Doomed City Page 15

  Andrei picked up the phone and gave an order. “A motorcycle with a sidecar and one police officer. Immediately.”

  2

  The motorcycle roared along Main Street, bouncing over the battered asphalt surface. Andrei hunched over, hiding his face behind the windscreen of the sidecar, but he was still chilled to the bone. He ought to have brought his uniform greatcoat.

  Every now and then loonies who were completely blue from the cold leaped off the sidewalk, skipping and weaving toward the motorcycle and yelling something that was drowned out by the noise of the motor—then the police motorcyclist braked, swearing through his teeth as he dodged away from the outstretched, clutching hands, broke through the lines of striped robes, and immediately revved up the motorbike again so hard that Andrei was flung backward.

  Apart from the loonies, there wasn’t anyone else in the street. Only once did they come across a patrol car slowly cruising along with an orange light blinking on its roof, and they saw a baboon running across the square in front of City Hall. The baboon was tearing along at full speed, and unshaven men in striped pajamas were chasing after it with shrill giggles and piercing howls. Turning his head, Andrei saw them finally overtake the baboon, knock it to the ground, stretch out its front and back legs in different directions, and start swinging it regularly to and fro to the strains of some ghoulish, otherworldly song.

  Infrequent streetlamps came hurtling toward them, between dark blocks of neighborhoods without a single light, where life seemed to have died out, and then up ahead the hazy, yellowish bulk of the synagogue appeared, and Andrei saw the Building.

  It was standing there firmly and confidently, as if it had always occupied that space between the wall of the synagogue, daubed all over with swastikas, and the trashy movie theater, which had been fined the previous week for showing pornographic films at night—standing in the very same spot where yesterday scraggy little trees were growing, an anemic little fountain was splashing in a preposterously large, drab concrete basin, and a motley assortment of little kids were squealing as they dangled from rope swings.

  It really was red, built of brick, with four stories, the windows of the first floor were closed off with shutters, and several windows on the second and third floors glowed yellow and pink, but the roof was covered with galvanized tin, and a strange antenna with several crosspieces had been installed beside the one and only chimney. There really was a porch with four stone steps leading up to the door, and a gleaming brass door handle, and the longer Andrei looked at this building, the more distinctly he heard a strange melody, solemn and gloomy, ringing in his ears, and he recalled in passing that many of the witnesses had testified that there was music playing in the Building . . .

  Andrei adjusted the visor of his uniform cap so that it didn’t obstruct his view and glanced at the police motorcyclist. The fat, surly man was sitting there huddled up, with his head pulled down into his raised collar, and smoking drowsily, holding the cigarette in his teeth.

  “Do you see it?” Andrei asked in a low voice.

  The fat man awkwardly swung his head around and turned down his collar. “Eh?”

  “The building. I asked if you can see it,” Andrei said, starting to get annoyed.

  “I’m not blind,” the policeman replied morosely.

  “And have you seen it here before?”

  “No,” said the policeman. “Not here. But I’ve seen it in other places. What of it? You see weirder things than that around here at night.”

  The music was roaring in Andrei’s ears with such tragic power that he couldn’t really hear the policeman very well. There was some kind of immense funeral taking place, with thousands and thousands of people weeping as they saw off their near ones and dear ones, and the roaring of the music gave them no chance to compose themselves, calm down, and disconnect themselves from it all . . .

  “Wait for me here,” Andrei told the policeman, but the policeman didn’t answer, which wasn’t really very surprising, since he was already on the far side of the street, and Andrei was standing on the stone porch, facing the oak door with the brass handle.

  Then Andrei looked to the right along Main Street, into the murky haze, and to the left along Main Street, into the murky haze, and said good-bye to all of this, just in case, and set his gloved hand on the ornately patterned, gleaming brass.

