The red-haired lieutenant leaned back his head with motherly tenderness and poured a glass of spirits down his throat.
How and when Solomin eventually found himself back on the street – of this he was not sure. Outside it was black as pitch. Struggling to stay upright, he groped with his hands along the walls. When he got under a streetlamp he noticed something sticking out of his pocket: an open bottle of cognac. The hiccups were killing him. He took a swig and, recorking the bottle, marched on. The alleyways twisted into bizarre figure eights beneath his feet.
When he finally stumbled into a square, it seemed he had emerged from a thick woods and into a clearing. Tripping and stumbling on his feet, he made his way across it.
But having walked only a dozen steps, he tripped over something. Under closer observation, it turned out to be a truck with double tires.
Solomin stopped, trying to recall something. Like a fisherman stooped over the pond of memory he clumsily tossed in his line, and a memory flapped in the clear water like a silver-scaled gudgeon: his dancing float half-vanished, then flashed into sight once more, shattering the water as it bobbed to the surface.
Suddenly, he heard a strangled moan from the truck bed above. The float ducked into the water like a falling stone, and at the end of his rod glimmered a massive, blinding fish – it was too much: his whole life hung on that memory like a lead weight.
“Ah-ha, you little scamps!…” murmured Solomin. “Still breathing, are you? Well, well, I see you won’t be leaving this vale without my help…”
The drunken captain started clambering up, his eyes bloodshot and cloudy. Progress was slow. His stumbly legs slipped off the spokes, his hands felt wooden as they struggled to heft up his inert body. Finally, with a mighty thrust, he hurled himself over the frame and smacked his face down into something soft. He pulled himself up and sat down heavily on a flattened heap.
A molting moon peeked out from behind the clouds. In the smoky light Solomin made out the bottom of the bed covered with a pile of black, stiffened bodies. From somewhere in the corner he heard the same groan.
Captain Solomin turned toward it, his swollen fingers pulling a revolver from its holster.
A man in his twenties lay supine with his head propped against the frame, sweat streaming down his bright, symmetrical face like tears shed beneath the surface of the skin. Clumps of blond hair clung to his brow in disarray. A groan escaped from his blackened lips like smoke through cracks in a clay roof.
Captain Solomin bent low over the man and, gripping him by the lapels, picked him up and set him upright.
“Ah-ha! That’s a sad tune you’re singing, brother. No playing dead, now. I’ve come to pay a visit. Let’s chat.”
Propped up helplessly like a rag doll, the man opened his dull eyes and hoarsely whispered:
“Drink!”
“Want to drink?” mimicked Solomin. “Well all right, suck on this!” he said, shoving the barrel of the gun into the sick man’s mouth.
The sick man began greedily sucking on the cool barrel of the gun with his burning hot lips.
“Is it good?” croaked the captain. “How’s it taste? Careful you don’t swallow a bullet – you could choke on it.”
His free finger groped in the dark for the trigger.
“You’ll choke on it, I swear to God!” His finger found the trigger and stopped in thought. Solomin pulled the barrel out of the sick man’s mouth and slid the revolver back into the holster.
“Oh no, brother! It’s not so easy! You’re too smart. That’s how anyone would want it. Kill you off? What for? You wouldn’t even feel it. You’d be grateful. No idiots here. Wait, first we should wake you up – we’ll have a little chat. You want a drink? Why not? I’ve got something here for you. Look how kindhearted I am. That’ll have you on your feet in a jiffy.”
The captain pulled a bottle of cognac from his jacket, uncorked it, and put the neck into the sick man’s mouth.
“Drink all that pours in, my dear boy. It’s on the house! That’s none of your Soviet ditchwater. It’s Martel! Three stars! Divine, isn’t it?”
The sick man sucked the sparkling liquid from the bottle in greedy gulps.
“You’re no slouch! That’s it, just a tad more. Don’t be shy. You’ll be shipshape in no time.”
Solomin tilted the flask. The liquid flowed over the sick man’s lips, and he choked with a violent convulsion. He coughed for a long time, unable to catch his breath. When he finally settled down, he turned to Solomin with keen eyes that shone with consciousness. His breathing was staggered and rapid.
Captain Solomin took his time recorking the bottle and slipping it back into his pocket, then took his revolver out again.
“There. Now at least you’re looking at me like a human being. Now we can talk.”
The captain sat himself comfortably on something that resembled a human back and, fiddling with his gun, began his interrogations:
“What’s your name?”
The sick man kept staring at him ravenously, like a fish thrown ashore and gasping for air.
“Where am I?” he finally spluttered.
“In Paris, son, in Paris. Not in Moscow. In Paris, among the Whites. Before the Imperial Tribunal of the Russian Empire. Now you get the picture?”
The sick man squeezed his eyes shut, evidently collecting his thoughts. After a long pause he quietly asked, with an expression of mortal fatigue:
“What do you want from me? I’ve got the plague.”
“That, brother, has got nothing to do with it. You think that just because you’ve got the plague there’s no such thing as justice, you lowlife. Nonsense! You’re going to dance just a few steps, brother, before we swing open the pearly gates. If you don’t answer my questions – the barrel goes between your teeth. If you don’t want your face all splattered up when you meet your Lenin, answer politely and to the point. Understood?”
The sick man stared at Solomin in silence.
“What’s your name?”
“Solomin.”
“Trying to play jokes, brother! Want a laugh or two? I’ll show you jokes, you son of a bitch! How do you know my name? Speak when I ask you a question! How do you know me?”
“I don’t know you at all and I don’t want to know you.”
“How do you know my last name?”
“I don’t know your last name.”
“You said it a moment ago: Solomin.”
“My name is Solomin.”
The captain lowered his gun in astonishment.
“What do you mean, you weasel, that your name is Solomin? My name is Solomin.”
The sick man furrowed his brow and took a careful look at the captain.
“Your name is Solomin?”
His eyebrows flew up like startled birds.
“What’s your first name?”
The captain gave him a powerful slap with a stiff hand, with all his might.
“How dare you start asking me questions, you motherfucker? Who’s the defendant here, you or I?”
The sick man covered his face with one hand.
“You’re stinking drunk and you’ve clearly forgotten your own last name. My name is Sergei Alexandrovich Solomin. I’m the USSR’s Deputy Secretary in Paris. You wanted to know whom you had the pleasure of meeting – there you are. Now go ahead and shoot. I’m not saying another word.”
But Captain Solomin did not lift his revolver. He stared at the sick man, his eyes popping out of his skull. All the alcohol suddenly drained from him like a shed skin, and he sat there sober, his mouth hanging open, unable to utter a single word. The name clawed its way up out of the depths of his throat and fell with a clatter:
“Sergei!”