The Night Watch (39 page)

'What should I do, Semyon?' I asked, without explaining what I meant.

'Do what you ought to do.'

'And what if I don't want to do what I ought to do? If our bright, radiant truth and our watchman's oath and our wonderful good intentions stick in my throat?'

'There's one thing you've got to understand, Anton,' said the magician, crunching a pickle. 'You ought to have realised it ages ago, but you've been tucked away with those machines of yours. Our Light truth may be big and bright, but it's made up of lots and lots of little truths. And Gesar may have a forehead a yard wide and the kind of experience you could never even dream of. But he also has haemorrhoids that have been healed by magic, an Oedipus complex and a habit of rejigging old schemes that worked before to make them look new. That's just for the sake of example, I don't really know what his oddities are, he's the boss after all.'

He took out another cigarette and this time I didn't try to object.

'Anton, I'll tell you what the problem is. You're a young guy, you join the Watch and you're delighted with yourself. At last the whole world is divided up into black and white! Your dream for humanity has come true, now you can tell who's good and who's bad. So get this. That's not the way it is. Not at all. Once we all used to be together. The Dark Ones and the Light Ones. We used to sit round the campfire in our cave and look through the Twilight to see where was the nearest pasture with a grazing mammoth, sing and dance, shooting sparks from our fingers, zap the other tribes with fireballs. And as an example, just to be entirely clear, let's say there were two brothers, both Others. Maybe when the first one went into the Twilight he was feeling well fed, maybe he'd just had sex for the first time. But for the other one it was different. Some green bamboo had given given him stomach-ache, his woman had turned him down because she said she had a headache and she was tired from scraping animal skins. And that's how it started. One leads everyone to the mammoth and he's satisfied. The other demands a piece of the trunk and the chief's daughter into the bargain. That's how we became Dark Ones and Light Ones, Good and Evil. Pretty basic stuff, isn't it? It's what we teach all the Other children. But whoever told you it had all stopped?'

Semyon leaned towards me so abruptly that his chair cracked.

'That's the way it was, it still is and it always will be. For ever, Antosha. There isn't any end to it. Today if anyone runs riot and sets off through a crowd, doing Good without authorisation, we dematerialise him. Into the Twilight with him, he's a hysterical psychopath, he's disturbing the balance, into the Twilight. But what's going to happen tomorrow? In a hundred years? In a thousand? Who can see that far? You, me, Gesar?'

'So what do I do?'

'Do you have a truth of your own, Anton? Tell me, do you? Are you certain of it? Then believe in it, not in my truth, not in Gesar's. Believe in it and fight for it. If you have enough courage. If the idea doesn't make you shudder. What's bad about Dark freedom is not just that it's freedom from others. That's another explanation for little children. Dark freedom is first and foremost freedom from yourself, from your own conscience and your own soul. The moment you can't feel any pain in your chest – call for help. Only by then it'll be too late.'

He paused to reach into the plastic bag and took out another bottle of vodka. He sighed:

'Number two. I have a feeling we're not going to get drunk after all. We won't make it. And as for Olga and what she said . . .'

How did he always manage to hear everything?

'She's not envious because Svetlana might be able to do something she didn't do. And not because Sveta still has everything ahead of her while Olga, to be frank, has it all behind her at this stage. She envies Sveta because you love her and you're there for her and you'd like to stop her. Even though you can't do a thing about it. Gesar could have done, but he didn't want to. You can't, but you want to. Maybe in the end there's no difference, but it still gets to her. It tears at her soul, no matter how old she might be.'

'Do you know what they're preparing Svetlana for?'

'Yes,' said Semyon, splashing more vodka into the glasses.

'What is it?'

'I can't answer that. I gave a written undertaking. Do you want me to take my shirt off, so you can see the sign of chastising fire on my back? If I say a word I'll go up in flames with this chair, and the ashes will fit into a cigarette pack. So I'm sorry, Anton. Don't try to squeeze it out of me.'

'Thanks,' I said. 'Let's drink. Maybe we'll get drunk after all. I certainly need it.'

