The man checks his watch. Everything is going exactly as he has planned, perfect. He’s got plenty of time. He looks at the street, the side alley. The alley is empty. Behind? There’s no one behind him either. Excellent.
Through backyards he knows so well, through nooks and alleys, avoiding the brightly lit boulevard, the man makes his way to a large barrack-like apartment building that belongs to the railroad. He grew up here; here he knows every in and out. The man pauses for a moment behind a woodshed, checks his approaches: there’s no one around. He runs up the stairs, leaping over the fifth and the seventh step – they’ve been creaking for years now. He slips into his mother’s little room, and closes the door behind him. Just in case, he locks it.
He is home now.
The man takes off his raincoat, pulls his machine gun off over his head and places it neatly on a bedside table. He opens the pantry, pushes a sack of potatoes aside. Here’s the floorboard he had cut out, and below it: his secret cache. There, wrapped in a rag, is a revolver and a half-dozen wonderful little bullets. The man unfolds the rag carefully, checks his weapon, strokes it affectionately. He opens the cylinder and slips in the bullets, pressing each hard with his finger: six gleaming capsules, six exactly – he counts them with a gravity that befits the occasion. The revolver is also short-barreled, foreign – it took him forever to hunt it down. The boys from Petersburg helped. Those guys are gold – they never let him down.
The man slips the revolver into a holster, and adjusts it under his arm, next to his heart. He can’t deny himself a moment of joy: he whips out the gun, pretends to aim it – Bang! – spins it on his index finger and throws it smartly back into its nest. Everything will go just fine! He’ll pay them back for everything. He checks his watch again: plenty of time until show time.
Now, the machine gun. It’s a splendid piece, just splendid, but it’ll have to wait its turn, it won’t speak today. From looking at it, you’d never know it was homemade: it’s small, compact, and it cost, let’s be honest, a fortune, but money means so little when you remember what the goal is. And Petrovich is an ace! An expert! He just studied the drawings (that was a separate story, how he got those), named his price, and voila! – two months later, he had it made! Excellent.
The man stroked the steel of the barrel, pulled out the cartridge, and laid them both out on the rag. Then he wrapped it up, tied it with a rubber band he brought with him specifically for this purpose, and rested the bundle at the bottom of his cache. He put the board in place, swept some potato dust over it, and finally dragged the sack back into place. No one would ever think to look here. And even if someone did – the board looks no different from all the other floorboards around it, he made sure of that.
Suddenly, the man thinks about his mother. Let her pray, what else has she got left to do in her old age? What was it they said in church? Rejoice and be glad! That’s right – watch out now, you sons of bitches, he’s about to go do some rejoicing! He’s spent a long time planning it, and he’s got every second laid out.
The man puts on his raincoat – a wonderful piece: so large, it hides the revolver even better than it conceals the machine gun. Not machine gun – his “little toy.” That’s how he likes to think of it.
Retreat, through the yard. And he’s lucky again – there is not a soul anywhere. And it’s beginning to drizzle. And dusk is seeping into the air.
He is lucky! Lucky!
The man is now walking down the main street. He is walking calmly, confidently. He doesn’t care that the street lamps are bright – it’s even better that way, it’ll be easier to take aim.
The man checks his watch – everything is going according to the plan. Excellent!
And here’s the Park of Culture and Leisure, which people simply call “the spot.” Some are already beginning to gather at the spot – the open-air dance floor on Merry Hill. The man crouches, ostensibly to tie his shoelace – and dashes into the bushes. The bushes are wet – it is drizzling – but the man can’t think about that: it’s now or never!
Holding his breath, he sneaks up closer to where the police patrol usually stands. There they are: two policemen in raincoats next to a traffic-police Moskvich sedan. They stand with their backs to him, smoking, talking about something.
It’s quiet in the park, only once in a while does someone walk by – the bigger crowd flows down the main street: back and forth, fat on its free feed, dumb as cattle. Trucks thunder by.
The man pulls out his gun, raises it, aims with both hands, knees slightly bent, back leaned back just a bit.
Pss! Pss! Pss!
Damn it! God damn it! All six – misfire!
Were the bullets wet? Did Vityunya let him down? Oh, you just wait, you bastard!
Disappear – right now! Everything’s been planned!
Through the park, past the kremlin. Stay calm. Those two didn’t even hear anything – the street noise swallowed the sound. Double-up, come back. Just like that. Now, go past the post, take a look.
Everything is fine: the pigs are standing where he left them, suspecting nothing. And only five minutes ago... All right, let it go.
His nerves are strung so tight they seem to hum.
Now go, mix with the crowd, vanish. Get on a bus. Go home!
At the door – hug her, so warm, cozy, and also tense, worried, she’s been waiting. Kiss her on the lips, pull her close, hold her tight.
“Did it... did it work?”
“No. Vityunya, son of a bitch, slipped me bad bullets – either they were wet, or the caps didn’t fit the firing pin. But they seemed fine when I tried them at his place!”
The man, defeated, shrugs off his raincoat, drops the holster with the toy Italian revolver, but doesn’t let it hit the floor – he catches it and puts it carefully on an armchair. It’s a nice piece, really. Four-hundred and fifty rubles kind of nice. His wife comforts him:
“That’s alright, Valya, don’t worry about it now. Everything went as you wanted, didn’t it? So you just think of it as done. Go wash up, quick, I’ve made pancakes with cheese and honey, the way you like.”
He goes to the bathroom, and splashes ferociously in the sink. He looks at himself in the mirror, and makes a face, like a fearsome gangster. Screw it!
“You know,” he shouts to the kitchen, “Petrovich did make me a machine gun. Wait till you see it! I’ll go to Petersburg on the weekend and show the guys, they’ll flip! Even Semyonov’s Parabellum is not as good, and he had it made at the Kirov factory.”
“You’ll have a great time, Valya!” his wife has come into the bathroom, put her hands on his shoulders. “You’re such a boy, really. Thirty-seven, and you’re still playing at guns.”
Valya turns and grabs her – the whole smooth, warm, delicious bundle of her – but the wife struggles free:
“Oh no, not right now. Off to the kitchen, Mr. Secret Agent!”
“Oui, mon général!”
The two scarf down the pancakes; each thinking about his or her own. The wife is happy that the not-entirely-safe game has ended well, that no one got into any trouble. Let him go to Petersburg for the weekend, hang out with his guys at the dacha, and shoot to his heart’s content. They call themselves “Scouts.” When they were little, they played Indians, and now they spend hours chasing each other in the woods and shooting paint at each other. She doesn’t mind, though – he needs to let off some steam, anyone would after sitting at a desk all week, drawing boxes at the architecture office. And the main thing, of course: it’s long been clear they won’t have a little one of their own to play with, but it doesn’t mean you can’t play at all, does it?
“Hey! I’ve got an idea,” Valya perks up suddenly. “You know what?”