“Yes. He said not to let anyone into his place. He said his teeth ached. I gave him a bottle of vodka and he left.”
“So it’s like that . . .” Andrei said, examining the heaps of trash again.
And he suddenly felt a desire so unbearably intense it was almost hysterical, enough to make him cry out, to get a wash, to strip off his stinking overalls and forget that tomorrow he would have to scrabble through all this stuff with a spade . . . Everything around Andrei was suddenly sticky and rank-smelling, and without saying another word, he dashed through the courtyard and onto his stairway, bounding up the steps three at a time and trembling in impatience, reached his apartment, grabbed the key from under the rubber mat, and swung open the door—and the fragrant coolness of eau de cologne received him into its tender embrace.
3
First of all he undressed, crumpling up his overalls and underwear and flinging them into a box of filthy junk. Filth unto filth. Then, standing stark naked in the center of the kitchen, he looked around and shuddered with renewed revulsion. The kitchen was submerged under heaps of dirty dishes. Plates were banked up in the corners, covered with bluish cobwebs of mold that charitably concealed black lumps of something or other. The table was crammed with murky, finger-marked wineglasses, water glasses, and empty preserved-fruit jars. The sink was choked with cups and saucers; blackened saucepans, greasy frying pans, colanders, and casseroles sat on the stools, giving off a lethargic stench. He walked over to the sink and turned the faucet on. He was in luck! The water was hot! And he set to work.
After washing all the dishes, pots, and pans, he grabbed hold of a mop. He worked with zealous enthusiasm, as if he were washing the dirt off his own body, but he couldn’t keep that up for all five rooms. He limited himself to the kitchen, the dining room, and the bedroom, merely glancing into the other rooms with a feeling of bewilderment—he simply couldn’t get used to it, just couldn’t understand what one man would need so many rooms for, and such monstrously huge, musty rooms at that. He closed their doors tightly, wedging them shut with chairs.
Now he ought to pop down to the shop to buy something for the evening. Davydov was coming, and some of the usual mob were bound to drop in too . . . But first he decided to get washed up. The water was running almost cold already, but it was still wonderful anyway. Then he put fresh sheets on the bed, and when he saw his own bed with clean sheets and crisp, starched pillowcases, when he caught the scent of freshness that they exuded, he was suddenly overcome by a desperate urge to lay his own clean body down for a while in this long-forgotten cleanness, and he collapsed with a crash, setting the trashy springs screeching and the old polished wood creaking.
Yes, it was wonderful, so cool, fragrant, and squeaky, and there on the right, within his reach, there turned out to be a pack of cigarettes with matches, and on the left, also within range, there was a small shelf of handpicked detective novels. It was slightly disappointing that there was no ashtray anywhere within reach, and it turned out that he had forgotten to wipe the dust off the small shelf, but these were merely insignificant details. He chose Ten Little Indians, lit up, and started reading.
When he woke, it was still light. He listened. The apartment and the building were silent, with only the water, dripping copiously from the defective faucets, weaving a strange pattern of sound. And apart from that, everything around him was clean, and that was strange too, but at the same time inexpressibly delightful. Then there was a knock at the door. He pictured Davydov, with his powerful build and tanned skin, scented with hay and reeking of fresh alcohol, standing outside on the landing, holding his horses by their bridles, with a bottle of moonshine at the ready. And then there was another knock and he woke up completely.
“Coming!” he yelled, springing up and running across the bedroom, searching for his underwear. He came across a pair of stripy pajama bottoms and hastily pulled them on. The elastic was weak, and he had to hold the pants up at one side.
Contrary to expectations, he couldn’t hear any good-natured swearing from behind the front door, no neighing of horses or glugging of liquid. Smiling in anticipation, Andrei pulled back the latch, opened the door, gave a croak, and took a rapid step back, grabbing the cursed elastic with his other hand as well. Standing there in front of him was his recent acquaintance Selma Nagel, the new girl from number 18.
“Have you got any cigarettes?” she asked, without even a trace of neighborly conviviality.
