At first he didn’t realize it was Izya. Standing at the table farthest away, in the corner, stooped over an open binder of back issues and propping himself up on hands set wide apart, was a stranger with his hair carelessly trimmed in wedges, wearing a suspicious-looking gray garment with no buttons, and it was only when this man suddenly grinned in a familiar way a moment later and started plucking at a wart on his neck with a familiar gesture that Andrei realized he was looking at Izya.
Andrei stood in the doorway for a while, watching him. Izya hadn’t heard Andrei come in. He couldn’t hear or notice a thing—first, he was reading, and second, a loudspeaker hanging directly above his head was blasting out the thunderous jangling of a victorious march. Then Selma exclaimed in an appalling wail, “Oh, look, it’s Izya!” and she darted forward, pushing Andrei aside.
Izya quickly looked up and spread out his arms, grinning even more broadly. “Aha!” he yelled delightedly. “So here you are!”
While Izya hugged Selma, delightedly smothering her cheeks and lips in kisses, while Selma squealed something unintelligible and ecstatic and ruffled up Izya’s ugly hair, Andrei walked across to them, struggling to overcome his acute sense of awkwardness. The searing feeling of guilt and betrayal that had almost knocked him off his feet that morning in the basement had been blunted and almost forgotten over the last year, but now it transfixed him again, and after he got close, he hesitated for a few seconds before daring to hold out his hand. He would have found it perfectly natural if Izya had ignored this hand of his, or even said something witheringly contemptuous—that was probably exactly what Andrei would have done. But Izya freed himself from Selma’s embrace, grabbed Andrei’s hand with eager passion, shook it, and asked with keen interest, “Where did they give you that beautiful shiner?”
“I was beaten,” Andrei replied tersely. He was astounded by Izya. There were many things he wanted to tell him, but all he did was ask, “So how come you’re here?”
Instead of answering, Izya flipped over several pages of the bound newspapers and gestured in exaggerated fashion as he declaimed with gusto, “‘. . . No rational arguments can possibly explain the fury with which the government press attacks the Party of Radical Rebirth. But if we recall that it is precisely the PRR—this tiny, young organization—that speaks out most uncompromisingly against every case of corruption—’”
“Drop it,” said Andrei, wrinkling up his face, but Izya merely raised his voice.
“‘—lawlessness, administrative stupidity, and shiftlessness; if we recall that it was precisely the PRR that brought up the Widow Batton case, if we recall that the PRR was the first party to warn the government of the futility of the swamplands tax…’ Belinsky! Pisarev! Plekhanov! Did you write this yourself, or was it your idiots?”
“OK, OK…” said Andrei, starting to get annoyed, and he tried to take the binder away from Izya.
“No, wait!” shouted Izya, wagging his finger at Andrei and tugging the binder toward himself. “Here is yet another pearl!… Where is it now?… Ah, yes. ‘Our City has a wealth of honest people, like any city populated by working folk. However, when it comes to political factions, surely Fritz Heiger is the only one who can lay claim to the exalted title—’”
“That’s enough!” Andrei yelled, but Izya tore the binder out of his hands, darted behind Selma, who was exultant, and continued from there, still plucking and spraying.
“‘Let us not speak of words, let us speak of deeds! Friedrich Heiger rejected the post of minister of information; Friedrich Heiger voted against a law providing major privileges to distinguished employees of the Public Prosecutor’s Office; Friedrich Heiger was the only eminent public figure to oppose the creation of a regular army, in which he was offered a senior position…’” Izya flung the binder under the desk and rubbed his hands together. “You always were an incredible ass in politics! But in the last few months, you’ve become catastrophically more stupid. You deserve that ornament on your noggin! Is your eye still in one piece at least?”
“Yes, my eye’s still in one piece,” Andrei said slowly. He had only just noticed that Izya moved his left arm kind of awkwardly, and three fingers on his left hand didn’t bend at all.
“Will you turn off that damned noise!” roared Kensi, appearing in the doorway. “Ah, Andrei, you’re here already… That’s good. Hello, Selma!” He dashed across the room and jerked the plug of the speaker out of its socket.
“What did you do that for?” Izya shouted. “I want to hear the speeches of my leaders! Let the martial music thunder forth!”
Kensi merely cast a furious glance at him. “Andrei, let’s go, I’ll tell you what we’ve done,” he said. “And we have to think about what to do next.”
His face and hands were covered in soot. He dashed out and Andrei dashed after him, realizing for the first time that the offices smelled of burnt paper. Izya and Selma followed behind.
“A general amnesty!” Izya told her, hissing and gurgling. “The great leader has flung open the doors of the prisons! He needed the space for different prisoners.” He whooped and groaned. “Every single criminal has been set free, and we all know what a criminal I am, don’t we? Even the lifers have been let out.”
“You’ve gotten thin,” Selma said in a voice filled with pity. “Your clothes are hanging off you, you’ve turned kind of mangy…”
“Well, at the end—for the last three days—they didn’t give us any food, or let us get washed.”
“So you must be hungry, then?”
“No, not a damn bit—I stuffed myself full in here.”
They walked into Andrei’s office. It was appallingly hot in there: the sun was shining straight in the window and the fireplace was blazing fiercely. Andrei’s little floozy of a secretary was squatting in front of the fireplace, as smutty-faced as Kensi, stirring a heap of burning paper with a poker. Everything in the office was covered in soot and black clumps of paper ash.
When she saw Andrei, his secretary jumped up and gave him a frightened, ingratiating smile. She’s the last person I expected to stay, thought Andrei. He sat down at his desk, feeling guilty, and forced himself to nod and smile back at her.
“Lists of all the special correspondents, names and addresses of members of the editorial board,” Kensi ticked off briskly. “The originals of all political articles, the originals of weekly reviews…”
“Dupain’s articles have to be burned,” said Andrei. “He was our greatest opponent of the PRR, I think.”
“Burned already,” Kensi said impatiently. “Dupain, and Filimonov too, just to be on the safe side…”
“Why are you making all this fuss?” Izya asked merrily. “They’ll carry you shoulder high.”
“That all depends,” Andrei said morosely.
“What do you mean, it all depends? Want to bet on it? A hundred finger flicks!”
“Just hang on, will you, Izya!” said Kensi. “For God’s sake shut up for ten minutes at least! I’ve destroyed all the correspondence with City Hall, but left the correspondence with Heiger for the time being…”