Lavr Fedotovich stood up. Anyone could see that he had been seriously impaired by yesterday’s lunch. Ordinary human weakness shone through his usually stony countenance. Yes, there was a crack in the granite, the bastion was breached, but despite all that he stood firm and powerful.
“The people,” began the bastion, rolling his eyes in pain. “The people do not like being locked within four walls. The people need room. The people need fields and rivers. The people need the wind and the sun.”
“And the moon,” added Khlebovvodov, loyally looking up at the bastion.
“And the moon,” Lavr Fedotovich confirmed. “The health of the people must be safeguarded, it belongs to the people. The people need work in the great outdoors. The people can not breathe without the open air.”
We didn’t understand. Even Khlebovvodov was still trying to figure it out, but the perceptive Farfurkis had already gathered his papers, packed up his notebook, and was whispering to the commandant. The commandant nodded and inquired respectfully:
“Do the people like to walk or drive?”
“The people,” announced Lavr Fedotovich, “prefer to ride in a convertible. Expressing the general consensus, I move that we postpone the present session and hold at once the field session scheduled for this evening. Comrade Zubo, take care of the details.” With those words Lavr Fedotovich fell back heavily into his chair.
Everyone started bustling. The commandant ordered the car, Khlebovvodov plied Lavr Fedotovich with mineral water, and Farfurkis dug around for the necessary documents. I took advantage of the bustle, grabbed Gabby by the leg, and threw him out. Gabby did not protest: this experience had shaken him profoundly and changed him for a long time to come.
The car arrived. Lavr Fedotovich was led out by both arms and seated in the front. Khlebovvodov, Farfurkis, and the commandant, fighting and scratching, shared the back seat with the safe containing the Great Round Seal. “The car seats five,” Eddie said worriedly. “They won’t take us.” I replied that that was fine with me, I had talked enough to last me a month. It was all a waste of time. We wouldn’t change them in a hundred years. We saved the stupid bedbug, fine, let’s go for a swim. However, Eddie said that he would not go swimming. He would follow in invisible form and try one more session—in the open air. Maybe that would be more effective.
They were shouting in the car. Farfurkis and Khlebovvodov were tangling. Khlebovvodov, who was getting sicker from the smell of the gas, demanded an immediate departure. And he was yelling that the people love fast driving. Farfurkis, feeling that he was the only businesslike person in the car, responsible for everything, maintained that the presence of a strange and untried driver had turned the closed session into an open one, and besides, according to the regulations, the absence of the scientific consultant made it impossible to have a session, so that even if it were held, it would be null and void.
“Difficulties?” inquired Lavr Fedotovich in a slightly firmer voice. “Comrade Farfurkis, get rid of them.” Farfurkis, emboldened, took to getting rid of them with zeal. And before I could blink an eye, I found myself co-opted as a temporary replacement for the scientific consultant, the driver was let go, and I was in his seat. “Go ahead, go ahead,” invisible Eddie whispered in my ear. “Maybe you’ll be of some help to me.” I was nervous and kept looking around. The car was surrounded by a crowd of kids. It was one thing to be in a room with the Troika and another thing to expose oneself in their company to the public eye.
“Can’t we go?” Khlebovvodov begged in a dying voice. “With a stiff breeze …”
“Harrumph,” said Lavr Fedotovich. “There is a motion to go. Any other motions? Driver, go.”
I started the engine and turned carefully, picking my way through the crowd of children.
At first Farfurkis drove me crazy with his backseat instructions. He wanted me to stop in no-stopping zones; or not to drive so fast, reminding me of the value of Lavr Fedotovich’s life; or to drive faster, because the breeze did not cool Lavr Fedotovich enough; or not to pay attention to the stoplights, since that undermined the authority of the Troika. But when we finally got out of the white suburbs of Tmuskorpion and into the country, when the green fields stretched before us and we could see the blue waters of a lake in the distance, and when the car bounced along on the gravel, peace descended on the car. Everyone stuck his face into the oncoming breeze, everyone squinted in the sun, and everyone felt good. Lavr Fedotovich lit up his first Herzegovina-Flor of the day, Khlebovvodov hummed an old folk song, and the commandant napped with the case files clutched to his breast.
