Andrei really loved this question. He’d invented the answer to it a very long time ago, and even written it down in his notebook, subsequently using it repeatedly in conversations with various girls.
“The most frightening thing?” he repeated, to pick up momentum. “The most frightening thing is this. Imagine it: the tent, the night, desert all around, absolutely no one, wolves howling, hailstones falling, a stormy wind…” He paused and looked at the Mentor, who was leaning forward, listening. “Hailstones, you understand? The size of a hen’s egg… And you have to go out to relieve yourself.”
The tense anticipation on the Mentor’s face was replaced by a rather perplexed smile, and then he burst into laughter. “Very funny,” he said. “Did you make that up yourself?”
“Yes, I did,” Andrei said proudly.
“Good for you, that’s funny…” The Mentor laughed again, wagging his head. Then he sat down in the armchair and started looking at the garden. “This is a nice place you have here, in the White Court,” he said.
Andrei turned around and also looked at the garden: green foliage drenched in sunlight, butterflies fluttering above flowers, apple trees standing motionless, and about two hundred meters away, behind some lilac bushes, the white walls and red roof of the next cottage… And Wang in his long white shirt, striding along, calm and unhurried, behind the spluttering lawn mower, with his youngest toddling along beside him, clutching his trouser leg…
“Yes, Wang has found peace,” the Mentor said. “Perhaps he really is the happiest man in the City.”
“That could very well be,” Andrei agreed. “In any case, I wouldn’t say that about my other acquaintances.”
“Well, that’s the circle of acquaintances you have now,” the Mentor rejoined. “Wang is the exception among them. I’d even say quite simply that he’s a man of a different circle. Not yours.”
“Uh-huh,” Andrei drawled pensively. “But after all, there was a time when we toted garbage together, sat at the same table, drank from the same mugs…”
The Mentor shrugged. “Everyone receives what he deserves.”
“What he achieves,” Andrei muttered.
“You can put it that way if you like—it’s the same thing. After all, Wang always wanted to be right down at the bottom. The East is the East. Beyond our comprehension. And so your paths have parted.”
“The most amusing thing,” said Andrei, “is that I still enjoy being with him as much as I used to. We always have something to talk about, something to remember… When I’m with him, I never feel awkward.”
“But does he feel awkward?”
Andrei thought for a moment. “I don’t know. But probably yes. Sometimes I get the feeling he makes a great effort to keep well away from me.”
The Mentor stretched, cracking his fingers. “But is that really the point?” he asked. “When you and Wang sit down with a bottle of vodka and you recall how things used to be, Wang relaxes, you must agree. But when you and the colonel sit down with a bottle of scotch, do either of you really relax?”
“Relaxation’s irrelevant,” Andrei mumbled. “What relaxation? I simply need the colonel. And he needs me.”
“And when you have lunch with Heiger? And when you drink with Dolfuss? And when Chachua tells you his new jokes over the phone?”
“Yes,” said Andrei. “That’s the way it all is. Yes.”
“Probably Izya’s the only one you’re still on the same terms with, and even then…”
“Precisely,” said Andrei. “And even then.”
“Uh-uh, there’s no question about it!” the Mentor exclaimed emphatically. “Just picture it to yourself: the colonel’s sitting right here, the deputy chief of staff of your army, an old English aristocrat from a glorious noble line. Dolfuss is sitting here, the counselor for construction, once a famous engineer in Vienna. And his wife, a baroness, a Prussian Junker. And sitting facing them is Wang. A caretaker.”
“Yep, yep,” said Andrei. He scratched the back of his head and laughed. “It does seem kind of tactless.”
“No, no! Forget about the official tact, that doesn’t matter. Just imagine what Wang will feel in this situation—what will it be like for him?”’
“I understand, I understand…” said Andrei. “I understand… It’s all a load of hokum anyway! I’ll invite him tomorrow, we’ll sit down and spend some time together, just the two of us, Mei-lin and Selma will rustle up some kind of ch’ih-fan for us, and I’ll give the little boy a Bull Dog—I have one without a firing hammer…”
“You’ll have a drink together!” the Mentor continued. “Tell each other something about your lives—he has plenty that he could tell you, and you’re good at telling a story too, and he doesn’t know anything about Penjikent, or Kharbas… It will be wonderful! I even slightly envy you.”
“You come as well,” Andrei said, and laughed.
The Mentor laughed too. “I shall be with you in my thoughts,” he said.
Just then the front doorbell rang. Andrei looked at his watch—it was precisely 7:00. “That has to be the colonel,” he said, and jumped to his feet. “Shall I go?”
“Why, naturally!” said the Mentor. “And I ask you, please, in the future never forget that there are hundreds of thousands of Wangs in the City, but only twenty counselors…”
It really was the colonel. He always arrived precisely at the agreed-upon time, and consequently was always first. Andrei met him in the hallway, shook his hand, and invited him into the study. The colonel was in civilian dress. His light gray suit sat on him as dapperly as on a mannequin, his sparse gray hair was neatly combed, his shoes gleamed, and so did his smoothly shaved cheeks. He was short and lean, with good posture, but at the same time slightly relaxed, without the woodenness so typical of the German officers that the army was awash with.
Once inside the study, he stopped in front of the rug, clasped his dry, white hands behind his back, silently surveyed the crimson and black magnificence in general and the weapons hanging on that background in particular. Then he said “Oh!” and gave Andrei an approving look.
“Have a seat, Colonel,” said Andrei. “A cigar? Whiskey?”
“Thank you,” said the colonel, sitting down. “A little drop of good cheer wouldn’t come amiss.” He took a pipe out of his pocket. “Today has been a frantic day,” he declared. “What happened on the plaza outside your place? I was ordered to put the barracks on alert.”
“Some blockhead or other,” said Andrei, rummaging in the bar, “collected some dynamite from the depot and couldn’t find any better place to stumble than under my window.”
“So there wasn’t an assassination attempt, then?”
“Good Lord, Colonel!” Andrei said, pouring the whiskey. “This isn’t Palestine, after all.”
The colonel chuckled and accepted a glass from Andrei. “You’re right. In Palestine no one was surprised by incidents of that sort. Or in Yemen either…”
“So they put you on alert?” Andrei asked, sitting down with his glass opposite the colonel.
“Oh yes indeed.” The colonel took a sip from his glass, thought for a moment with his eyebrows raised, carefully set down the glass on the telephone table beside him, and started filling his pipe. He had old man’s hands, covered in silvery fluff, but they didn’t tremble.
“And what was the force’s combat readiness like?” Andrei inquired, also sipping from his glass.
The colonel laughed again, and Andrei felt a momentary envy—he would really love to know how to laugh in the same way. “It’s a military secret,” said the colonel. “But I’ll tell you. It was terrible. I never saw the like, even in the Yemen. Ah, never mind the Yemen! I never saw the like, even when I was training those black chappies in Uganda! Half the men weren’t even in the barracks. Half of the other half turned out for the alert without their weapons. And those who did turn out with their weapons didn’t have any ammunition, because the commanding officer of the munitions store had gone off with the keys to work his hour at the Great Construction Site.”