They only drove for a short time. Apparently the monkey hordes hadn’t reached this area yet—the streets were quiet and deserted, as always at this early hour. Here and there in the buildings windows were being flung open and still-sleepy people were stretching drowsily and watching the truck indifferently. Women in nightcaps hung mattresses out across windowsills; on one of the balconies a wiry old man diligently performed his morning exercises in striped underpants, with his beard fluttering. The flood of panic hadn’t reached this far yet, but closer to the sixteenth district they started coming across the first fugitives—disheveled, not so much frightened as angry, some with bundles over their shoulders. When they caught sight of the truck, these people stopped, waved their arms, and shouted something. The truck roared as it turned onto Fourth Left Street, almost knocking down a very elderly couple pushing along a two-wheeled trolley with suitcases on it, and stopped. They all saw the baboons immediately.
The baboons were making themselves at home on Fourth Left Street, as if it were the jungle, or wherever it was they lived. With their tails curled into hooks, they shambled in slovenly crowds from sidewalk to sidewalk, bounded cheerfully along the cornices of buildings, swung from the lampposts, climbed up on advertising pillars and attentively searched themselves for lice, shouted to each other in booming voices, grimaced, fought, and made carefree, relaxed love. A gang of the silvery vandals was smashing up a food stall, two hooligans with tails were molesting a woman who was standing petrified in an entryway, white-faced with fear, and a shaggy-furred cutie, who had installed herself in a traffic controller’s booth, stuck her tongue out flirtatiously at Andrei. The warm wind carried along the street clouds of dust, feathers from eiderdowns, sheets of paper, clumps of fur, and the already established odor of a menagerie.
Andrei looked at Fritz in bewilderment. With the air of a genuine battle commander, Heiger surveyed the field of imminent action through narrowed eyes. The driver shut off the engine, and the silence that ensued was filled with wild, absolutely nonurban sounds—roaring and mewing, a low, velvety whooping, burping, champing, grunting… At that moment the besieged woman started shrieking at the top of her voice, and Fritz went into action.
“Disembark!” he ordered. “Move it, move! Deploy in a line… Deploy in a line, I said, not a huddle! Forward! Beat them, drive them away! Don’t jab at them, beat them! I don’t want to see a single ugly brute left here! Beat them on the head and on the spine! Don’t poke at them, beat them! Forward, move it! Don’t stop, hey, you there!”
Andrei was one of the first to jump down. He didn’t deploy into a line; instead he took a more comfortable grip on his iron bludgeon and went dashing straight to the aid of the woman. Catching sight of him, the long-tailed hooligans burst into peals of diabolical laughter and darted off down the street, hopping and skipping and wiggling their gleaming buttocks derisively. The woman carried on screeching with her eyes squeezed tightly shut and her hands clenched into fists, but she wasn’t in danger anymore, and Andrei left her and set off toward the bandits who were ransacking the food stall.
They were powerful, seasoned veterans, especially one, with a tail as black as coal—he was sitting on a barrel, lowering his arm into it up to the shoulder, fishing out pickled cucumbers and champing on them with relish, every now and then spitting at his cronies, who were frantically ripping away the plywood wall of the stall. Noticing Andrei approaching, the black-tailed character stopped chewing and grinned balefully. Andrei didn’t like the look of that grin at all, but retreat was impossible. He swung back his iron pole, yelled “Beat it!” and dashed forward.
The black-tailed character grinned even more malignly—he had fangs like a sperm whale—then skipped down lazily off the barrel, moved a few paces away, and started biting at something under his armpit. “Beat it, you pest!” Andrei yelled even louder, and swung the metal bar against the barrel. Then the black-tailed character darted off to the side and leaped in a single bound onto a second-floor cornice. Emboldened by his adversary’s cowardice, Andrei darted over to the stall and smashed his iron pole against the wall. The wall split open and black-tail’s friends scattered in all directions. The battlefield had been cleared and Andrei looked around.
Fritz’s battle formations had disintegrated and the soldiers were wandering in confusion around the street, which was now empty, peering into entryways or stopping and throwing their heads back to look up at the baboons, who were spread out along the cornices on the facades of the buildings. In the distance the intellectual type was stomping along the street, whirling his pole above his head and raising clouds of dust as he pursued a lame monkey that was indolently trudging along just two paces ahead of him. There was no one to do battle with—even Fritz was at a loss. He stood there beside the truck, scowling and gnawing on his finger.
Quietening down again when they sensed that they were out of danger, the baboons went back to exchanging comments, scratching themselves, and making love. The most insolent of them moved lower, ranting unmistakable abuse, grimacing mockingly, and displaying their backsides insultingly. Andrei spotted black-tail again: he was already on the other side of the street, sitting on a lamppost and roaring with laughter. A small, swarthy-skinned man who looked like a Greek set off toward the lamppost with a menacing air. He took a swing and launched his iron pole up at black-tail with all his might. There was a clang and a clatter, broken glass came showering down, and black-tail jumped about a meter in the air in his surprise and almost fell, but adroitly grabbed hold with his tail, assumed his previous pose, and suddenly, arching his back, drenched the Greek with a stream of liquid fecal matter. Andrei felt the gorge rise in his throat, and he turned away. The defeat was absolute; it seemed impossible to come up with any kind of response.
Andrei walked over to Fritz and asked in a low voice, “Well, what are we going to do?”
“Fuck knows,” Fritz said rancorously. “If only we had a flamethrower…”
“Maybe we could bring some bricks?” asked a pimply young guy in overalls who had walked across to them. “I’m from the brick factory. We’ve got a truck; we could be there and back in half an hour.”
“No,” Fritz said categorically. “Bricks are no good. We’d break all the windows, and then they’d pelt us with our own bricks… No. What’s needed here is some kind of pyrotechnics… Rockets, detonators… Ah, if I just had a dozen cylinders of phosgene gas!”
“Where would we get detonators in the City?” a scornful bass voice asked. “And as for phosgene, I think I’d rather have baboons…”
They began crowding around their commander. Only the swarthy-skinned Greek stayed away—he was washing himself off at a hydrant, spewing out infernal curses.
Andrei watched out of the corner of his eye as black-tail and his friends sneakily sidled over to the food stall again. Here and there in the windows of the buildings local inhabitants’ faces, mostly women’s, began appearing, pale from the terrors they had suffered or red with annoyance. “Well, don’t just stand there!” they shouted angrily from the windows. “Send them packing, you men! Look, they’re looting the food stall! Why are you just standing there like stuffed dummies? Hey you, the white-haired one! Give an order, can’t you? Why are you just standing there like that? Good God, my children are crying! Do something so we can come out! Call yourselves men? Frightened of monkeys!” The men snarled sullenly and shamefacedly in reply.