Andrei first of all glanced into the apartment on his left. The soldiers had occupied this one. He saw light coming from a little room with no windows. Sergeant Vogel was sitting at a small table in just his shorts, with his peaked cap tilted to the back of his head, diligently filling out some kind of record sheet. There was good order in the army; the door of the little room was standing wide open so that no one could come in or go out unnoticed. At the sound of steps, the sergeant quickly raised his head and peered, shielding his face from the light of the lamp.
“It’s me, Vogel,” Andrei said in a quiet voice, and walked in.
In a flash the sergeant had moved up a chair for him. Andrei sat down and looked around. So there was good order in the army. All three cans of disbursable water were here. The boxes of canned goods and hardtack for tomorrow’s breakfast were here too. And a box of cigarettes. The sergeant’s superbly cleaned pistol was lying on the table. The room had an oppressive, male, field-campaign odor. Andrei set one hand on the back of the chair.
“What’s for breakfast, Sergeant?” he asked.
“The usual, Mr. Counselor,” Vogel replied in surprise.
“See if you can think up something different from the usual,” said Andrei. “Rice porridge with sugar, maybe . . . Is there any canned fruit left?”
“It could be rice porridge with prunes,” the sergeant suggested.
“Make it with prunes, then. Issue a double ration of water in the morning. And a half bar of chocolate for every man . . . We do still have chocolate?”
“We have a little bit,” the sergeant said reluctantly.
“Then issue it . . . What about cigarettes—the last box?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Well, nothing can be done there. Tomorrow as usual, and starting the next day reduce the ration . . . Ah yes, and another thing. From now on, starting today, a double water ration for the colonel.”
“I beg to report, sir—” the sergeant began.
“I know,” Andrei interrupted. “Tell him it’s an order from me.”
“Yes, sir . . . Would the counselor care to . . . Anastasis? Where are you going?”
Andrei looked around. A soldier, also wearing only his shorts and boots, was standing, swaying unsteadily, in the passage, totally addled with sleep.
“Sorry, Sergeant . . .” he muttered. He was obviously completely out of it. Then his arms straightened out against his sides. “Permission to absent myself to visit the latrine, Sergeant?”
“Do you need paper?”
The soldier smacked his lips and wiggled his face.
“Negative. I have some.” He held out a scrap of paper clutched in his fist, obviously from Izya’s archives. “Permission to go?”
“Granted . . . I beg your pardon, Mr. Counselor. They’ve been running all night. And sometimes they just go right where they are. The manganese crystals used to help, but now nothing does any good . . . Would you care to check the sentries, Mr. Counselor?”
“No,” Andrei said, getting up.
“Will you order me to accompany you?”
“No. Stay here.”
Andrei went back out into the lobby. It was just as hot here, but at least the stink wasn’t quite so bad. The Mute soundlessly appeared beside him. He heard Private Anastasis stumble and hiss through his teeth on the steps one floor higher. He’ll never get to the john; he’ll dump it on the floor, Andrei thought with queasy sympathy.
“Right, then,” he said to the Mute in an undertone. “Shall we check out how the civilians have settled in?”
He walked across the lobby and in through the door of the apartment opposite. The field-campaign odor hung in the air here too, but the good order of the army was lacking. A dimmed lamp in the passage faintly illuminated an untidy, jumbled heap of instruments in tarpaulin covers and guns, a dirty rucksack with its contents chaotically dragged out, and canteens and mess tins dumped by the wall. Andrei took the lamp and stepped into the nearest room, and immediately stumbled over someone’s shoe.
The drivers were sleeping here, naked and sweaty, stretched out on crumpled sheets of tarpaulin. They hadn’t even laid out any bedsheets . . . But then, he supposed, the bedsheets were probably dirtier than the tarpaulin. One of the drivers suddenly raised himself and sat upright, without opening his eyes, fiercely scratched at his shoulders, and mumbled indistinctly, “We’re going hunting, not to the bathhouse. Hunting, got that? The water’s yellow . . . under the snow it’s yellow, got that?” Without finishing what he was saying, he went limp again and slumped over onto his side.