  Behind the door was a small, quiet entrance hall, illuminated by a dim, yellowish light, with bunches of greatcoats, overcoats, and raincoats dangling from a coat stand with splayed branches, like a palm tree. Underfoot was a worn carpet with pale, indistinct patterns, and straight ahead there was a broad marble staircase with a soft, red runner, squeezed tight against the steps by well-polished metal rods. There were also pictures of some kind on the walls, and something else behind an oak barrier on the right, and someone nearby, who politely took Andrei’s portfolio and whispered, “Upstairs, please . . .” Andrei couldn’t make out any of this very clearly, because the visor of his cap obstructed his view very badly by sliding down right over his eyes, so that he could only see what was right under his feet. Halfway up the stairs it occurred to him that he ought to have checked the damned cap at the cloakroom with that gold-braid-festooned character who had sideburns right down to his waist, but it was too late now, and everything here was arranged so that you had to do things at the right time or not do them at all, and it was impossible to take back a single move or a single action that he had made. And with a sigh of relief he strode up the final step and took off the cap.

  The moment he appeared in the doorway, everyone got to their feet, but he didn’t look at any of them. He saw only his partner, a short, elderly man in a prewar-style uniform and gleaming box-calf-leather boots, who reminded him painfully of someone and at the same time was entirely unfamiliar.

  Everyone stood motionless along the walls, the white marble walls decorated in gold and purple and draped with bright, multicolored banners . . . no, not multicolored—everything was red and gold, only red and gold, and huge panels of purple and gold fabric hung down from the infinitely distant ceiling, like the materialized ribbons of some incredible northern lights. They all stood along the walls with their tall, semicircular niches, and hiding in the twilight of the niches were haughtily modest busts of marble, plaster, bronze, gold, malachite, stainless steel . . . those niches breathed out the chill of the grave, everyone was freezing, everyone was furtively rubbing their hands together and huddling up against the cold, but they all stood at attention, looking straight ahead, and only the elderly man in the semimilitary uniform, Andrei’s partner, Andrei’s adversary, strode about slowly with silent steps in the empty space at the center of the hall, with his massive, graying head tilted slightly forward and his hands held behind his back, with the left hand clutching the wrist of the right. And when Andrei walked in, and when everyone got up and had already been standing for some time, and when the faint sigh, as if of relief, had already faded away under the vaults of the hall, after tangling itself in the purple and the gold, this man continued to stride about, and then suddenly, in midstride, he stopped and looked at Andrei very intently, without smiling, and Andrei saw that the hair on the large cranium was sparse and gray, the forehead was low, the magnificent mustache was really sparse, but neatly trimmed, and the indifferent face was yellowish, with bumpy skin, as if it had been dug over.

  There was no need for introductions, and there was no need for speeches of greeting. They sat down at a small encrusted table, and Andrei turned out to have the black pieces, while his elderly partner had the white ones, not actually white but yellowish, and the man with the dug-over skin reached out a small, hairless hand, picked up a pawn between his finger and thumb, and made the first move. To meet it Andrei immediately moved out his own pawn—the quiet, reliable Wang, who had always wanted only one thing, to be left in peace, and here he would be granted a certain peace, dubious and relative though it was, here, in the very center of events, which would unfold, of course, whi
ch were inevitable, and Wang would have a tough time of it, but here was the precise spot where Andrei could bolster him, cover him, protect him—for a long time and, if he so wished, an infinitely long time.

  The two pawns stood facing each other, forehead to forehead—they could touch each other, they could exchange meaningless words, they could simply be quietly proud of themselves, proud of the fact that they, simple pawns, had defined the main axis around which the entire game would now unfold. But they couldn’t do anything to each other, they were neutral toward each other, they were in different combat dimensions—small, yellow, shapeless Wang with his head pulled down into his shoulders in customary fashion, and a thickset little individual with crooked cavalryman’s legs, wearing a Caucasian felt cloak and a tall astrakhan hat, with a prodigiously opulent mustache, high cheekbones, and slightly slanting eyes.

  Equilibrium had been restored on the board again, and this equilibrium ought to last for quite a long time, because Andrei knew that his partner was a genius of caution, who always considered men to be the most valuable thing of all, which meant that for the immediate future nothing could threaten Wang, and Andrei sought out Wang in the ranks along the walls and smiled ever so slightly at him, but immediately turned his eyes away, because they had caught Donald’s intent, sad gaze.