'I can see that,' Semyon agreed. 'Let's get on with it.'

I
WOKE UP
very early. It was quiet all around, that living silence you get in the country, with the rustle of the morning wind after it's finally turned cool. Only that didn't make me feel any better. The bed was soaking wet with sweat and my head was splitting. Semyon was snoring monotonously on the bed beside me – three of us had been put in the same room. Tolik was sleeping on the floor, wrapped up in a blanket. He'd turned down the hammock he'd been offered, saying his back was hurting – he'd injured it in some tussle in 1976 – and he'd be better off sleeping on a hard surface.

I held the back of my head in my hands to stop the sudden movement shaking it to pieces and sat up on the bed. I looked at the bedside locker and saw two aspirins and a bottle of Borzhomi mineral water. Who was this kind soul?

The evening before, we'd drunk two bottles between us. Then Tolik had turned up. Then someone else, and they'd brought some wine. But I hadn't drunk any wine, I still had enough sense left for that.

I washed down the aspirins with half a bottle of water and sat there stupidly for a while, waiting for the medicine to take effect. The pain didn't go away. I didn't think I'd be able to stand it for long.

'Semyon,' I called in a hoarse voice. 'Semyon!'

The magician opened one eye. He looked perfectly okay. As if he hadn't drunk far more than I had the day before. So that was what another hundred years of experience could do for you.

'Sort my head, will you . . .'

'I don't have an axe handy,' he muttered.

'Ah, you . . .' I groaned. 'Will you fix the pain?'

'Anton, we drank of our free will, didn't we? Nobody forced us, did they? And you enjoyed it!'

He turned over on to his other side.

I realised I couldn't expect any help from Semyon. And anyway he was right, it was just that I couldn't take it any more. I slipped my feet into my trainers, stepped over Tolik's sleeping body and left the room.

There were two rooms just for guests, but the door of the other was locked. However, the door at the end of the corridor, leading into our hostess's bedroom, was open. Remembering what Tiger Cub had said about her healing powers, I walked straight in without hesitation.

It looked like everything was against me today. She wasn't there. And despite my suspicions, neither were Ignat and Lena. Tiger Cub had spent the night with Yulia and the young girl was sleeping like a child, with one arm and one leg dangling over the side of the bed.

I didn't care who I asked for help any more. I tiptoed across, sat down beside the huge bed and whispered her name:

'Yulia, Yulienka . . .'

The girl opened her eyes, blinked and asked sympathetically:

'Hangover?'

'Yes.' I didn't risk a nod, someone had just set a small grenade off inside my head.

'Uhuh?'

She closed her eyes, I even thought she'd dozed off again, but she kept her arm round my neck. For a few seconds nothing happened, then the pain started receding rapidly. As if someone had opened a secret tap in the back of my head and started draining the seething poisons.

'Thanks,' I whispered. 'Thanks, Yulienka.'

'Don't drink so much, you can't take it,' she mumbled and immediately started snoring softly and evenly, as if she'd simply flipped a switch from work to sleep. Only kids and computers can do that.

I stood up, delighted to see the world in colour again. Semyon had been right, of course. You have to take responsibility for your actions. But sometimes you simply don't have enough strength for that. I looked around. The entire bedroom was decorated in beige tones, even the inclined window was slightly tinted. The music centre had a golden finish, the thick, fluffy carpet on the floor was light brown.

I really shouldn't be doing this. No one had invited me.

I walked quietly towards the door and when I had already half left, I heard Yulia's voice:

'You owe me a Snickers bar, okay?'

'Two,' I agreed.

I could have gone back to finish my night's sleep, but my memories of the bed weren't very pleasant ones. It felt like all I had to do was he down and the pain lurking in the pillow would pounce again. I just dropped back into my room to grab my jeans and shirt and put them on, standing in the doorway.

Was everybody really asleep? Tiger Cub was wandering about outside somewhere, but surely someone must have sat up until morning, talking over a bottle.

