The colonel nodded without speaking.
‘My dear fellow, I was not inquiring as to your opinion, but your condition.’ said Timur Timurovich.
‘I feel quite well, thank you,’ I replied. ‘But I am sleepy.’
This was no more than the simple truth.
‘Then sleep.’
He turned away from me.
‘Tomorrow morning.’ he said to an invisible nurse, ‘please give Pyotr four cc’s of taurepam immediately before the hydraulic procedures.’
‘Can we have the radio on?’ asked a quiet voice in the corner.
Timur Timurovich clicked a switch on the wall, took the colonel by the arm and led him in the direction of the door. I closed my eyes and realized that I did not have enough strength to open them again.
‘Sometimes I think that all our soldiers brave.’ a man began singing in a mournful voice, ‘Who fell on battle’s bloody hills and plains, Were never buried in their native graves, But turned into a soaring flight of cranes…’
At these final words turmoil broke out in the ward.
‘Keep tight hold of Serdyuk!’ yelled a voice right beside my ear. ‘Who put those blasted cranes on? Have you forgotten, or what?’
‘It was you asked for it to be turned on,’ answered another voice. ‘Let’s change channels.’
There was another click.
‘Is the time now past.’ an ingratiating voice asked from the ceiling, ‘when Russian pop music was synonymous with provincialism? Here’s the chance to judge for yourself. The «Inflamed Ovaries» are a rare kind of Russian pop group, consisting entirely of women whose stage gear weighs as much as a «T-90» tank. Despite such ultra-modern features, the «Inflamed Ovaries» play mostly classical music, but in their own interpretation. Listen to what the girls make of a simple fugue in F by the Austrian composer Mozart, who is well known to many of our listeners from the cream liqueur that bears the same name, which can be bought wholesale from our sponsor, the trading firm «Third Eye».’
I heard the beginning of wild music, like the wind howling in a prison chimney, but I was already, thank God, only half-conscious. At first I was overwhelmed by tormenting thoughts about what was happening, and then I had a brief nightmare about an American wearing dark glasses which seemed to continue the story told by the unfortunate Maria.
The American landed his plane in a yard, soaked it with kerosene and set fire to it. Into the flames he threw the crimson jacket, the dark glasses and the canary-yellow trousers, until he was left wearing nothing but the skimpy trunks. Rippling his magnificently developed muscles he searched for something in the bushes for a long time, but failed to find it. Then there was a gap in my dream, and the next time I saw him - horror of horrors! - he was pregnant: the encounter with Maria had obviously not been without its consequences. At that precise moment he was transformed into a terrifying metal figure with a sketchy mask in place of a face, and the sun glinted furiously on his swollen belly.
3
The melody seemed at first to be floating up the staircase to wards me, briefly marking time before it dashed in desperation on to the landing - that was when I could hear the short moments of quietness between its sounds, Then the pianist’s fingers picked up the tune, set it back on the steps, and the whole thing was repeated one flight of stairs lower. The place where all this was taking place seemed very much like the staircase in house number eight on Tverskoi Boulevard, except that in my dream the staircase extended upwards and downwards as far as the eye could see and was clearly infinite. I suddenly understood that every melody has its own precise meaning, and that this was one of the proofs of the metaphysical impossibility of suicide - not of its sinfulness, but precisely of its impossibility. And I felt that all of us are nothing more than sounds drifting through the air from the fingers of some unknown pianist, nothing more than short thirds, smooth sixths and dissonant sevenths in a mighty symphony which none of us can ever hear in its entirety. This thought induced a profound sadness in me, which remained in my heart as I came plummeting out of the leaden clouds of sleep.
For several seconds I struggled to understand where I actually was and what was taking place in this strange world into which some unknown force had been thrusting me every morning for the past twenty-six years. I was dressed in a heavy jacket of black leather, riding breeches and boots, and there was a pain in my hip where something was sticking into me. I turned over on to my side, reached under my leg and felt the holster with the Mauser, and then I looked around me. Above my head hung a silk canopy with astoundingly beautiful yellow tassels. The sky outside the window was a cloudless blue, and the roofs in the distance glowed a dull red in the rays of the winter sun. Directly opposite my window on the other side of the boulevard I could see a dome clad in tin-plate, which for some reason reminded me of the belly of a huge metal woman in childbirth.
Suddenly I realized that I had not been dreaming the music
I could hear it playing clearly just beyond the wall I began trying to grasp how I had come to be here and suddenly; like an electric shock, yesterday’s memories came flooding back in a single second, and I realized that I was in Vorblei’s apartment. I leapt up from the bed, dashed across to the door and froze.
On the other side of that wall, in the room where I had left Vorblei, not only was someone playing the grand piano. they were playing the very Mozart F Minor fugue which cocaine and melancholia had drawn to the surface of my own mind only the evening before. The world quite literally went dark before my eyes as I imagined the cadaver pounding woodenly on the keys, fingers protruding from beneath the (oat which I had thrown over him, and I realized that the previous day’s nightmare was not yet over. Glancing round the room I spotted a large wooden crucifix hanging on the wall, with a small, elegant silver figure of Christ, the sight of which briefly induced in me the strangest sense of deja vu, as though I had seen this metal body in some recent dream. I took down the crucifix, drew my Mauser and tiptoed out into the corridor. My approximate reasoning was that, if I could accept that a dead man could play the piano, then there was some likelihood that he might be afraid of the cross.
The door into the room where the piano was playing stood ajar. Trying to tread as quietly as possible, I went up to it and glanced inside, but I could see no more than the edge of the grand piano. I took several deep breaths and then kicked open the door and stepped into the room, grasping the heavy cross in one hand and holding my gun ready to shoot in the other. The first things I saw were Vorblei’s boots protruding from the corner; he was still lying at peace under his grey Fnglish shroud.
I turned towards the piano.
Sitting at the keyboard was the man in the black military tunic whom I had seen the day before in the ‘Musical Snuffbox’. He appeared to be about fifty years old, with a thick black handlebar moustache and a sprinkling of grey at his temples. He gave no sign of having noticed my appearance; his eyes were closed as though he were entirely absorbed in the music, and his playing was truly excellent. Lying on the lid of the piano I saw a tall hat of the finest astrakhan fur with a red ribbon of watered silk and a sabre of an unusual form in a magnificent scabbard.
‘Good morning,’ I said, lowering the Mauser.
The man at the piano raised his eyelids and looked me up and down. His eyes were black and piercing, and it cost me a certain effort to withstand their almost physical pressure. Noticing the cross in my hand he gave a barely perceptible smile.
‘Good morning.’ he said, continuing to play. ‘It is gratifying to see that you give thought to your soul at such an early hour.’
‘What are you doing here?’ I asked, carefully placing the crucifix on the lid of the piano beside his sabre.
‘I am attempting.’ he replied, ‘to play a rather difficult piece of music. But unfortunately it was written for four hands and I am now approaching a passage which I shall not be able to manage on my own. Perhaps you would be kind enough to assist me? I believe you are acquainted with the piece in question?’