  His partner thought, slowly and deliberately tapping the cardboard tube of his long papirosa on the mother-of-pearl-encrusted surface of the small table, and Andrei squinted once again at the frozen ranks, but this time he was looking not at his own men but at the men whom his adversary had at his disposal. There were almost no faces that he knew: some surprisingly cultured-looking men in civilian clothes, with beards and pince-nez, wearing old-fashioned neckties and vests; some military men in unfamiliar uniforms, with numerous diamonds on their collar tabs, with medals bolted onto mounts covered with shot-silk ribbons . . . Where did he get men like that from? thought Andrei, feeling rather surprised, and looked again at the white pawn that had been moved out. This pawn, at least, was very familiar to him—a man of once-legendary fame who, so the adults whispered, had failed to justify the hopes placed in him and had now, so to speak, left the stage. The man clearly knew that himself but was not particularly mournful—he stood there with his crooked legs firmly planted on the parquet floor, twirling the wings of his gigantic mustache, peering around under his brows, and giving off an acrid smell of vodka and horse sweat.

  Andrei’s partner raised his hand above the board and moved a second pawn. Andrei closed his eyes. He hadn’t been expecting this at all. How could it be—immediately, like this? Who was it? A handsome, pale face, inspired, yet at the same time rendered repulsive by a strange hauteur, a bluish pince-nez, an elegant, curly beard, a shock of black hair above a light forehead—Andrei had never seen this man before and couldn’t say who he was, but he was evidently someone of importance, because he was talking peremptorily and briskly with the crooked little man in the felt cloak, who only twitched his mustache, twitched his jaw muscles, and kept turning his slanting eyes off to the side, like some huge wildcat facing a confident trainer.

  But Andrei had no interest in their relationship—Wang’s fate was in the balance, the fate of little Wang, who had suffered torment all his life, who had his head pulled right down into his shoulders now, prepared already for the very worst, hopelessly submissive in his preparedness, and now there were only three possibilities: Wang is taken, Wang takes, or Andrei leaves everything just as it is, suspending the lives of these two in uncertainty—in the exalted language of strategy that would be called Queen’s Gambit Declined—and Andrei was familiar with that continuation, and he knew it was recommended in the textbooks, he knew that it was elementary, but he couldn’t bear the idea of Wang hanging by a thread for hour after hour, breaking out in a cold sweat in fear of imminent death, and the pressure on him would keep building up and up, until finally the monstrous tension at this point became absolutely intolerable, the gigantic, bloody abscess burst, and not a trace would be left of Wang.

  I couldn’t bear that, thought Andrei. And after all, I don’t know this man in the pince-nez at all—why should I feel pity for him, if even my brilliant partner thought for no more than a few minutes before deciding to make this sacrifice . . . And Andrei removed the white pawn from the board and set his own, black pawn in its place, and in that moment he saw the wildcat in the felt cloak suddenly, for the first time in its life, glance directly into its tamer’s eyes and bare its yellow, smoke-stained fangs in a carnivorous grin. And immediately a man with dusky, olive-dark skin, not Russian or even European looking, slipped through between the ranks along the walls to the blue pince-nez and swung an immense rusty blade, and the blue pince-nez flashed aside like a streak of blue lightning, and the man with the pale face of a great tribune and failed tyrant gasped feebly, his legs buckled, and his small, well-proportioned body tumbled down the ancient, chipped steps that were heated to incandescence by the tropical sun, becoming soiled with white dust and bright red, sticky blood . . . Andrei caught his breath, swallowed the lump that was obstructing his throat, and looked at the board again.

  Two white pawns were already standing there side by side; the center had been firmly seized by the Brilliant Strategist, and in addition, from out of the depths the gaping pupil of impending doom was aimed directly at Wang’s chest—there could be no lengthy deliberations here, this wasn’t a matter of just Wang; the slightest procrastination and the white bishop would break through into open space with room to maneuver—he had been dreaming for a long time of breaking out into open space, this tall, statuesque, handsome man, a great commander, decorated with constellations of medals, badges, diamonds, and stripes, this proud Adonis with eyes of ice and the plump lips of a youth, the pride of a young army, the pride of a young country, the successful rival of other, equally haughty and arrogant individuals, bedecked with the medals, badges, diamonds, and stripes of the Western science of warfare. What was Wang to him? He had hacked down dozens of Wangs with his own hand; at a single word from him thousands of such Wangs—dirty, lice-ridden, and hungry, inspired with blind faith in him—had marched, steady and erect, against tanks and machine guns, and those who had miraculously survived, now well-groomed and paunchy, were willing to march even now, willing to do everything all over again . . .

