“Ah, a record player…” Selma said in a totally uninspired voice. “Haven’t you got a tape recorder?”
“What a question,” said Andrei. “Do you think I’m a radio station or something?”
“You’re some kind of savage,” Selma Nagel declared. “Russian, that’s the word. OK then, you listen to your phonograph, you probably drink vodka, and what else do you do? Race around on a motorbike? Or don’t you even have a motorbike?”
Andrei got angry. “I didn’t come here to race around on a motorbike. I’m here to work. But what about you, I wonder—what do you intend to do here?”
“He came here to work…” said Selma. “Tell me, what were they beating you for in the police station? Drugs?”
“No one was beating me in the police station! Where did you get that idea from? And in any case, our police don’t beat anyone. You’re not in Sweden now, you know.”
Selma drew in her breath with a whistle. “Well, well,” she said mockingly. “So I imagined it.” She stuck her cigarette butt into the ashtray, lit another cigarette, got up, and set off around the room with a comical, waltzing movement. “And who lived here before you?” she asked, halting in front of a huge oval portrait of some woman in lilac with a toy dog on her knees. “In my place, for instance, it was obviously some sex maniac. Pornography in all the corners, used condoms on the walls, and an entire collection of women’s garter belts in the wardrobe. I can’t really tell what he was, a fetishist or a clit-licker…”
“You’re lying,” Andrei said, stunned. “That’s all lies, Selma Nagel.”
“What would I tell lies for?” Selma asked in astonishment. “Who was it who lived there? Do you know?”
“The mayor! The current mayor lived there, got it?”
“Ah,” Selma said indifferently. “I see.”
“What do you see?” said Andrei. “What is it that you see?” he yelled, growing frenzied. “What can you understand here anyway?” He stopped. That wasn’t something you could talk about. That was something you had to experience inside, for yourself.
“He’s probably about fifty,” Selma declared with the air of a connoisseur. “Old age creeping up on him, the man’s freaking out. Male menopause!” She laughed and stared at the portrait with the toy dog again.
Silence fell. Andrei gritted his teeth, feeling distressed for the mayor. The man was expansive and imposing; he had an exceptionally engaging face, with a full head of noble gray hair. He spoke beautifully at meetings of the municipal citizens’ council—about temperance, about proud asceticism, about strength of spirit, about inner moral fiber, charged with fortitude and virtue. And when they used to meet outside on the landing, he invariably held out his large, warm hand to be shaken and inquired with his perennial courtesy and consideration whether the tapping of his typewriter bothered Andrei at night.
“He doesn’t believe it!” Selma suddenly burst out. She turned out not to be looking at the portrait anymore but to be examining Andrei with an angry kind of curiosity. “If you don’t believe it, then don’t. Only it disgusts me, having to wash it all off. Isn’t there any way to hire someone for that here?”
“Hire someone…” Andrei repeated obtusely. “Screw you!” he said malevolently. “You can wash it off yourself. There’s no place for whiners here.”
For a while they examined each other with mutual animosity. Then Selma turned her eyes away and murmured, “Why the hell did I come here? What am I going to do here?”
“Nothing special,” said Andrei. He had overcome his animosity. This person needed help. Andrei had already seen plenty of new arrivals in this place. “The same thing as everyone else, that’s what you’ll do. You’ll go to the labor exchange, fill out a record card, drop it in the slot… We’ve got a job allocation device set up there. What were you in the other world?”
“A foxtailer.”
“What?”
“Well, how can I explain it… One, two, spread those legs…”
Andrei felt stunned again. She’s lying. The thought flashed through his mind. The minx is just feeding me a load of drivel. Trying to make a fool out of me. “And did you earn good money?” he asked sarcastically.
“You fool,” she said, almost affectionately. “It’s not for the money, just that it’s interesting. It’s out of boredom.”
“But how could that happen?” Andrei asked mournfully. “What on Earth were your parents thinking? You’re young, you could still be studying and learning for ages and ages…”
“What for?” Selma asked.
“What do you mean, what for? You could make a life for yourself… Be an engineer, or a teacher… You could join the Communist Party and fight for socialism…”
“Oh my God, my God…” Selma whispered hoarsely, collapsing into the armchair as if she’d been poleaxed and hiding her face in her hands. Andrei was frightened, but at the same time he felt a sense of pride, and his own prodigious responsibility.
“Oh, come on now, come on…” he said, awkwardly sliding closer to her. “What’s happened has happened. It’s over. Don’t get upset. Perhaps it’s good that things turned out this way for you. You’ll make up for everything here. I’ve got lots of friends, all real human beings…” He recalled Izya and frowned. “We’ll help. We’ll fight together. There’s a hell of a lot of work to do here! Lots of disorder and confusion, and simple trash—every honest person counts. You can’t imagine just how much trash of all kinds has come flooding in here! I don’t ask them, of course, but sometimes I’d really love to: What exactly brought you here anyway, what damn use are you to anyone here?”
He was on the point of giving Selma a friendly, even brotherly, pat on the shoulder, but at that moment, without taking her hands away from her face, she asked, “So not everyone here’s like that?’
“Like what?”
“Like you. Idiots.”
“Oh, for crying out loud!” Andrei jumped down off the table and started walking in circles around the room. What a bourgeois bitch. A whore, but she comes here too. Thinks it’s interesting, don’t you see… But then, Selma’s directness actually impressed him. Directness was always good. Face-to-face, across the barricades. Not like Izya, for instance: neither ours nor yours, as slippery as an eel, and he’d squirm through anywhere…
Selma giggled behind him. “Well, what are you running around for?” she said. “It’s not my fault if you’re such a little idiot. OK, I’m sorry.”
Determined not to relent, Andrei resolutely sliced his open hand through the air. “I’ll tell you this,” he said. “You, Selma, are a very badly neglected individual, and it will take a long time to scour you clean. And please don’t imagine that I am personally offended by you. The people who reduced you to this state, yes, I have scores to settle with them. But not with you, none at all. You’re here, and that means you’re our comrade. Work well, and we’ll be good friends. And you’ll have to work well. Being here, you know, it’s like being in the army: if you don’t know how, we’ll teach you; if you don’t want to, we’ll make you!” He liked the way he was speaking very much—it was so distinctly reminiscent of the speeches given by Lyosha Baldaev, the leader of the Communist Youth League group in his faculty at the university, before the unpaid working Saturdays. At this point he discovered that Selma had finally taken her hands away from her face and was gazing at him with frightened curiosity. He winked at her encouragingly. “Oh yes, we’ll make you, what were you expecting? We used to get real loafers coming to the building site—at first all they wanted to do was slip down to the beer kiosk and into the woods. But we fixed them! And they were as good as gold! You know, work can even humanize a monkey.”