“Well, well, brother, you are nervous!” said I.
“Stand where you are,” said the boy in a hoarse voice.” I did not say your name.”
“To say the least,” said I. “You did not even mention yours, and you fire at me like I was a dummy.”
“Stand where you are,” repeated the boy, “and don’t move.” He backed and suddenly blurted in rapid fire, “Hence from my hair, hence from my bones, hence from my flesh.”
“I cannot,” I said. I was still trying to understand whether he was playing or was really afraid of me.
“Why not?” said the boy. “I am saying everything right.”
“I can’t go without moving,” I said. “I am standing where I am.”
His mouth fell open again.
“Hugger: I say to you — Hugger — begone!” he said uncertainly.
“Why Hugger?” I said. “My name is Ivan; you confuse me with somebody else.”
The boy closed his eyes and advanced upon me, holding the tube in front of him.
“I surrender,” I warned. “Be careful not to fire.”
When the tube dented my midriff he stopped and, dropping it, suddenly went limp, letting his hands fall. I bent over and looked him in the face. Now he was brick-red. I picked up the tube. It was something like a toy rifle, with a convenient checkered grip and a flat rectangular flask which was inserted from below, like a clip.
“What kind of gadget is this?” I asked.
“A splotcher,” he said gloomily. “Give it back.”
I gave him back the toy.
“A splotcher,” I said, “with which you splotch. And what if you had hit me?” I looked at the wall. “Fine thing. Now you won’t get it off inside of a year. You’ll have to get the wall changed.”
The boy looked up at me suspiciously. “But it’s Splotchy,” he said.
“Really — and I thought it was lemonade.”
His face finally acquired a normal hue and demonstrated an obvious resemblance to the manly features of Major General Tuur.
“No, no, it’s Splotchy.”
“So?”
“It will dry up.”
“And then it’s really hopeless?”
“Of course not. There will simply be nothing left.”
“Hmm,” said I, with reservation. “However, you know best. Let us hope so. But I am still glad that there will be nothing left on the wall instead of on my face. What’s your name?”
“Siegfried.”
“And after you give it some thought?”
He gave me a long look.
“Lucifer.”
“What?”
“Lucifer.”
“Lucifer,” said I. “Belial, Ahriman, Beelzebub, and Azrael. How about something a little shorter? It’s very inconvenient to call for help to someone with a name like Lucifer.”
“But the doors are closed,” he said and backed one step. His face paled again.
“So what?”
He did not respond but continued to back until he reached the wall and began to sidle along it without taking his eyes off me. It finally dawned on me that he took me for a murderer or a thief and. that he wanted to escape. But for some reason he did not call for help and went by his mother’s door, continuing toward the house exit.
“Siegfried,” said I, “Siegfried, Lucifer, you are a terrible coward. Who do you think I am?” I didn’t move but only Turned to keep facing him. “I am your new boarder; your mother has just fed me croutons and cream and you go and fire at me and almost splotched me, and now you are afraid of me. It is I who should be afraid of you.”
All this was very much reminiscent of a scene in the boarding school in Anyudinsk, when they brought me a boy just like this one, the son of a sect member. Hell’s bells, do I really look so much the gangster?
“You remind me of Chuchundra the Muskrat,” I said, “who spent his life crying because he could not come out into the middle of the room. Your nose is blue from fear, your ears are freezing, and your pants are wet so that you are trailing a small stream….”
In such cases it makes absolutely no difference what is said. It is important to speak calmly and not to make sudden movements. The expression on his face did not change, but when I spoke about the stream, he moved his eyes momentarily to take a look. But only for a second. Then he jumped toward the door, fluttering for a second at the latch, and flew outside, dirty bottoms of his sandals flying. I went out after him.
He stood in the lilac bush, so that all I could see was his pale face. Like a fleeing cat looking momentarily over its shoulder.
“Okay, okay,” said I. “Would you please explain to me what I must do? I have to send home my new address. The address of this house where I am now living.” He regarded me in silence. “I don’t feel right going to your mother — in the first place, she has guests, and in the second—”
“Seventy-eight, Second Waterway,” he said.
Slowly I sat down on the steps. There was a distance of some ten meters between us.
‘That’s quite a voice you have,” I said confidentially. “Just like my friend the barman’s at Mirza-Charles.”
“When did you arrive?” said he.
“Well, let’s see.” I looked at my watch, “About an hour and a half ago.”
“Before you there was another one,” he said, looking sideways. “He was a rat-fink. He gave me striped swimming trunks, and when I went in the water, they melted away.”
“Ouch!” I said. “That is really a monster of some sort and not a human — he should have been drowned in Splotchy.”
“Didn’t have time — I was going to, but he went away.”
“Was it that same Hugger with Martha and the boys?”
“No — where did you get that idea? Hugger came later.”
“Also a rat-fink?”
He didn’t answer. I leaned back against the wall and contemplated the street. A car jerkily backed out of the opposite driveway, back and forthed, and roared off. Immediately it was followed by another just such a car. There was the pungent smell of gasoline. Then cars followed one after another, until my eyes blurred. Several helis appeared in the sky. They were the so-called silent helis, but they flew relatively low, and while they flew, it was difficult to talk. In any case, the boy was apparently not going to talk. But he wasn’t going to leave, either. He was doing something with his splotcher in the bushes and was glancing at me now and then. I was hoping he wasn’t going to splotch me again. The helis kept going and going, and the cars kept swishing and swishing, as though all the fifteen thousand cars were speeding by on Second Waterway, and all the five hundred helis were hung over Number 78. The whole thing lasted about ten minutes, and the boy seemed to cease paying attention to me while I sat and wondered what questions I should ask of Rimeyer. Then everything returned to its previous state, the smell of exhaust was gone, the sky was cleared.
“Where are they all going — all at once?” I asked.
“Don’t you know?”
“How would I know?”
“I don’t know either, but somehow you knew about Hugger.”
“About Hugger,” I said. “I know about Hugger quite accidentally. And about you I know nothing at all… how you live and what you do. For instance, what are you doing now?”
“The safeguard is broken.”
“Well then, give it to me, I’ll fix it. Why are you afraid of me? Do I look like a rat-fink?”
“They all drove off to work,” he said.
“You sure go to work late. It’s practically dinnertime already. Do you know the Hotel Olympic?”
“Of course I know.”
“Would you walk me there?”
He hesitated.
“No.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“School is about to end — I must be going home.”
“Aha! So that’s the way of it,” said I. “You are playing hookey, or ditching it, as we used to say. What grade are you in?”
“Third.”
“I used to be in third grade, too,” I said.
He came a bit out of the bushes.
“And then?”
“Then I was in the fourth.” I got up. “Well, okay. Talk you won’t, go for a walk you won’t, and your pants are wet, so I am going back in. You won’t even tell me your name.”
He looked at me in silence and breathed heavily through his mouth. I went back to my quarters. The cream-colored hall was irreparably disfigured, it seemed to me. The huge black clot was not drying. Somebody is going to get it today, I thought. A ball of string was underfoot. I picked it up. The end of the string was tied to the landlady’s half-doorknob. So, I thought, this too is clear. I untied the string and put the ball in my pocket.