There was a little hall on the second floor. I spotted Danila and Nastya in there, sleeping peacefully on the sofa, and beat a hasty retreat. I shook my head: Danila had a very attractive wife, and Nastya had an elderly husband who was madly in love with her.

But then, they were only people.

And we were Others, the volunteers of the Light. How could it be helped if we had a different morality? It was like a frontline, with its field army romances and the young nurses comforting the officers and the men, not only in the hospital beds. In a war the appetite for life is just too strong.

I went to the library, where I found Garik and Farid. They had spent all night talking over a bottle – and not just one. And it obviously wasn't long since they'd fallen asleep in their armchairs: Farid's pipe was still smoking faintly on the table in front of him. There were piles of books that had been pulled off the shelves lying on the floor. They must have had a long argument about something, appealing for support to writers and poets, philosophers and historians.

I went down the long wooden spiral staircase. Surely I could find someone to share this peaceful morning with me?

Everybody was still asleep in the sitting room too. I glanced into the kitchen, but there was no one there except for a dog, cowering in the corner.

'Moving again?' I asked.

The terrier bared his fangs and gave a pitiful whine.

'Well, who asked you to play soldier yesterday?' I squatted down in front of the dog and took a piece of sausage off the table. The well-trained animal hadn't dared steal it. 'Here, take it.'

The jaws clicked shut above my open palm.

'You be kind and people will be kind to you!' I explained. 'And stop cowering in corners.'

I took a piece of sausage for myself and chewed it as I walked through the sitting room into the study.

They were asleep in there too.

Even when it was opened out the sofabed in the corner was narrow, so they were lying very close. Ignat was in the middle with his muscular arms flung out wide and a sweet smile on his face. Lena was pressed up against his left side, with one hand clutching his thick shock of blond hair, and her other arm thrown across his chest with her hand on our Don Juan's other partner. Svetlana had her face buried in Ignat's armpit, with her arms reaching in under the blanket that had slipped halfway off their bodies.

I closed the door very quietly and carefully.

It was a cosy little restaurant. As its name suggested, the Sea Dog was famous for its fish dishes and its shipboard interior. And, what's more, it was right next to the metro station. And for a fragile middle class that was sometimes prepared to splash out on a restaurant, but liked to save money on taxis, that was a significant factor.

This customer had arrived by car, in an old but perfectly serviceable model-six Zhiguli. To the well-trained eyes of the waiters the man looked a lot more prosperous than his car suggested. The calm with which he drank his expensive Danish vodka without asking the price only served to reinforce this judgement.

When the waiter brought the sturgeon he'd ordered, the customer glanced at him briefly. Before that he'd been sitting there, tracing lines on the tablecloth with a toothpick, occasionally stopping and gazing at the flame of the glass-bodied oil lamp, but now he suddenly looked up.

The waiter didn't tell anyone what he thought he saw in that instant. It was as if he was gazing into two blinding well-shafts. Blinding in the way the Light blinds when it sears and becomes indistinguishable from the Dark.

'Thank you,' said the customer.

The waiter walked away, fighting the urge to walk faster. Repeating to himself: it was just the reflection of the lamplight in the gloom of the restaurant. Just the way the lamplight happened to catch his eyes.

Boris Ignatievich carried on sitting there, breaking toothpicks. The sturgeon went cold, the vodka in the crystal carafe got warm. On the other side of the partition of thick cables, fake ships' wheels and sailcloth, a large gathering was celebrating someone's birthday, there were speeches of congratulation and complaints about the heat, taxes and gangsters who weren't doing things 'the right way'.

Gesar, the chief of the Moscow office of the Night Watch, waited.

The dogs who'd stayed outside shied away at the sight of me. The freeze had been really tough on them. Their bodies had refused to obey them, they hadn't been able to draw breath or bark, the saliva had congealed in their mouths, the air had pressed down on them with a hot, heavy, delirious hand.

But their spirits were still alive.

The gates were half open; I went through them and stood for a moment, not quite sure where I was going and what I was going to do.

What difference did it make, anyway?

