All this was typed with carbon paper—the third or even fourth copy. And below it was a note added by hand:
Dear Voronin, good-bye!
I’m going to blow myself up today at 1300 in the plaza in front of the Glass House. If this letter doesn’t arrive too late, you can watch it happen, but don’t try to stop me—that would only cause unnecessary casualties.
Andrei raised his eyes and saw Amalia. “Do you remember Denny?” he asked. “Denny Lee, our letters editor…”
Amalia nodded without speaking, then her face suddenly crumpled in horror. “It’s not possible!” she said hoarsely. “It’s not true…”
“He blew himself up,” said Andrei, finding it hard to move his lips. “Probably strapped dynamite around himself. Under his jacket.”
“What for?” said Amalia. She bit on her lip and tears welled up in her eyes, overflowing and running down her little white face and hanging from her chin.
“I don’t understand,” said Andrei. “I don’t understand anything…” He stared blankly at the letter. “We saw each other not long ago… Sure, we cussed and swore at each other; sure, we quarreled…” He looked at Amalia again. “Maybe he tried to get in to see me? Maybe I wouldn’t see him?”
Amalia put her hands over face and shook her head.
And suddenly Andrei felt anger. Not even anger but the same furious exasperation he had felt earlier that day in the locker room after his shower. What the hell! What more do they damn well want? What else do they need, these riffraff? The idiot! What has he proved with this? He doesn’t want to be a swine, he doesn’t want to be a swineherd… He’s bored! Well you can go to hell and take your damned boredom with you! “Stop bawling!” he yelled at Amalia. “Wipe off your nose and get back to your place.”
He tossed the sheet of paper away, jumped up, and went over to the window again.
A huge, dark crowd filled the plaza. At the center of the crowd was an empty, gray space, cordoned off by light blue uniforms, with people in white coats swarming about in it. An ambulance was hysterically howling with its siren, trying to clear a path for itself…
And just what have you really proved? That you don’t want to live with us? What did you have to prove that for, and to whom? That you hate us? You shouldn’t. We do everything that has to be done. It’s not our fault they’re swine. They were swine before us, and they’ll still be swine after us. We can only feed and clothe them, and relieve them of brutish animal suffering, but they’ve never known any spiritual suffering in their lives and they never can. Have we done so very little for them? Look what the City is like now. Clean and orderly, without a trace of the old shambles, chow to spare, duds to spare, soon there’ll be amusements to spare, just give us time—and what else do they need? And you, what have you achieved? Now the ambulance men will scrub your guts off the asphalt—and you’re done… But we have to keep on and on working, keeping the whole behemoth moving, because everything we’ve achieved so far is only the beginning—it still has to be secured, my friend, and once it has been secured, increased… Because maybe on Earth there’s neither God nor devil standing above people, but here there is… You stinking democrat, populist weasel, the brother of my brothers…
But Denny was still there in front of his eyes, the way he was the last time they met, a month or two ago—completely withered somehow, ground down, as if he were ill, and some kind of secret horror was lurking in his sad, extinct eyes—and the words he said right at the end of their rowdy, senseless argument, after he had already gotten up and tossed the crumpled bills onto the little silver dish: “God, what have you been bragging about to me? He’s laying his life on the altar… What for? To stuff people’s bellies! But is that really the goal? In crummy little Denmark they’ve known how to do that for years and years already. OK, so maybe I don’t have the right, as you put it, to crucify myself in the name of everyone. Maybe not everyone knows, but you and I certainly do—that’s not what people need; you’ll never build a genuinely new world that way!”
“And just how, damn and blast it, do you build it? How?” Andrei had bellowed, but Denny merely waved that aside and wouldn’t talk anymore after that.
The white phone rang. Andrei reluctantly went back to the desk and picked it up.
“Andrei? This is Heiger here.”
“Hello, Fritz.”
“Did you know him?”
“Yes.”
“And what do you think about this?”
“A hysterical wimp,” Andrei said through his teeth. “Trash.”
Heiger said nothing for a moment. “Did you get a letter from him?”
“Yes.”
“A strange man,” said Heiger. “All right, then. I’m expecting you at two.”
Andrei put down the receiver, and the phone rang again. This time it was Selma calling. She was badly shaken. Rumors of the explosion had already reached White Court; naturally, along the way they had been distorted beyond all recognition, and now all White Court was in a state of quiet panic.
“Fine, everyone’s safe and sound,” said Andrei. “I’m fine, and Heiger’s fine, and the Glass House is fine… Did you call Ruhmer?”
“To hell with Ruhmer!” Selma exclaimed, infuriated. “I ran back from the salon almost out of my mind—Madam Dolfuss burst in, as white as a ghost, and set the walls shaking, howling that someone had tried to kill Heiger and half the building had been blown to pieces…”
“Oh, come on,” Andrei said impatiently. “I haven’t got time.”
“Can you tell me what happened?”
“Some psychopath—” Andrei stopped, realizing what he was saying. “Some blockhead was lugging explosives across the plaza and he dropped them, probably.”
“It definitely wasn’t an assassination attempt?”
“I don’t know, do I? Ruhmer’s handling it, but I don’t know anything.”
Selma breathed into the phone for a while. “You’re just lying, probably, Mr. Counselor,” she said, and hung up.
Andrei walked around the desk and glanced out into the reception office. Amalia was in her place—stern, with her lips pursed, absolutely unapproachable—and her fingers were flying over the keyboard at her usual furious speed; not a trace was left on her face of tears, snot, or any kind of emotion. Andrei looked at her tenderly. That’s my girl. Screw you, Vareikis, he thought with boundless malice. I’ll throw you out on your ass first… His view of Amalia was suddenly blocked off. Obsequiously looming over him at a superhuman height was a face, squashed in from both sides, that belonged to Ellisauer from the transport department.
“Ah,” said Andrei. “Ellisauer… I’m sorry, I won’t see you today. Tomorrow, first thing in the morning, please.”
Without saying a word, Ellisauer bowed, breaking himself in half, and disappeared. Amalia was already standing with her notepad and pencil at the ready. “Mr. Counselor?”