After checking that all four drivers were there, Andrei moved on to the next apartment. This was the residence of the intelligentsia. They were sleeping on folding camp beds, covered with gray sheets, and they, too, were sleeping restlessly, snoring unhealthily, groaning, and gritting their teeth. Two cartographers in one room and two geologists in the next one. In the geologists’ room Andrei caught an unfamiliar, sweetish smell, and immediately remembered the rumors going around that the geologists smoked hash. The day before yesterday Sergeant Vogel had confiscated a reefer from Private Tevosyan, thumped him in the face, and threatened to put him in the advance guard and leave him there to rot. And although the colonel had taken a rather humorous view of the incident, Andrei had found it all very disturbing.
The other rooms in the huge apartment were empty, except for the kitchen, where Skank was sleeping, completely swaddled in rags—they had obviously worn her out this evening. Her skinny, naked legs, sticking out from under the rags, were covered in raw grazes and some kind of blotches. Yet another disaster visited on us, Andrei thought. The Queen of Shamakha. Damn the rotten bitch to hell. The filthy whore . . . Where is she from? Who is she? Babbling her gibberish in an incomprehensible language . . . Why is there an incomprehensible language in the City? How is that possible? Izya was totally floored when he heard it . . . Skank. That’s the name Izya gave her. A good name. It really suits her. Skank.
Andrei went back to the drivers’ room, lifted the lamp up over his head, and pointed out Permyak to the Mute. Silently slipping through between the sleeping men, the Mute leaned down over Permyak and took hold of the man’s ears in his hands. Then he straightened up. Permyak sat there, propping himself up with one hand and using the other to wipe away the spittle that had overflowed onto his lips in his sleep.
Catching his eye, Andrei nodded in the direction of the corridor, and Permyak immediately got to his feet, lightly and soundlessly. They went through into an empty room deeper inside the apartment, and the Mute closed the door firmly and leaned back against it. Andrei looked for a place to sit. The room was empty, and he sat down on the floor. Permyak squatted down in front of him. His pockmarked face had a dirty look in the lamplight, and his tangled hair tumbled down over his forehead, with a crooked tattoo—KHRUSHCHEV’S SLAVE—showing through it.
“Thirsty?” Andrei asked in a low voice.
Permyak nodded. The familiar roguish smile appeared on his face. Andrei took a hip flask out of his back pocket and held it out to him—there was water splashing about in the bottom of it. He watched as Permyak drank in miserly little sips, with his bristly Adam’s apple moving up and down. The water immediately sprang out on his body as sweat.
“Warm . . .” Permyak said hoarsely, handing back the empty flask. “Cold would be good . . . straight out of the faucet . . . Agh!”
“What’s wrong with that motor of yours?” Andrei asked, stuffing the flask back in his pocket.
Permyak gathered the sweat off his face with his splayed fingers. “The motor’s shit,” he said. “We built it after the first one, racing against the deadline . . . It’s a miracle it held out for this long.”
“Can it be fixed?”
“Yes, it can be fixed. We’ll fiddle with it for a day or two and get it fixed. Only it won’t last long. We’ll slog on for maybe another two hundred kilometers, and then we’ll be back sunbathing. The motor’s shit.”
“I see,” sai
d Andrei. “Did you happen to notice the Korean Pak hanging around the soldiers?”
Permyak peevishly disregarded that question. “At today’s lunch break the soldiers got together and agreed not to go any farther.”
“I already know that,” Andrei said, clenching his teeth. “You just tell me who’s running things on their side, will you?”
“I can’t make that out, boss,” Permyak wheezed in a whisper. “Tevosyan shoots his mouth off more than anyone else, but he’s always full of crap, and every morning lately he’s been wigged out.”
“What?”
“Wigged out . . . You know, stoned, tripping . . . No one listens to him. But who the real ringleader is, I can’t tell.”
“Hnoipek?”
“Damned if I know. Maybe it’s him. He’s a big man, all right . . . Seems like the drivers are for it—I mean, not going any farther. Nothing Mr. Ellisauer says makes any sense; he just giggles like a creep and tries to please everyone . . . which means he’s afraid. But what can I do? I just keep laying it on the line that the soldiers can’t be trusted, they hate us drivers. We ride and they walk, that’s what they say. They get private’s rations, and we get the same as the gentlemen scientists . . . Why should they like us, they say. It used to work all right, but not any longer. But you know the most important thing? The day after tomorrow is the thirteenth day—”
“And what about the science team?” Andrei interrupted.
