“Now, you bastards, you shits…” the bearded man muttered, performing some kind of intricate, extremely deft movements with his hands, to an accompaniment of slithering metallic clicks and jangling. Andrei tensed up in anticipation of thunder and flame, and the monkeys on the roof apparently sensed something too. They stopped hurling themselves about, hunkered down on their tails, and started twisting their dogs’ heads to and fro, exchanging their comments on something in dry clicks.
But Fritz was already beside the cart. He grabbed the bearded man by the shoulder and repeated peremptorily, “As you were!”
“Hold on!” the bearded man muttered irascibly, jerking his shoulder. “Hold on, will you, just let me cut them down, the long-tailed bastards…”
“I gave you an order—as you were!” Fritz barked.
Then the bearded man turned his face toward Fritz and slowly stood up. “What’s the problem?” he asked, drawling the words with immense contempt. He was the same height as Fritz, but noticeably broader then him across the shoulders and below the waist.
“Where did you get a gun?” Fritz asked abruptly. “Show me your papers!”
“Why, you little snot!” the bearded man said in baleful amazement. “He wants my papers! How do you like this, you white-haired louse?”
Fritz disregarded the obscene gesture. Still looking the bearded man straight in the eye, he barked loud enough for the whole street to hear: “Ruhmer! Voronin! Friese! Come here!”
Andrei was surprised to hear his own name, but he immediately pushed off from the wall and walked over to the cart, taking his time. From the other side, moving at a brisk jog, came sloping-shouldered Ruhmer—in the past he had been a professional boxer—and, running at full speed, one of Fritz’s cronies, the small, skinny Otto Friese, a consumptive youth with large jug ears.
“Come on, come on…” the farmer kept muttering with an ominous leer as he observed all these preparations for combat.
“I urgently request once again that you present your papers,” Fritz repeated with icy politeness.
“And you can stick your request up your backside,” the bearded man responded indolently. He was looking mostly at Ruhmer now, and he had set his hand, as if by chance, on the handle of an impressive looking whip ingeniously woven out of rawhide.
“Guys, guys!” Andrei admonished them. “Listen, soldier, drop it, don’t argue, we’re from City Hall.”
“Fuck your City Hall up the ass,” the soldier replied, examining Ruhmer balefully from head to toe.
“Well, what’s the problem here?” Ruhmer inquired in a quiet, very husky voice.
“You know perfectly well,” Fritz said to the bearded man, “that guns are prohibited within city limits. Especially machine guns. If you have a permit, I request you to present it.”
“And just who are you to go asking for my permit? Are you the police or something? Some kind of gestapo?”
“We are a voluntary self-defense brigade.”
The bearded man smirked. “Well, defend yourselves then. If you’re a self-defense brigade, who’s stopping you?”
A regular full-tilt jawing session was brewing up. The brigade gradually gathered around the cart. Even some of the local male population crept out of entrances—some with fire tongs, some with pokers, and some with chair legs. They gazed inquisitively at the bearded man, at the ominous machine gun perched upright on the tarpaulin, at something rounded and glassy, glinting under the tarpaulin sheet. They sniffed—the farmer was enveloped in a distinctive atmosphere, compounded of the odors of sweat, garlic sausage, and strong liquor…
Andrei was surprised at the strange tenderness he felt as he examined the faded army tunic with the sweat stains under the armpits and a solitary, small bronze button (not even fastened) on the collar, the fore-and-aft cap with the mark left by a five-pointed star, tilted down over the right eyebrow in familiar fashion, the massive, tarpaulin-fabric, shit-crusher boots—the immense beard was probably the only thing that seemed out of place, that didn’t fit the image… And then it occurred to him that for Fritz all this must evoke quite different associations and sensations. He looked at Fritz. The former Unterleutnant was standing erect, with his lips compressed into a thin line and his nose gathered into contemptuous creases, trying to freeze the bearded man with the glare of his steely gray, genuinely Aryan eyes.
“We’re not required to have permits,” the bearded man drawled in the meantime. “We’re not required to do anything at all, except feed you spongers.”
“All right, then,” the bass voice boomed from the back rows. “But where’s the machine gun from?”
“A machine gun—so what? It’s the coupling of town and country, isn’t it? A carboy of moonshine for you, a machine gun for me, all honest and aboveboard.”
“Oh no,” the bass voice boomed. “A machine gun, that’s not just some sort of toy, not a threshing machine or something of the kind.”
“It seems to me,” the judicious individual commented, “that farmers are actually allowed to have guns!”
“No one’s allowed to have guns!” Friese squeaked, and blushed violently.
“Well, that’s stupid!” the judicious individual responded.
“Damn right it’s stupid,” said the bearded man. “I’d like to see you out in our swamps, at night, in the rutting season…”
“Whose rutting season?” the intellectual type asked with keen interest, pushing through into the front row in his glasses.
“The rutting season for them as needs to rut,” the farmer answered him disdainfully.
“No, no, if you please…” the intellectual type said hastily. “I’m a biologist, you know, and I still can’t—”
“Shut up,” Fritz told him. “And as for you,” he went on, turning to the man with the beard, “I suggest that you follow me. I suggest it in order to avoid unnecessary bloodshed.”
Their glances clashed. And would you believe it, somehow, from some minute feature or other that only he could spot, the man with the luxurious beard sensed who he was dealing with here. His beard split apart in a malicious grin, and he pronounced in a repulsive, obnoxiously thin little voice, “Milch und eggsen? Hitler-kaput!” He wasn’t in the least bit afraid of bloodshed, unnecessary or any other kind.
It was as if Fritz had been punched on the chin. He flung his head back, his pale face turned crimson, the knotted muscles stood out on his cheeks. For a moment Andrei thought he was about to fling himself at the bearded man, and Andrei even leaned forward, ready to stand between them, but Fritz controlled himself. The blood drained back out of his face and he announced drily, “That has nothing to do with the matter. Be so good as to follow me.”
“Oh, leave him alone, Heiger!” the bass voice said. “It’s obvious he’s a farmer, isn’t it? When have you ever heard of anyone hassling farmers?”
And everyone around started nodding and muttering that yes, he was clearly a farmer, who would drive off and take the machine gun with him—he really wasn’t any kind of gangster at all.
“We need to repel the baboons, and here we are playing policemen,” the judicious individual added.
That relieved the tension immediately. Everyone remembered about the baboons, and the baboons turned out to be sauntering around wherever they fancied again, behaving as if they were at home in the jungle. It also turned out that the local population had apparently gotten sick of waiting for decisive action from the self-defense brigade. They had evidently decided that the self-defense brigade wasn’t going to do anything useful, and they’d have to somehow make shift for themselves. And women carrying pocketbooks, with their lips firmly clamped shut in no-nonsense determination, were scurrying about on their morning errands, many of them clutching sticks from brooms and mops to fend off the most persistent of the monkeys. The shutters were taken down off a shop window, and the stall-keeper walked around his looted stall and groaned, scratching his back and clearly trying to figure something out. A line sprang up at the bus stop, and the first bus—yes, there it was—appeared in the distance. In contravention of a municipal council bylaw, it sounded its horn loudly, scattering the baboons, who were not familiar with the traffic regulations.