Doomed City

by Arkady Strugatsky

  To smooth over the incident, they drank another glass. Andrei’s head started spinning. He was vaguely aware that he was fiddling with the phonograph, and he was going to drop it in a moment, and the phonograph really did fall to the floor, but it wasn’t damaged at all—quite the opposite. It seemed to start playing even louder. Then he was dancing with Selma, and Selma’s sides turned out to be warm and soft, and her breasts were unexpectedly firm and large, which was one helluva of a pleasant surprise—finding something beautifully formed under those formless folds of prickly wool. They danced, and he held on to her sides, and she took his cheeks in her open palms and said he was a really nice boy and she really liked him, and in his gratitude he told her that he loved her and he had always loved her, and now he’d never let her get away from him again . . . Uncle Yura slammed his fist into the table, proclaiming, “I feel a sudden chill in here, time for another glass of cheer.” Then he put his arms around Wang, who had completely wilted by this stage, and kissed him three times in the Russian fashion. Then Andrei found himself in the middle of the room, and Selma was sitting at the table again, throwing bread pellets at apathetic Wang and calling him Mao Tse-tung. That put Andrei in mind of the song “Moscow-Peking” and he immediately performed that beautiful composition with exceptional passion and fervor, then he and Izya Katzman suddenly found themselves standing, staring wide-eyed at each other, lowering their voices deeper and deeper in a sinister whisper and holding up their index fingers as they repeated, over and over: “Lis-tening to us! Lis-tening to us!” After that he and Izya somehow found themselves crammed into a single armchair, with Kensi sitting on the table in front of them, dangling his legs, while Andrei fervently tried to persuade him that he, Andrei, was willing to perform any kind of work here—that any work at all gave him especial satisfaction, and he felt just great working as a garbage collector. “Here I am—a garb- . . . age col-lector!” he exclaimed, enunciating the words with a struggle. “A grab- . . . grabbage collector!”

  And Izya, spitting in Andrei’s ear, kept harping on about something unpleasant, something offensive: saying that Andrei actually experienced a sweet humiliation from being a garbage collector (“Yes . . . I’m a grab-bage collector!”), that he was so intelligent, so well read and capable, fit for much greater things, but even so he bore his heavy cross with patience and dignity, unlike certain others . . . Then Selma appeared, bringing him immediate consolation. She was soft and affectionate, and she did everything he wanted, and she didn’t contradict him, and at that point there was a sweet, devastating gap in his sense impressions, and when he surfaced from out of that gap, his lips were puffy and dry and Selma was already sleeping on his bed. He straightened her skirt with a paternal gesture, flung the blanket over her, adjusted his own attire appropriately, and went back out into the dining room, trying to walk with a brisk stride and stumbling on the way over the outstretched legs of poor Otto, who was sleeping on a chair in the hideously uncomfortable pose of a man killed by a shot to the back of the neck.

  Towering up on the table was the large carboy itself, and all the revelers were sitting there, propping up their tousle-haired heads and warbling in a soft-voiced chorus, “In the desolate depths of the steppe a coachman was freezing . . .” and large tears were rolling down out of Fritz’s pale, Aryan eyes. Andrei was about to join in when there was a knock at the door. He opened it, and a woman wrapped in a shawl, dressed in her underskirt with boots on her bare feet, asked if the caretaker was here. Andrei shook Wang awake and explained to him where he was and what was required of him. “Thanks, Andrei,” Wang said after listening carefully to him, and left, feebly shuffling his feet. The others finished singing the song about the coachman in the steppe, and Uncle Yura suggested a drink “to folks at home not grieving,” but then it turned out that Fritz was asleep, so he couldn’t clink glasses. “That’s it, then,” said Uncle. “That means this will be the last one . . .” But before they drank one last glass, Izya Katzman, who had suddenly turned strangely serious, rendered one more solo—a song that Andrei didn’t entirely understand, but apparently Uncle Yura understood it perfectly well. The song included the refrain “Ave Maria” and an absolutely appalling verse that seemed to come from a different planet:

  They sent the prophet up the river a short while later,

  And in the Komi Republic he gave up the ghost.

  The labor union committee gave the dour investigator

  A free month in Teberda for devotion to his post.

