It was located in an old pump house; red brick with a pointy tin roof painted dark green, the pump house had been built by the steam engine depot, where there were garages now, and the water tower was given to the police for some reason. With narrow windows and brick crenellations, it looked like a fortress tower lost in geography. Inside it was cold—the cold water from the deep well had seeped into the bricks.
The lost and found office and the address bureau were run by one man—a police captain with the manner of a pickpocket, skinny, tall, all cartilage and fluidity, unable to sit still, able to be in two or three places at once; he did well among the lost wallets and long narrow drawers with address cards: the town lost things, people got lost in the town, and they came to him with every loss, and he sat there looking as if he had stolen the items, had lured away a person, and then, befitting his job, was also involved in the search.
The captain led me down a spiral staircase to the former pump room; now it was a storeroom for items and address files. Along the way he managed to complain that the lost and found wasn’t what it used to be—pronouncing “lost and found” with a special intonation; before, the captain said, people turned in more, whatever they found in the street, but now they would turn in a purse only if they’d found it on a bus and had called in the police to check whether it was a bomb; otherwise, nobody turned anything in.
Of course, the captain was exaggerating: we walked past piles of unclaimed items, dusty bundles, gutted wallets, attaché cases, ladies’ bags; I saw cosmetic bags, a roll of roofing felt, a picnic cooler, drafting tools, baby carriages, downhill skis and even ice skates; a plastic horse on wheels, milk cans, pails, carts, a bag of cement. It looked like the antechamber of the world to come, which people reached after a long journey, accumulating stuff as they went, and then had to leave it all here. The objects stood there, huddled in bunches like sheep without a shepherd, and it seemed that if anyone whistled to them, the carriages and carts would roll on their own and the rest of the stuff would climb in, and the canes and crutches would hobble and the skis would slide. The things were afraid: they were abandoned and now, aged and old-fashioned, they didn’t know what would happen to them; I saw the captain with fresh eyes: Did he understand what service he was doing? The losses of the entire city were gathered here and there was something bitter in the fact that they were unnoticed; it was easier to accept, to just pay no mind to the loss, even though the lost items could be found and returned.
While the captain rummaged in the drawers for the address of Grandfather II’s correspondent—if still alive—I thought about those things; once, when I was with a woman, I realized that we were both tired people who looked with pity upon our own bodies, and our embrace had a taste of that pity; we had lived so long that the only object from the past we had was the body: another city, another apartment—the body lives longer than contemporary objects made to be replaced. I wanted so much to tell it: here we are all alone, pal; here we are alone … I thought about things and the loneliness of man among them; of the fact that a person can be described as a selection of his important objects—but when someone else comes to this selection, what is he going to do? Create a puzzle out of a wristwatch, a cigarette case engraved From your coworkers, a wedding ring, and a validated ticket? And here I stand among lost objects when all I need is a person—one who might know and remember; I do not trust objects.
The captain told me the address; the person I sought had moved from Red Kolkhoz Street. Then he suggested I take a look at the finds—if I liked something, I could buy it; sort of like a pawnshop, said the captain. I said no; he kept trying to interest me in a fishing rod left on a bus; he spun the gilt-edged lure and triple hook, showing me how the fish would swallow it; the pole was pathetic, homemade, but the captain took that into account, making up a story about how tackle that doesn’t look like much is really the best; the captain was a bullshitter, he spent the day among rubbish, trying to sell it and waiting for success—what if some fool brings him something truly valuable; at the door we ran into the next visitor with something under his arm; the captain bustled and rushed me out the door, these were probably stolen goods for sale. I gave the captain some money, he perked up and stopped rushing me, the money received as a bribe equalized me with the rest of his visitors and created a relationship—I gave, he took—and he probably wanted to introduce me to the petty thief, out of boredom, to see what would happen.
It was sunny. The city authorities had started the fountains six weeks late and the pipes were not yet cleared; rusty, murky water rose to the sky; I bought an ice cream and then the captain caught up with me. “Lunch,” he said. “Shall we have lunch?”
We went to a café; over lunch the captain asked me in a seemingly confused way but actually quite cautiously why I was looking for that person; seeing that I did not understand where he was going, the captain spoke more clearly: in this town many old men have a lot of money; if someone, for example, had a good job in the business sector, he retired a millionaire; kickbacks, accounts, faked documents, construction materials sold on the side—there were plenty of ways of getting rich, the mining plant was too big, too dark and convoluted even for the people managing it, and “many, many”—as the captain repeated—managed to use their jobs to their advantage. And if I, say, were looking for that kind of man, being related to him in some way, and having expectations of money, then I should get myself some friends first.
The captain told me as an aside the story of a young city slicker who asked him for an address, he had come for his inheritance, but, alas, he never got it—something happened to him. “I gave him the address all right,” the captain said, “but he refused to have lunch with me.”
The captain was probably lying; he lied the way he ate—not concerned with the taste, hurrying to get it into his gullet and take another bite; in essence, he was chewing price lists, swallowing rubles, he wanted to have an expensive lunch at my expense; he was cowardly, the captain, used to looking over his shoulder and making do with small change; I noticed that the suitcases and bags at the lost and found had their side seams undone—the captain had sliced the stitching with a razor in case something was sewn into the lining. He was giving me a similar once-over; but it was clear that the captain was not alone, he could get in touch with others and make it seem that I really was a future heir.
It was too late to tell the captain I was only looking for someone who could tell me about the former camp warden; too late to pretend to be a historian or a journalist. The captain believed what he had made up about me, his guesses and fantasies were reinforced, and any attempt to be anyone but a seeker of inheritance would only make him suspect that I was trying to get him off track. The captain had waited so long among the old bags, among the card files, alone in his robber’s tower, had spent so much time buying up rags and stolen electronics, all small-time, all secretly, that now he saw me as his one and only sparkly, shiny, precious opportunity. I realized that believing his own fantasy, he would tell his fellow crooks I was a rich heir, not even realizing that he was lying; the captain ate olives, sucking the pits and neatly placing them on the edge of his plate; he was eating me, he was a local and I was a stranger, and he knew that very well.
I could only pretend to accept his offer; I was counting on his greed—he would pretend to have told the gang when in fact he would not because he knew that he would get nothing, being an idle blabbermouth; the captain replied that he would find out where I was staying and come visit me that evening. I got up, put money for both of us under the ashtray, into which the captain, smiling, dropped an olive pit.