Then the hawthorn bush shook, and coughing, Perkhushkov spoke up unseen from the bush:
“Oh damn! Mea culpa. You people will be the death of me. We didn’t foresee possible currency operations.”
“What currency operations?” said Akhmed Khasianovich, looking around with his mad, magnificent goat eyes. Svetlana glanced at Akhmed Khasianovich, fell in love with him to the grave, and pressed herself to his breast.
“What kind, what kind,” came the shout from the bush, “forbidden ones, that’s what kind! Don’t you realize what awaits us? I sit on high, look far and wide, never close my eyes, I spy, I spy: our sister-region comrades pass through town and village, our sister-region comrades bear Tulumbass currency: its light is blinding, its quantity uncounted, in town and village they’re buying up milk and cabbage, galoshes and caramels, undermining the allowable, violating the permissible. Soon the Tulumbass comrades will set foot in the town of R., which is entrusted to my care: pillars will collapse and roofs will crack, walls will sway and the earth will yawn, the savings banks will go up in black smoke and a heavenly fire will devour the housing offices and government insurance departments if the tiniest unit of currency touches the right hand of even our lowliest compatriot. Terror, noose, and pit!” shouted the bush.
And, as if in answer to his speech, down below, at the foot of the hill, a horn rang out: it was Olga Khristoforovna announcing the assembly of all the units, which, however, weren’t there.
“There’s bad luck for you…” whispered Vasily Paramono-vich. “Or maybe it’ll work out? It seems the central authorities informed us that their currency is shells on twine. Tiny little things, yellow, with spots. Shaped like a baby’s privates. There were instructions.”
“Maybe it will work out,” the bush said, calming down. “And anyway, Akhmed Khasianovich is responsible.”
“They’re coming!” shouted Akhmed Khasianovich. The Tulumbasses walked on and on in an endless stream, breaking bushes and crushing trees.
“About five thousand,” estimated Vasily Paramonovich, swearing as nastily as a soldier.
“Tartars through and through,” said Antonina Sergeevna sadly in a very old-fashioned way, to which the Tartar Akhmed Khasianovich replied, “I beg your pardon?”
“Why are they armed?” cried the keen-eyed Perkhushkov. “I’m going to have to annihilate a few people with entries in their dossiers.”
“That’s the way he always is,” said Antonina Sergeevna. “Tries to scare you, but he’s really a kind soul. He also loves fowl. At home he’s got baby chickens and ducklings and turkey chicks. He recognizes them all and knows them by name. Feeds them himself and eats them himself. And he always writes down which one he’s eaten: Rainbow or Buck Buck or White Tail, and he pastes a photo in his album. Just like children, honestly.”
The sun broke through the clouds and shone on the gun barrels of the approaching crowd.
“Hey, it’s our guys! Soldiers!” Vasily Paramonovich laughed joyfully. “They got here on time. Bread and salt retreat! Those are our guys. There, the tanks have appeared. Lord, what a wonderful sight!”
And truly, they were our guys. They moved harmoniously, beautifully, leaving behind them an even swath, like a highway. They moved on foot and on motorcycles, on jeeps, and tanks, and Volgas, black and milk-colored, and one Mercedes, camouflaged as a train trackman’s hut.
The hut turned its back to the forest, its face to us, and from the lacquered door Colonel Zmeev emerged, glowing with unbearable male beauty.
On seeing him, Svetlana even let out a cry.
“Heigh-ho!” Colonel Zmeev greeted our leadership in English. “To your health. How many magnificent multicolored women and stylish civilians. How marvelously the sun shines and the frosty wind refreshes. How symbolic are the generous gifts of our rich earth: bread, and likewise salt. But we’re no slouches: allow me to thank you for your attention and hospitality and offer you these modest gifts, made or requisitioned by our departmental craftsmen in their rare hours of leisure. Amangeldyev! Hand out the modest gifts.”
Amangeldyev, a soldier of medium height whose face expressed constant readiness either for fright or for immediate physical pleasure, offered the box with the modest gifts and spread out on the withered grass a fringed tablecloth which was somehow instantly and densely covered with bottles of cognac and cold fish snacks.
“To your arrival!” Vasily Paramonovich clinked glasses with the guests. “Thank God. You got here in time. We had already started to worry. The aviation up there—they didn’t disappoint us, they’ve been around since morning. The sixth ocean! You get my meaning!”
“The wild blue yonder,” agreed Akhmed Khasianovich, glancing jealously at the colonel, who was thrice entwined by Svetlana. “Heavenly eagles.”
“Steel birds zoom in where tanks fear to crawl,” said Vasily Paramonovich joyfully.
“It’s not quite like that,” smiled Colonel Zmeev. “With the help of contemporary technology we can crawl in where our grandfathers never dreamed. The song’s outdated.”
“Pickles! Help yourselves to pickles! Dig in!” bustled Antonina Sergeevna, treating the guests to their own goods.
“Oh, the eternally feminine,” said Zmeev, approving Antonina Sergeevna’s fussing, and Svetlana squeezed him even harder.
Lyonechka looked at Amangeldyev, who, as a representative of a national minority and moreover a simple subordinate, had instantly endeared himself to the poet.
After a snack, the colonel distributed the gifts. Lyonechka was presented a length of green Syrian brocade 240 by 70 centimeters, which he gave straightaway to Amangeldyev for puttees. (Like a shout in the mountains, this act provoked an entire avalanche of events: Amangeldyev’s grateful relatives sent Lyonechka’s family monthly parcels of dried apricots, whetting stones, fake medicinal resin, and dark blue raisins for two years; since by that time Lyonechka had already disappeared, his flabbergasted family, suffocating under the landslide of gifts and not understanding what it owed to the unknown givers, scrupulously tried to stop this bounty with no return address. Then three of Amangeldyev’s cousins descended, wanting to rent an apartment, sell melons, buy rugs, and enter law school to become prosecutors; greeted with insufficient affection, in their view, they burned down a cooperative garage, tore up a children’s sandbox, and bent in half the linden saplings recently planted by Pioneer scouts; not having fully appreciated the effectiveness of Aunt Zina’s old connections, however, they were captured in the Hunters’ Café in the middle of bartering a suitcase full of turquoise for yellow-striped certificate rubles with a certain Gokht, for whom the police had long been searching, but this is all beside the point.) Judy received dried fish, Svetlana a pen on a granite base, and I got a Warsaw Pact Armed Forces calendar of memorable dates.
Then from the town the horn sounded once again and Olga Khristoforovna could be heard shouting through the megaphone:
“Everyone lay down your weapons! I’ll count to 3,864,881. One! Two! Three! Four! Five! Six! Seven! Eight!…”
“There’s time,” said Zmeev. “Another round of drinks—and then we’ll start shooting.”
“Shoot her, my dears, she sings songs,” complained Vasily Paramonovich.