PART IV
Mr. Counselor
1
The water flowed out lukewarm and tasted vile. The showerhead was set unnaturally high, beyond his reach, and the feeble jets watered absolutely everything except what they were meant to. The drain was blocked, as usual, and the water above the grating sloshed about under his feet. And anyway, it was outrageous that he’d had to wait. Andrei listened: they were still droning and jabbering in the locker room. He thought he heard his name mentioned. Andrei twisted around and started squirming with his back, trying to catch the flow on his spine—he slipped, grabbed hold of the rough concrete wall, and swore under his breath. Damn them all to hell, why didn’t they realize they ought to build a separate shower for government employees? I hate hanging around here like some kind of bad smell…
On the door in front of his nose someone had scratched, LOOK RIGHT. Andrei automatically looked to the right, where someone had scratched, LOOK BACK. Andrei got the idea. OK, we know the deal, we learned that in school, we used to write the same stuff ourselves… He shut off the water. It was quiet in the locker room. He cautiously opened the door and glanced out. Thank God, they’d gone…
He walked out, squeamishly turning up his toes as he hobbled across the dirty tiles toward his clothes. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted some kind of movement over by the wall. Peering in that direction, he discovered a pair of skinny buttocks, overgrown with black wool. So that was it, the usual picture: a naked man kneeling on the bench, staring into the women’s locker room through a chink in the corner. Frozen absolutely still in his intent concentration.
Andrei took a towel and started wiping himself down. The towel was a cheap one, government issue, impregnated with the smell of carbolic, and it didn’t really absorb the water but just smeared it across his skin.
The naked man was still ogling. His pose was unnatural, like a hanged man’s—the hole in the wall had evidently been made by a teenager, in a low, inconvenient spot. And then the moment must have come when there was nothing left for the man to watch, because he sighed loudly and sat down, lowering his feet onto the floor. And then he saw Andrei.
“She got dressed,” he announced. “A beautiful woman.”
Andrei didn’t say anything.
“I burst a blister again—there you go…” the naked man declared, examining the palm of his hand. “Yet again.” He unfolded a towel and examined it suspiciously on both sides. “I’ll tell you what I don’t understand,” he went on, toweling his head. “Why the hell couldn’t they send some excavators over here? All of us could be replaced by a single excavator, couldn’t we? And here we are scrabbling away with spades, like…”
Andrei shrugged and mumbled something that he didn’t even understand himself.
“Ah?” asked the naked man, freeing his ear from under the towel.
“I said, there are only two excavators in the City,” Andrei growled irritably. The lace on his right shoe had snapped, and now it was impossible to escape a conversation.
“That’s what I’m saying—they should send one over here!” the naked man protested, energetically scrubbing at one side of his hairy pigeon chest. “But with spades… Let me tell you, you have to know how to work with a spade, and how, I ask you, are we supposed to know that, if we’re from City Planning?”
“The excavators are needed somewhere else,” Andrei growled. The damned shoelace just wouldn’t tie.
“Where else is that?” asked the naked man from City Planning, pouncing immediately. “If I understand right, this here is the Great Construction Project. So where are the excavators? Gone to the Greatest Construction Project, have they? I haven’t heard about that one.”
Why the hell do I have to argue with you? Andrei thought balefully. And why am I arguing with him anyway? I ought to agree with him, not argue. If I’d backed him up a couple of times, he’d have left me in peace… No, he wouldn’t have left me in peace anyway, he’d have started talking about naked women—how good it is for his health to ogle them. Obsessive-delusional creep. “What are you beefing about, anyway?” he said, straightening up. “They only ask you to work one hour a day, but you’re whining like they were screwing a pencil up your ass… So he burst a blister! An industrial injury…”
Stunned, the naked man from City Planning stared at Andrei with his mouth half open. Skinny and hairy, with gouty little knees and a crooked little belly…
“You’re all working for your own sake, after all!” Andrei continued, furiously knotting his necktie. “They’re asking you to work for yourselves, not for someone else’s uncle! But no, they’re still dissatisfied, nothing’s right for them. Before the Turning Point he probably carted shit, but now he works in City Planning, and he’s still whining…”
He put on his jacket and started rolling up his overalls. And at that point the man from City Planning finally spoke up. “I beg your pardon!” he exclaimed resentfully. “I didn’t mean anything of the kind. I was only thinking of rationality, efficiency… You surprise me! If you’d like to know, I stormed City Hall in person! And I tell you that if this is the Great Construction Site, then the very best of everything ought to be sent here… and don’t you take the liberty of shouting at me!”
“Aah, it’s pointless trying to talk to you…” Andrei said, and walked out of the locker room, wrapping his overalls in newspaper as he went.
Selma was already waiting for him, sitting on a bench a short distance away. She was smoking pensively, looking in the direction of the foundation pit, with her legs crossed in her usual manner, fresh and pink after her shower. Andrei felt an unpleasant twinge—it could very easily have been her that the hairy little bastard was ogling and drooling over. He walked across, stopped beside her, and laid his palm on her cool neck. “Shall we go?”
She looked up at him, smiled, and rubbed her cheek against his hand. “Let’s just have a cigarette,” she suggested.
“Right,” he agreed, sitting down beside her and lighting up too.
In the foundation pit hundreds of people shuffled about, earth flew off spades, the sun flashed on polished iron. A line of drays loaded with dirt was moving across the opposite slope, and the next shift was gathering by the stacks of concrete slabs. The wind swirled around the reddish dust, carrying fragments of marches from the loudspeakers installed on concrete columns to their ears, and swaying immense sheets of plywood bearing faded slogans: “Heiger said: We must! The City replied: We shall!”; “The Great Construction Site is a blow struck at the nonhumans!”; “The Experiment—on the Experimenters!”
“Otto promised the rugs would come today,” said Selma.
“That’s good,” Andrei answered delightedly. “Take the biggest one there is. We’ll put it on the floor in the parlor.”
“I was going to put it in your study. On the wall. Remember, I said so last year, when we’d only just moved in?”
“In the study?” Andrei said thoughtfully. He imagined his study, the rug, and his guns. It looked great. “Good idea,” he said. “Right. Let’s put it in the study.”
“Only you have to call Ruhmer,” said Selma. “Get him to send a man.”
“You call him,” said Andrei. “I won’t have time… But then… OK, I’ll call. Where shall I get him to send the man? Our place?”
“No, straight to the depot. Will you be back for lunch?”
“Yes, probably. By the way, Izya’s been asking for a long time if he can come by.”
“Well, that’s great! Invite him this evening. It’s ages since we got together. And we should invite Wang, with Mei-lin…”