  When Izya finished singing, there was silence for a while, then Uncle Yura abruptly smashed his massively heavy fist into the tabletop and swore at length in exceptionally florid style, following which he grabbed a glass and started swigging from it without any toasts at all. And Kensi, following some strange association that only he could understand, performed another song in an extremely unpleasant, squeaky, and vehement voice, about how, if the Japanese soldiers were all to start pissing at once against the Great Wall of China, a rainbow would appear above the Gobi Desert; about how the imperial army was in London today, tomorrow it would be in Moscow, and the next morning it would drink tea in Chicago; that the sons of Yamato had settled the banks of the Ganges and were catching crocodiles with fishing rods. Then he fell silent, tried to light a cigarette, broke several matches, and suddenly out of the blue told them about a little girl he used to be friends with in Okinawa—she was fourteen years old, and she lived in the house opposite his. One day some drunken soldiers raped her, and when her father went to the police to complain, gendarmes showed up and took him and the girl away, and Kensi never saw them again . . .

  Nobody was saying anything when Wang stuck his head into the dining room, called Kensi’s name, and beckoned to him.

  “That’s the way things go,” Uncle Yura said gloomily. “And just look: the same thing in the West, and back home in Russia, and in the yellow-skinned countries—the same story everywhere. Power is unjust. Ah, no, brothers, what would I want to go back there for? I’d rather be here.”

  Kensi came back, pale-faced and preoccupied, and started looking for his belt. His uniform tunic was already fully buttoned.

  “Has something happened?” Andrei asked.

  “Yes. Something has happened,” Kensi replied in a crisp, staccato voice, adjusting his holster. “Donald Cooper shot himself. About an hour ago.”

  PART II

  1

  Andrei suddenly had a headache from hell. He crushed his cigarette butt into the overflowing ashtray with a sense of loathing, pulled out the middle drawer of his desk, and looked to see if there were any tablets in there. There weren’t any. Just a massive army pistol lying on top of a jumble of old documents and little tattered cardboard boxes of assorted petty stationery items lurking in the corners, plus a littering of gnawed pencil stumps, tobacco crumbs, and broken cigarettes. All this only made his headache worse. Andrei slammed the drawer shut, propped his head up with his hands over his face, and started watching Peter Block through the cracks between his fingers

  Peter Block, a.k.a. Tailbone, was sitting a short distance away on a stool, with his red mitts calmly folded together on his knees, blinking indifferently and licking his lips from time to time. He clearly didn’t have a headache, but it was obvious that he was feeling thirsty. And he probably wanted a smoke too. Andrei tore his hands away from his face with an effort, poured himself some lukewarm water from a carafe, and drank half a glassful, subduing a mild spasm. Peter Block licked his lips. His gray eyes were as inexpressive and empty as ever. His massive, gristly Adam’s apple set off on a long glide down the skinny, grubby neck protruding from his unbuttoned shirt collar and then bobbed back up to his chin.

  “Well?” said Andrei.

  “I don’t know,” Tailbone replied hoarsely. “I don’t remember anything like that.”

  You bastard, thought Andrei. You animal. “So what’s this you’ve told us?” he asked. “You hit the grocery store on Wool Lane; you remember when you hit it, you remember
who you hit it with too. Good. You hit Dreyfus’s café, and you remember when you hit it and who with as well. But for some reason you’ve forgotten about Hofstadter’s shop. And that was your latest job, wasn’t it, Block?”

  “I really couldn’t say that, Mr. Investigator,” Tailbone responded with excruciatingly loathsome politeness. “I beg your pardon, but that’s just someone trying to set me up. Since we quit after the Dreyfus place, you know, since we chose the path of complete rehabilitation and socially useful employment, well, since then I haven’t done any more jobs of that kind.”

  “Hofstadter identified you.”

  “I really do beg your pardon, Mr. Investigator”—the note of irony in Tailbone’s voice was clearly audible now—“but Mr. Hofstadter is a bit screwy, after all, everybody knows that. So he’s got everything confused, hasn’t he? I’ve been in his shop, sure I have—to buy a few potatoes or onions . . . I noticed before that he wasn’t quite right in the head, begging your pardon, and if I’d known how things would turn out, I’d have stopped going to his place. I mean, just look, would you ever . . . ?”