Only Farfurkis, after a brief struggle, was able to overcome the relaxation that overtook the others. He unfurled a map of Tmuskorpion and environs and diligently marked out our itinerary, which, however, was of no use, since Farfurkis had forgotten that we were traveling by car and not by helicopter. I suggested my version: the lake, the swamp, the hill. At the lake we had to look into the case of the plesiosaur; at the swamp, to rationalize and utilize the mysterious sounds; and at the hill, to examine the so-called enchanted place.
Farfurkis, to my surprise, had no objections. It turned out that he had total confidence in my driver’s intuition, and moreover, he had always had a high regard for my abilities. He would be very happy working with me in the bedbug subcommittee, he had long had me in mind, and in general he always had our wonderful, talented youth in mind. His heart is always with youth, even though he does not close his eyes to its fundamental faults. Today’s youth does not struggle enough, does not pay enough attention to the struggle, has no desire to struggle more, to struggle to make struggling the true, primary goal of the struggle, and if our wonderful talented youth struggle so little, then they will have little chance of becoming a truly struggling youth, always involved in the struggle to become a true struggler who struggles to make the struggle …
We sighted the plesiosaur from a distance—something looking like an umbrella handle was sticking out of the water a mile from shore. I drove up to the beach and parked. Farfurkis was still struggling with grammatical permutations in the name of struggling youth, but Khlebovvodov had jumped out of the car and opened the door for Lavr Fedotovich. Lavr Fedotovich did not wish to get out. He looked benevolently at Khlebovvodov and announced that there was water in the lake, that the session was officially declared open, and that Comrade Zubo had the floor.
The commission settled in the grass around the car. The mood was somehow different. Farfurkis unbuttoned his shirt, and I took mine off, so as not to miss an opportunity to work on my tan. The commandant, breaking all the rules as he went along, rattled off the file on the plesiosaur called Liza, and nobody listened to him. Lavr Fedotovich dreamily looked at the lake, seemingly trying to decide whether the people needed it or not, and Khlebovvodov was telling Farfurkis sotto voce how he was once chairman of the Musical Comedy Theater Kolkhoz, where he used to get fifteen piglets a year from each sow. Oats rustled not twenty feet from us, cows grazed in distant pastures, and the inclination to agricultural subjects was understandable.
When the commandant had finished reading the brief section on the unexplained, Khlebovvodov made a new remark—that pleurisy was a dangerous disease and he was shocked that it was allowed to be on the loose around here. Farfurkis and I spent quite a while trying to explain that pleurisy and plesiosaurs were two entirely different things. Khlebovvodov, however, maintained his position, referring us to Ogonek magazine, which had many precise descriptions of fossilized plesiosaurs. “You can’t confuse me,” he said. “I’m a well-read man, even if I’ve had no higher education.” Farfurkis gave up, but I continued arguing until Khlebovvodov suggesting calling over the plesiosaur and asking it. “It can’t talk,” the commandant said, squatting down next to us. “It doesn’t matter,” Khlebovvodov said. “We’ll figure it out. After all, we have to see it anyway. At least this way, there’ll be some use out of it.”
“Harrumph,” said Lavr Fedotovich. “Are there any questions for th
e speaker? No? Call in the case, Comrade Zubo.”
The commandant jumped up and started running along the shore. First he shouted hoarsely: “Liza, Liza!” But since the plesiosaur seemed to be deaf, the commandant tore off his jacket and started waving it, like a shipwreck victim hailing a sail on the horizon. Liza gave no sign of life. “She’s asleep,” the commandant said in dismay. “I’ll bet she’s had her fill and she’s asleep.” He ran around and waved some more and then asked me to honk. I beeped the horn. Lavr Fedotovich, leaning over the hood, examined the plesiosaur with his opera glasses. I honked for two minutes or so and then said that any more honking would wear down the battery. The whole thing seemed hopeless.
“Comrade Zubo,” Lavr Fedotovich spoke without putting down his glasses. “Why is the case not responding?”
The commandant blanched and could not come up with a reply.
