The taxi braked. It was the very same place. It even seemed as though there was that same burning smell…
… Peck registered a hit on the armored carrier with the Fulminator. It spun on a single tread, hopping in the piles of broken bricks, and two fascists immediately jumped out in their unbuttoned camouflage shirts, flung a grenade apiece in our direction, and sped off into the darkness. They moved knowingly and adeptly, and it was obvious that these were not youngsters from the Royal Academy or lifers from the Golden Brigade, but genuine full-blown tank corps officers. Robert cut them down point-blank with a burst from his machine gun. The carrier was bulging with cases of beer. It struck us that we had been constantly thirsty for the last two days. Iowa Smith clambered into the carrier and began handing out the cans. Peck opened them with a knife. Robert, putting the machine gun against the carrier, punched holes into the cans with a sharp point on the armor. And the Teacher, adjusting his pince-nez, tripped on the Fulminator straps and muttered, “Wait a minute, Smith; can’t you see I’ve got my hands full?” A five-story building burned briskly at the end of the street, there was a thick smell of smoke and hot metal, and we avidly downed the warm beer, and were drenched through and through, and it was very hot and the dead officers lay on the broken and crushed bricks, with their legs identically flung out in their black pants, and the camouflage shirts bunched at their necks, and the skin still glistening with perspiration on their backs.
‘They are officers,” said the Teacher. “Thank God. I can’t bear the sight of any more dead kids. Accursed politics! People forget God on account of it.”
“What god is that?” inquired Iowa Smith out of the carrier. “I’ve never heard of him.”
“Don’t jest about that, Smith,” said the Teacher. “This will all end soon, and from then on no one nowhere will be permitted to poison the souls of men with vanity.”
“And how then shall they multiply?” asked Iowa Smith. He bent over the beer again, and we could see the burn holes in his pants.
“I am talking about politics,” said the Teacher modestly. “The fascists must be destroyed. They are beasts. But that is not enough. There are many other political parties, and there is no place for them and all their propaganda in our land.” The Teacher came from this town and lived within two blocks of our post. “Social anarchists, technocrats, communists, are of course — “
“I am a communist,” announced Iowa Smith, “at least by conviction. I am for the commune.”
The Teacher looked at him in bewilderment.
“Also I am a godless man,” added Iowa Smith. “There is no god, Teacher, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
At which point we all began to say that we were all atheists, and Peck said that on top of that he was for technocracy, while Robert announced that his father was a social anarchist and his grandfather was a social anarchist and he, Robert, probably could not escape being a social anarchist, although he didn’t know what it was all about.
“Well now, if the beer would get ice-cold, said Peck pensively, “I would at once believe in God with great delight.”
Teacher smiled embarrassedly and kept wiping his glasses. He was a good man and we always kidded him, but he never took offense. From the very first night I observed that his courage was not great, but he never retreated without being commanded. We were still chattering and joking when there was a thunderous crash, the burning building wall collapsed, and straight out of the swirling flames and clouds of smoke and sparks swam a Mammoth attack tank, floating a yard above the pavement. This was a new horror, the likes of which we hadn’t seen yet. Floating out in the middle of the street, it rotated its thrower as though looking around, and then, hovering on its air cushion, began to move in our direction, screeching and clanking metallically. I regained my wits only by the time I was behind a gate post. The tank was now considerably closer, and at first I couldn’t see anyone at all, but then Iowa Smith stood up in full view out of the carrier, and propping the butt of the Fulminator against his stomach, took aim. I could see the recoil double him up. I saw a bright flash against the black brow of the tank. And then the street was filled with roar and flame, and when I raised my burned eyelids with great effort, the street was empty and contained only the tank. There was no carrier, no mounds of broken brick, no leaning kiosk by the neighboring house — there was only the tank. It was as though the monster had come awake and was spewing waterfalls of flame and the street ceased being a street and became a square. Peck slapped me hard on the neck and I could see his glassy eyes right in front of my face, but there was no time to run toward the trench and break out the launcher.
We both picked up the mine and started running toward the tank, and all I remember is looking continually at the back of his head, and gasping for breath and counting steps, when the helmet flew off Peck’s head, and he fell, so I almost dropped the mine and fell on top of him. The tank was blown up by Robert and Teacher. I still don’t know how they did it or when; it must be they were running behind us with another mine. I sat until morning in the middle of the street holding Peck’s bandaged head on my knees and staring at the awesome treads of the tank sticking out of the asphalt lake. That same morning the whole bloody thing came to an end all at once. Zun Padana surrendered with all his staff and was shot in the street by some crazed woman when already a prisoner….
This was the very same place. I even thought I smelled smoke and burned metal. Even the kiosk stood on the corner, and it too was a bit crooked in the latest style of architecture. The part of the street which the tank turned into a plaza remained a plaza, and on the site of the asphalt lake there was a small square in which someone was being beaten. Iowa Smith was an urban planner from Iowa, U.S.A., Robert Sventisky was a movie director form Krakow, Poland. The Teacher was a schoolteacher from this town. No one ever saw them again, even dead. And Peck was Peck, who had now become Buba
Buba lived in the same sort of cottage as I, and its front door was open. I knocked, but no one responded and no one – came out to meet me. I entered the dark hall. The lights did not go on. The door to the right was locked, and I looked into the one on the left. In the living room a bearded man, in a jacket, but without pants, was sleeping on a tattered couch. Someone’s feet stuck out from under the overturned table. There was a smell of brandy, tobacco smoke, and of something else, cloyingly sweet, like in Aunt Vaina’s room the other day. In the door to the study, I bumped into a handsome florid woman, who was not in the slightest surprised to see me.
“Good evening,” I said. Please excuse me, but does Buba live here?”
“Here,” she said, examining me out of glistening oily-looking eyes.
“Can I see him?”
“And why not — all you want.”
“Where is he?”
“Funny man. Where would he be?” she laughed.
I could guess where, but said, “In the bedroom?”
“You are warm,” she said.
“What do you mean — warm?”
“What a dunce, and sober yet! Would you like a drink?”
“No,” I said, angry. “Where is he? I need him right away.”
“Your prospects are poor,” she said gaily. “But search on, search on. As for me, I must go.”
She patted me on the cheek and went out.
The study was empty. There was a large crystal vase on the table with some kind of reddish fluid in it. Everything smelled of that nauseatingly sweet odor. The bedroom was also empty; crumpled sheets and pillows were scattered about. I approached the bathroom door. The door was full of holes, obviously made by bullets shot from the inside, judging by their shape. I hesitated, then took hold of the handle. The door was locked.
I opened it with considerable difficulty. Buba lay in the bath up to his neck in greenish water; steam rose from its surface. The radio howled and wheezed on the edge of the tub. I stood and looked at Buba. At the erstwhile cosmonaut experimenter, Peck Xenai. At the once-upon-a-time supple and well-muscled fellow, who at eighteen left his warm city by the warm sea, and went into space for the glory of man, and who at thirty returned to his country to fight the last of the fascists and to remain here forever. I was repelled to think that only an hour ago, I had looked like him. I touched his face and pulled his thin hair. He did not stir. Then I bent over him to let him sniff some Potomac, and suddenly saw that he was dead.