“I didn’t die,” Andrei said, his blood running cold.
The old man nodded with a smile. “Yes, that’s what many people think,” he said. “But they’re mistaken. History records cases in which people have been taken up to heaven while alive, but no one has ever heard of them being exiled alive—as a punishment!—to hell.”
Andrei listened, staring at him in a daze.
“You’ve simply forgotten,” the old man went on. “There was a war, bombs were falling in the streets, you were running to a bomb shelter and suddenly—a blast, pain, and everything disappeared. And afterward, a vision of an angel, speaking benignly in parables—and here you are.” He nodded sagely again, thrusting out his lower lip. “Yes, yes, undoubtedly that is where the impression of free will comes from. Now I understand: it’s inertia. Merely inertia, young man. You spoke with such conviction that you even shook me somewhat… the organization of chaos, a new world… No, no, it’s merely inertia. It should pass off in time. Don’t forget, hell is eternal, there is no way back, and you’re still only in the first circle…”
“Are you serious?” Andrei asked in a slightly squeaky voice.
“You know all this yourself,” the old man said gently. “You know it all perfectly well! It’s just that you’re an atheist, a young man, and you don’t want to admit to yourself that all your life—short as it was—you were wrong. Your obtuse and ignorant teachers taught you that ahead of you there was nothing, an empty void, putrefaction, that you could expect neither gratitude nor retribution for what you had done. And you accepted these squalid ideas, because you were so very young, you possessed excellent bodily health, and death was merely a distant abstraction for you. Having committed evil, you always hoped to escape punishment, because the ones who could punish you were men exactly the same as you. And if you happened by chance to do good, you demanded immediate reward from those who were exactly like you. You were ludicrous. Now you understand that, of course—I can see it in your face…” He suddenly laughed. “We had an engineer in our underground organization, a materialist; he and I often argued about life after death. My God, how he used to mock me! ‘Pop,’ he used to say, ‘you and I will finish off this pointless argument in heaven…’ And you know, I’m still searching for him here—I search, but I simply can’t find him. Perhaps there was some truth in his joke; perhaps he really did go to heaven—as a martyr. He certainly died an agonizing death… And I’m here.”
“Nocturnal disputes about life and death?” a familiar voice suddenly croaked right in Andrei’s ear, and the bench quaked as Izya Katzman, in his customary disheveled and shock-headed condition, plumped himself down on the other side of Andrei. In his left hand he was clutching a light-colored document file and with his right he immediately started fiddling with his wart. As always, he was in state of ecstatic exaltation.
Trying to sound as casual as possible, Andrei said, “This elderly gentleman here believes that we are all in hell.”
“The elderly gentleman is absolutely right,” Izya immediately retorted, and started giggling. “At least, if it’s not hell, it’s something entirely indistinguishable from it in all its manifestations. However, you must admit, Pan Stupalski, that you have not yet discovered in my career while alive even a single transgression for which I deserved to be dispatched to this place! I didn’t even commit adultery, I was so stupid.”
“Pan Katzman,” the old man declared, “I can easily accept that you yourself are entirely unaware of that fateful transgression of yours!”
“Possibly, possibly,” Izya readily agreed. “From the look of you,” he said, addressing Andrei, “you have been in the Red Building. Well, how did you like it in there?”
And at that moment Andrei finally recovered his wits. As if the murky, sticky membrane of his nightmare had suddenly burst and melted, the pain in his head had faded away, and now he could distinguish everything around him sharply and clearly, and Main Street stopped being murky and misty, and it turned out that the policeman wasn’t sleeping on the motorcycle at all but sauntering along the sidewalk with the red tip of his cigarette glowing, casting glances in the direction of the bench. My God, Andrei thought, almost in horror, what am I doing here? After all, I’m an investigator, time’s passing by, and here I am engaging in idle banter with this crackpot, and then Katzman’s here… Katzman? How did he get here? “How do you know where I’ve been?” he asked abruptly.
“It’s not hard to guess,” said Izya, giggling. “You should take a look at yourself in the mirror…”
“I’m asking you a serious question!” said Andrei, raising his voice.
The old man suddenly got up. “Good night, pánové,” he said, transferring the bowler hat to his head with a smooth movement. “Pleasant dreams.”
Andrei took no notice of him. He looked at Izya. But Izya, plucking at his wart and gently bobbing up and down on the spot, watched as the old man moved away, grinned from ear to ear, and was already choking and grunting in anticipation. “Well?” said Andrei.
“What a character!” Izya declared admiringly. “Ah, what a character! You’re a fool, Voronin, as always—you don’t have a clue about anything! Do you know who that is? That’s the famous Pan Stupalski, Stupalski the Judas! He betrayed 248 people to the Gestapo in Lodz, he was exposed twice, and both times he somehow managed to wriggle out of it and put someone else in his place. It was only after the liberation that they finally nailed him, and he was given a fair and speedy trial, but even then he ducked out of it. The esteemed Mentors deemed it useful to extract him from the noose and send him here. To complete the bouquet. He lives in a madhouse here, acts as if he’s crazy, but meanwhile he carries on with his favorite line of work… Do you think he just happened by chance to be here on the bench, right beside you? Do you know who he works for now?”
“Shut up!” said Andrei, summoning up the willpower to smother the eager curiosity that consumed him every time Izya told his stories. “I’m not interested in all that. How did you come to be here? And how the hell did you know that I’d been inside the Building?”
“I was inside it myself,” Izya said calmly.
“I see,” said Andrei. “So what happened in there?”
“Well, you know best what happened in there. How should I know what happened as you saw it?”
“And what happened as you saw it?’
“Now, that is absolutely none of your business,” said Izya, adjusting the voluminous document file on his knees.
“Did you get the file in there?” asked Andrei, reaching out his hand.
“No,” said Izya. “Not in there.”
“What’s in it?”
“Listen,” said Izya. “What business is that of yours? What are you pestering me for?”
Izya still didn’t understand what was going on. But then, Andrei himself didn’t fully understand what was going on, and his mind raced feverishly as he tried to decide what to do next.
“Do you know what’s really in this file?” said Izya. “I discovered the old City Hall—it’s about fifteen kilometers from here. I was rummaging around in there all day long; they switched the sun off and it was as dark as hell—you know there hasn’t been any lighting there for about twenty years now… I wandered round and round in circles, barely managed to find the way out onto Main Street—ruins on all sides, these wild voices yelling…”
“I see,” said Andrei. “Didn’t you know it’s forbidden to rummage around in the old ruins?”