The doorbell rings. I go to answer it. On the threshold stands my neighbour Voronin in his underpants. He is holding a gun, a 16 calibre rifle.
“Was it you who broke my window?” he growls.
“What? Are you crazy?”
“Show me your balcony,” he demands, and pushes past me into the living-room.
Our balcony is next to his bedroom window. He tries the glass door but it won’t open because of the snow piled against it.
“I thought you’d gone out onto your balcony and broken my window with a mop.”
“What would I want to do that for?”
“Who the hell knows what goes on in your mind, you’ve been pissed for two months,” he snaps, and goes home.
If I had stepped onto the balcony there would have been footprints in the snow, and there are none. Something isn’t right. Why would I break his window? I scarcely know Voronin. He is the head doctor in the clinic where Olga works. We exchange greetings on the stairs and his wife sometimes borrows matches. There’s no quarrel between us. After thinking hard about the incident I go to fetch some six-inch nails and a hammer. I nail the balcony door shut. Let them say what they like now! But the business still worries me. And a gun!
The more I think about it the more convinced I am that some sort of dirty trick is being played on me. Voronin knows that I have just come out of camp. He probably knows that Olga has left. He knows that I drink. Perhaps he wants to provoke me into some sort of criminal action. But why? What have I ever done to him? I can find no answer. The simplest solution would be to have a drink and forget it all but I decide not to succumb.
The next day I feel just as bad. It’s my third day without drinking. Nor have I eaten anything. I go into the kitchen and listen to the noises in the building around me. Voices come from the landing. I stand by the front door with my ear to the crack but all I can hear is babble, punctuated by whistles and shrieks.
I lie down to read again, but I can’t concentrate on my book. The lines dance before my eyes without making sense. I put the book down and lie waiting for nightfall, hoping for sleep to bring relief.
The acrid stench of burning cotton wool annoys me. Earlier in the day I threw my quilt into the stove to warm the room, and now I want to open a window but do not dare after the business with Voronin. I listen to noises outside. The wind has abated and the street roars with cement-mixers driving to the building site down the road.
I hear my name from the other side of the wall. Taking my metal mug, I place it against the door to listen, as I learned in prison. Bloody hell, they are discussing how to get me sent to jail!
“It didn’t work last night,” says Voronin.
“You must do something to get rid of that parasite.” I recognise the voice of a woman who lives on the floor above me. “How can I bring up my children decently with him around?”
“His poor wife,” says another, “no wonder she left him. Did you see the low-life he brought in last week?”
‘Hypocrites!’ I think, ‘You bitches aren’t averse to the bottle yourselves and when you’re drinking the whole block has to know about it.’
I consider jumping out on them but decide this might also be some sort of provocation. If they can accuse me of starting a fight I’ll go back to camp for sure.
Judging by the noise everyone in our block is assembled on the landing. Then I hear Voronin address his eldest son: “Dimka, go down into the street and throw stones at the windows. Then there’ll be material evidence to have Petrov arrested.”
I rejoice. They do not know that I’ve nailed up the balcony door. But they are many and I am one. I know the disposition of the police well enough. They don’t need proof. Once they have their denunciations everything will proceed as smoothly as a knife through butter.
I turn off the light in order to see what’s happening in the street. Dimka walks about below, his eyes on the ground.
Hah, he won’t find any stones. The snow’s too deep.
Dimka begins to gather compressed lumps of snow thrown up by the cement mixers. He throws them at the windows of the block. Fortunately the lumps disintegrate before they reach the third floor.
I shake with fear and outrage. But I’m not going to give up without a fight, so I burst out onto the landing and press the doorbell of my next-door neighbour. I need a witness to prove my innocence. My neighbour, a Tatar called Piotr Tukhvatullin, opens the door, looks into my eyes and silently ushers me into the kitchen where he pours me a glass of after-shave.
“Drink!” he says, bringing out a chess board and playing with me for the rest of the night. Sunday morning dawns and Piotr takes me to the market with him. He spends the whole day buying animal skins from peasants, keeping me beside him and giving me a top-up whenever I start to get the jitters. I feel better, but back in the flat that evening the terror returns. In order not to hear the Voronins’ conversation I go into the kitchen. Apathy overwhelms me. Let them do to me what they will. Voices start to come through the wall adjoining the Tukhvatullins flat. Piotr’s wife is cursing him for getting mixed up with me. He defends himself rather half-heartedly.
I begin to suspect that something is not right at all. I go into the toilet and pull the chain over and over again. Despite the noise of the water I can still hear the conversation on the other side of the wall.
‘Delirium tremens! The dt’s!’ Running into the kitchen I pull out my emergency supply but it doesn’t help. The Voronins have started to sing. An opera is coming from the other side of the wall. Voronin is singing solo in a bass voice:
“He hears nothing!” a chorus of his relations responds.
It is music from Carmen. I laugh as tears run down my cheeks. Why the hell does it have to be opera? I’m an ignoramus where music is concerned. My only visit to the opera was a reward for washing our bedroom floor in Riga. I block my ears but the voices do not stop. But — if I know I’m hallucinating I haven’t completely lost control over myself. I have to do something, so I dress and go outside. It’s three in the morning. At the approach of a car I break into a sweat. A dog’s bark makes my scalp tingle and tighten in terror, but I press on and manage to reach the first aid post on the main road.
They put me in an ambulance and drive me to the psychiatric hospital at Komsomolsk. Two nurses escort me through the foyer, weaving around male and female patients who are waltzing like somnambulists to the strains of The Blue Danube. I laugh till my stomach aches.
I am treated by a Doctor Djmil who convinces me that my visions of the last few days have been nothing more than products of my imagination. Except for the dancers, who were real and part of the Doctor’s attempts to give his patients a sense of normality.
I calm down, although I crave a drink. After three days I discharge myself, thinking the best thing to do will be to start work as soon as possible. But my empty flat haunts me with reminders of my family. I run away, seeking out friends who drink.
Two weeks later I return and spend the whole night sweeping up little black devils who have taken over the flat in my absence. There are several hundred of them, about the size of mice, running about the floor thumbing their noses at me and sticking out their tongues. They tease me for imagining my neighbour with a gun. I’m not afraid of them for they seem more mischievous than evil. I take a mop and briskly herd them into the corner so I can crush them all at once. I work as diligently as a woman mopping up spilled water. The task takes all night, for as soon as I have swept the devils into one corner they jump over the mop and run squealing across the floor again.