Arkady Strugatsky - Definitely Maybe

I felt my jaw drop, and I shut my mouth. I didn’t understand a thing. Vecherovsky asked very calmly:

“Did you get bad news about Dmitri?”

She stopped looking at me and turned to him. Then she leaped up, ran into the foyer, and came back, rummaging through her purse.

“Just look, look at what I received.” A comb, lipstick, papers, and money spilled on the floor. “God, where is it? Here!” She threw the purse on the table, stuck her trembling hand into her pocket (she missed on the first try), and pulled out a crumpled telegram. “Here.”

I grabbed it. Read it. Understood nothing: IN TIME SNEGOVOI. I read it again, and then, in desperation, out loud:

“‘DMITRI BAD HURRY TO MAKE IT IN TIME SNEGOVOI.’ Why Snegovoi? How could it be Snegovoi?”

Vecherovsky carefully took the telegram from me.

“Sent this morning,” he said.

“When?” I asked loudly, like a deaf man.

“This morning. At nine twenty-two.”

“God! Why would he play a trick like that on me?”

Excerpt 18…. then me. She couldn’t reach me by phone. She couldn’t get a ticket at the airport. She stormed the director’s office, brandishing the telegram, and he gave her a note, but it wasn’t much help. There were no planes ready for takeoff, and the ones that arrived were going the wrong way. Finally, in desperation, she took a plane to Kharkov. Then the whole story started over again, but it was pouring rain there to boot. It was only toward evening that she managed to get to Moscow by a freight plane that was carrying refrigerators and coffins. From Domodedovo Airport she rushed over to Sheremetyevo, and she finally got to Leningrad riding in the cockpit. She hadn’t eaten a single thing since she left and spent most of the time weeping. Even as she was falling asleep, she kept threatening to go to the post office first thing in the morning with the police and find out whose work it was, what bastards were responsible. Naturally, I agreed with her, saying, of course, we won’t leave it at this; for jokes like this people should be punched out; no, more than that, they should be arrested. Of course, I didn’t tell her that nowadays, thank God, the post office wouldn’t accept a telegram like that without confirmation, that it is impossible to play practical jokes like that, and that it was most likely that no one sent the telegram, that the Teletype in Odessa just printed it out by itself.

I couldn’t fall asleep. It was morning anyway. It was light outside, and despite the blinds the room was bright. I lay still in bed, petting Kaliam, stretched out between us, and listened to Irina’s even breathing. She always slept deeply and with great pleasure. There was nothing so bad in the world that it would give her insomnia. At least, so far there hadn’t been.

The sickening sense of impending doom that befell me the moment I read and finally understood the telegram had not left me. My muscles were in cramps and inside, in my chest and stomach, was a huge, shapeless cold lump. Once in a while the lump moved, and then my skin crawled.

At first, when Irina fell asleep in mid-word and I heard her even breathing, for a moment I felt better. I wasn’t alone. Next to me was the person nearest and dearest to me. But the cold toad in my chest stirred and I was horrified by that sense of relief; so this is what I’ve sunk to; they’ve reduced me to this: I can be happy that Irina is here, that Irina is in the same foxhole under fire with me. Oh no, we go for her ticket first thing in the morning. Back to Odessa. I’ll push everyone aside, I’ll chew our path through the lines to the ticket office.

My poor little girl, how she suffered because of those bastards, because of me and that lousy interstellar matter, all of which isn’t worth a single wrinkle on Irina’s face. And they got to her, too. Why? They needed her for something? The bastards, the blind bastards. They hit anyone who is in firing range. No, nothing will happen to her. They’re just using her to scare me. They’re playing on my nerves, one way or another.

Suddenly, I pictured dead Snegovoi—walking along Moscow Boulevard in his striped pajamas, heavy, cold, with a clotted bullet hole in his thick skull; coming into the post office and getting in line at the telegram window; a gun in his right hand, the telegram in his left; and nobody notices. The girl takes the telegram from his dead fingers, writes out a receipt, and, forgetting the money, calls out: Next.

I shook my head to dispel the vision, quietly got out of bed, and padded to the kitchen in my underwear. It was sunny in there, the sparrows were making a racket in the yard, and I could hear the janitor’s broom. I picked up Irina’s purse, fished out a crumpled pack with two broken cigarettes in it, sat down, and lit up. I hadn’t smoked in a long time. Two, maybe three years. Proving my willpower. Yep, brother Malianov, you’ll need your willpower now. Hell, I’m a lousy actor, and I don’t know how to lie. Irina must know nothing. She has nothing to do with it. I have to do this alone. No one can help me, not Irina, no one.

And what does help have to do with it, anyway? Who’s talking about help? I don’t tell Irina my problems if I can at all avoid it. I don’t like making her sad. I love making her happy and hate making her sad. If it weren’t for all this crap I would have loved to have told her about the M cavities, she would have understood immediately, even though she’s no theoretician and is always putting down her own abilities. But what can I tell her now?

There are different problems, however, different levels of problems. There are minor ones that it’s no sin to complain about, that are even pleasant to kvetch about. Irina would say: Big deal, what nonsense, and everything would get better. If the problems are bigger, then it’s just unmanly to talk about them. I don’t tell Mother or Irina about them. And then there are the problems of such magnitude that it becomes a little unclear. First of all, whether I want it or not, Irina is in the firing line with me.

Something very unfair is happening here. I’m being battered to death, but at least I understand for what, can guess who’s doing it, and know that I’m being battered. These are not stupid jokes and not fate; they’re aiming at me. I think it’s better to know that they’re aiming at you. Of course, it takes all kinds, and probably most people would rather not know, but my Irina is not one of them. She’s reckless; I know her. When she’s afraid of something she rushes headlong right into her fear. It would be dishonest not to tell her. And in general, I have to make a decision. (I haven’t even tried to think about that yet, and I’ll have to. Or have I already chosen? Have I made my choice without knowing it?) And if I have to choose—well, let’s assume the choice itself is up to me alone. We’ll do what we want. But what about the consequences? One choice will lead to their tossing atom bombs, instead of plain ones, at us. Another choice—I wonder, would Irina have liked Glukhov? I mean he’s a nice, pleasant man, quiet, meek. We could get a television, to Bobchik’s everlasting joy; we could ski every Saturday, go to the movies. One way or the other the decision will affect more than just me. Sitting under a shower of bombs is bad, but finding out after ten years of marriage that your husband is a jellyfish is no picnic either. But maybe it would be all right. How do I know what she sees in me? That’s just it, I don’t. And maybe she doesn’t know either.

I finished the cigarette and flipped the butt into the garbage. A passport lay next to the can. Nice. We had cleaned up every last scrap, every penny, but there was her passport. I picked up the gray-green book and looked at the first page distractedly. I don’t know why. I broke out in a cold sweat. Sergeenko, Inna Fedorovna. Date of birth: 1939. What’s this? The photograph was of Irina—no, not Irina. Some woman who looked like Irina, but wasn’t. Some Sergeenko, Inna Fedorovna.