The man with the mustache said something, and Rada walked over to his table. They struck up a muted conversation, ill tempered and hostile, but at that point a fly attacked Maxim, and he had to do battle with it. The fly was brawny, blue, and brazen, and it seemed to come flying at Maxim from all sides at once; it buzzed and droned as if it were making a declaration of love to him; it refused to fly away, it wanted to be here, with him and his plate, walking over them and licking them; it was obstinate and garrulous. The whole business finished with Maxim making a false move and the fly crashing into his beer. Maxim fastidiously moved the mug to another table and set about eating the stew.
Rada came over and asked him something without smiling, looking off to the side. “Yes,” said Maxim, just to be on the safe side. “Rada is good.”
She glanced at him in undisguised fright, walked away to the barrier, and came back, carrying a shot glass of brown liquid on a saucer.
“Tastes good,” said Maxim, giving the girl an affectionate, concerned look. “What’s bad? Rada, sit here, talk. Must talk. Mustn’t go away.”
This carefully thought-out oration produced an unexpectedly bad impression on Rada. Maxim actually thought she was going to burst into tears. In any case, her lips started trembling, and she whispered something and ran out of the room. The pudgy woman behind the barrier uttered several indignant words. I’m doing something wrong, Maxim anxiously thought. But he absolutely couldn’t imagine what it was. All he understood was that neither the man with the mustache nor the pudgy woman wanted Rada to “sit and talk” with him. But since they were obviously not representatives of public authority or guardians of the law, and since Maxim was obviously not breaking any laws, there was probably no need to take the opinion of these disgruntled individuals into consideration.
The man with the mustache muttered something under his breath but with a distinctly unpleasant intonation, finished his glass in a single gulp, took a thick, black, lacquered cane out from under the table, got up, and unhurriedly walked across to Maxim. He sat down facing him, set the cane across the table, and, without looking at Maxim but clearly addressing him, started straining slow, heavy words through his teeth, frequently repeating the word “massaraksh.” His speech seemed as black and polished by frequent use as his ugly cane; this speech contained a distinct, black threat, and a challenge, and animosity, and all of this was strangely blurred by the indifference of his intonation, the indifference on his face, and the vacancy of his glassy eyes.
“I don’t understand,” Maxim said angrily.
Then the man with the mustache turned his pale face toward Maxim, seeming to look straight through him, slowly asked a question, enunciating every word separately, then suddenly whipped a knife with a long, narrow, glittering blade out of the cane. Maxim was actually caught unawares. Not knowing what to say or how to react, he picked up the fork off the table and twirled it in his fingers. That had an unexpected effect on the man with the mustache, who softly sprang back, knocking over his chair, but without standing up; he awkwardly squatted down, holding the knife out in front of him. His mustache rose up, revealing his long, yellow teeth.
The pudgy woman behind the barrier gave an ear-splitting squeal, and Maxim jumped to his feet in surprise. The man with the mustache was suddenly right up close to him, but at that very second Rada appeared out of nowhere, set herself between the man and Maxim, and started shouting loudly and vehemently—first at the man with the mustache and then, turning around, at Maxim. At this stage Maxim understood absolutely nothing at all, but the man with the mustache suddenly gave a gruesome smile, picked up his cane, hid the knife in it, and set off toward the exit. In the doorway he looked back, flung out a few words in a quiet voice, and disappeared.
Pale-faced, with her lips trembling, Rada picked up the fallen chair, wiped up the spilled brown liquid with a napkin, collected the dirty dishes and took them away, then came back and said something to Maxim. Maxim replied, “Yes,” but that didn’t help. Rada repeated the same thing, and her voice sounded angry, but Maxim sensed that she was less angry than frightened. “No,” Maxim said, and the woman behind the barrier immediately started yelling, with her cheeks quaking, and then Maxim finally confessed, “I don’t understand.”
The woman darted out from behind the barrier and flew across to Maxim, without stopping yelling even for a second. She planted herself in front of him with her hands propped on her hips, still yelling. Then she grabbed hold of his clothes and started crudely rifling through his pockets. Maxim was dumbfounded and didn’t try to resist. He simply kept repeating, “Mustn’t,” and plaintively glancing at Rada. The pudgy woman shoved him in the chest and, as if she had made some terrible decision, rushed back to her place behind the barrier and grabbed the receiver of the phone there. Maxim realized that he had been discovered not to have all those pink and green pieces of paper with lilac imprints, without which it was apparently not permitted to appear in public spaces here.
“Fank!” he declared with feeling. “Fank is unwell! Go. Bad.”
But then the situation was unexpectedly defused. Rada said something to the pudgy woman, who dropped the phone, carried on clucking for a little longer, and calmed down. Rada sat Maxim in his old place, put a new mug of beer down in front of him, and, to his indescribable delight and relief, sat down beside him. For a while everything went very well. Rada asked questions, Maxim, glowing with delight, replied, “I don’t understand,” and the pudgy woman muttered in the distant background. Focusing intensely, Maxim constructed another phrase and declared that “rain falls massaraksh bad mist.” Rada burst into laughter, and then another young and rather pretty girl arrived and said hello to everybody, she and Rada left the room, and a little while later Rada appeared without her apron, wearing a glittering red cape with a hood and carrying a large check bag.
“Let’s go,” she said, and Maxim jumped to his feet. But they weren’t allowed to leave just like that. The pudgy woman raised a hue and cry again. There was something else she didn’t like, and she started demanding something. This time she was waving a pen and a sheet of paper in the air. Rada argued with her for a while, but the second girl came up and took the woman’s side. They were making an obvious point of some kind, and Rada eventually conceded defeat. Then all three of them started pestering Maxim. At first they kept asking one and the same question separately and in chorus, and Maxim, naturally, didn’t understand. He merely shrugged. Then Rada told everyone to be quiet, gently patted Maxim on the chest, and asked, “Mak Sim?”
“Maxim,” he corrected her. “Maxim. Mak—mustn’t. Sim—mustn’t. Maxim.”
Then Rada set her finger to her nose and said, “Rada Gaal. Maxim…”
Maxim finally realized that for some reason his surname was required, which was strange in itself, but he was far more surprised by something else. “Gaal?” he blurted out. “Gai Gaal?”
Everyone fell silent. They were all astounded.