  No, Andrei must not let this man have either Wang or the center. And he quickly advanced a pawn that was waiting there to be used, without looking to see who it was and thinking of only one thing: covering Wang, bolstering him, defending him, if only from the rear, showing the great tank commander that Wang was, of course, in his power, but he could not move beyond Wang. And the great tank commander realized this, and the fresh glint in his eyes was drowsily concealed once again by those handsome, heavy eyelids, but evidently he had forgotten, exactly as Andrei had forgotten and now suddenly realized with some appalling inner flash of insight, that it was not they, the pawns and bishops, who decided everything here—and not even the castles, and not even the queens. And immediately the small, hairless hand slowly rose over the board, and Andrei, already realizing what was about to happen, croaked hoarsely, “J’adoube.” And in accordance with the noble code of the game, and so hastily that his fingers actually cramped, he swapped Wang and the piece that was supporting him. Fortune favored him with a pale smile: Wang was now supporting, and Wang’s place had been taken by Valka Soifertis, with whom Andrei had shared a school desk for six years, and who had already died anyway in ’49, during an operation on a stomach ulcer.

  His brilliant partner’s eyebrows slowly rose up and the brownish, speckled eyes narrowed in mocking surprise. Of course he found this move ludicrous and incomprehensible; it was nonsensical from both the tactical and, especially, the strategic point of view. Continuing the movement of his small, weak hand, he halted it above the bishop, paused for a few more seconds, pondering, and then his fingers closed confidently on the lacquered head of the piece, and the bishop lunged forward and knocked g
ently against the black pawn, pushing it aside and establishing itself in its place. The Brilliant Strategist then slowly carried the taken pawn off the board, and a small group of intent, businesslike people in white coats had already surrounded the gurney on which Valka Soifertis was lying—Andrei’s eyes caught one last glimpse of the dark features, corroded by illness, and the gurney disappeared through the doors of the operating theater . . .

  Glancing at the great tank commander, Andrei saw in his gray, transparent eyes the same terror and oppressive perplexity that he felt himself. The tank commander was blinking rapidly, watching the Brilliant Strategist without understanding a thing. He was accustomed to thinking in terms of the movements through space of immense masses of machines and men; in his naivety and simplemindedness, he was accustomed to believing that everything would always be decided by his armor-plated armadas, rolling on confidently through foreign lands, and by the multi-engined airborne fortresses, stuffed with bombs and parachutists, sailing through the skies above foreign lands; he had done everything possible to make sure that this clear dream could be realized at any moment necessary . . . Of course, he had sometimes indulged in certain doubts as to whether the Brilliant Strategist was really so very brilliant and would be able to unequivocally determine that moment and the necessary directions of the armor-plated blows, but even so, it was impossible for him to understand how it was possible to sacrifice precisely him, so talented, so assiduous, and so unique, how it was possible to sacrifice everything that had been created by such immense labor and effort . . .

  Andrei quickly removed him from the board, away with him, and set Wang in his place. Men in blue peaked caps squeezed through the ranks, grabbed the great tank commander crudely by the shoulders and arms, took away his weapon, punched the handsome, thoroughbred face with a crunch, and dragged him off to a prison cell, and the Brilliant Strategist leaned bank in his chair, narrowed his eyes in satisfaction, folded his hands together on his stomach, and started twiddling his thumbs. He was content. He had given a bishop for a pawn and was very content. And then Andrei suddenly realized that in the Strategist’s eyes everything looked entirely different; he had deftly and unexpectedly removed the bishop that had been hindering him and received a pawn into the bargain—that was how things looked in reality . . .