The Place Where

by Rodion Pretis

  “And what role do you play in all this?” I asked. “Are you any secret agent?”

  - Absolutely nothing like that, monsieur Rosen. And if it were, I certainly would not tell you about it, - he blew a wisp of smoke past my left ear; I smelled burning garbage. “I am only a servant of the Commune,” he continued. “I do everything I can to bring France back to the sunlight of scientific rationalism.” Please keep in mind that we are all very grateful to you for the help you provide us.

  “And which you credit yourself with,” I added mentally.

  “I could do more if I had access to more information,” I said. What I have been given so far would not have been enough for a fundamentalist preacher to recognize sin. I needed to get a large sample in order for my plan to work.

  “I was impressed already by what I have received from you so far,” said Abalen (“Lord Jesus,” I thought, “if such a merde [40] impresses them, then everything will be easier than I I thought! ”). - Of course, this did not have great immediate tactical value. Nevertheless, even having this in our hands, we were able to at least twice do the bandwagon to the foamists in the media. Now we are conducting a propaganda campaign - ultimately this may turn out to be no less important than what our fighters do.

  “At least give me the opportunity to deal with reports that did not go through censorship,” I pulled out a handful of crumpled sheets from my trouser pocket. Two-thirds of the text was covered with black or white paint. “I will judge for myself whether the information is suitable or unsuitable!”

  “I'll see what I can do,” he answered.

  The next morning, a dull-looking frère kick threw a plastic box into my office. The papers, floppy disks and crystals dumped in it were the embodiment of chaos, but it did not bother me. I always get excited when I get a fresh source of information, but this time the excitement was more intense because the stakes were much higher than usual.

  One of the first things I found out when I finally started the analysis was the news that my old friend Major Ledua was dead. For the first time this was mentioned in an official statement made a couple of weeks ago - it stated that he was killed by letterhead. However, I did not need to sniff out for a long time to find out that in fact it was the Communards who cleaned it. I found mention of a series of denunciations of him by Abalen subordinates, and although the charges were not set out in detail, the result was nonetheless obvious. Even if by that time I had not yet begun to suspect, this alone was enough to ring a bell in my brain.

  In fact, with this news, I felt more gloomy satisfaction than surprise. Every revolution sooner or later begins to devour its own children, as someone once put it. In the Paris Commune, obviously, the meal had already begun. For me it was just what I needed; in fact, my plan depended on this.

  The next week I did not get out of the table. After everything I went through, it was a deep, almost carnal pleasure for me to be completely immersed in research. Little by little I weaved my web - not forgetting from time to time to give really stunning conclusions about what the blanks and penists were up to. It was, in general, quite easy: in comparison with most corporations, governments are no more complex than a hospital duck. In addition, neither blanks nor penists — nor the Commune, for that matter — were even governments in any of the usual meanings of the word. Therefore, not even a few days after I started my work, Abalen brought me a bottle of really good “Remy”, meaning to congratulate me on my amazing insight. I belong to lovers of bourbon rather than cognac, but nevertheless accepted the gift. It was the least that Abalen could do for me - and I was going to make sure that it stayed that way.

  After he brought me the bottle, I did not see the sergeant for two weeks. I took advantage of this respite to wander around the building, and subsequently even around the neighborhood. After a very short period of time, everyone already knew that Abalen had gotten his own agent, and no one paid particular attention to the scruffy pariah in a shabby white suit. This cast out the last doubts that might have arisen regarding the role of Abalen in the Commune: this man wore his sergeant stripes as a sheep's clothing.

  Clarifying the truth about the fate of Sissy did not create in me the determination to kill Abalen - it only deepened her. I had hardly given her even one thought since the lieutenant used me as a decoy, but then in one of the paper piles I found a list of recruits recruited in the "Dialton"; draftees were neatly divided by gender and nationality, but the names themselves were encrypted. Only one Canadian woman was on the list. At that moment, I realized that several weeks had already passed since I thought about Sissy, and felt at the top of the wall of pain, so high that it was unbearable to look down. So I returned to work and soon came across an encrypted bed allocation list - it was almost identical to the list of conscripts, but several female names were missing, including a single Canadian.

  Putting two and two together is what I do. At that moment I could not stop myself. Sissy and a number of young carefree trastafar were called upon to serve the Commune in a very specific way - it was a service of this kind, which required a boudoir rather than a bed.

  Until that moment, I tried to develop a plan where Abalen would be finished, and I myself would get out safe and sound. But when I saw this second list, I felt the unrealistic fatalism that came to me when I went out into the middle of the street, carrying a bag of ammunition, returning to me. Abalen will die, and I will die with him.