“Yes . . . please . . . come in . . .” Andrei mumbled, backing away.
She came in and walked past him, scalding him with the mingled aromas of incredible perfumes.
She walked through into the dining room, then he closed the door, and with a despairing call of “Wait just a moment, I’ll be right there!” dashed into the bedroom. “Ay-ay-ay” he said to himself. “Ay-ay-ay, how could I . . .” In fact, however, he didn’t feel ashamed in the least; he even felt glad that he’d been caught out like this, so clean and washed, with his broad shoulders and smooth skin and magnificently developed biceps and triceps—it was actually a shame to get dressed. But after all, it was necessary to get dressed, and he stuck his hands in a suitcase and rummaged around in it, then pulled on a pair of gymnastics pants and a washed-out blue sports singlet with the intertwined letters “LU” (for Leningrad University) on the back and the chest. And that was how he appeared before Selma Nagel: chest thrust out, shoulders spread wide, with a slightly lingering gait and a pack of cigarettes in his outstretched hand.
Pretty Selma Nagel indifferently took a cigarette, clicked her lighter, and lit up. She didn’t even look at Andrei, and she had an air about her as if she didn’t give a damn for anything in the world. In fact, by daylight she didn’t look so very pretty. Her face was rather irregular, even coarse, her nose was too short, and her large mouth was daubed too thickly with lipstick. However, her little legs, so thoroughly naked, were far above and beyond all praise. Unfortunately he couldn’t get a proper look at all the rest—who in hell’s name had taught her to wear such baggy clothes! A sweater, and with that neck! Like a frogman.
She sat there in a deep armchair, with one beautiful leg crossed over the other beautiful leg, and looked around indifferently, holding her cigarette soldier fashion, with the burning end cradled inside her palm. Andrei sat down jauntily but elegantly on the edge of the table and also lit up.
“My name’s Andrei,” he said.
She turned her indifferent gaze onto him. Her eyes weren’t the way they had seemed last night either. They were large but quite definitely not black; they were pale blue, almost transparent.
“Andrei,” she repeated. “Polish?”
“No, Russian. And your name’s Selma Nagel—you’re from Sweden.”
She nodded. “Yes, from Sweden . . . So it was you they were beating in the police station yesterday?” she asked, abruptly setting a little lacquered box, slightly larger than a matchbox, on her knee. “Nothing but crackling and howling on every wavelength, no fun at all.”
Andrei cautiously took the little box from her and realized with surprise that it was a radio. “Oh, wow!” he muttered. “Is it really transistorized?”
“How should I know?” She took the radio back from him and there was a burst of wheezing, crackling, and mournful howling. “It just doesn’t work, that’s all. So you’ve never seen any like this, then?”
Andrei shook his head. Then he said, “Actually, your radio shouldn’t work. There’s only one radio station here, and that broadcasts directly through the mains.”
“Oh God,” said Selma. “Then what are people supposed to do here? There’s no box either.”
“What box?”
“You know, the telly . . . TV!”
“Ah . . . Yes, that’s not planned for any time soon around here.”
“Well, what a drag!”
“We can crank up the phonograph,” Andrei suggested shyly, feeling awkward. Really and truly, what was all this—no radio, no television, no movie the
aters?
“The phonograph? What sort of thing is that, then?”
“You don’t know what a phonograph is?” Andrei asked in amazement. “Well, it’s a gramophone. You put on a record . . .”
“Ah, a record player . . .” Selma said in a totally uninspired voice. “Haven’t you got a tape recorder?”
“What a question,” said Andrei. “Do you think I’m a radio station or something?”
“You’re some kind of savage,” Selma Nagel declared. “Russian, that’s the word. OK then, you listen to your phonograph, you probably drink vodka, and what else do you do? Race around on a motorbike? Or don’t you even have a motorbike?”
Andrei got angry. “I didn’t come here to race around on a motorbike. I’m here to work. But what about you, I wonder—what do you intend to do here?”
“He came here to work . . .” said Selma. “Tell me, what were they beating you for in the police station? Drugs?”
