“Do you always have monkeys roaming round the streets here?” Selma asked.
“No,” said Andrei, pulling a long face. “That only started today. In honor of your arrival.”
“Are you going to humanize them?” Selma inquired insinuatingly.
Andrei forced out a laugh. “We’ll see how things go,” he said. “Maybe we really will have to humanize them. The Experiment is the Experiment.” For all its contemptuous insanity, the idea still seemed to have to some kind of rational kernel to it. I’ll have to bring up the question this evening, he thought briefly, but then another idea immediately occurred to him. “What are you planning to do this evening?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Whatever comes up. What do people do around here?”
There was a knock at the door. Andrei looked at the clock. It was seven already—the gathering was already starting to come together. “Today you’re my guest here,” he told Selma firmly. With this dissolute creature, the only way to act was firmly. “I don’t exactly promise a load of fun and games. But I’ll introduce you to some interesting people. Deal?”
Selma shrugged one little shoulder and started tidying her hair. Andrei went to open the door. Someone was already hammering on it with his heel. It was Izya Katzman. “Have you got a woman in here, or what?” he asked while he was still in the doorway. “And when will you finally get a doorbell put in, that’s what I’d like to know.”
As always, for the first few minutes of his appearance at a gathering, Izya’s hair was neatly combed, his shirt collar was stiffly starched, and his cuffs positively gleamed. His narrow, well-ironed tie was arranged with great precision along the nose-navel axis. Nonetheless, Andrei would still have preferred to see Donald or Kensi right now. “Come in, come in, blabbermouth,” he said. “What’s wrong with you today, showing up before everyone else?”
“I knew you had a woman here,” Izya replied, rubbing his hands and giggling, “so I hurried over to take a peek.” They walked into the dining room and Izya made straight for Selma with broad, rapid strides. “Izya Katzman”—he introduced himself in a velvety voice—“garbage collector.”
“Selma Nagel,” Selma responded indolently. “Tramp.”
Izya actually grunted in delight and solicitously kissed the hand held out to him. “By the way,” he said, turning to Andrei and then back to Selma, “have you heard? The council of district commissioners is considering a draft resolution”—he lifted one finger in the air and raised his voice—“‘concerning the regularization of the situation that has arisen in connection with the presence within the city limits of large aggregations of dog-headed monkeys’… Oof! It is proposed to register all the monkeys, fit them with metal collars and disks bearing their names, and then assign them to institutions and private individuals, who will be responsible for them henceforth!” He started giggling, then grunting, and then began hammering his right fist into the open palm of his left hand with shrill, lingering little groans. “Superb! All other work has been abandoned—all the factories are producing collars and name disks. Our Mr. Mayor is personally taking into his care three mature baboons and is calling on the public to follow his example. Will you take in a female baboon, Andrei? Selma will be against it, but such is the requirement of the Experiment! And as everyone knows, the Experiment is the Experiment. I hope you are in no doubt, Selma, that the Experiment is definitely an experiment—neither excrement, nor exponent, nor even a permanent—wave, that is—but precisely the Experiment?”
Struggling to make himself heard above the gurgling and groaning, Andrei said, “There you go again, waffle, waffle, waffle!” This was what he had dreaded most of all. This kind of nihilistic, couldn’t-care-less attitude was bound to have a highly subversive impact on someone new. Of course, it was so incredibly alluring to wander from building to building like this, giggling and spraying disdainful spittle right and left, instead of gritting your teeth and—
Izya stopped giggling and started striding agitatedly around the room. “Perhaps it is waffle,” he said. “Possibly. But as usual, Andrei, you understand damn-all about the psychology of the management. Exactly what, in your opinion, is the function of the management?”
“To manage!” said Andrei, rising to the challenge. “To manage and not to waffle, by the way, not to prattle. To coordinate the activities of the citizens and organizations—”
“Stop! Coordinate activities—to what end? What is the ultimate goal of this coordination?”
Andrei shrugged. “That’s elementary. The universal good, order, the creation of optimal conditions for advancing—”
“Oh!” Izya thrust his finger into the air again. His mouth fell slightly open and his eyes rolled up. “Oh!” he repeated, and fell silent again. Selma watched him delightedly. “Order!” Izya proclaimed. “Order!” His eyes rolled back even farther. “And now imagine that in the city entrusted to you, countless herds of baboons appear. You can’t drive them out—you haven’t got the guts for it. You can’t feed them on a centralized basis either—there isn’t enough grub, not enough reserves. The baboons are begging in the street—outrageous disorder: we do not have and cannot have any beggars. The baboons crap without cleaning up after themselves, and no one intends to clean up after them. What is the conclusion begging to be drawn from all this?”
“Well, in any case, it’s not to put collars on them,” said Andrei.
“Correct!” Izya said approvingly. “Of course it’s not to put collars on them. The very first no-nonsense conclusion begging to be drawn is: conceal the existence of the baboons. Pretend that they are not even here. But that, unfortunately, is also impossible. There are too many of them, and so far our management remains nauseatingly democratic. And then a brilliantly simple idea appears: regularize the presence of the baboons! Legitimize the chaos and outrage, thereby rendering them an element of the harmonious order intrinsic to the administration of our good mayor! Instead of herds and gangs of beggars and hooligans—we have sweet household pets. We all love animals! Queen Victoria loved animals. Darwin loved animals. Even Beria, so they say, loved some animals, not to mention Hitler…”
“Our king Gustaf loves animals too,” Selma put in. “He has cats.”
“Excellent!” Izya exclaimed, slamming his fist into his palm. “King Gustaf has cats, and Andrei Voronin has his own personal baboon. And if he really loves animals a lot, even two baboons…”
Andrei gave up and went off to the kitchen to check his food reserves. While he was rummaging in the little cupboards, unfolding and carefully sniffing at dusty little packets with stale, darkened contents, in the dining room Izya’s voice carried on booming without a break and Selma’s laughter rang out, mingling with Izya’s own grunting and gurgling.
There was nothing to eat: a bag of potatoes that had already begun to sprout, a dubious can of sprats, and an absolutely stony loaf of bread. Then Andrei delved into the drawer of the kitchen table and counted his cash again. He had some cash—just enough to last until payday, as long as he was economical with it and didn’t invite any guests but went visiting other people instead. They’ll drive me into the grave, Andrei thought gloomily. Damn it, I’ve had enough. I’ll bleed them all dry. What do they think I’ve got here, some kind of cookshop? The baboons!
At this point there was another knock at the door and Andrei went to open it, chuckling malevolently. He noticed in passing that Selma was sitting on the table with her hands stuck under herself and her painted mouth stretched out to her ears, like a real little bitch, and Izya was pontificating in front of her, waving his baboon-like arms around, and all his gloss had deserted him: the knot of his tie was under his right ear, his hair was standing up on end, and his shirt cuffs were gray.