I didn't feel resentful. I wasn't even in pain. The two of us had never even slept together. In fact, I was the one who'd been careful to erect barriers. I didn't just live for the present moment; I wanted everything right now, but I wanted it for ever.

I found the walkman at my belt and switched it on at random. That always worked for me. Maybe because I'd been controlling the simple electronic circuits for a long time, like Tiger Cub, without knowing it.

Who's to blame if you're so tired?
And haven't found what you were longing for?
Lost everything you sought so hard,
Flown up to the sky and fallen back again?
Whose fault is it that day after day
Life walks on other people's paths
But your home has become lonely,
With darkness at its windows,
And the light dims and sounds die
And your hands seek new torment?
And if your pain should ease –
It means new disaster's on the way.

It was what I myself had wanted. I'd tried to make it happen. And now I had only myself to blame. Instead of spending all evening with Semyon, discussing the complex issues of the global conflict between Good and Evil, I ought to have stayed downstairs. Instead of getting angry with Gesar and Olga for their cunning version of truth, I ought to have insisted on my own. And never, ever have thought that it was impossible to win.

Once you start thinking like that, you've already lost.

Who's to blame, tell me, brother?
One is married, another's rich,
One is funny, another's in love.
One's a fool, another's your enemy,
And whose fault is it that there and here
They wait for each other, it's how they live,
But the day is dreary, the night is empty,
The warm places are crowded out,
And the light dims and sounds die,
And your hands seek new torment?
And if your pain should ease,
It means new disaster's on the way.

Who's to blame and what's the secret,
Why is there no grief or happiness,
No victories without defeats,
And the score of luck and disaster is even?
And whose fault is it you're alone,
And your one life so very long,
And so dreary and you're still waiting,
Hoping some day you will die?

'No,' I whispered, pulling off the earphones. 'That's not for me.'

We'd all been taught for so long to give everything and not take anything in exchange. To sacrifice ourselves for the sake of others, to face up to the machine-gun fire. Every look noble and wise, not a single empty thought, not one sinful intention. After all, we were Others. We'd risen above the crowd, unfurled our immaculately clean banners, polished up our high boots, pulled on our white gloves. Oh, yes, in our own little world we could never go too far. A justification could be found for any action, a noble and exalted justification. Here we are all in white, and everyone else is covered in shit.

I was sick of it.

A passionate heart, clean hands, a cool head . . . Surely it was no accident that during the Revolution and the Civil War, almost all the Light Ones had attached themselves to the Cheka? And most of those who didn't had died. At the hands of the Dark Ones, or even more often at the hands of those they were defending. At the hands of humans, because of human stupidity, baseness, cowardice, hypocrisy, envy. A passionate heart and clean hands. But keeping a cool head was more important. That was essential. I didn't really agree with all the rest. Why not a pure heart and hot hands? I like the sound of that better.

'I don't want to protect you,' I said into the quietness of the forest morning. 'I don't want to! Women and children, old men and morons – none of you. Live however you want, get what you deserve! Run from vampires, worship Dark Magicians, kiss the goat under its tail! If you deserved it – take it! If my love means less than your happy lives, then why should you be happy?'

They can become better, they must, they're our roots, they're our future, they're our responsibility. Little people and big people, road-sweepers and presidents, criminals and cops. They carry within them the Light that can erupt in life-giving warmth or death-dealing flame . . .

I don't believe it!

I've seen all of you. Road-sweepers and presidents, criminals and cops. Seen mothers killing their children, fathers raping their daughters. Seen sons throwing their mothers out of the house and daughters putting arsenic in their fathers' food. Seen a husband smiling as he sees his guests out, then closes the door, and punches his pregnant wife in the face. Seen a smiling wife send her drunken husband out for another bottle and turn to his best friend for a passionate embrace. It's very simple to see all this. All you have to do is look. That's why they teach us not to look before they teach us to look through the Twilight.

But we still look anyway.

They're weak, they don't live long, they're afraid of everything. We mustn't despise them and hate them, that would be wrong. They must only be loved, pitied and protected. That is our job, our duty. We are the Watch.