  The freedom of movement that Abalen patronized me also provided me with all the necessary opportunities to enter into the database several fresh reports from various terminals and autonomous keyboards that are not password protected, using the identification numbers I got from the uncensored reports that Abalen gave me . In these reports there was nothing striking, no, God forbid, direct hints; I even managed to imitate the terrifying grammar used by some of the Communard agents. In addition, most of the information that I put into them was easy to verify, since all this was simply written off by me from other sources or was my own, already confirmed conclusions about what the other side is doing.That is exactly what such things need to be done: as much truth as possible should be said so that a few crumbs of fabrications pass more or less unnoticed.

  It is more or less - until someone decides that all these trees must mean something, and does not stop to see the forest. I had no doubt that in this revolution, as in all others, there is a percentage of lovers to count trees.

  However, I must admit that by the end of the second week I was already quite nervous. It's nice to think that you know your job and that the result of your venture is completely predictable within your experience. However, any business carries the danger of complete failure - and if this business collapsed ... Thinking about it was unbearable.

  So I was more than a little scared when one late in the evening Abalen burst into my office with such a look, as if he had just found out that capitalism is indeed the most effective economic doctrine.

  “We need to leave, you and me,” he said.

  - where to go? I asked. I did not expect to see him again - in fact, I was hoping to read his obituary in the next pack of communard press releases.

  “I'll explain later.” Just take your notebook. “He unplugged my electronic notebook, unplugged the cables, and handed it to me.” “We need him to get through the outposts.”

  - Through the outposts?

  - Do not play a boob; do as i said! - In Abalene, apparently, the bourgeois-martinet woke up, whom I always suspected of him. “I still have to do something.” Meet me in the lobby in five minutes. And you'd better be there, Rosen, or I'll take care to get you shot.

  As a rule, I'm not so slow in thinking. I suppose that only the complete certainty that I had finished with Abalene prevented me from immediately understanding what really happened: this bastard somehow sniffed out that he was going to be charged, and decided to get away from his frères until they separated his head from the shoulders ... or in what other way there they sent to the next world those who no
longer satisfied the ideas of the Commune about projecting the past into the future.

  However, I remained out of the game for no more than a minute. My occupation teaches me to think on my feet, and I was on my own almost instantly. I slipped into Abalen's office and began to shove into my pockets everything that lay on the surface, not forgetting to grab his electronic notebook as well - it was, of course, locked, but a quick plan was forming in my head how to deal with it.

  My suit must have looked a little messy when I went out into the lobby; however, frères for the most part was not very well versed in tailor's art, so I was not surprised that no one noticed my protruding pockets.

  - What happened? I asked Abalena as soon as we were outside and walked along the polymer tiles of the pavement. He turned north - obviously heading for the fashionable northeastern arrondissements, where so far the forms prevailed.

  “One friend hinted that they were going to indict me before the Central Committee,” he replied. - Of course, in such cases there can be no question of justification.

  “Of course,” I said.

  - However, a person in such a position as mine should inevitably arouse envy among many. So, whether they will justify me or not, I am quite sure that if I allow myself to be called, the case is unlikely to end well for me. Therefore, I regret to leave my service to the revolution and the Commune. They are out of luck.

  “Why do you need me?” - Just in case, I put my hands in my pockets so that Abalen would not have too much curiosity about their shape.

  “But it seemed to me that you could not wait to return home.” - Abalen portrayed a light sympathetic moue at the corner of his mouth [41], and I could hardly resist not kicking him in the groin. “Well, and besides, of course, monsieur Rosen, you are my pass through the outposts.”

  - Of course.

  Abalen, as usual, flew on the crest of the wave, ahead of the news of the charge against him. His careless swing was enough to let us through all kinds of checkpoints and outposts that got in our way through the communal zone - they have not told anyone here that now he is an enemy of the revolution. I began to regret that I did not spread my misinformation somewhat more widely.

  “You do not want to tell me what you are going to do?” I asked him when we passed another group of much-laconic frères. - And then I feel like a person who is offered to invest money, not even allowing to look at the prospectuses.

  - Capitalist humor. Funny, ”he said. - In general, everything is quite simple. We are heading to the outpost on a relatively stable part of the front. I speak with patrols from our side, that is, from the side of the Commune. We are heading for a small reconnaissance. As soon as we pass our outpost, we dive out of sight, approach the front line of forms from a different direction, and here you already provide me with access to the blank sector. Simple, right?

  “And how will I play my part in this ingenious plan?”

  - Patience, old man. Patience. When the time comes, I will explain everything to you, but not before.

  I shrugged. The question was not whether Abalen was going to remove me, but only when and how he intended to do so. Feeling the weight of his notebook on his belt, I only hoped that he would wait for the moment when we got to the blank outposts - and then I could surprise him before he surprised me.

