“Buy a lot, did you?” he asked.
“Yes,” I replied.
“Hand that over too,” said the lieutenant.
I set out on the table in front of him four copies of the day before yesterday’s issue of Pravda, three issues of the local newspaper the Fisherman, two issues of the Literary Gazette, eight boxes of matches, six Golden Key toffees, and a reduced-price wire brush for cleaning Primus stoves.
“I can’t hand over the water,” I said dryly. “Five glasses with syrup and four without.”
I was beginning to understand what the problem was, and the realization that I would have to justify my actions gave me an extremely awkward and unpleasant feeling.
“Seventy-four kopecks, comrade Lieutenant,” the youthful Kovalyov reported.
The lieutenant contemplated the heap of newspapers and boxes of matches. “Just having fun were you, or what?” he asked me.
“What,” I said morosely.
“Careless,” said the lieutenant. “Very careless, citizen. Tell me about it.”
I told him. At the end of my story I earnestly requested the lieutenant not to interpret my actions as an attempt to save up the money to buy a Zaporozhets car. My ears were burning. He laughed.
“Why shouldn’t I?” he inquired. “Some people have managed it.”
I shrugged. “I assure you, the idea could never even have entered my head… I mean it really never did!”
The lieutenant maintained a long pause. The youthful Kovalyov took my passport and began studying it again.
“I can’t even imagine it…” I said in dismay. “An absolutely crazy idea… Saving up kopeck by kopeck…” I shrugged again. “You’d be better off standing out on the church porch…”
“We’re waging a campaign against begging,” the lieutenant said emphatically.
“Quite right, of course… I just don’t understand what it’s got to do with me, and—” I realized that I was shrugging my shoulders a lot and promised myself not to do it anymore.
The lieutenant maintained another excruciatingly long pause while he examined the five-kopeck piece. “We’ll have to draw up a report,” he said eventually.
I shrugged. “By all means… although…” But I didn’t actually know “although” what.
The lieutenant carried on looking at me for a while, waiting for me to continue, but I was trying to work out which article of the criminal code my activities came under. Then he pulled across a sheet of paper and began writing.
The youthful Kovalyov returned to his post. The lieutenant scraped his pen across the paper, frequently dipping it into the inkwell with a bang. I sat there, idiotically examining the posters hanging on the walls and thinking vaguely that in my place Lomonosov, for instance, would have grabbed his passport and leaped out of the window. What is the essential point here? I thought. The essential thing is whether or not a person thinks of himself as guilty. In that sense I am not guilty. But guilt, it seems, may be either objective or subjective. And a fact is a fact: all those copper coins amounting to seventy-four kopecks are from a legal point of view the fruit of theft committed with the use of a technical device—to wit, one unchangeable five-kopeck piece…
“Read that and sign it,” said the lieutenant.
I read it. It emerged from the report that I, the undersigned A. I. Privalov, had in a manner unknown to me come into possession of a working model of an unchangeable five-kopeck piece of type State Standard 718-62, of which I had made improper use; that I, the undersigned A. I. Privalov, asserted that I had acted in this way solely for purposes of scientific experimentation and entirely unmotivated by the pursuit of personal gain; that I was prepared to reimburse the state for the losses inflicted on it in the sum of one ruble and fifty-five kopecks; and finally, that I had, in accordance with Solovets Municipal Soviet decree of March 22, 1959, surrendered the aforesaid working model of an unchangeable five-kopeck piece to the duty officer at the local militia station, Lieutenant U. U. Sergienko, and received in exchange five kopecks in the valid currency of the Soviet Union. I signed it.
The lieutenant checked my signature against the signature in my passport, counted the copper coins carefully once again, phoned somewhere to confirm the cost of the toffees and the Primus stove brush, then wrote out a receipt and handed it to me together with five kopecks in valid currency. As he gave me back the newspapers, matches, sweets, and brush, he said, “On your own admission, you drank the water. So altogether you owe another eighty-one kopecks.”
I settled my debt with a tremendous sense of relief. The lieutenant leafed carefully through my passport once again and handed it back to me.
“You can go, citizen Privalov,” he said. “And take more care from now on. Are you going to be in Solovets long?”
“I’m leaving tomorrow,” I said.
“Well, try to be more careful until tomorrow.”
“Oh, I’ll do my best,” I said, putting away my passport. Then, on a sudden impulse, I asked him in a quiet voice, “But tell me, comrade Lieutenant, don’t you find things a bit strange here in Solovets?”
The lieutenant was already looking through some papers. “I’ve been here a long time,” he said absentmindedly. “I’m used to it.”
5
“But do you yourself believe in ghosts?” one of the students asked the lecturer.
“No, of course not,” the lecturer replied as he slowly dissolved into thin air.
Until that evening I tried to be extremely careful. From the militia station I set off straight back home to Curving Seashore Street, and once there I climbed straight under the car. It was very hot. A menacing black cloud was slowly advancing from the west. While I was lying under the car covering myself with grease, old Naina Kievna, who had suddenly become very attentive and polite, came toadying up to me with a request to give her a lift to Bald Mountain. “They do say, dear guest, that it’s bad for a car to be standing around idle,” she cooed in her rasping voice, glancing in under the front bumper. “They say it’s good for it to go driving about. And I’d pay you, you can be sure of that.” I didn’t want to drive to Bald Mountain. In the first place, the boys might turn up at any moment. In the second place, I found the old woman’s unctuous persona even less endearing than her cantankerous one. And then it turned out that the journey to Bald Mountain was ninety versts in one direction, and when I asked the old granny how good the roads were, she declared happily that I needn’t worry about that—the road was smooth and if there was a problem she’d push the car herself. “Don’t you worry about me being old, dear guest, I’m still fit and strong,” she said.
After her first unsuccessful sally the old woman beat a temporary retreat, withdrawing into the house. The cat Vasily came and joined me under the car. He watched my hands closely for about a minute and then pronounced in a low but clearly audible voice, “I wouldn’t advise it, citizen… mmnaa… I wouldn’t advise it. They’ll eat you up.” Then he immediately left, twitching his tail. I was still trying to be very careful, so as soon as the old woman launched her second assault, I asked her for fifty rubles in order to put an end to the whole thing there and then. She retreated immediately, giving me a respectful look.
I carried out the DM and the TS, drove to the gas station with extreme caution to fill the tank, ate lunch in cafeteria number 11, and had my papers inspected once again by the vigilant Kovalyov. Just to make sure my conscience was clear, I asked him which was the road to Bald Mountain. The youthful sergeant gave me a very suspicious look and said, “Road? What are you talking about, citizen? What road? There isn’t any road there.” I drove back home in pouring rain.