  “Hofstadter’s daughter also identified you. It was you who threatened her with a knife, you in person.”

  “It never happened. Something did happen, but it wasn’t anything like that. It was her that set the knife against my throat, that’s what! One day she boxed me into that back room of theirs—and I had a really narrow escape. She’s got this obsession with sex; all the men in the neighborhood hide away in the corners to avoid her . . .” Tailbone licked his lips again. “The main thing is, she says to me, you come in the back room yourself, she says, choose the cabbage yourself—”

  “I’ve already heard that. Tell me again what you did and where you went on the night of the twenty-fourth. In detail, starting from the moment the sun was switched off.”

  Tailbone raised his eyes to the ceiling. “Right then,” he began, “when the sun was switched off, I was sitting in a beer parlor on the corner of Jersey and Second, playing cards. Then Jack Lever invited me to another beer parlor, so we went, and on the way we dropped by Jack’s place, we wanted to pick up his broad, but we stayed too long and started drinking there. Jack got tanked, and his broad put him to bed and threw me out. I went off home to sleep, but I was totally plastered, and along the way I tangled with these guys, three of them there were, they were drunk too. I don’t know any of them; I’d never seen them before in my life. They gave me such a battering, I don’t remember anything after that—I just came round in the morning right on the edge of the Cliff, barely made it back home. I went to bed, and then they came to get me.”

  Andrei leafed through the case file and found the medical evaluation. The sheet of paper was already slightly greasy.

  “The only fact confirmed here is that you were drunk,” he said. “The medical evaluation does not confirm that you had been beaten up. No traces of a beating were discovered on your body.”

  “So the guys did a tidy job, then,” Tailbone said approvingly. “So they had stockings filled with sand . . . All my ribs are still aching even now . . . and they refuse to put me in the hospital . . . I’ll croak in your cells here—then you’ll all have to answer for me.”

  “They didn’t ache for three days, then the moment we presented you with the medical evaluation, they suddenly started aching—”

  “What d’you mean, they didn’t ache? I was in agony, they were aching so bad, I couldn’t stand it any longer, so I started complaining.”

  “Stop lying, Block,” Andrei said wearily. “It’s obscene just to listen to you.”

  He was sick and tired of this slimeball. A bandit, a gangster, literally caught with the goods, and Andrei still couldn’t nail him . . . I haven’t got enough experience, that’s what it is. The others have his kind spilling their guts in no time flat . . . Meanwhile Tailbone began sighing woefully, screwed up his face pitiably, rolled his pupils back up under his forehead, and started swaying on his seat, moaning feebly and clearly intending to collapse in a faint as adroitly as he could so they would give him a glass of water and pack him off to sleep in his cell. Andrei watched these loathsome antics through the cracks between his fingers with hate in his heart. Come on, then, come on, he thought. Just you dare puke on my floor—I’ll make you wipe it all up with blotting paper, you son of a bitch.

  The door opened and Senior Investigator Fritz Heiger strode confidently into the office. Casting an indifferent glance at Tailbone doubled over on the stool, he walked across to the desk and perched sideways on the papers. Without bothering to ask, he shook several cigarettes out of Andrei’s pack, stuck one in his teeth, and arranged the others neatly in a slim silver cigarette case. Andrei struck a match and Fritz took a drag, nodded as an expression of gratitude, and blew out a stream of smoke toward the ceiling.

  “The boss told me to take the Black Centipedes case off you,” he said in a low voice. “That’s if you don’t mind, of course.” He lowered his voice even further and puckered his lips significantly. “Apparently the solicitor general came down on our boss like a ton of bricks. Now he’s calling everyone to his office and giving them an earful too. Just wait—he’ll get around to you soon.”

  Fritz took another drag and looked at Tailbone. The suspect, who had been straining his neck to catch what the bosses were whispering about, immediately cringed and emitted a pitiful moan.

  “Looks like you’re done with this one, right?”

  Andrei shook his head abruptly. He felt ashamed. This was the second time in the last ten days that Fritz had come to take a case from him.