  Judging by the appearance of the outposts, the front line here did not change for several weeks, or maybe months. A raid of dirt and pigeon droppings accumulated on the barbed wire, which you simply can't see in the more active parts of the city. Dogs curled around the legs of the apathetic frères patrol; not a single power shell was visible. Some of them libertized somewhere the video lottery terminal and installed it right at the observation post, to which Abalen was dragging me. A canceled card stuck in the receiving slot of the terminal, which allowed playing for free, but at the same time excluding the possibility of winning;and while Abalen was slowly lying to the lieutenant, I walked over to a group of bored frères, watching the characters that flickered on the screen in meaningless sequence. Looking at all this scum that has accumulated here in a corner, it was impossible to believe that there are areas of Paris where pieces are torn from human bodies and buildings so that the most meaningless reconstruction project in the world can move with its disgusting move.

  “We have to go,” Abalen's voice came from behind me. “I hope you can tear yourself away from this exciting activity?”

  I swallowed the answer, asking for the language, and turned to follow him. He did not even deign to wait for me, and I had to trot to catch him. We ducked into a building and went down to the basement, where we spent a few unpleasant seconds in a dark, dank tunnel that revived the nightmares of my brief stay as an electric-roasted laboratory rat before appearing among the ruins of an old metro station . It seemed to me that I saw a flash of light in the distance. What is this optical sight?

  I stopped, already feeling the sniper's heavy gaze on my chest, just below the sternum, and suddenly I saw Sissy, standing exactly as I am now. Who knows how much the trastafar was sacrificed in order to drive away the blanks, after which their beds were transferred to the new owners? I felt a strange mixture of sorrow and relief - if so, then everything ended quickly for her; this was not an endless nightmare of serial rape, which seemed to my subconscious.

  Abalen did not hesitate for a second, I must admit it. Grabbing my hand, he pulled me outside, into the street. Now, being so close to freedom, I found in myself much less composure in relation to the possibility of being shot than a couple of weeks ago. Finally, we, safe and sound, were on the other side, in an abandoned apartment building, inaccessible to the views of both the Communards and the forms. It was not difficult for us to overcome another two hundred meters of picturesque ruins without substituting ourselves for anything other than electronic observation. I thought that we must get to the very outpost of forms before frères finally figure out what Abalen was up to.

  - So, what are you going to do, crossing the border of the Land of the Future and returning to the real world? I asked when he stopped in the midst of what once seemed to be a pretty courtyard. - How will a revolutionary theorist adapt to bourgeois fraud?

  “At first it seemed to me that this was a serious question, and not just another pathetic attempt to make fun,” he said. - Never try to outdo the Frenchman in barbs, monsieur. Here we are the masters.

  “Trying to flap your wings, you little shit,” I thought. - Come on, clap; the funnier it will be to watch you plop down to the ground. ”

  - The thing is, monsieur Rosen, that I am extremely easy to adapt. I will have no difficulty entering a new life. Perhaps for this I will have to leave Paris, and it will be a pity. But even if Bucharest or Buenos Aires cannot be called the City of Light, I can still feel quite satisfactory there.

  He pulled out a small gun and pointed it at me.

  - In the end, you can do economic intelligence anywhere.

  If he expected me to be shocked, then he was disappointed. At least I hope so. Honestly, I expected from him something at least a little smarter. However, I was glad that he could not come up with anything better than an exchange of personalities. Looking expectantly at me for a few moments, he frowned and waved his gun.

  “Come along, Sergeant Abalen,” he said.

  The forms, of course, had already seen us, and when we got out of the ruins and moved across the street, heading for their outpost, a well-armed meeting commission awaited us. Abalen pushed me forward and raised his hands over my head. One of the blanks in spotted overalls gestured for me to do the same.

  “I hope you guys can help me,” Abalen said when we got to the forms. His English was almost completely devoid of accent, and I threw him a few more points for it. Amazingly many talents from our sergeant! “I was held captive by these bastards for several months,” he continued. - Here is one of them. His name is Abalen. Consider this my gift to you if you call my embassy and help me get out of here.

  This caused lively negotiatio
ns among the blanks. I smiled.

  “Thank you,” I said to Abalen. “I always wanted to be famous.” - He did not leave the role; Yes, I did not expect this.

  The officer showed up. His uniform was tailored by the tailor, well-cleaned and smoothed to a crunch. He was wearing dark pilot glasses, in his hands he held an officer cane. “It's not surprising that you guys are unable to conquer the city,” I thought.

  “So, here is the notorious sergeant Abalen,” he said, looking at me.

  “I'm afraid it is not,” I objected. “But this is Abalen.” - I nodded at the sergeant.

  He portrayed a very convincing angry grimace on his face.

  - It's a lie! He cried out. “He abducted me and killed my friends!” You cannot allow it to get away with it!

  - Oh, come on! - I turned to the officer. “Is there really no one here who has seen the photograph of Abalen?” - I knew in advance the answer: like many of my former colleagues, Abalen was very serious about avoiding cameras; but now I myself played a role.