“It’s a simple address: 105 Main Street, apartment 16. Entrance from the courtyard. If I’m not there, call round to the caretaker’s place—he’s a Chinese guy, Wang, I’ll leave a key with him.” Andrei really liked Davydov, although they clearly didn’t see eye to eye on everything.
“What year were you born?” Davydov asked.
“Twenty-eight.”
And when did you leave Russia?”
“In ’51. Only four months ago.”
“Aha. And I left Russia for here in ’47… So tell me then, Andriukha, how are things in the countryside—have they gotten better?”
“Well, of course!” said Andrei. “They’ve rebuilt everything, they’re reducing prices every year… I didn’t get out into the country after the war myself, it’s true, but to judge from the movies and the books, life in the country’s really good now.”
“Hmm… movies,” Davydov said doubtfully. “You know, when it comes to movies…”
“No, why say that? In town, the shops have got everything. They abolished ration cards ages ago. So where’s it all from? From the country, right…”
“That’s right,” said Davydov. “From the country… But you know, I got back from the front and my wife was gone, she’d died. My son disappeared without a trace. The village was deserted. OK, I think, we’ll put this right. Who won the war? We did! So now we’re calling the shots. They wanted to make me farm chairman. I agreed. There was no one in the village but women, so there was no need even to get married. We just about scraped through ’46; right, I think, now things will get a bit easier…” He suddenly stopped talking and said nothing for a long time, as if he’d forgotten about Andrei. “Happiness for all mankind!” he declared unexpectedly. “How about you—do you believe it?”
“Of course.”
“And I believed that too. No, I thought, the countryside’s a dead duck. Some kind of stupid blunder, I thought. Grabbed by the tits before the war, grabbed by the throat after it. No, I thought, this way they’ll crush us. And the life, you know, as grim as a general’s shoulder straps. I’d started drinking already, and then—the Experiment.” He sighed heavily. “So, you reckon this Experiment of theirs will work out?”
“Why is it theirs? It’s ours!”
“OK, so let say it’s ours. Will it work out or not?”
“It’s got to,” Andrei said firmly. “It all depends on us, and only us.”
“Whatever depends on us, we’re doing it. We did it there, we’re doing it here… Basically, of course, I can’t really grumble. Life’s tough, all right, but way better than it was. The main thing is, you do it for yourself, get what I mean? And if some stooge shows up, you can maybe drop him in the privy, and there you go, home free! Party member, are you?” he asked suddenly.
“Komsomol. Yurii Konstantinovich, you take altogether too gloomy a view of things. The Experiment is the Experiment. It’s hard, there are plenty of mistakes, but probably it couldn’t possibly be any other way. Everyone on duty at his own post—everyone doing what he can.”
“And what’s your post?”
“Garbage collector,” Andrei said proudly.
“A really serious post, that,” said Davydov. “And have you got a profession?”
“My profession’s very specialized,” said Andrei. “Stellar astronomer.” He pronounced the title shyly, glancing sideways at Davydov, anticipating mockery, but on the contrary, Davydov was terribly interested.
“Really, you’re an astronomer? Listen, brother, then you ought to know where this is we’ve all been fetched up. Is it a planet of some kind, or a star, maybe? Back out there, in the swamps I mean, folks fall out over that every evening—they come to blows, so help me! They get a skinful of moonshine and then they go at it hammer and tongs… There are some as think, you know, we’re stuck in some kind of fish tank—still right here on Earth. This great, huge kind of fish tank, only instead of fish, it has people in it. So help me! But what do you think—from the scientific point of view?”
Andrei scratched the back of his head and laughed. In his apartment people almost came to blows for the same reason—even without any moonshine. And as for the fish tank, Izya Katzman had expatiated on that in exactly the same way, word for word, giggling and spraying. “How can I put it, you see…” he began. “It’s all very complicated. Baffling. And from the scientific point of view, there’s only one thing I can tell you: it’s not likely that this is a different planet, even less a star. In my opinion, everything here is artificial, and it has nothing to do with astronomy.”
Davydov nodded a few times. “A fish tank,” he said decisively. “And the sun here’s a sort of lightbulb, and that Yellow Wall running right up to the sky… Listen, if I follow this side street, will I get to the market or not?”
“Yes, you will,” said Andrei. “You haven’t forgotten my address?”
“I haven’t forgotten it—expect me this evening.”
Davydov lashed at the horses and let out a whistle, and the cart rumbled onto the side street and disappeared. Andrei set off for home. What a great guy, he thought, feeling moved. A soldier! Of course, he didn’t join the Experiment, he ran away from his problems, but I’ve no right to judge him for that. He was wounded, his house and land were trashed—he was entitled to falter, wasn’t he? His life here is clearly no bowl of cherries either. And he’s not the only one here who’s faltered; we have plenty of those here…
On Main Street the baboons were sauntering about, totally free and easy. Either Andrei had gotten used to them, or they themselves had changed in some way, but they no longer seemed anything like as brazen, let alone as frightening, as a few hours earlier. They placidly arranged themselves in groups in the hot sun, jabbering and searching themselves for lice, and when people walked by, they held out their shaggy, black-palmed paws and blinked pleadingly with their watery eyes. It was as if an immense number of beggars had suddenly shown up in the City.
Andrei saw Wang at the gates of his building. He was sitting on a stanchion, hunched over sadly with his work-worn hands lowered between his knees.
“Lost the cans, did you?” he asked, without raising his head. “Look at what’s happening.”
Glancing into the passageway, Andrei was horrified. The heaps seemed to reach right up to the lightbulb. There was only a narrow little track leading to the door of the caretaker’s lodge.
“God almighty!” Andrei said, suddenly getting jittery. “I’ll go right now… hang on… I’ll be right back…” He tried feverishly to recall which streets he and Donald had raced along last night and the spot where the fugitives had dumped the cans off the truck.
“Don’t bother,” Wang said in a hopeless voice. “A commission’s already been here. They took down the numbers of the cans and promised to bring them this evening. They won’t bring them this evening, of course, but maybe they might by morning, eh?”
“You know, Wang,” said Andrei, “it was sheer hell and hullabaloo, I feel ashamed to remember it.”
“I know. Donald told me what it was like.”
“Donald’s home already?” Andrei asked, brightening up.
“Yes. He said not to let anyone into his place. He said his teeth ached. I gave him a bottle of vodka and he left.”
“So it’s like that…” Andrei said, examining the heaps of trash again.
And he suddenly felt a desire so unbearably intense it was almost hysterical, enough to make him cry out, to get a wash, to strip off his stinking overalls and forget that tomorrow he would have to scrabble through all this stuff with a spade… Everything around Andrei was suddenly sticky and rank-smelling, and without saying another word, he dashed through the courtyard and onto his stairway, bounding up the steps three at a time and trembling in impatience, reached his apartment, grabbed the key from under the rubber mat, and swung open the door—and the fragrant coolness of eau de cologne received him into its tender embrace.