“The burial detail,” said Uncle Yura. “That’s right. Now they’ll take them to the dump—all done and dusted… Hey, that’s Stas waving to us over there! Gee-up!”
They could see Stas’s ungainly figure in the illuminated mist ahead of them. When the cart drew level with him, Uncle Yura suddenly leaned down from the front edge and asked, almost as if he were frightened, “What’s the problem, brother? What’s wrong with you?”
Without answering, Stas tried to jump up sideways onto the cart, fell off, gritted his teeth loudly, took hold of the side with both hands, and started muttering in a stifled voice.
“What’s wrong with him?” Selma asked in a whisper
The cart moved slowly toward the roaring of engines and crackling of shots, and Stas held on to the cart with both hands, walking alongside, as if he didn’t have the strength to climb up, until Uncle Yura leaned down from the cart and dragged him up onto the front.
“So what is wrong with you?” Uncle Yura asked in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear. “Can we drive on? Just tell me what you’re mumbling about, will you?”
“Mother of God,” Stas said in a clear voice. “What are they doing it for? Who could have ordered that?”
“Whooah!” Uncle Yura called, loud enough for the whole City to hear.
“No, you keep going, keep going,” said Stas. “We can drive on. Only it’s best not to look… Pani,” he said, turning to Selma, “turn away, you mustn’t look, look over that way… better still, don’t look at all.”
Andrei felt his throat tighten; he looked at Selma and her eyes were open so wide, they seemed to cover her entire face.
“Go on, Yura, go on…” Stas muttered. “Drive her on, the bitch, stop plodding along! Move fast!” he roared. “Gallop on! Gallop on!”
The horse shot off at a gallop, the buildings on the left came to an end, and the mist suddenly receded and dispersed, revealing Baboon Boulevard—this was definitely the source of all the noise. A line of trucks with their engines idling blocked off the boulevard in a semicircle. Standing in the trucks and between them were men with white armbands, and running along the boulevard between burning trees and bushes, howling and screaming, were men in striped pajamas and baboons absolutely frantic with fear. They stumbled and fell, clambered up trees, tried to hide in the bushes, and all the time the men with white armbands shot at them with rifles and machine guns. The boulevard was strewn with large numbers of motionless bodies, some of them smoldering and smoking. A jet of fire enveloped in swirling black smoke gushed out of one of the trucks with a long hiss, and yet another tree hung with black clusters of baboons flared up like an immense torch. And above all the noise someone howled in an unbearably high falsetto voice, “I’m fit and well! It’s a mistake! I’m normal! It’s a mistake!”
All this went rushing past, shuddering and skipping, leaving them with a sharp pain in their ribs, scorching them with its heat and drenching them with its stink, deafening them and punching them in the eyes, and a minute later it was all behind them and the glimmering mist had closed back together, but Uncle Yura drove the horse hard for a long time, desperately whooping and brandishing the reins. “What in hell’s name is all this?” Andrei kept repeating stupidly to himself, slumping in exhaustion against Selma. “What in hell’s name is all this! They’re madmen, the blood has driven them berserk… Madmen have taken control of the City, insane butchers have taken over, now it’s the end of everything, they won’t stop, they’ll come for us next…”
The cart suddenly stopped. “Ohh no,” said Uncle Yura, swinging around bodily. “You know what this calls for…” He rummaged among the sacks in the cart, pulled out a large bottle, dragged out the cork with his teeth, spat it out, and started swigging. Then he handed the bottle to Stas, wiped his mouth, and said, “So you’re exterminating them… The Experiment… Right, then.” He took a folded sheet of newsprint out of his breast pocket, neatly tore off one corner, and reached for his tobacco. “So you’re going for broke. All the way! Really going for broke!”
Stas held out the bottle to Andrei. Andrei shook his head. Selma took the bottle, downed two gulps from it, and handed it back to Stas. No one said anything. Uncle Yura smoked his crackling roll-up, growled in his throat like an immense dog, then suddenly turned around and untangled the reins.
There was only one block left to the turn onto Stool Closet Lane when the mist ahead of them was brightly lit up again and they heard a cacophonous hubbub of voices. Right at the intersection, a huge, rumbling crowd, illuminated by searchlights, was heaving about in the middle of the street. The intersection was crammed solid; there was no way they could drive through it.
“Some kind of meeting,” said Uncle Yura, looking back over his shoulder.
“That’s the way of it,” Stas agreed despondently. “Once they start shooting people, the meetings come next… Is there no way to drive around?”
“Hang on there, brother, why would we want to drive around?” said Uncle Yura. “We ought to listen to what the people are saying. Maybe they’ll say something about the sun… Lookee, there’s plenty of our folks here.”
The rumbling died down and a furious, rasping voice, amplified through microphones, rang out over the crowd.
“…And let me say that once again: mercilessly! We will purge the City! Of filth! Of scum! Of every last, single parasite! String up the crooks!”
“Aaah!” the crowd roared.
“String up the bribe-takers!”
“Aaah!”
“Anyone who comes out against the people will dangle from a streetlamp!”
“Aaah!”
Andrei recognized the speaker now. The riveted flank of some kind of military vehicle rose up out of the very center of the crowd, with a figure rising farther up above it, clutching the riveted flank with both hands. Illuminated by the blue beam of a searchlight, the long, black-clad torso swayed back and forth as the figure opened its parched mouth in a shout—the figure of the former noncommissioned officer of the Wehrmacht and present leader of the Party of Radical Rebirth, Friedrich Heiger.
“And this will only be the beginning! We shall establish a genuine order of the people, a genuinely human order, in this, our City! We care nothing for any experiments! We are not guinea pigs! We are people! Our weapons are reason and conscience! We will not allow anyone! To control our destiny! We shall be masters of our own destiny! The destiny of the people is in the hands of the people! The people has entrusted its destiny to me! Its rights! Its future! And I swear! I shall justify this trust!”
“Aaah!”
“I shall be ruthless! In the name of the people! I shall be cruel! In the name of the people! I shall not permit the slightest discord! No more struggle between people! No more communists! No more socialists! No more capitalists! No more fascists! No more fighting against each other! We shall fight for each other!”
“Aaah!”
“No more parties! No more nationalities! No more classes! Anyone who preaches discord will be strung up!”
“Aaah!”
“If the poor continue to fight against the rich! If the communists continue to fight against the capitalists! If the blacks continue to fight against the whites! We shall be trampled down! We shall be exterminated! But if we! Stand shoulder to shoulder! Grasping our guns in our hands! Or our sledgehammers! Or the handles of our plows! Then no power will ever be found that can crush us! Our weapon is unity! Our weapon is the truth! No matter how hard it might be! Yes, we have been lured into a trap! But I swear in the name of God, the beast is too large for this trap!”