When I approached Manya, my first seller, I was already expected by the same young police sergeant whom I had met before.
“So,” he said in a professional tone.
I looked at him searchingly, with a premonition of disaster.
“May I see your papers, citizen,” he said, saluting and looking past me.
“What’s the problem?” I asked, taking out my passport.
“And I’ll be asking you for the coin, too,” said the policeman, accepting the passport.
I handed him the five-kopeck piece in silence. Manya was regarding me with accusing eyes. The policeman studied the coin and, stating with satisfaction, “Aha,” opened the passport. He studied that passport like a bibliophile would study a rare incunabulum. I waited, mortified. A crowd grew slowly around us. Various opinions about me were expressed by its members.
“We’ll have to take a walk,” the policeman finally said.
We took a walk. While we walked, several variants on my unsavory biography were created in the accompanying crowd, and a series of antecedents was formulated for the court case that was initiated right in front of everybody’s eyes.
In the station house, the policeman handed the passport and the five-kopeck piece to the lieutenant on duty. He examined the coin and offered me a chair. I sat down. The lieutenant said disdainfully, “Hand in the change,” and also immersed himself in the study of my passport. I shoveled out the coppers. “Count them, Kovalev,” said the lieutenant and looked at me steadily.
“Bought much?” he asked.
“A lot,” I answered.
“Hand it in, too,” said the lieutenant.
I laid out four issues of two-day-old Pravdas, three issues of the local Fisherman, two issues of the Literary Gazette, eight boxes of matches, six pieces of Golden Key toffee, and a marked-down wire brush for cleaning kerosine stoves.
“I can’t hand in the drinks,” I said dryly. “Five glasses with syrup and four without syrup.”
I was beginning to comprehend what was involved, and I was extremely nauseated and discomfited at the idea that it would be necessary to find excuses for myself.
“Seventy-four kopecks, comrade Lieutenant,” reported the youthful Kovalev.
The lieutenant pensively regarded the pile of newspapers and match boxes.
“Were you amusing yourself, or what?” he asked me.
“Or what,” I said gloomily.
“Not prudent of you,” said the lieutenant. “Not prudent, citizen. Tell me about it.”
I told. At the end of the story, I asked the lieutenant most earnestly not to interpret my actions as an attempt to save up the price of a car. My ears were burning. The lieutenant chuckled.
“And why not so interpret it?” he inquired. “Cases of it have been attempted.”
I shrugged.
“I can assure you such a thought couldn’t enter my head…. What am I saying? It couldn’t, when, in fact, it didn’t!”
The lieutenant was silent for a long time. The young Kovalev took my passport and again set to studying it.
“It would be rather ridiculous to suppose…” I said, distraught. “An altogether loony concept… to save by the kopeck…” I shrugged again. “You’d be better off begging on the church steps, as they say.
“As to begging, we try to combat that,” said the lieutenant significantly.
“And that’s correct and only natural…. I just don’t understand what that has to do with me….” I caught myself shrugging once more, and resolved not to do it again.
The lieutenant was silent for a tiresomely long time, examining the coin.
“We’ll have to make out a report,” he said finally.
“Please, of course… although…” I didn’t know exactly what followed the “although.”
For a while, the lieutenant looked at me in expectation of a continuation. But I was busy figuring as to which section of the criminal code my actions came under, so he drew a sheet of paper toward him and set to writing.
The young Kovalev returned to his post. The lieutenant was squeaking away with his pen, and dipping it often and noisily into the inkwell. I sat, dully staring at the posters hung on the walls and thinking, listlessly, how, in my place, Lomonosov, for example, would have grabbed his passport and jumped out the window. What’s at the core o/ it all? I thought. The essence of the matter is that a man does not regard himself as guilty. In that sense, I was not guilty. But guilt, it seems, can be objective and subjective. And a fact is a fact: all that copper money in the amount of seventy-four kopecks, juridically speaking, was the result of theft, carried out by technical means in the form of an unspendable coin.
“Read it and sign, please,” said the lieutenant.
I read. According to the report it was manifest that I, the undersigned, Privalov, A.I., had, by means unknown to me, come into the possession of a working model of an unspendable five-kopeck coin, All-union Government Standard type 7 18–62, and had willfully misused same; further, that I, the undersigned Privalov, A.I., allegedly carried out my operations with the aim of conducting a scientific experiment, and without any intent to defraud; that I was prepared to make restitution for the losses suffered by the state in the amount of one ruble and fifty-five kopecks; and, finally, that in accordance with the resolution of the Solovetz City Council of March 22, 1959, I had handed over said working model of the unspendable five-kopeck coin to the lieutenant on duty, Sergienko, V.V., and received in return five kopecks in monies of legal tender on the territory of the Soviet Union. I signed.
The lieutenant verified my signature with the one in the passport, again meticulously counted the coppers, rang up somebody to confirm the prices of the toffee and the wire brush, and wrote out a receipt and handed it to me together with five kopecks in monies of legal tender on the territory of the Soviet Union.
Returning the papers, matches, candies, and wire brush, he said, “As to the soft drinks, you have consumed those as you have already admitted. Altogether, you owe eighty-one kopecks.”
I paid up with a feeling of tremendous relief. The lieutenant having leafed through my passport once again, handed it back to me.
“You may go, citizen Privalov,” he said. “And be careful from now on. Are you in Solovetz for long?”
“I’ll be leaving tomorrow,” I said.
“Well then, be careful until tomorrow.”
“Oh, I will!” I said, putting the passport away. Then, responding to an impulse and lowering my voice, I asked, “Would you mind telling me, comrade Lieutenant, don’t you find it a bit strange here in Solovetz?”
But the lieutenant was already absorbed in his paperwork.
“I’ve been here a long time,” he said absentmindedly. “I’m used to it.”
Chapter 5
“And do you believe in ghosts?” asked someone from the audience.
“Of course not,” replied the speaker, and melted slowly in the air.
All the time, until the evening arrived, I concentrated on being extremely careful. I went directly home from the police station to Lukomoriye Street and immediately crawled under the car. It was very hot. A menacing dark cloud was creeping in from the west. While I was lying under the car, dripping oil on my person, old Naina Kievna become most unctious and friendly, twice approaching me to take her to Bald Mountain.