“Yes indeed, gentlemen,” someone said. “Evidently we shall have to come to terms with this as well. So we can all go home, commander?”
Fritz glowered morosely at the street. “Well now,” he said in an ordinary human voice. “Home it is then.”
He swung around, sticking his hands into his pockets, and was the first to head toward the truck. The brigade straggled after him. Men struck matches and lit up, and someone asked what they could do about being late for work; it would be good if they could get some kind of official note… The judicious individual had an answer for that too: everyone would be late for work today, so what point was there in notes? The jawing session around the cart dispersed. The only ones left were Andrei and the biologist in glasses, who had set himself the firm goal of discovering exactly who it was that had a rutting season in the swamps.
As he dismantled the machine gun and stashed it away again, the bearded man condescendingly explained that the creatures who had a rutting season in the swamps were redbacks, and the redbacks, brother, were something like crocodiles. Had the biologist ever seen crocodiles? Right, then. Only covered in fur. This red kind of fur, coarse and stiff. And when they were rutting, brother, you’d best keep your distance. In the first place, they were big brutes, the size of bulls, and in the second place, during that business they didn’t notice a thing—a house wasn’t a house to them, a shed wasn’t a shed; they smashed everything to splinters…
The intellectual type’s eyes blazed and he listened avidly, constantly adjusting his glasses with outstretched fingers. Fritz called from the truck, “Hey, are you coming or not? Andrei?” The intellectual type glanced around at the truck, looked at his watch, groaned pitifully, and started mumbling apologies and thanks. Then he grabbed the bearded man’s hand, shook it with all his might, and ran off. But Andrei stayed.
He himself didn’t know why he had stayed. It was a rush of something like a fit of nostalgia. It wasn’t even as if he were missing the sound of spoken Russian—after all, everyone around here spoke in Russian—and it wasn’t as if this man with a beard seemed to him like the incarnation of his motherland, no way. But something about him definitely made Andrei feel thoroughly homesick, something or other that he couldn’t get from the stern, sardonic Donald, or from the jolly and passionate but still somehow alien Kensi, or from Wang, always good natured, always affable, but really badly downtrodden. And even less from Fritz, a remarkable man after his own fashion but nonetheless yesterday’s enemy… Andrei hadn’t even suspected how badly he’d been pining for this mysterious “something.”
The man with a beard gave him a sideways glance and asked, “From the home country, are you?”
“From Leningrad,” said Andrei, feeling embarrassed, and in order to gloss over this embarrassment somehow, he took out his cigarettes and offered them to the bearded man.
“So that’s the way of it,” said the man, tugging a cigarette out of the pack. “We’re fellow countrymen, then. But I’m from Vologda, brother. Cherepovets—ever heard of it? The wild and woolly Cherepovtsians…”
“Sure I have!” Andrei exclaimed, absolutely delighted. “They’ve built an iron and steel works there, a ginormous industrial plant.”
“You don’t say?” the bearded man responded rather indifferently. “So they’ve roped in Cherepovets too… Well, OK. And what do you do here? What’s your name?”
Andrei told him.
“I’m working the land here,” the bearded man continued. “A farmer, as they say here. Yurii Konstantinovich, and the surname’s Davydov. Fancy a drink?”
Andrei hesitated. “It seems a bit early,” he said.
“Well, maybe it is,” Yurii Konstantinovich agreed. “I’ve still got to get to the market, haven’t I? I arrived yesterday evening, you see, went straight to the workshops; they promised me a machine gun there a long time ago. Well, it was one thing and another: I tried out the gadget, offloaded some ham, you know, and a couple hundred liters of moonshine for them, then I look around—and they’ve turned the sun off already…” While he was telling Andrei all this, Davydov finished securing his load, untangled the reins, sat in the cart sideways, and started the horses moving. Andrei set off beside him.
“Yep, yep,” Yurii Konstantinovich continued. “So here they’ve already switched off the sun, and this guy says to me: ‘Come on, let’s go,’ he says. ‘I know a place near here.’ So we went and we had a drink and a bite to eat. You know how it is with vodka in the City, and I had moonshine. They provide the music, like, and I put up the drink. Well, women, of course…” Davydov waggled his beard as he reminisced, then went on, lowering his voice: “Out in our swamps, brother, women are kind of thin on the ground. You know, there’s this widow, well, we go to her… her husband drowned the year before last… Well, you know the way that works out—you go visit her, no way around it, but afterward, it’s fix her threshing machine, or lend her a hand with the harvest, or else it’s the tiller… Ah, what a paain!” He lashed a baboon that had tagged along behind the cart with his whip. “Anyway, brother, where we are, it’s like living in combat conditions—near as, dammit. Without a gun, there’s just no way. And who’s that bright-blond boy of yours? German, is he?”
“Yes,” said Andrei. “A former sublieutenant, he was taken prisoner near Königsberg, and he came here from captivity…”
“I spotted something repulsive about that ugly mug,” said Davydov. “Those wormy assholes drove me all the way to Moscow, drove me into hospital, blew off half my backside, clean as a whistle. I gave them what for afterward too. I’m a tank soldier, right? Last time I burned out was outside Prague…” He twisted his beard about. “Now, what do you reckon to this then? Of all the damned places to meet!”
“No, he’s a decent enough, no-nonsense kind of guy,” said Andrei. “And gutsy too. He likes to cut a strut, OK, but he’s a good worker, lots of energy. For the Experiment, I reckon he’s a very useful individual. An organizer.”
Davydov said nothing for a while, clicking his tongue at the horses. “This guy comes out to us in the swamps last week,” he said eventually. “Well, we got together at Kowalski’s place—he’s a farmer too, a Pole, about ten kilometers from me, got a good house, big. Yep, yep. So we got together. And then this type starts feeding us this hogwash: do we, like, have a correct understanding of the objectives of the Experiment? And he’s from City Hall, the Agricultural Department. Well, we can see where he’s heading: let’s say we do have a correct understanding—then a tax increase would be a good idea… Are you married?” he suddenly asked.
“No,” said Andrei.
“The reason I ask is, I could do with a place to stay tonight. I’ve got another piece of business set up for tomorrow morning.”
“But of course!” said Andrei. “No need even to ask! Come and stay the night, I’ve got loads of space, I’d be delighted.”
“Well, and so would I,” Davydov said with a smile. “Fellow countrymen and all that.”
“Make a note of the address,” said Andrei. “Have you got something to write it on?”
“Just tell me,” said Davydov. “I’ll remember it.”