“The interview can’t appear in this form!” he almost shrieked.
I was somewhat taken aback.
“All right then, it won’t,” I said as calmly as possible.
“Goodbye!” he said curtly, and slammed the receiver.
“What did I do wrong?” I wondered.
Every morning, we were woken by barking — the puppies continued to beg for food from passers-by on their way to work. The passers-by cursed them — the puppies dirtied their clothes with their paws.
But once on a deep morning that merged into noon, I did not hear the puppies. I felt anxious while I was still asleep: something was obviously lacking in the languid confusion of sounds and reflections that precede awakening. An emptiness arose, it was like a funnel that was sucking away my sleepy peace.
“Marysenka! I can’t hear the puppies!” I said quietly, and with such horror as if I couldn’t find the pulse on my wrist.
Marysenka was terrified herself.
“Quick, run outside!” she also whispered.
A few seconds later, I was jumping down the steps, thinking feverishly: Did a car run them over? What, all four of them? That can’t be… I ran into the sun and into the scent of warmed earth and grass, and the quiet noises of a car around the corner, and whistled, and shouted, repeating the names of the puppies one after another and then at random. I circled the untidy yard, overgrown with bushes. I looked under each bush — but didn’t find anyone there.
I ran around our incredible building, incredible because on one side it had three stories, and on the other it had four. It was situated on a slope, and so the architects decided to make the building multi-levelled — so that the roof would be even; the building could easily drive insane an alcoholic who was attempting to judge how far off he was from the D.T.s by counting the number of stories in this decrepit but still mighty “Stalin-era” building.
I thought about this briefly again as I walked around the building slowly, banging on the water pipes for some reason, and looking into the windows. There were no puppies, nor any traces of them.
Terribly upset, I returned home. Marysya immediately understood everything, but still asked:
“No?”
“No.”
“I heard someone calling them in the morning,” she said. “That’s right, I did. It was some guy with a hoarse voice.”
I looked at Marysya, my whole appearance demanding that she remember what he said, this guy, and how he talked — I would go and find him in the town by his voice, and ask him where my puppies were.
“The tramps probably took them,” Marysya said resignedly.
“What tramps?”
“A whole family of them lives not far from here, in a Khrushchev-era building. A few men and a woman. They often walk back past our home with rubbish bags. They probably lured the puppies to go with them.
“Do you mean… they could eat them?”
“They eat anything.”
For a moment I pictured this all to myself — how my jolly friends were lured by deceit and thrown in a bag. How they squealed as they were carried. How happy they were when they were dumped out of the bag in the apartment — and at first the puppies even liked it: the delicious smell of tasty, rotting meat and… what’s that other smell? Stale alcohol…
Perhaps the tramps even played with the puppies a little — after all, they’re people too. They may have stroked their backs and tickled their tummies. But then came dinner time… They couldn’t have butchered them all at once? I thought, almost crying. Maybe two… maybe three. I imagined these agonizing pictures, and I even started shaking.
“Where do they live?” I asked Marysenka.
“I don’t know.”
“Who does?”
“Maybe the neighbors do?”
Silently I put my shoes on, thinking what weapon to take with me. There wasn’t any weapon in the house apart from a kitchen knife, but I didn’t take it. If I stab a tramp or all the tramps with this knife, then I’ll have to throw it away, I thought gloomily. I went around the neighbors’ apartments, but most of them had already gone to work, and those who were at home were mainly elderly, and couldn’t understand what I wanted from them — something about puppies, something about tramps… Besides, they didn’t open their doors to me. I got sick of explaining things to the peepholes of wooden doors which I could knock down with three or so kicks. After calling one of the neighbors an “old moron,” I ran out of our building, and headed to the building where the tramps lived.
I reached the Khrushchev-era building, almost running, and as I approached it I tried to determine which was the ill-fated tramps’ den by looking at the windows. I couldn’t work it out; there were too many poor and dirty windows, and only two that were clean. I ran into the building and rang the doorbell of apartment №1.
“Where do the tramps live?” I asked.
“We’re tramps ourselves,” a man in his underpants replied sullenly, looking me over. “What do you want?”
I looked over his shoulder, foolishly hoping that Brovkin would jump out to meet me. Or the pitiful Grenlan would crawl out, dragging intestines behind her. The apartment was dark, and there was a bicycle in the entry. Twisted and dirty doormats lay on the floor. The door to apartment №2 was opened by a woman from the Caucasus, and several swarthy kids came running out. I didn’t bother explaining anything to them, although the woman immediately started talking a lot. I didn’t understand what she was talking about. I went up to the second floor.
“There’s an apartment with tramps living in it in your building,” I explained to a tidy-looking old woman, who was coming down the stairs. “They robbed me, and I’m looking for them.”
The old woman told me that the tramps lived in the next entranceway on the second floor.
“What did they steal?” she asked, as I was already going down the stairs.
“My bride,” I was going to joke, but I thought better of it.
“This one thing…”
I looked around outside — perhaps there was some blunt instrument I could take. There wasn’t any to be found, or I would have taken one. I didn’t try to break a branch off the American maple tree growing in the yard — you couldn’t break it if you tried, you could spend a whole week bending the soft, fragile branch, and it wouldn’t do any good. It’s a wretched, ugly tree, I thought vengefully and angrily, somehow linking the tramps with American maples and America itself, as if the tramps had been brought over from there. The second floor — where should I go? This door, probably. The one that looks the worst. As if people had been pissing on it for several years. And it’s splintered at the bottom, revealing the yellow wood.
I pressed the door bell, stupidly. Yes, that’s right, it will ring out with a trill, just press it harder. For some reason I wiped my finger on my trousers, having touched a doorbell that had been silent for one hundred years, and didn’t even have wires attached to it. I listened to the noises behind the door, hoping of course to hear the puppies.
Have you already devoured them, you skunks?… I’ll show you…
For an instant I contemplated what to hit the door with — my fist or my foot. I even raised my foot, but then hit it with my fist, not very hard, and then harder. The door opened with a hiss and a creak, just by a crack. I pushed the door with my hands — it dragged across the floor, over a worn track. I stepped into semi-darkness and a nauseating smell, firing myself up with a bitterness that simply wilted from the stench.