“No one was beating me in the police station! Where did you get that idea from? And in any case, our police don’t beat anyone. You’re not in Sweden now, you know.”
Selma drew in her breath with a whistle. “Well, well,” she said mockingly. “So I imagined it.” She stuck her cigarette butt into the ashtray, lit another cigarette, got up, and set off around the room with a comical, waltzing movement. “And who lived here before you?” she asked, halting in front of a huge oval portrait of some woman in lilac with a toy dog on her knees. “In my place, for instance, it was obviously some sex maniac. Pornography in all the corners, used condoms on the walls, and an entire collection of women’s garter belts in the wardrobe. I can’t really tell what he was, a fetishist or a clit-licker . . .”
“You’re lying,” Andrei said, stunned. “That’s all lies, Selma Nagel.”
“What would I tell lies for?” Selma asked in astonishment. “Who was it who lived there? Do you know?”
“The mayor! The current mayor lived there, got it?”
“Ah,” Selma said indifferently. “I see.”
“What do you see?” said Andrei. “What is it that you see?” he yelled, growing frenzied. “What can you understand here anyway?” He stopped. That wasn’t something you could talk about. That was something you had to experience inside, for yourself.
“He’s probably about fifty,” Selma declared with the air of a connoisseur. “Old age creeping up on him, the man’s freaking out. Male menopause!” She laughed and stared at the portrait with the toy dog again.
Silence fell. Andrei gritted his teeth, feeling distressed for the mayor. The man was expansive and imposing; he had an exceptionally engaging face, with a full head of noble gray hair. He spoke beautifully at meetings of the municipal citizens’ council—about temperance, about proud asceticism, about strength of spirit, about inner moral fiber, charged with fortitude and virtue. And when they used to meet outside on the landing, he invariably held out his large, warm hand to be shaken and inquired with his perennial courtesy and consideration whether the tapping of his typewriter bothered Andrei at night.
“He doesn’t believe it!” Selma suddenly burst out. She turned out not to be looking at the portrait anymore but to be examining Andrei with an angry kind of curiosity. “If you don’t believe it, then don’t. Only it disgusts me, having to wash it all off. Isn’t there any way to hire someone for that here?”
“Hire someone . . .” Andrei repeated obtusely. “Screw you!” he said malevolently. “You can wash it off yourself. There’s no place for whiners here.”
For a while they examined each other with mutual animosity. Then Selma turned her eyes away and murmured, “Why the hell did I come here? What am I going to do here?”
“Nothing special,” said Andrei. He had overcome his animosity. This person needed help. Andrei had already seen plenty of new arrivals in this place. “The same thing as everyone else, that’s what you’ll do. You’ll go to the labor exchange, fill out a record card, drop it in the slot . . . We’ve got a job allocation device set up there. What were you in the other world?”
“A foxtailer.”
“What?”
“Well, how can I explain it . . . One, two, spread those legs . . .”
Andrei felt stunned again. She’s lying. The thought flashed through his mind. The minx is just feeding me a load of drivel. Trying to make a fool out of me. “And did you earn good money?” he asked sarcastically.
“You fool,” she said, almost affectionately. “It’s not for the money, just that it’s interesting. It’s out of boredom.”
“But how could that happen?” Andrei asked mournfully. “What on Earth were your parents thinking? You’re young, you could still be studying and learning for ages and ages . . .”
“What for?” Selma asked.
“What do you mean, what for? You could make a life for yourself . . . Be an engineer, or a teacher . . . You could join the Communist Party and fight for socialism . . .”
“Oh my God, my God . . .” Selma whispered hoarsely, collapsing into the armchair as if she’d been poleaxed and hiding her face in her hands. Andrei was frightened, but at the same time he felt a sense of pride, and his own prodigious responsibility.
