bastards?
“And what do you say?” Izya asked Ellisauer. “You?”
“What about me?”
“Your men ask you, that’s clear enough . . . But how do you answer them?”
Ellisauer started shrugging his shoulders and wiggling his sparse eyebrows. “A strange question . . .” he mumbled as he did it. “What answer can I give them, I ask you? I’d like to know what answer I’m supposed to give them. How do I know?”
“That is, you don’t give them any answer?”
“But what answer can I give them? What? I tell them the boss knows best.”
“What an answer!” said Izya, glaring horrendously. “With answers like that you can demoralize an entire army, never mind the poor drivers . . . ‘Well guys, I’m ready to go back right now, only the big bad boss won’t let me . . .’ Do you even understand why we’re making this journey? You’re a volunteer, aren’t you—no one forced you to come!”
“Listen, Katzman . . .” Quejada tried to interrupt. “Let’s get down to brass tacks!”
“You knew it was going to be hard, didn’t you, Ellisauer? You did. You knew we weren’t going for a walk in the park, didn’t you? You did. You knew the City needed this expedition, didn’t you? You did—you’re an educated man, an engineer . . . You knew what the orders were, didn’t you: keep going as long as the fuel and water last? You knew that perfectly well, Ellisauer!”
“I’m not objecting, am I!” Ellisauer gabbled hastily, absolutely terrified. “I’m only trying to explain to you that my explanations . . . That is, I mean it’s not clear to me how I should answer them, because after all, they ask me—”
“Will you stop waffling, Ellisauer!” Izya said, closing in for the kill. “Everything’s perfectly clear: you’re afraid to go on, you’re conducting moral sabotage, you’ve demoralized your own subordinates, and now you’ve come running here to complain . . . And you, by the way, don’t even have to walk. You ride all the time . . .”
Go on, Izya, give it to him, buddy, Andrei thought lovingly. Whop him, the motherfucker, whop him! He’s already shit himself, now he’ll ask to go to the john . . .
“And I don’t understand at all what all this panic is about,” Izya continued without easing up. “So the geology’s come up short. To hell with the geology—we’ll get by without any geology. And we’ll get by even more easily without any cosmography . . . Surely it’s clear that our main job is reconnaissance, collecting information. I personally can vouch that to date the expedition has already achieved a great deal, and it can do even more. The tractor’s broken down? So fine, let them repair it here, two days or ten, I don’t know—let’s leave the sickest and most exhausted men and move ahead gently on the other tractor. If we find water, we’ll stop and wait for the others. It’s all very simple, you know; it’s no big deal . . .”
“Sure, it’s all very simple, Katzman,” Quejada said acidly. “How would you like a bullet in the back, Katzman? Or in the forehead? You’ve gotten too carried away with your archives, you don’t notice anything going on around you. The soldiers won’t go any farther. I know it. I heard them deciding for themselves . . .”
Ellisauer suddenly sprang up from behind him and dashed out of the room, mumbling incoherent apologies and demonstratively clutching his stomach. The rat, Andrei thought savagely. The cowardly swine. The gutless shit . . .
Quejada seemed not to have noticed anything. “Out of all my geologists, there’s only one man I can rely on,” he continued. “The soldiers and the drivers can’t be relied on at all. Of course, you can shoot one or two of them to frighten the rest . . . maybe that would help. I don’t know. I doubt it. And I’m not sure you have the moral right to do that. They don’t want to go on because they feel cheated. Because they’ve gotten nothing out of this expedition, and now they have no hope of getting anything. The wonderful legend that Mr. Katzman so opportunely invented—the legend of the Crystal Palace—doesn’t work anymore. Different legends have overshadowed it now, you know, Mr. Katzman . . .”
“What the hell do you mean?” said Izya, stammering from indignation. “I didn’t invent anything!”
Quejada brushed that off almost affably: “All right, all right, that’s immaterial now. It’s already clear that there’s not going to be any palace, so there’s nothing to talk about. You know perfectly well, gentlemen, that three-quarters of your volunteers came on this expedition for booty, and only for booty. And what have they received instead of booty? Bloody diarrhea and a vermin-ridden idiot for their nocturnal frolics . . . But even that’s not the point. As if the disappointment wasn’t enough, they’re scared too. Let’s thank Mr. Katzman. Let’s thank Mr. Pak, to whom we have so graciously offered bed and board with our expedition. Thanks to the efforts of these gentlemen, we have learned a vast amount about what lies in store for us if we continue our advance. The men are afraid of the thirteenth day. The men are afraid of talking wolves. The shark wolves weren’t enough for us, so we’ve been promised talking ones! The men are afraid of Ironheads. And together with what they’ve already seen—all these mutes with their tongues cut out, abandoned concentration camps, all these cretins who have reverted to savagery and pray to springs, and the well-armed cretins who fire at you out of the blue, without rhyme or reason . . . together with what they’ve seen today, here, in these houses—those bones in the barricaded apartments . . . it all makes a delightful and impressive combination! And if yesterday what the men were most afraid of in the entire world was Sergeant Vogel, today they couldn’t give a rotten damn for Vogel—they have more terrifying things to fear.”
Quejada finally stopped talking, caught his breath, and wiped away the sweat that had sprung out on his fat face. And then the colonel lifted one eyebrow ironically and said, “I have the impression that you are thoroughly frightened yourself, Mr. Quejada. Or am I mistaken?”
Quejada squinted at him with a red eye. “Don’t you worry about me, Colonel,” he growled. “If I’m afraid of anything, it’s a bullet between the shoulder blades. Out the blue. From men I sympathize with, by the way.”
“So that’s it?” said the colonel. “Well now . . . I don’t presume to judge the importance of the present expedition, and I don’t presume to tell the l
eader of the expedition how he ought to act. My job is to carry out orders. However, I feel obliged to state that I consider all this discussion of mutiny and insubordination to be idle prattle. Leave my soldiers to me, Mr. Quejada! If you like you can also leave to me those of your geologists that you don’t trust. I’ll be glad to deal with them . . . I must point out to you, Counselor,” he continued with the same devastating politeness, “that today too much is being said about the soldiers by precisely those individuals who have no official connection with the soldiers—”
“The individuals talking about the soldiers,” Quejada interrupted angrily, “work round the clock with them, and eat and sleep beside them.”
In the silence that followed, a leather armchair quietly creaked as the colonel sat completely upright. He said nothing for a while. The door opened quietly and Ellisauer snuck back to his place with a sour smile, bowing slightly as he walked.
Come on, Andrei mentally urged the colonel, staring at him with all his might. Come on, whop him! Right on the mustache! Whop his ugly mug, whop it!
The colonel finally spoke: “I am obliged to draw to your attention, Counselor, that today a certain section of the command staff has evinced sympathy for and, even worse, connivance at perfectly understandable and ordinary but entirely unacceptable sentiments among the lower ranks of the army. As the senior officer, I have the following declaration to make: If the aforementioned connivance and sympathy should assume any practical forms, I shall deal with the connivers and sympathizers as is appropriate to deal with such individuals in field conditions. Other than that, Mr. Counselor, I have the honor to assure you that the army remains ready henceforth to carry out any commands you may give.”
Andrei quietly caught his breath and gave Quejada a jubilant look. Quejada was smiling crookedly as he lit a new cigarette from the butt of the old one. Andrei couldn’t see Ellisauer at all.