The stranger mopped off his face with a handkerchief, got up out of his chair, opened a long, flat box that was lying on the windowsill, and took some kind of dark clothing out of it.
“Come here,” he said to Maxim. “Get dressed.”
Maxim looked over at Fish.
“Go,” said Fish. “Get dressed. Must.”
Maxim realized that the long-awaited turning point in his destiny was finally arriving: someone somewhere had decided something. Forgetting Fish’s admonitions, he immediately pulled off the ugly coverall and arrayed himself, with the stranger’s help, in the new attire. To Maxim’s mind, this attire was not remarkable for either its beauty or its comfort, but it was exactly the same as what the stranger himself was wearing. He could even have surmised that the stranger had sacrificed his own spare set of clothes, since the sleeves were too short while the trousers hung down behind like a sack and kept slipping off Maxim’s hips. However, everyone else present found Maxim’s appearance in his new clothes very much to their liking. The stranger muttered something approving and Fish, softening the features of her face—as far as that is possible for a bream—stroked Maxim’s shoulders and tugged the jacket down on him, and even Floor Lamp flashed a pallid smile from his refuge behind the control desk.
“Let’s go,” the stranger said, and set off toward the door through which the enraged Hippopotamus had rushed out.
“Good-bye,” Maxim said to Fish. “Thank you,” he added in Russian.
“Good-bye,” Fish replied. “Maxim good. Healthy. Must.”
She seemed to be moved. Or perhaps she was concerned because the suit didn’t fit very well? Maxim waved to poor Floor Lamp and hurried after the stranger.
They walked through several rooms cluttered with ponderous, antiquated apparatuses, rode down to the first floor in an elevator that rattled and clanged, and arrived in the spacious, low vestibule to which Gai had brought Maxim several days earlier. And just like several days earlier, they had to wait while documents of some kind were written out, while a funny little man in a ludicrous hat scratched something on pink forms, and the red-eyed stranger scratched something on green forms, and then a young woman with optical enhancers on her eyes applied violet impressions to these forms, and everybody exchanged forms and impressions, in the process getting confused and shouting at each other, and grabbing the phone, and eventually the little man in the ludicrous hat took two green forms and one pink one for himself, tearing the pink form in half and giving one half to the girl who had applied the impressions, and the stranger with the peeling face was given two pink forms and a piece of thick blue cardboard, as well as a round metal counter with words stamped on it, and a minute later he gave all of this to a tall, strapping man with bright buttons who was standing by the exit, only twenty steps away from the little man in the ludicrous headgear, and as they were already walking out into the street, the strapping man started hoarsely shouting, and the red-eyed stranger went back again, and when he came back explained to Maxim that he had forgotten to take the square of cardboard, which he stuffed inside his jacket with a deep sigh. Only after that was Maxim, who was already streaming with sweat, allowed to get into an irrationally long automobile, taking a seat to the right of the red-eyed man, who was extremely agitated and panting hard and kept reciting Hippopotamus’s favorite mantra: “massaraksh.”
The car started growling and smoothly moved off, winding its way out through a motionless herd of other cars, all empty and wet, before driving across the large, asphalted square in front of the building, around an immense flower bed with withered flowers, past a high yellow wall with broken glass scattered along its top, and finally rolling up to the turn onto the express highway, where it braked to a sharp halt.
“Massaraksh,” the red-eyed man hissed again, and switched off the engine.
A long column of identical trucks, with bodies made of crookedly riveted, bent iron, painted in blotches, stretched out along the highway. Rows of motionless round objects with a damp metallic glint protruded above the sides of the trucks, which were moving at a leisurely pace and maintaining the correct intervals, with their engines smoothly murmuring, and diffusing an appalling stench of organic combustion products.
Maxim examined the door on his side, figured out what did what, and raised the window. Without looking at him, the red-eyed man uttered a long phrase that was absolutely incomprehensible.
“I don’t understand,” said Maxim.
The red-eyed man turned toward him with an expression of surprise and, if his intonation was anything to go by, asked a question.
“I don’t understand,” Maxim repeated.
The red-eyed man seemed even more surprised by that. He reached into his pocket and took out a flat box filled with little white sticks, stuck one of them in his mouth, and offered the others to Maxim. Out of politeness Maxim took the little box and stated examining it. The box was made of cardboard and had a pungent smell of dried plant matter of some kind. Maxim took one of the little sticks, bit off a small piece, and chewed it. Then he hastily lowered the window, stuck his head out and spat. It wasn’t food.
“Mustn’t,” he said, handing the little box back to the red-eyed man. “Tastes bad.”
The red-eyed man looked at him with his mouth half-open and the little white stick adhering to his lip and dangling from it. Following the local rules, Maxim touched the tip of his own nose with one finger and introduced himself: “Maxim.” The red-eyed man muttered something and a little flame suddenly appeared in his hand; he lowered the end of the little white stick into it, and immediately the car was filled with nauseating smoke.
“Massaraksh!” Maxim exclaimed, and indignantly flung the door open. “Mustn’t!”
He had realized what the little sticks were. In the passenger car that he traveled in with Gai, almost all the men had been poisoning the air with exactly the same kind of smoke, only they hadn’t used little white sticks to do it but long or short wooden objects that looked like children’s whistles from some ancient era. They were breathing in some kind of narcotic—undoubtedly an extremely injurious habit, and at that time, in the train, Maxim’s only consolation had been that the likable Gai was clearly also categorically opposed to this custom.
The stranger hurriedly tossed the little narcotic stick out the window and for some reason flapped his hand in front of his face. Just to be on the safe side, Maxim also flapped his hand and then introduced himself again. The red-eyed man turned out to be called Fank, and that was as far as the conversation went. They sat there for about five minutes, exchanging affable glances and taking turns pointing at the endless column of trucks and repeating “massaraksh” to each other. Then the interminable column finally came to an end, and Fank drove out onto the highway.
He must have been in a hurry. In any case, he immediately revved up the engine to a velvety roar, switched on some device that broadcast an abhorrent howling, and set off—in Maxim’s opinion completely disregarding every rule of safety—racing along the highway, overtaking the column, and barely managing to dodge the cars hurtling toward him.
They passed the column of trucks and then, almost flying out onto the roadside, passed a wide red carriage with a solitary, very wet driver; they slipped past a wooden cart on wobbling wheels with spokes, drawn by a wet fossil of an animal, drove a group of howling pedestrians wearing canvas cloaks into a ditch, and then flew under the sheltering branches of huge trees with spreading crowns, planted in neat rows on each side of the road. Fank kept increasing speed, setting the oncoming stream of air roaring through the streamlined cowling, and vehicles ahead of them, frightened by this roaring, squeezed up close against the side of the road, making way. It seemed to Maxim that the car hadn’t been designed for this kind of speed—it was too unstable—and he felt rather anxious.