“Damned if I know. They cuss a blue streak, but I can’t make out who they’re for. They brawl with the soldiers every damned day over that Skank . . . And you know what Mr. Quejada said? He said the colonel won’t hold out much longer.”
“Who did he say it to?”
“Well, what I think is, he says it to everyone. I heard him myself, telling his geologists never to part with their weapons. In case they’re needed. Got a cigarette about you, Andrei Mikhailovich?”
“No,” said Andrei. “And what about the sergeant?”
“There’s no getting close to the sergeant. With him you get off at the same stop you got on at. Hard as flint. They’ll kill him first. They really hate him.”
“All right,” said Andrei. “But what about the Korean, after all? Is he working on the soldiers or not?”
“I haven’t seen him doing that. He always keeps himself to himself. If you like, I can keep a special eye on him, but I reckon it’s a waste of time . . .”
“Right, here’s the story,” said Andrei. “Starting tomorrow there’s a long halt. Basically, there’s no work to be done. Except on the tractor. And the soldiers will just be loitering about and shooting the bull. So what you have to do, Permyak, is figure out for me who’s running this show. That’s your top priority. Think of some way; you know better than I do how it can be done . . .” He got up, and Permyak jumped to his feet too. “Did you really vomit today?”
“Yeah, I got it real bad . . . Seems like it’s eased off a bit now.”
“Do you need anything?”
“Nah, it’s not worth the bother. But I could use some smokes.”
“OK. You get the tractor fixed and I’ll give you a bonus. Off you go.”
Permyak slipped out through the door past the Mute, who moved aside for him. Andrei walked across to the window and leaned on the windowsill, waiting the regulation five minutes. The beam of the swiveling headlamp picked out the black, bulky forms of the cargo sleds and the second tractor and set the remaining shards of glass glittering in the windows of the house opposite. To the right the metal heel plates on the boots of an invisible sentry clinked as he wandered back and forth across the street, quietly whistling some mournful tune or other.
Never mind, Andrei thought. We’ll survive. If I could just find the ringleader . . . He pictured it to himself again—the sergeant lines up the unarmed men in a single rank on Andrei’s order and he, the leader of the expedition, slowly walks along the rank, holding a pistol in his lowered hand and glancing into the stony faces overgrown with stubble, and he stops at Hnoipek, right in front of that red-haired scumbag’s face, and shoots him in the stomach—first one shot, and then another . . . without charge or trial. “And that’s what will happen to every cowardly rat who dares to . . .”
And it seems that Mr. Pak really doesn’t have anything to do with this business, he thought. That’s something, at least. Nothing will happen tomorrow. Nothing will happen for another three days, and three days is long enough to come up with all sorts of things . . . For instance, we could find a good spring a hundred kilometers farther on. No doubt they’ll gallop on like horses to get to water. This sweltering heat is unbearable . . . We’ve only been here one night and the whole place already stinks of shit . . . And anyway, time is always on the side of the bosses against the troublemakers. It’s always been that way, everywhere . . . Where did I get that from? Izya. No, I probably made it up myself. It’s a good thought, a correct thought. Attaboy . . . So today they conspired and decided they won’t move on tomorrow. They’ll get up sizzling in the morning and we’ll hand them a long halt. No need to go anywhere after all, guys, it was a waste of time showing your teeth . . . And here’s some rice porridge with prunes for you, a second mug of tea, and chocolate . . . So take that, Mr. Hnoipek! But I’ll get around to you, just give me time . . . Dammit, I’m so sleepy . . . You just forget about drinking anything, Mr. Counselor, you need to sleep. Tomorrow at first light . . . Damn you to hell, Fritz, you and your expansion plans. The emperor of all shit, that’s you . . .
“Let’s go,” he said to the Mute.
Izya was still thumbing through his papers. He’d developed a new bad habit now—biting his beard. He collected a handful of the matted hair, stuck it in between his teeth, and gnawed on it. What a booby, honestly . . . Andrei walked over to his camp bed and started spreading out the sheet. It stuck to his hands like oilcloth.