“Discipline is lacking here, too,” Khlebovvodov piped up. “You’ve let your subordinates get out of hand.”
“This is a case of undermined authority,” Farfurkis noted. “You should sleep at night and work during the daytime.”
The commandant began undressing in despair. There was no alternative. I asked him if he could swim. It turned out that he did not know how, but that it did not matter to him. “Never mind,” Khlebovvodov said bloodthirstily. “He’ll be supported by authority.” I carefully voiced my doubts about the wisdom of the planned course. The commandant would undoubtedly drown, I said, and was it really necessary, I asked, for the Troika to take on duties that had nothing to do with its function, that is, becoming a lifeguard station. Besides, I reminded them, if the commandant did drown, the goal would still remain unreached and someone else, that is either Farfurkis or Khlebovvodov, would have to swim out after the case. Farfurkis rejoined with the information that calling the cases was the function and prerogative of the representative of the local authorities, or, in his absence, of the scientific consultant. So that my words could be seen as an attack and an attempt to shift responsibility. I announced that in the present situation I was less the scientific consultant and more the driver of an official car, which I could not leave for more than a distance of twenty feet. “You should know the appendix to the Statutes of Driving on Streets and Roads,” I said accusingly, risking nothing. “Paragraph 21.” There was a tense silence. The black umbrella handle still stood lighthouse-straight on the horizon. We watched anxiously as Lavr Fedotovich’s head turned slowly, like the turret of a battleship. We were all in the line of fire, and none of us wanted to be hit.
“As God is my witness.” The commandant cracked first, kneeling in his underwear. “Jesus Christ our Savior, I’m not afraid of swimming or of drowning. But what does she care, that Liza. She’s got a gullet like a subway! She can swallow a cow! And she’ll be drowsy.”
“Actually,” Farfurkis said nervously. “Why call her? Actually, we can see from here that she presents nothing of any interest, anyway. I suggest that we rationalize her and expunge her as unnecessary.”
“Expunge her right away!” Khlebovvodov added. “So she can swallow a cow, big deal! I can swallow one, too. But try getting fifteen piglets from one. Now that’s real work!”
Lavr Fedotovich finally rolled out the artillery. However, instead of a horde of scrabbling individuals, instead of a nest of teeming, contradictory passions, instead of undisciplined spiders undermining the Troika’s authority, his sights showed him a workers’ collective, full of solidarity, enthusiasm, and zeal, burning with a single desire: to write off that scourge Liza and move on to the next problem. There was no salvo. The turret made a 180-degree turn, and the terrifying muzzles pointed at the unsuspecting umbrella handle on the horizon.
“The people,” we could hear from the conning tower. “The people look into the distance. The people see a plesiosaur. The people do not need …”
“The plesiosaur!” Khlebovvodov shot from a pistol and missed.
It turned out that the people desperately need plesiosaurs, that certain members of the Troika have lost their sense of perspective, that certain commandants have forgotten whose bread they are eating, that certain representatives of our glorious scientific intelligentsia have revealed a tendency to view the world through a glass darkly, and that, finally, Case 8 must be postponed until some winter month when it can be reached along the ice. There were no other motions, and certainly no questions for the speaker. And that was the final decision.
“Let’s move on to the next question,” announced Lavr Fedotovich, and the members of the Troika pushed their way into the back seat. The commandant was hurriedly dressing, muttering: “You’ll pay for this. I gave you the best pieces—like my own daughter, you floating pig.”
Then we took the road along the lake shore. The road was horrible, and I thanked heaven that the summer was dry, or it would have been the end of us. However, I had thanked the heavens too soon, because the closer we got to the swamp the more the road displayed a tendency to disappear and turn into two damp ruts with grass growing in them. I downshifted and tried to estimate my passengers’ physical strength. It was perfectly clear that fat, flabby Farfurkis would be of little help. Khlebovvodov looked sturdy enough, but I did not know if he had recovered sufficiently from his stomach attack. Lavr Fedoto-vich would probably not even get out of the car. That left the commandant and me if anything went wrong, because Eddie would not reveal himself just to push a two-thousand-pound car out of the mud.
