Then Andrei pushed the Mute aside and ran up the stairs on numb legs, to where the voices were still droning in the same way, as if nothing at all had happened.
“That’s enough!” he barked as he tore into the library hall. “Let’s get out of here!”
His voice had turned completely hoarse, and they didn’t hear him, or maybe they heard him but took no notice because they were too absorbed. It was a huge space, receding into an unbelievable distance, and the shelves stacked with books muffled all sounds. One set of shelves had been knocked over and the books from it were lying in a heap. Izya and Pak were rummaging in this heap—both of them flushed and sweaty, excited and delighted… Andrei walked across to them, striding straight over the books, grabbed them both by the collar, and jerked them up onto their feet.
“We’re getting out of here,” he said. “That’s enough. Let’s go.”
Izya cast a bleary glance at him, jerked himself free, and immediately came to his senses. He ran a rapid glance over Andrei from head to foot.
“What’s wrong with you?” he asked. “Has something happened?”
“Nothing’s happened,” Andrei said angrily. “That’s enough digging around in here. Where did you want to go? The Pantheon? So let’s go to the Pantheon.”
Pak, whom Andrei was still clutching by the collar, delicately wriggled his shoulders and cleared his throat. Andrei let go of him.
“Do you know what we found here?” Izya began excitedly, then suddenly broke off. “Listen, what has happened?”
Andrei had already pulled himself together. Everything that occurred down below seemed absolutely ludicrous and impossible up here—in this austere, airless hall, under Izya’s searching gaze, and in the presence of the imperturbably correct Pak.
“We can’t waste so much time on every site,” he said with a frown. “We’ve only got one day. Let’s go.”
“A library isn’t just any other site!” Izya immediately objected. “This is the first library on our entire route… Listen, you look terrible. Come on, what really has happened?”
Andrei still couldn’t bring himself to tell them. He didn’t know how. “Let’s go,” he growled, turning away and striding back across the books toward the way out.
Izya overhauled him, took him by the arm, and walked along beside him. The Mute in the doorway stepped aside to let them pass. Andrei still didn’t know how to begin. All the possible beginnings and all the possible words were idiotic. Then he remembered about the diary.
“You were reading me a diary yesterday…” he said as they walked down the stairs. “You know, written by that guy who hanged himself…”
“Yes?”
“Yes, yes…”
Izya stopped. “The shimmering?”
“Did you really not hear anything?” Andrei asked despairingly.
Izya shook his beard from side to side, and Pak replied in a quiet voice. “We probably got carried away. We were arguing.”
“You maniacs…” said Andrei. He convulsively caught his breath, glanced around at the Mute, and finally said it. “The statue. It came and went… It seems they wander around the City, like they were alive…”
He lapsed into silence. “Well?” Izya asked impatiently.
“Well what? That’s it.”
Izya’s expression of intent interest changed to immense disappointment. “Well, so what?” he said. “So it’s a statue… another one walked last night, so what?”
Andrei opened his mouth and closed it again.
“The Ironheads,” Pak put in. “This is obviously where the legend came from.”
Unable to utter a word, Andrei glanced from Izya to Pak and back again. Izya rounded his lips in an sympathetic expression—the penny had finally dropped—and kept trying to pat Andrei on the arm, but Pak clearly didn’t think any further explanations were needed and furtively glanced back over his shoulder into the library.
“W-Well now…” Andrei finally managed to force out. “That’s just great. So you believed it straight off?”
“Listen, calm down, will you,” said Izya, grabbing hold of his sleeve. “Of course we believed it, why wouldn’t we? The Experiment is the Experiment, isn’t it? We lost sight of that, thanks to rampant diarrhea and our constant bickering, but the fact of the matter… Lord Almighty, what’s the big deal? So they’re statues, so they walk… But we’ve got a library here! And you know what a fascinating picture it paints? The people who lived here were our contemporaries—from the twentieth century…”
“I get it,” said Andrei. “Let go of my sleeve.”
It was obvious to him now that he’d made a total fool of himself. But then, these two still haven’t seen the statue for real. I reckon they’ll change their tune when they do. But then, the Mute acted kind of strange too… “Don’t even try to persuade me,” he said. “We haven’t got time for this library right now. When we drive by with the tractors, you can load up an entire sledful. But right now we’re leaving. I promised to get back in time for taps.”
“All right, then,” Izya said soothingly. “Right, let’s go. Let’s go.”
Shit, Andrei thought uneasily as he hurried down the stairs. How could I act that way? he asked himself as he opened the entrance door and walked out into the street first, so no one could see his face. And I’m not some common soldier or crude, ignorant driver, he thought, striding over the sizzling-hot cobblestones. It’s all down to Fritz, he thought furiously. He proclaimed that there was no Experiment anymore, and I believed it… that is, I didn’t really believe it, of course, I just accepted the new ideology—out of a sense of loyalty and sworn duty… Ah, no, guys, all these new ideologies are for fools, for the masses… But we lived for four years and never even spared a thought for the Experiment, didn’t we; we were up to our eyes in other business… Making our little career… he thought scathingly. Acquiring carpets and items for our private collections…
At the intersection he slowed down for a moment and cast an oblique glance into the side street. The statue was there, gesturing menacingly with a finger fifty centimeters long, repulsively grinning with its toadish mouth. As if to say, I’ll get you, you sons of bitches!
“Is this the one?” Izya casually asked.
Andrei nodded and moved on.
They walked on and on, gradually sinking into a stupor in the heat and the blinding light, stepping on their own short, ugly shadows, with the sweat drying into a salty crust on their foreheads and temples, and even Izya had stopped yakking about how some elegant hypotheses he had constructed had been demolished, and even the tireless Pak was already dragging one foot—the sole of his boot had torn off—and from time to time even the Mute opened his black, gaping mouth, stuck out his gruesome stump of his tongue, and started panting in double-quick time, like a dog… And nothing else happened, except that once Andrei lost his grip and shuddered when he happened to look up and saw a huge, green-stained face in a wide-open window on the fourth floor, staring at him with blind, bulging eyes. Well, after all, it was a ghastly sight—an ugly face with green blotches, filling the entire window up on the fourth floor.
Then they walked out into the square.
They hadn’t come across any squares like this before. It looked like some weird kind of forest had been felled here. The square was studded all over with plinths—round, square, hexagonal, stelliform, shaped like weird abstract hedgehogs, artillery towers, and mythical beasts, made of stone, cast iron, sandstone, marble, stainless steel, and even, apparently, gold… And all these plinths were empty, except for one fifty meters ahead of them, on which a leg as tall as a man, with an exceptionally muscly calf, had been snapped off above the knee, leaving the naked foot trampling the head of a winged lion.