‘I know what I saw,’ I told him.
‘That’s the whole fucking point! Nobody sees anything — until they know what they are seeing! There’s no such fucking thing as pure seeing. It’s always being shaped by what we know. Except it’s not what we know, it’s what we fucking think and what we presuppose and what we have been told. She doesn’t even know what she’s capable of!’
‘You’re not making sense, Jan,’ I said.
‘Excuse me, Comrade fucking Ironist. Making sense? Don’t give me that. You wouldn’t know sense if it came up and bit off your balls.’
I looked around. Red-haired man was still behind me, with his hand tucked into his own jacket. A few people were coming and going. I contemplated calling to them, but it would have been fruitless. What would I have yelled? ‘Help help!’ perhaps? I would have been taken for a drunk, and Muscovites would have averted their eyes and shuffled on.
‘If they are here, these aliens of yours,’ I said, meaning perhaps to postpone the inevitable, ‘then where are they? What are they doing?’
‘They’re making war upon us,’ said Frenkel. ‘Of course.’
‘I don’t see—’
‘They’re invading us, of course. They’re fucking softening us up. A century or so of attrition. It’s the’- dab, dab, dab — ‘battleship anchored off the coast, bombarding our fucking entrenchments. Of course they’d prefer it if we didn’t see the battleship. If we saw it, we might start firing back.’
‘Bombarding us?’
‘You don’t think the entire twentieth century is fucking evidence of the shells landing amongst us? You don’t think it’s strange that this century, out of all the previous epochs of human existence, is the one where the world goes up in fucking flames all around us?’
‘Flames? You were the one who wanted to blow up Chernobyl!’
‘The thing that’s incredible about UFOs,’ Frenkel went on, ‘is not that millions of people believe in them, but that millions don’t. It takes a continual effort of will not to see them.’
I started to reply. But Frenkel was in spate now.
‘I’m not the bad guy,’ he slurred. ‘Two roads. One of them leads to glory — a human renaissance. One led to the stars, do you understand?’ Dab, dab. ‘Not a figure of speech. The other leads to the mundane. The mundane. The fucking mundane. The bourgeois mundane.’ He seemed to be getting increasingly worked up. ‘The shitting mundane. The Yankee mundane. The deadly mundane. The defeating mundane. The appalling, appalling, appalling mundane. Into the realm of that American woman’s perceiving consciousness. The interference pattern that… fucking fuck. That fucking. Fucking.’
‘You seem to be distilling your thought down to a single word,’ I observed.
‘If only we’d taken her out of the picture…’ Dab dab. ‘Everything was in place. She’ll go back to America,’ dabbing at his twisted mouth. ‘And good riddance. Fucking reality catalyst and she’s not even aware of it herself. Coyne was right about her.’
‘You’re talking about the woman I love,’ I said.
A rasp, the sound of somebody clearing his throat.
I looked behind me. Red-hair was still standing there, his hand still menacingly inside his jacket. But directly behind him was now standing a second man: a fellow enormously bearded and dressed in an old-style black coat. There was something vaguely familiar-looking about him, but perhaps it was simply that he looked as many Russians do. Coat, beard, patient manner. ‘Good morning, comrade,’ I said to this newcomer.
‘Good morning,’ he replied.
The red-haired man started and looked around. ‘Hey? What do you want? Go on — fuck off.’
‘I’m just waiting, comrade,’ said the big-bearded man, mildly. ‘I’ll wait my turn.’
‘This is none of your business,’ said Red-hair. ‘Go on, fuck off.’
I looked about the little square. Two women, plump and middle-aged, were standing in the corner watching us; deciding, evidently, whether or not to join the queue. Because, of course, two people standing together in a Moscow street is just two people; but three people standing together must be queuing for something.
‘Whatever it is the wheelchair-bound comrade is selling,’ said Big-beard, ‘I’m sure he’ll have enough to sell to a third customer, after he’s dealt with you two.’
‘Selling?’ barked Frenkel, from his chair. ‘Fuck off!’
The two women were now making their way over towards the dry fountain.
‘Look,’ said Red-hair, bringing his hand gunless from his jacket the better to gesticulate. ‘Go away. Fuck off. This is a private matter.’
The women joined the queue. ‘What’s he got?’ asked the plumper of the two. ‘Oranges, is it?’
‘It’s not oranges!’ snapped Frenkel.
‘This is not a queue,’ insisted the red-haired man.
Big-beard looked at him. Then he turned his head to look at the two ladies queuing behind him. He looked back at us. ‘It certainly looks like a queue to me, comrade.’
‘Empirically,’ I put in, ‘I’d have to say he’s correct.’
‘What is he selling?’ asked the less plump of the two ladies.
‘Death,’ I told them, smiling.
‘Death? What is that — cigarettes, you mean? Vodka, you mean?’
‘I was hoping for oranges,’ said the plumper of the two ladies.
‘Nik, get rid of them,’ snarled Frenkel, slaver pooling in the sickle-curve of his twisted lower lip. ‘Just get rid of them! This is KGB business! Tell them!’
‘KGB business,’ said Nik, bringing out his pistol and flourishing it.
The three newcomers looked at him. ‘Since when do the KGB have to queue in the street to buy oranges?’ asked the plumper of the two women.
‘I don’t believe a word of it,’ said the less plump. ‘Shame on you, young man. You should be in Afghanistan, fighting for the Motherland, like my nephew.’
‘He wants all the oranges to himself,’ said the first woman.
More people, seeing the queue form, were starting to come across and line up. ‘What’s he selling? asked one
‘Rope,’ I said, in a loud voice. ‘Unless,’ I added, turning back to Frenkel. ‘Unless you’re saying, really, that there is no rope.’
‘There is no rope!’ barked Frenkel, spittle flying from his mouth in the sunshine like sparks. ‘There was no rope, there is no rope — you know all about that.’
‘Rope?’ said somebody, joining the queue at the back. ‘Or cord? I will buy cord. I need cord to mend the curtains in my apartment.’
‘I heard it was oranges,’ said the plumper of the two plump women behind me.
‘Nik!’ cried Frenkel. ‘Get rid of them. Shoot if you have to.’
There were now eight people queuing, and more looking on from the edge of the square. Red-haired man stepped a little to one side, so everybody could see him. ‘Listen everybody!’ he called. ‘Do you see? Do you see this gun?’
Everybody was looking at the gun. He held it in the air. Then he brought it down, and aimed it at my head. Its muzzle was no more than an inch from my temples. ‘Do you see?’ he called. ‘Do you understand?’
There was a murmur up and down the line. Three more people had joined the end of the queue.