  “Oh really?” Fritz said in surprise. He studied Tailbone for a few seconds, sizing him up, then spoke under his breath—“With your permission?”—and slipped off the desk without waiting for a reply.

  Walking right up close to the suspect, he leaned down over him compassionately, holding his cigarette away at arm’s length.

  “Hurting all over?” he inquired sympathetically.

  Tailbone moaned in the affirmative.

  “Like a drink?”

  Tailbone groaned again and reached out a trembling paw.

  “And you’d probably like a smoke too, I suppose?”

  Tailbone half-opened one eye distrustfully.

  “He’s hurting all over, the poor soul!” Fritz said loudly, but without turning toward Andrei. “It’s a shame to watch a man suffering so badly. He hurts here . . . and he hurts here . . . and he hurts here too . . .”

  As he repeated these words, varying the tone of his voice, Fritz made short, obscure movements with the hand that wasn’t holding the cigarette: Tailbone’s pitiful lowing suddenly broke off, to be replaced by squawking gasps of surprise, and his face turned pale.

  “Get up, you bastard!” Fritz suddenly yelled at the top of his voice, taking a step back.

  Tailbone immediately jumped to his feet, and Fritz swung a horrific punch into his stomach. Tailbone swayed forward and Fritz landed an open-palm uppercut on his chin with a dull thud. Tailbone swayed backward, knocking over the stool, and fell on his back.

  “Get up!” Fritz roared again.

  Sobbing and gasping for breath, Tailbone started hastily scrabbling across the floor. Fritz bounded over to him, grabbed his collar, and jerked him up onto his feet. Tailbone’s face was completely white now, with a green glint to it, his eyes were goggling crazily, and he was sweating profusely.

  Wrinkling up his face in disgust, Andrei looked down at the floor and started fumbling in the pack of cigarettes with trembling fingers, struggling to catch hold of a cigarette. He had to do something, but it wasn’t clear what. On the one hand, Fritz’s actions were abhorrent and inhuman, but on the other hand, the way this barefaced gangster and thief, this noxious boil on the body of society, made a mockery of justice was just as abhorrent.

  “I believe you’re dissatisfied with your treatment?” Fritz’s ingratiating voice was saying in the meantime. “I believe you’re even thinking of making a complaint. Well
then, my name is Friedrich Heiger. Senior Investigator Friedrich Heiger . . .”

  Andrei forced himself to look up. Tailbone was standing there stretched out to his full height, but with his entire body leaning back, and Fritz was standing right up close, leaning down toward Tailbone and hovering over him menacingly, with his fists propped against his sides.

  “You can complain—you know who my present boss is . . . But do you know who used to be my boss before? A certain Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler! Ever heard that name before? And do you know where I used to work before? In an organization that went by the name of the Gestapo! And do you know what I was famous for in that organization?”

  The phone rang and Andrei picked up the receiver. “Investigator Voronin here,” he said through his teeth.

  “Martinelli,” replied a slightly strangled voice that sounded short of breath. “Come to my office, Voronin. Immediately.”

  Andrei hung up. He realized he was going to get a humongous bawling-out from the boss, but right now he was glad to get out of this office—as far away as possible from Tailbone’s crazed eyes, from Fritz’s savagely thrust-out jaw, out of the congealing atmosphere of the torture chamber. What was Fritz doing this for . . . the Gestapo, Himmler . . . ?

  “The boss wants me in his office,” he announced in a strange, squeaky voice that didn’t seem to be his own, mechanically pulling out the drawer of the desk and putting the pistol in his holster so that he would report in due form.

  “Good luck,” Fritz responded, without turning around. “I’ll be here for a while, don’t worry.”

  Andrei walked toward the door, moving faster and faster as he went, and shot out into the corridor like a rocket. Beneath the gloomy vaulted ceiling, a cool, odorous silence reigned, with several ragged individuals of the male sex sitting motionless on a long wooden garden bench under the strict gaze of the guard on duty. Andrei walked past a row of closed doors and into the detention cells, past a stairway landing on which several young investigators from the latest intake puffed continually on cigarettes as they passionately explained their cases to each other, went up to the third floor, and knocked on the door of his boss’s office.