“He locked himself in,” Wang responded. “Said he wasn’t to be disturbed.”
“He’s been down in the dumps recently for some reason, guys. OK, forget about him. Listen, Kensi, what’s wrong with your hand?”
Kensi pulled a wry face as he answered. “A baboon snapped at me. What a bastard—bit right through to the bone.”
“You don’t say!” Andrei exclaimed, astonished. “I thought they were kind of placid.”
“Sure, very placid… When someone catches you and starts riveting a collar round your neck…”
“What collar?”
“Directive 57. All baboons are to be registered and fitted with a numbered collar. Tomorrow we’re going to distribute them to members of the public. Well, we ringed about twenty of them and herded the others over into the next precinct; they can sort them out. Why are you just standing there with your mouth hanging open? Let’s have some shot glasses—there aren’t enough shot glasses…”
4
When the sun was turned off, the entire company was already flying high. In the darkness that instantly fell, Andrei clambered out from behind the table and made his way over to the light switch, along the way kicking over some saucepans or other standing on the floor. “Don’ you be frightened, sweet fräulein,” Fritz babbled behind him. “That’s what always happens here…”
“Let there be light!” Andrei declared, articulating the words laboriously.
The dusty lightbulb on the ceiling lit up. The light was pitiful, just like in the passage to the courtyard. Andrei turned around and surveyed the gathering.
Everything was absolutely fine. Ensconced at the head of the table, swaying slightly on his kitchen stool, was Yurii Konstantinovich Davydov, who half an hour earlier had finally and irrevocably become “Uncle Yura” to Andrei. Uncle Yura had a brawny roll-up smoking between his firmly clenched teeth and a thick glass tumbler clutched in his right hand, and he was waving the calloused index finger of his left hand through the air in front of the nose of Izya Katzman, who was sitting beside him, now entirely bereft of his tie and jacket, and with traces of meat sauce clearly displayed on the collar and chest of his shirt.
Wang was sitting modestly on Uncle Yura’s right; in front of him he had the very smallest plate, with a small piece of something on it, and the most battered fork, and for the moonshine he had taken himself a glass with a chipped edge. His head had sunk completely down into his shoulders and his face was raised, with the eyes closed and a blissful smile on the lips: Wang was basking in his peace.
Sharp-eyed Kensi, his cheeks brightly flushed, was snacking with gusto on sauerkraut and rendering an enthusiastic account of something to Otto, who was battling heroically against drowsiness, exclaiming in his brief moments of victory, “Yes! Of course! Yes! Oh, yes!”
Selma Nagel, the Swedish tramp, was out-and-out gorgeous. She was sitting in an armchair, with her legs thrown over the soft armrest, and those gleaming legs were exactly level with the chest of the bold Unter-officer Fritz, so Fritz’s eyes were blazing, and in his excitement he had broken out in red blotches. He kept thrusting his full glass at Selma, repeatedly attempting to drink to Bruderschaft with her, but Selma pushed him away with her own glass, laughed, swung her legs about, and from time to time brushed Fritz’s hairy, fondling paw off her knees.
Andrei’s chair on the other side of Selma was the only one that was empty, apart from the chair set out for Donald, also sadly vacant. What a pity Donald’s not here, Andrei thought. But we’ll survive—we’ll even get through that! We’ve had to cope with worse things… His thoughts were a little confused, but his general mood was spunky, with a light veneer of the tragic. He went back to his place, picked up a glass, and roared, “A toast!”
No one took any notice of him except Otto, who merely jerked his head like a horse bitten by gadflies and responded, “Yes! Oh, yes!”
“I came here because I believed!” Uncle Yura boomed in his deep bass voice, not giving the giggling Izya a chance to remove that gnarled finger from under his nose. “And I believed because there was nothing else left to believe in. And a Russian has to believe in something, don’t you see, brother? If he doesn’t believe in anything, there’ll be nothing left but vodka. Even to make love to a woman, you’ve got to have faith. You have to believe in yourself; without faith you’ll never even get it up.”
“That’s right, that’s right!” Izya responded. “Take away a Jew’s belief in God and a Russian’s belief in the Good Czar, and they become capable of all sorts of diabolical things.”
“No… hang on! Jews are a special case…”
“The most important thing, Otto, is to take things easy,” Kensi was saying at the same time, crunching with relish on his cabbage. “There isn’t any training anyway—there simply can’t be any. Think about it: who needs professional training in a city where everyone is constantly changing his profession?”
“Oh, yes!” Otto responded, his mind clearing for a second. “I said the same thing to the minister.”
“And what did the minister say?” asked Kensi, picking up his glass of moonshine and taking a few small sips, as if he were drinking tea.
“The minister said that it was an extremely interesting idea and suggested that I should draft a detailed proposal.” Otto sniffed and tears welled up in his eyes. “But instead of that I went to see Elsa…”
“And when the tank was only about two meters away from me,” Fritz droned, spilling moonshine on Selma’s white legs, “I remembered everything! You wouldn’t believe it, fräulein, all the years of my life flashed by in front of my eyes… But I’m a soldier! With the name of the führer—”
“Ah, your führer’s been gone for ages!” Selma kept trying to drum into his head, laughing so hard that she cried. “They burned that führer of yours!”
“Fräulein!” Fritz declared, thrusting his jaw forward menacingly. “In the heart of every true German, the führer still lives! The führer will live on down through the ages! You are an Aryan, fräulein, you can understand me: when th’Russian tank… only three meters away… with the name of the führer on my lips, I…”
“Ah, I’m sick of you and your führer!” Andrei yelled at him. “Guys! Come on, you bastards! Listen to the toast, will you?”
“A toast?” exclaimed Uncle Yura, suddenly getting the idea. “Come on! Go to it, Andriukha!”
“Fortheladiespresent!” Otto suddenly blurted out, shoving Kensi away from him.
“You shut up, will you!” Andrei barked. “Izya, stop grinning like that! I’m being serious! Kensi, damn you! Guys, I think we should drink… we’ve already drunk to it, but only sort of in passing, and we need to drink fundamentally, seriously, to our Experiment, to our noble cause, and especially—”
“To the inspirer of all our victories, Comrade Stalin!” Izya roared.
That put Andrei off his stride. “No, listen,” he mumbled. “What are you interrupting me for? OK, to Stalin too, of course… Damn, now you’ve completely thrown me… I wanted us to drink to friendship, you fool!”
“Never mind, never mind, Andriukha,” said Uncle Yura. “It’s a good toast: we ought to drink to the Experiment, and we ought to drink to friendship too. Boys, raise your glasses, we’ll drink to friendship and to everything turning out just fine.”
“And I’ll drink to Stalin,” Selma piped up stubbornly. “And to Mao Tse-tung. Hey, Mao Tse-tung, do you hear, I’m drinking to you,” she shouted at Wang.