The moment he stepped inside the kitchen, he realized everything in the apartment had changed. The phonograph was booming and hissing in the dining room. He heard the clatter of dishes and the shuffling of dancing feet. And rumbling out over and above all these other sounds was the familiar bass voice of his excellency Yurii Konstantinovich: “You, brother, all that stuff about the economics and sociology—we don’t need it. We’ll get by without. But freedom, brother, now that’s a different matter. Freedom’s worth breaking your back for.”
Water was already boiling up in a large saucepan on the gas cooker, a freshly sharpened knife was lying, ready and waiting, on the kitchen table, and there was a ravishing aroma of meat coming from the oven. Two paunchy sacks were standing in the corner of the kitchen, propped against each other, and lying on top of them were an oil-soaked wadded jacket with burn holes, a familiar whip, and some kind of harness. The familiar machine gun was standing right there too—assembled and ready for use, with a flat, burnished metal magazine protruding from the breech. A glass carboy was gleaming with an oily glint under the table, with corn shuckings and pieces of straw stuck to it.
Andrei put down the basket and the bag. “Hey, you loafers!” he yelled. “The water’s boiling!”
Davydov’s rumbling bass fell silent, and Selma appeared in the doorway, red-faced and with her eyes glowing. Fritz towered up behind her shoulder. Apparently they had just been dancing, and the Aryan had no intention of taking his massive red paws off Selma’s waist just yet.
“Hofstadter sends you his greetings!” said Andrei. “Elsa is concerned that you don’t call round. The child will be a month old soon, after all!”
“Stupid jokes!” Fritz declared in disgust, but he took his paws away. “Where’s Otto?”
“It’s true, the water is boiling!” Selma declared in surprise. “Now what do we do with it?”
“Take the knife,” said Andrei, “and start peeling the potatoes. And I think you’re very fond of potato salad, aren’t you, Fritz? So you get on with it, and I’ll go and play the part of the host.”
He was about to walk into the dining room, but Izya Katzman intercepted him in the doorway. His face was glowing ecstatically.
“Listen,” he said, giggling and spraying. “Where did you get that remarkable character from? It seems like they’ve got a genuine Wild West down on the farms. American wide-open spaces!”
“Russian wide-open spaces are every bit as good as American ones,” Andrei said peevishly.
“Oh yes! Oh yes!” Izya shouted. “‘When the Jewish Cossacks rebelled, there was a coup, a coup in Birobidzhan, and if anyone tries to take our Berdichev, a boil will spring up on his belly!’”
“You drop that,” Andrei said sternly. “I don’t like it… Fritz, I’m placing Selma and Katzman under your command: work, and quickly. I’m hungry—I’m starving… And don’t yell in here—Otto will be knocking, he dashed off to get some canned stuff.”
Having put everyone in their places, Andrei hurried into the dining room, where first of all he exchanged a firm handshake with Yurii Konstantinovich.
Yurii Konstantinovich, still as red-faced and strong-smelling as ever, was standing in the middle of the room with his feet planted wide apart in their tarpaulin-fabric boots and his hands stuck into his soldier’s belt. His eyes were merry and slightly wild—Andrei had often seen eyes like that in the faces of harum-scarum men who liked hard work and strong drink, and had no fear of anything on Earth. “There!” said Davydov. “I’ve come, just as I promised. Have you seen the big bottle? That’s for you. The potatoes are for you too—two sacks. They wanted to give me, you know, a certain something for them, but I thought what the hell do I want all this for? I’ll drive them round to a good man instead. They live here, rotting away in their stone mansions, never seeing the light of day… Listen, Andrei, I was just telling Kensi here, the Japanese, I told him: Give it all up, guys! What is there round here that you haven’t seen already? Collect up your little kids, your women, your girls, and all come on out to us…”
Kensi, still in uniform after his spell of duty but with his tunic unbuttoned, was working away awkwardly with one hand, trying to set the table with miscellaneous dishes. His left hand was bound up with a bandage. He smiled and nodded to Davydov. “That’s what it will come to, Yura,” he said. “Next there’ll be an invasion of squids, and then every last one of us will move out to those swamps of yours.”
“Ah, why bother to wait for those… what-d’you-call-ems… To hell with those damned squids. Tomorrow morning I’m leaving empty, nothing in the cart—I can easily load up three families. You’re not a family man, are you?” he asked, turning to Andrei.
“God has spared me,” said Andrei.
“Then who’s this girl to you? Or isn’t she yours?”
“She’s new here. Just arrived last night.”
“So what could be better? A pleasant young lady. Take her and let’s go, eh? We’ve got air out there. We’ve got milk out there. You probably haven’t drunk any fresh milk in a year, have you? And I keep on wondering why there’s no milk in your shops. I’ve got three cows all to myself. I hand over that milk to the state, I feed myself with it, I feed the pigs with it, I pour it away on the ground… You settle at our place, you’ll see, and you’ll wake up in the morning to go out into the field and your very own cow will give you a pitcher of steaming-fresh milk—straight from the cow, eh?” He winked strenuously with both eyes, one after the other, laughed, whacked Andrei on the shoulder, then set off across the room, making the floorboards creak loudly, stopped the phonograph, and came back again. “And the air there! You haven’t even got any air left here—you’ve got a menagerie here, that’s all the air you’ve got. Kensi, why keep making it so hard on yourself? Call the girl, let her set the table.”
“She’s peeling potatoes in there,” Andrei said with a smile. Then he pulled himself up short and started helping Kensi. Davydov was a really great guy. He felt very close to him, as if they’d known each other for a whole year already. So… what if he really did it—took off to the swamps? Milk or no milk, the life there had to be really healthy. Just look at the way Davydov was standing there, like a statue!
“Someone’s knocking,” Davydov told him. “Shall I open up or will you go yourself?”
“Just a moment,” Andrei said, and went to the front door. Standing outside the door was Wang—without his wadded jacket now, wearing a blue serge shirt down to his knees and a waffle-weave towel wrapped around his head.
“They brought the cans!” he said with a joyful smile.
“So screw them then,” Andrei responded no less joyfully. “The cans can wait. Why are you alone? Where’s Mei-lin?”
“She’s at home,” said Wang. “She’s very tired. She’s sleeping. Our son’s taken sick.”
“Well come in, don’t just stand there… Come on, I’ll introduce you to a fine human being.”
“We’ve already met,” Wang said as he walked into the dining room.
“Ah, Vanya!” Davydov shouted delightedly. “So you’re here as well! Yes,” he said, turning back to Kensi, “I knew Andrei was a regular guy. Look, all the good people get together at his place. Take you, now, or that little Jew… what’s his name… Well, now we’ll have a whale of a feast! I’ll go and take a look at what they’re fiddling with for so long in there. There’s nothing at all to do, and they’ve made a huge job out of it…”
Wang quickly squeezed Kensi away from the table and began neatly and deftly rearranging the knives and forks. Kensi adjusted his bandage with his free hand and his teeth. Andrei waded in to help him. “Donald still hasn’t shown up,” he said in a concerned voice.