Soon buildings sprang up, flanking the road on both sides, the car hurtled into the city, and Fank was forced to reduce speed. The first time, with Gai, Maxim had traveled through the city in a large public vehicle, crammed unbelievably full of passengers. His head was jammed against the low ceiling, people on every side were swearing and smoking, and the ones standing next to him kept callously stepping on his feet and jamming sharp corners of some kind into his sides. It was late evening, the windows hadn’t been washed for a long time, and they were splattered with mud and caked with dust. And, in addition, they reflected the light of the little lamps inside the vehicle, so Maxim hadn’t seen anything of the city. But now he was a given a chance to see it.
The streets were disproportionately narrow and completely choked with traffic. Fank’s automobile barely even crept along, boxed in on all sides by vehicles of every possible kind. The rear wall of a van, covered in gaudy, brightly colored inscriptions and crude images of people and animals, towered up in front of them. On their left two identical cars crawled along, neither overtaking nor falling back, crammed with gesticulating men and women. Beautiful, striking women, not like Fish. Farther to the left some kind of electric train trudged along with a rattling and rumbling of iron, constantly scattering blue and green sparks; it was completely choked with passengers, who were hanging out of all the doors in bunches. On the right there was a sidewalk, a motionless strip of asphalt where traffic was forbidden. People wearing wet clothes in various tones of black and gray were walking along the sidewalk in a dense stream, colliding with each other, overtaking each other, dodging away from each other, forcing their way forward with their shoulders, continually running in through open, brightly lit doorways and mingling with the seething crowds behind immense misted-up windows, and sometimes suddenly gathering into large groups, creating blockages and whirlpools, craning their necks and peering at something or other. There were very many thin, pale faces, very similar to Fish’s face, and almost all of them were unattractive, morbidly scrawny, excessively pale, haggard, and angular. But they gave the impression of contented people; they laughed frequently and willingly, they acted spontaneously, their eyes glowed, and their voices rang out, loud and lively, on all sides. Perhaps this is a fairly successful world after all, Maxim thought. In any case, although the streets are dirty, at least they’re not piled high with garbage, and the buildings look quite cheerful; almost all the windows have a light in them because the day is overcast, and that means they obviously have no shortage of electricity. The advertising announcements glitter quite merrily, and as for the haggard faces, with this level of street noise and this level of air pollution, you could hardly expect anything else. It’s a poor world, poorly organized, and not entirely healthy… but outwardly at least it appears to be fairly successful.
Suddenly something about the street changed. Agitated shouts rang through the air. A man climbed up a streetlamp, hung there, and started strenuously shouting, waving his free hand around. The crowd on the sidewalk started singing. People stopped, tearing off their hats, rolling up their eyes, and singing, shouting themselves hoarse, raising their narrow faces toward the huge multicolored inscriptions that had suddenly blazed into life across the street.
“Massaraksh,” Fank hissed, and the car abruptly swerved.
Maxim looked at Fank. He was deathly pale and his face was contorted. Shaking his head around, he lifted one hand off the oval of the steering wheel with a struggle and stared at his watch. “Massaraksh,” he groaned, and added several more words, but the only ones Maxim could recognize were “I don’t understand.” Then Fank looked back over his shoulder, and his face contorted even more agonizingly. Maxim looked back too, but there was nothing special behind them. Just a completely enclosed bright yellow vehicle, like a square box, moving along the street.
The shouting in the street was completely unbearable now, but that wasn’t what bothered Maxim. Fank was obviously losing consciousness, but the car was still moving. The van in front of them braked, its signal lights lit up, and the brightly daubed wall suddenly leaped toward them; there was a repulsive scraping sound and a dull thud, and the car’s warped hood stood up on end.
“Fank!” Maxim shouted. “Fank! Mustn’t!”
Fank lay there with one hand and his head lowered onto the steering wheel, groaning loudly and frequently. All around them brakes squealed as the traffic came to a standstill and horns sounded. Maxim shook Fank by the shoulder, then let go of him, swung his own door open, stuck his head out, and shouted in Russian, “Over here! He needs help!” A singing, yelling, clamoring crowd of people had already gathered by the car, energetically gesturing and brandishing their fists in the air above their heads. Maxim saw dozens of pairs of glaring, bloodshot eyes rolling around in their sockets. He didn’t understand anything at all; either these people were outraged by the accident, or they were delighted to distraction about something, or they were threatening somebody.
It was pointless to shout—he couldn’t even hear himself—and Maxim turned back to Fank, who was lying slumped back with his head dangling, kneading his temples, cheeks, and cranium with all his might, and there was saliva bubbling out between his lips. Maxim realized that Fank was suffering intolerable pain; he took a firm hold of Fank’s elbows, hurriedly bracing himself in order to transfuse the pain into himself. He wasn’t sure that it would work with a being from a different planet—he couldn’t find the nerve contact he was looking for—and then Fank suddenly tore his hands away from his temples and started pushing Maxim in the chest with what little strength he had left, desperately muttering something in a tearful, wailing voice. The only thing Maxim could understand was: “Go, go…” Fank was obviously raving.
At that point the door beside Fank swung open and two flushed faces, crowned by black berets and surmounting rows of glinting metal buttons, were thrust into the car. Immediately a multitude of firm, strong hands grabbed Maxim by his shoulders, sides, and neck, tore him away from Fank, and dragged him out. He didn’t resist—there was no menace or evil intent in these hands, quite the opposite in fact. He was dragged away into the crowd, and from there he saw the two men in berets leading Fank, doubled over, to the yellow vehicle, and another three men in berets driving the people who were waving their arms around away from him. And then the crowd roared as it closed around the crippled car, which awkwardly stirred, rising up and turning on its side, so that Maxim briefly glimpsed its wheels slowly turning in the air, and then it was already lying on its roof, and the crowd was clambering onto it, and everybody was shouting and singing, and they were all in the grip of some strange, rabid, frenzied merriment.
Maxim was forced back toward the wall of a building and pressed up against the wet glass of a shop window. Craning his neck to look over people’s heads, he saw the square yellow automobile, covered with a multitude of bright, glittering lights, start moving with a brassy screech, force its way through the crowd of people and vehicles, and disappear from sight.