Today the toilet is so disgusting that Eddie-baby hurries to get out of it as fast as he can, but he makes an unforgivable mistake. Standing up to toss the paper into the hole, he inadvertently looks down and notices that the level of excrement under the platform is unusually high, that no more than ten or fifteen centimeters separates it from the platform, and that squirming around in it are pinkish white worms!
"Jesus fucking Christ!" Eddie cries out in horror, and rushes away over the bricks and out of the disgusting cloaca, swearing at himself for having looked down. After putting at least fifty meters between himself and the loathsome, always lit building, he sighs with relief.
Eddie-baby is pleasantly surprised to find not only Cat and Lyova sitting on the benches under the lindens, but also Red Sanya, who after all isn't supposed to be there.
Between Cat, Lyova, and Sanya are a half-liter of Stolichnaya and a white bowl containing some cucumbers and slices of roast meat. The bowl has obviously been brought by Cat and Lyova, whose building – No.5 – is nearby. Sanya's building is closer to Eddie-baby's.
"Hey, Ed!" the three mates shout with delight.
Eddie-baby doesn't answer but just walks up to them, silently smiling. He knows that if he asks "What?" or says "Yes?" all three worthies will happily and gallantly shout back in unison, "Eat my dick for supper!" Eddie-baby isn't offended by this – it's a traditional, jocular flourish – but remembering it, he doesn't answer.
To be fair, it should be said that the same thing holds for Cat, Lyova, and Sanya. Sanya might call out "Cat!" and if Cat forgets and answers "What?" he will invariably get the response "Suck my cock!" and a roar of laughter. It's a friendly if coarse joke and nothing more.
"Sit down, Ed," says Sanya. "Lyova, pour the boy a drink."
Lyova pours Eddie-baby half a glass of vodka. Eddie drinks the cold, biting liquid, and after a respectable pause he says,
"Hey, Sanya, I thought you were going to Rezany's."
Only when he has spoken these words does Eddie-baby permit himself to reach out for a slice of meat and a cucumber. To be unhurried in the domain of drinking is a sign of superior skill.
It turns out that even though it's only half past nine, Sanya has already managed to have a tremendous fight with Dora, his hairdresser girlfriend, and has told her to go fuck herself, slapped her face, and walked out of Tolya Rezany's, slamming the door behind him (Tolya's a butcher too, and Sanya and Dora usually spend their holidays at his place), which is why Sanya's now sitting on a bench under the lindens. Where else can a young man from Saltovka go, where else can he take his grief and his troubles, and who else is there to console him and bring him good cheer, if not his loyal friends and a good glass of vodka?
"Fucking slut!" says Sanya in reference to his hairdresser, and chases his vodka with a cucumber. "And she acts like her cherry's never been popped. Abanya told me a month ago that some dude from Zhuravlyovka by the name of Zhorka Bazhok was screwing her. I didn't believe him then, but now I see he was right!"
"You ought to tell her to fuck off for good, Sanya," Lyova says. "You can always find yourself another pussy, can't you? All you have to do is whistle and a dozen will come running to old Red."
"Just ask Svetka," Eddie-baby chimes in, thinking of Sanya's sister. "She has plenty of girlfriends; she'll pick a good one out for you."
"Why the fuck should I ask anybody?" Sanya objects, maybe a little offended. "All I have to do is walk into a dance and every cunt in the place is looking at me, waiting for me to take her out and fuck her. As far as my sister Svetka is concerned" – and here Sanya turns to Eddie – "she's still pissing her bed, and her little friends are more your age, Ed. To me they're just minors."
Eddie-baby doesn't say anything. He's ashamed to be a minor.
Crunching their cucumbers, the group falls into a melancholy silence. Now and again from the neighboring buildings comes the sound of a drunken song, or snatches of music, or a burst of laughter.
"Well, shall we get another bottle, then?" Cat breaks the silence, addressing Sanya.
"Why not?" Sanya agrees, and reaches into his pocket for some money. "Grocery Store No.7 is open till twelve tonight."
"I've got some cash." Cat stops Sanya. Cat's a decent guy and earns very good money at his factory. Sanya, of course, earns a lot more as a butcher, and on top of that he's always well supplied with meat, but he's also pretty careless about how he spends his money. Cat wants to treat everybody now, which is his right, and so Sanya doesn't object, and takes his hand out of the pocket of his beige Hungarian ratine overcoat.
Cat gets up from the bench, straightens his jacket – he and Lyova have come outside without their coats on – says, "All right, I'll be back in a minute," and leaves.
"Buy a couple of bottles of Zhiguli, if they have any," Lyova calls after him as he walks away.
"Okay, fatso," Cat replies without turning around.
19
After taking only a couple of steps, however, Cat stops and looks hard in the direction of the trolley stop.
"Hey, guys," he announces, "there's a trash coming! This way!"
"Let the fucker come," Sanya says calmly. "We don't owe him anything. There's no more vodka left anyway. He's wasting his time."
His heavy boots thumping and his greatcoat unbuttoned, the militia officer comes running up to the benches. Eddie-baby knows him, as do the others. The trash Stepan Dubnyak, a man of nearly fifty, naturally cannot be a good person, but on the other hand, however tricky he may be, he's still not a complete shit. If he ever puts any of the kids in for fifteen days, he always brings them a bottle in his pocket, even though drinking in jail is of course prohibited. Several times Stepan has managed to avoid taking Saltovka kids in when he ought to have arrested them, and so on. Stepan wants to live in peace with the local punks. Now that Sanya has moved from the Horse Market to the new food store on Materialist Street – the same one that Eddie-baby and Vovka the Boxer broke into once – Stepan's wife buys her meat from him. He puts aside some nice pieces for her. Or at least that's what he tells her. Sanya likes to have fun at his customers' expense. One day on a bet, in Eddie-baby's presence, he pulled out the thick red lining from somebody's galoshes, hacked it up with a cleaver on his butcher block, smeared it with blood, and then sold it as a makeweight on somebody else's order. The whole thing.
"What's the matter, Styopa?" Sanya asks in a falsely sympathetic tone. "The dogs chasing you or something?"
"Give me a hand, boys!" Stepan blurts out, gasping for breath. "Some blackasses in the Twelfth Construction Battalion have mutinied. They got high on hashish, and now they're coming up Materialist Street toward the Stakhanovite Club. They're beating up everybody in their path, they've already raped a girl,… and now they're coming here! They beat my partner Nikolai senseless – I had to leave him at the club…"
Judging by Stepan's face, the business is serious. He looks scared, and he doesn't scare easily.
"How many?" Cat asks. "The whole battalion?"
"There were about twenty," Stepan says, breathing heavily, "but now there are ten or twelve. All Uzbeks. The ringleader's a Russian, a sergeant. Apparently their relatives brought the hashish from Uzbekistan for the holiday. They've gone completely berserk, foaming at the mouth…"
"Why the fuck should we stick our necks out just to help the trashes?" Lyova growls. "I've served time, thanks to you, so count me out."
"Are they armed?" Sanya asks Stepan, ignoring Lyova's grumbling.