My pessimistic thoughts were interrupted by a gigantic black puddle on the road. This was no bucolic, patriarchal puddle, no smalltown puddle that everyone had driven through and that was used to everything. Nor was it a muddy urban puddle, lazily spreading amid the litter of a construction site. This was a calm, cold-blooded puddle, vicious in its morbid appearance, casually stretching between the two ruts in the road, as mysterious as the eye of a sphinx, as perfidious as a wicked witch—evoking nightmarish thoughts of drowned trucks. I braked sharply.
“That’s it. We’re here.”
“Harrumph,” said Lavr Fedotovich. “Comrade Zubo, read the file.”
I could see the commandant vacillating in the silence. It was still rather far to the swamp, but the commandant could also see the puddle blocking our only approach. He sighed and rustled his papers.
“Case 38,” he read. “Surname: Blank. Name: Blank. Patronymic: Blank. Nickname: Cow’s Muck Swamp.”
“Just a minute!” Farfurkis interrupted anxiously. “Listen!”
He raised his finger. We listened, and we heard.
Somewhere in the distance silver horns sang out victoriously. The sound pulsed, grew, and seemed to come closer. The blood froze in my veins. That was the trumpeting of mosquitoes, and not even all of them were calling to battle—only the company commanders or maybe even only the battalion commanders and higher. With the mysterious inner vision of a trapped animal, we saw around us acres and acres of marshy mud, overgrown with thin sedge, covered with layers of decaying leaves, with rotten stumps sticking out here and there, all under the canopy of emaciated aspens. And all these acres, every square inch of them, had detachments of the reddish cannibals, ruthless, starved, and frustrated.
“Lavr Fedotovich!” babbled Khlebovvodov. “Mosquitoes!”
“There is a motion!” Farfurkis shouted. “To postpone the examination of this case until October … November!”
“Harrumph,” said Lavr Fedotovich in surprise. “The public doesn’t understand.”
Suddenly the air around us was filled with movement. Khlebovvodov squealed and slapped his face as hard as he could. Farfurkis replied with the same. Lavr Fedotovich started to turn slowly and in surprise, and then the impossible happened: a huge redheaded pirate landed smoothly on Lavr Fedotovich’s forehead and drove his sword right between the poor man’s eyes. Lavr Fedotovich reeled. He was shocked, he did not understand, he could not believe it. And then it really began.
Shaking my head like a horse, waving the mosquitoes away with my elbow
s, I tried to turn the car around in the narrow space between the aspen groves. Lavr Fedotovich was roaring and squirming on my right, and from the back seat came such a volley of smacks that it sounded as though a whole company of uhlans and hussars had embarked on an evening of mutual insults. By the time I had the car turned around, I was completely swollen. My ears were hot doughnuts and my cheeks were pound cakes, and there were millions of horns on my forehead.
“Forward!” they shouted from all sides. “Back! Give it gas! Get moving! I’ll have you tried, Comrade Privalov.” The motor was roaring, clumps of mud flew in all directions, and the car bounced like a kangaroo, but our speed was low, disgustingly low, and meanwhile new squadrons and armadas were taking off from innumerable airfields. The enemy was indisputably superior in the air. Everybody except me was busy indulging in furious self-criticism, even self-torture. I could not tear my hands away from the wheel, and I could not even use my legs to fight them off. I had one foot free, and with it I scratched everything it could reach. Finally we got to the lake. The road was better and it was uphill. I felt a breeze on my face. I stopped the car. I caught my breath and started scratching. I lost myself in scratching. When I did manage to stop I realized that the Troika was finishing off the commandant.
The commandant was accused of planning and executing a terrorist act. They were holding him accountable for every drop of blood lost by the Troika, and he paid dearly for each and every drop. What was left of the commandant when I could see, hear, and think again could not accurately be called the commandant anymore: a few bones, an empty stare, and a weak mumble: “As God is … In the name of Jesus Christ …”
“Comrade Zubo,” said Lavr Fedotovich finally. “Why did you stop reading the report? Please continue.”
The commandant began gathering the scattered papers from his files.
“Go right to the brief description of the unexplained,” demanded Lavr Fedotovich.
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