“Who are you?” asked Andrei, feeling in his pocket for the brass kitchen pestle he had been carrying for four days now because the times were so uncertain.
“We’re the voluntary militia,” the stocky man replied. “What business have you got in City Hall? Who are you?”
“I’m the senior editor of the City Gazette,” Andrei said angrily, clutching the pestle tightly in his hand. He didn’t like the way the juvenile approached him from the left while he was speaking and the third volunteer militiaman, another young guy who was obviously strong too, wheezed into his ear from the right. “I’m going to City Hall to protest against the actions of the censor.”
“Ah,” the stocky man said in an indefinite tone of voice. “I see. Only why go to City Hall? You could arrest the censor and put out your newspaper, no bother.”
Andrei decided to act brazenly for the time being. “Don’t you go telling me what to do,” he said. “We’ve already arrested the censor without any advice from you. Anyway, just let me through.”
“A representative of the press…” growled the one who was wheezing in his right ear.
“Why not? Let him go in,” the youth on Andrei’s left said condescendingly.
“Yes,” said the stocky man. “Let him go in. Only don’t let him try to blame us afterward… Have you got a gun?”
“No,” said Andrei.
“That’s a mistake,” said the stocky man, stepping aside. “Go on through.”
Andrei walked through. Behind him he heard the stocky man say in a high, squeaky voice, “Jasmine is a pretty little flower! And it smells very good too…” and the militiamen laughed. Andrei knew that little rhyme, and he felt an angry urge to turn back, but he only lengthened his stride.
There were quite a lot of people on Main Street. Most of them were sticking close to the walls or standing bunched together in courtyard entrances, and they all had white armbands. A few were loitering in the middle of the road, approaching the farmers driving past and telling them something before the farmers drove on. The stores were all closed, but there were no lines in front of them. Outside one bakery an elderly militiaman with a knotty walking stick was trying to get through to an old woman who was standing on her own: “I assure you quite definitely, madam. The stores will not open today. I myself am the owner of a grocery store, madam—I know what I’m talking about.” But the old biddy replied in a screechy voice to the effect that she would die right here on these steps before she gave up her place in line…
Trying hard to smother his mounting sense of alarm and a strange feeling that everything around him was somehow unreal—it was all like in a movie—Andrei reached the square. Where the mouth of Main Street opened out onto the square, it was choked with carts great and small, farm wagons and drays. The air stank of horse sweat and fresh dung, and horses of every shape and size swung their heads to and fro, while the sons of the swamps shouted to each other in deep, loud voices and crude hand-rolled cigarettes glimmered on all sides. Andrei caught the smell of smoke—somewhere nearby they were lighting a campfire. A fat man with a mustache and a cowboy hat came out of an archway, buttoning up his fly as he walked, and almost ran into Andrei. The man swore good-naturedly and started picking his way between the carts, calling out in a barking voice to someone named Sidor: “Come this way, Sidor! Into the yard, you can do it there! Only watch your step, don’t put your foot in it!”
Biting on his lip, Andrei walked on. At the very entrance to the square the carts were already standing on the sidewalk. Many of the horses had been unharnessed and hobbled, and they were shuffling around, sniffing dejectedly at the asphalt. In the carts people were sleeping, smoking, and eating—Andrei could hear the appetizing sounds of liquid glugging and lips smacking. He climbed up onto the porch of a building and looked across the vast camp. It was only about fifty paces to City Hall, but it was a maze. Campfires crackled and smoked, and the smoke, tinted gray-blue by the mercury lamps, drifted over the covered wagons and massive carts and was drawn into Main Street, as if into some gigantic chimney. Some motherfucker buzzed as it settled on Andrei’s neck and bit, like a pin being thrust into his skin. With a feeling of loathing Andrei swatted something large and prickly that crunched juicily under his palm. They’ve dragged all the damned bugs in with them from the swamps, he thought angrily, catching a distinct whiff of ammonia coming from under the building’s half-open front door. Jumping down onto the sidewalk, he set off decisively into the maze of horses, stepping in something soft and crumbly in his first few strides.
The ponderous, rounded form of City Hall towered up over the square like a five-story bastion. Most of the windows were dark, with only a few lit up, and the elevator shafts set on the outside of the walls glowed a dim yellow. The farmers’ camp surrounded the building in a ring, and between the carts and City Hall there was an empty space, illuminated by bright streetlamps on fancy cast-iron columns. Farmers, almost all of them armed, were jostling together under the streetlamps, and at the entrance to City Hall a line of policemen stood facing them, their badges of rank indicating that they were mostly sergeants and officers.
Andrei was already pushing his way through the armed crowd when someone called his name. He stopped and turned his head.
“Here I am, over this way!” barked a familiar voice, and Andrei finally spotted Uncle Yura.
Uncle Yura was waddling toward him, already holding out his hand to be shaken—still in the same old tunic, with his fore-and-aft cap cocked to one side, and the machine gun that Andrei knew so well hanging on a broad strap over his shoulder.
“Howdy-do, Andriukha, you old townie!” he exclaimed, slapping his rough hand loudly into Andrei’s palm. “Here I’ve been looking for you everywhere; there’s a ruckus on, I think, no way our Andriukha’s going to miss that! He’s a spunky fellow, I think, he’s got to be hanging around here somewhere.”
Uncle Yura was pretty plastered. He tugged the machine gun off his shoulder, leaned his armpit on the barrel like a crutch, and carried on talking with the same vehement passion. “I go this way, I go that way—and still no Andriukha. Son of a bitch, I think, what the hell’s going on? That blond-haired Fritz of yours—he’s here. Rubbing shoulders with the country folk, making speeches… But I can’t find you anywhere.”
“Hang on, Uncle Yura,” said Andrei. “What did you come here for?”
“To demand my rights!” Uncle Yura chuckled, his beard splaying out like a twig broom. “That’s what I came here for, and only for that—but it doesn’t look like we’re going to get anywhere here.” He spat and scraped the gobbet into the ground with his immense boot. “The people are lousy vermin. They don’t know themselves what they came here for. Whether they came to ask or they came to demand, or maybe neither one thing nor the other, just because they missed the big-city life—we’ll camp here for a while, shit all over your City, and then go back home. The people are shit. Look…” He swung around and waved to someone. “For instance, take Stas Kowalski, my little friend here… Stas! Stas, fuck it… Come over here!”
Stas came over—a skinny, round-shouldered man with mournfully dangling ends to his mustache and a sparse head of hair. He gave off a devastating reek of home brew and only stayed on his feet by instinctive reflex response, but every now and then he defiantly flung up his head, grabbed at the strange-looking short-barreled machine gun hanging around his neck, raised his eyelids with an immense effort, and glanced around menacingly.