Izya suddenly turned right around toward him and said, “So, the story is that they lived here under the rule of the Kindest and Simplest. Both words with capital letters, note. They had a good life, plenty of everything. Then the climate started changing and temperatures fell sharply. And then something else happened and they all died. I found a diary here. The man who wrote it barricaded himself in his apartment and starved to death. Or rather, he hanged himself—after he went insane . . . It all started when this sort of shimmering appeared outside . . .”
“When what appeared?” Andrei asked, and stopped tugging off his shoe.
“Some kind of shimmering appeared. Shimmering! And if anyone got caught in that shimmering, they disappeared. Sometimes they managed to shout out, but sometimes they didn’t even have time for that; they simply dissolved into thin air—and that was it.”
“Crazy bullshit . . .” Andrei growled. “Well?”
“Anyone who went out of the house died in that shimmering. But at first the ones who got frightened and realized they were in really deep shit stayed alive. At first they talked to each other on the phone, and then they gradually started dying off. After all, they had nothing to eat, it was freezing outside, and they hadn’t laid in any firewood, the heating wasn’t working . . .”
“And where did the shimmering go to?”
“He doesn’t write anything about that. I told you, he lost his mind at the end. The last entry he made is this . . .” Izya rustled the papers. “Here, listen: ‘I can’t go on. There’s no point anyway. It’s time. This morning the Kindest and Simplest walked along the street and glanced in at my window. It’s the smile. It’s time.’ That’s all. And note that his apartment is on the fifth floor. The poor wretch hung a noose from the ceiling lamp . . . It’s still hanging there, by the way.”
“Yes, sounds like he really did go insane,” said Andrei, getting into bed. “That’s the starvation, for sure. Listen, what about water, is there anything?”
“Nothing so far. Tomorrow, I think, we ought to walk to the end of the aqueduct . . . What’s this, going to bed already?”
“Yes, and I r
ecommend you do the same,” said Andrei. “Turn down the lamp and clear out.”
“Ah, listen,” Izya said plaintively. “I wanted to read for a bit longer. You’ve got a good lamp here.”
“And where’s yours? You’ve got one just like it.”
“You know, it got broken. In the sled . . . I stood a crate on it. By accident . . .”
“You cretin,” said Andrei. “All right, take the lamp and leave.”
Izya hastily rustled his papers and moved out his chair, then he said, “Ah yes! Duggan brought your pistol back. And he passed on a message from the colonel for you, but I’ve forgotten . . .”
“OK, let me have the pistol,” Andrei said. He stuck the pistol under his pillow and turned over onto his side, with his back toward Izya.
“How about I read you a letter?” Izya asked in a cajoling voice.
“Get out,” Andrei said calmly.
Izya giggled. Lying with his eyes closed, Andrei heard the rustling as he bustled about, gathering up his papers, and the creaking of the dried-out parquet. Then the door squeaked, and when Andrei opened his eyes, it was already dark.
Some kind of shimmering . . . Mmm, yes. Well, we’ll have to see how it goes. There’s nothing we can do about that. We have to think about the things we can control . . . There wasn’t any shimmering in Leningrad, there was bitter, atrocious, hideous, freezing cold, and people who were freezing to death cried out in the icy entranceways—hour after hour, getting weaker all the time . . . He used to fall asleep listening to someone calling out, and wake up to the same hopeless call, and he couldn’t have said it was frightening; it was more sickening, and in the morning, when he walked down the stairs that were flooded with frozen shit, muffled right up to his eyes, to get water, holding his mother’s hand, the one that was pulling the little sled with a bucket lashed to it, that person who had been calling out was lying down at the bottom, beside the elevator shaft, probably still where he fell the day before, it had to be the same spot—he couldn’t get up or even crawl, and absolutely no one had come out to him . . . And no shimmering was needed. We only survived because my mother was in the habit of ordering firewood in the early spring instead of in summer. The firewood saved us. Twelve adult cats and a little kitten that was so hungry, when I tried to stroke it, it pounced on my hand and started greedily chewing and biting my fingers. I’d like to send you there, you bastards, Andrei thought about the soldiers with sudden malice. That was no Experiment . . . And that city was more terrible than this one. I would definitely have gone insane. What saved me was being so young. The little children simply died . . .