“Oh, come on now, come on . . .” he said, awkwardly sliding closer to her. “What’s happened has happened. It’s over. Don’t get upset. Perhaps it’s good that things turned out this way for you. You’ll make up for everything here. I’ve got lots of friends, all real human beings . . .” He recalled Izya and frowned. “We’ll help. We’ll fight together. There’s a hell of a lot of work to do here! Lots of disorder and confusion, and simple trash—every honest person counts. You can’t imagine just how much trash of all kinds has come flooding in here! I don’t ask them, of course, but sometimes I’d really love to: What exactly brought you here anyway, what damn use are you to anyone here?”
He was on the point of giving Selma a friendly, even brotherly, pat on the shoulder, but at that moment, without taking her hands away from her face, she asked, “So not everyone here’s like that?’
“Like what?”
“Like you. Idiots.”
“Oh, for crying out loud!” Andrei jumped down off the table and started walking in circles around the room. What a bourgeois bitch. A whore, but she comes here too. Thinks it’s interesting, don’t you see . . . But then, Selma’s directness actually impressed him. Directness was always good. Face-to-face, across the barricades. Not like Izya, for instance: neither ours nor yours, as slippery as an eel, and he’d squirm through anywhere . . .
Selma giggled behind him. “Well, what are you running around for?” she said. “It’s not my fault if you’re such a little idiot. OK, I’m sorry.”
Determined not to relent, Andrei resolutely sliced his open hand through the air. “I’ll tell you this,” he said. “You, Selma, are a very badly neglected individual, and it will take a long time to scour you clean. And please don’t imagine that I am personally offended by you. The people who reduced you to this state, yes, I have scores to settle with them. But not with you, none at all. You’re here, and that means you’re our comrade. Work well, and we’ll be good friends. And you’ll have to work well. Being here, you know, it’s like being in the army: if you don’t know how, we’ll teach you; if you don’t want to, we’ll make you!” He liked the way he was speaking very much—it was so distinctly reminiscent of the speeches given by Lyosha Baldaev, the leader of the Communist Youth League group in his faculty at the university, before the unpaid working Saturdays. At this point he discovered that Selma had finally taken her hands away from her face and was gazing at him with frightened curiosity. He winked at her encouragingly. “Oh yes, we’ll make you, what were you expecting? We used to get real loafers coming to the building site—at first all they wanted to do was slip down to the beer kiosk and into the woods. But we fixed them! And they were as good as gold! You know, work can even humanize a monkey.”
“Do you always have monkeys roaming round the streets here?”
Selma asked.
“No,” said Andrei, pulling a long face. “That only started today. In honor of your arrival.”
“Are you going to humanize them?” Selma inquired insinuatingly.
Andrei forced out a laugh. “We’ll see how things go,” he said. “Maybe we really will have to humanize them. The Experiment is the Experiment.” For all its contemptuous insanity, the idea still seemed to have to some kind of rational kernel to it. I’ll have to bring up the question this evening, he thought briefly, but then another idea immediately occurred to him. “What are you planning to do this evening?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Whatever comes up. What do people do around here?”
There was a knock at the door. Andrei looked at the clock. It was seven already—the gathering was already starting to come together. “Today you’re my guest here,” he told Selma firmly. With this dissolute creature, the only way to act was firmly. “I don’t exactly promise a load of fun and games. But I’ll introduce you to some interesting people. Deal?”
Selma shrugged one little shoulder and started tidying her hair. Andrei went to open the door. Someone was already hammering on it with his heel. It was Izya Katzman. “Have you got a woman in here, or what?” he asked while he was still in the doorway. “And when will you finally get a doorbell put in, that’s what I’d like to know.”
As always, for the first few minutes of his appearance at a gathering, Izya’s hair was neatly combed, his shirt collar was stiffly starched, and his cuffs positively gleamed. His narrow, well-ironed tie was arranged with great precision along the nose-navel axis. Nonetheless, Andrei would still have preferred to see Donald or Kensi right now. “Come in, come in, blabbermouth,” he said. “What’s wrong with you today, showing up before everyone else?”
“I knew you had a woman here,” Izya replied, rubbing his hands and giggling, “so I hurried over to take a peek.” They walked into the dining room and Izya made straight for Selma with broad, rapid strides. “Izya Katzman”—he introduced himself in a velvety voice—“garbage collector.”