Lifting himself up on his hands, he slid down a step lower. If I go back to the table now, he thought, I’ll never get out of the Building. It will devour me. That’s quite clear: it has already devoured many people, we have witness testimony to that. But that’s not what’s most important. What’s important is that I have to get back to my office and untangle this ball of thread. That’s where my duty lies. That’s my responsibility, what I have do now. Everything else is a mirage…
He slid down another two steps. He had to break free of the mirage and get back to work. There was nothing accidental about all this. Everything here had been superbly thought through. It was a hideous illusion, fabricated by provocateurs in an attempt to destroy belief in the ultimate victory, to pervert the concepts of morality and duty. And it was no accident that the sordid little New Illusion movie theater was there at one side of the Building. New! There was nothing new about pornography, but that place called itself new! Who were they fooling? But what was on the other side? The synagogue…
He slid down the steps, going full tilt, and reached a door with the word EXIT on it. And after he had already taken hold of the handle, when he was still overcoming the resistance of the creaking spring, he suddenly realized what the common element was in all the eyes fixed on him up there. Reproach. They knew that he wouldn’t come back. He still hadn’t realized it himself, but they already knew for certain…
He tumbled out into the street, avidly gulped down a huge mouthful of the damp, misty air, and his heart thrilled with joy to see that everything was still the same out here: murky gloom along Main Street to the right, murky gloom along Main Street to the left, and there in front of him, just across the street, was the motorcycle with the sidecar and the police driver, soundly asleep, with his head completely submerged in his collar. The fat bastard’s dozing, Andrei thought affectionately. He’s worn out. And then a voice inside him suddenly declared loudly, “Time!” and Andrei groaned and burst into tears of desperation, only now recalling the most important, the most terrible rule of the game. The rule invented specially to deal with namby-pamby sissies from the intelligentsia like him: anyone who breaks off the game loses all his pieces.
Andrei swung back around with a howl of “Don’t!” and reached out for the brass door handle. But it was too late. The Building was already leaving, slowly backing away into the impenetrable gloom of the shadowy back alleys behind the synagogue and the New Illusion. It crept away with a palpable rustling and grating, with its windowpanes rattling and floor beams creaking. A tile fell off the roof and smashed on a stone step of the porch.
Andrei clutched the brass handle with every ounce of his strength, but it seemed to have fused with the timber of the door, and the house was moving faster and faster, and Andrei was already running, almost being dragged after it, as if it were a departing train. He jerked and tugged on the door handle, and suddenly stumbled over something and fell, his cramped and twisted fingers slipped off the smooth brass whorls, he smashed his head very painfully against something, he saw a shower of bright stars, and something crunched in his skull, but he could still see the Building backing away, extinguishing its windows as it went; he saw it swerve behind the yellow wall of the synagogue, then reappear, as if it peeping out with its last two lit-up windows, and then those windows went out too, and darkness fell.
3
He was sitting on a bench facing the idiotic concrete basin of the fountain and pressing a damp handkerchief that was already warm against a massive bump over his right eye. The bump was horrific to touch and he was in absolute agony; the ache in his head felt so bad, he was afraid his skull might be fractured; his skinned knees stung; his bruised elbow had gone numb, but there were indications that it would soon be demanding his attention. Perhaps, however, all this was really for the best. All this lent what was happening an emphatic, crude reality. There was no more Building, there was no Strategist or dark, sticky puddle under a table, there was no game of chess, there was no betrayal, there was nothing but a man who was strolling absentmindedly through the dark and had tumbled over the low concrete barrier straight into the idiotic basin, smashing his stupid head and the rest of his body against the damp concrete…
In fact, of course, Andrei realized only too well that it wasn’t all as simple as that, but it was comforting to think that it had all really been a delirious delusion, that he really had tripped and smashed his head—that really made it all quite amusing, and it was certainly convenient. What do I do now? he thought hazily. So I’ve found the Building; I’ve been inside it and seen it for myself… But what next? Don’t go trying to stuff my head—my poor, aching head—with all that bombastic garbage about rumors and myths and all the rest of that stupid propaganda. That’s just for starters. So don’t forget… Actually, that was my mistake—I think I was the one stuffing everyone else’s heads. I have to release that guy right away… what’s his name… the flute man. I wonder if that Ella of his played chess in there too? Shit, but my head is hurting like hell…
The handkerchief had gotten really warm now. Andrei got up with a grunt, hobbled across to the fountain, leaned over the edge, and held the damp rag in the ice-cold stream for a while. Someone was hammering on his lump with passionate fury—from the inside. How about that for a myth! A.k.a. a mirage… He squeezed out the handkerchief, pressed it against the painful spot again, and looked across the street. The fat policeman was still sleeping. Fat scumbag, Andrei thought rancorously. Some sentry you are. Why did I bother to bring you? Just so you could catch up on your shut-eye, was it? I could have been bumped off a hundred times here. And then, of course, after that jerk had caught up on his sleep, he would have shown up at the Public Prosecutor’s Office in the morning and reported as a matter of routine that the investigator went into the Red Building last night and never came back out again. Andrei spent some time imagining how glorious it would feel right now to fill a bucket with icy water, sneak up to the fat bastard, and pour the entire bucketful down the back of his neck. Wouldn’t that just make him freak! That was how the boys used to amuse themselves at the training camp: if someone dozed off, they tied a shoe to his private parts with the laces, then put that huge, filthy shit-crusher on his face. Still half asleep, the guy would go berserk and savagely launch the shoe into space with all his might. It was very funny.
Andrei went back to the bench and found that he had acquired a companion. A scraggy little man dressed completely in black—even his shirt was black—was sitting there with one leg crossed over the other, holding an old-fashioned bowler hat on his knees. Probably the caretaker from the synagogue. Andrei gingerly sat down beside him, cautiously probing the boundaries of the lump through the damp handkerchief.
“Well, all right,” the little man said in a clear, old voice. “But what comes next?”
“Nothing special,” said Andrei. “We’ll catch all of them. I won’t just leave things like this.”
“And then?” the old man persisted.
“I don’t know,” Andrei said after a moment’s thought. “Maybe some other abomination will turn up. The Experiment is the Experiment. It’s not for long.”
“It’s for ever and ever,” the old man remarked. “According to every religion—it’s forever.”
“Religion’s got nothing to do with this,” Andrei objected.
“You still think that, even now?” the old man asked in surprise.