Arkady Strugatsky - Definitely Maybe

I didn’t interrupt. I’ve known that big-faced lug for a quarter century, and not just any century, but the twentieth. He was shouting like that because he had pigeonholed everything in his own mind. There was no point in interrupting, because he wouldn’t have heard me. Until Weingarten has pigeonholed everything, you can argue with him as an equal, like with an ordinary mortal, and can even change his mind. But Weingarten, with everything settled, becomes a tape recorder on playback. Then he shouts and becomes inordinately cynical—probably stems from an unhappy childhood.

So I listened to him in silence, waiting for the tape to end, and the only strange thing was the number of times he referred to living and dead Weingartens. He couldn’t have been frightened—he wasn’t me, after all. I’d seen all kinds of Weingartens: Weingarten in love, Weingarten the hunter, Weingarten the coarse oaf, and Weingarten wiped out. But this was a Weingarten I’d never seen: a frightened Weingarten. I waited for him to turn himself off for a few seconds to get another cigarette and asked just in case:

“Did they frighten you?”

He dropped the cigarettes and gave me the finger, a big, wet finger, across the table. He had been waiting for the question. The answer had also been prerecorded, not only in gestures, but orally as well:

“I like that—frightened me!” he said, waving his finger under my nose. “This isn’t the nineteenth century, you know. They used to frighten people in the nineteenth century. But they don’t bother with that nonsense in the twentieth. In the twentieth, they buy you off. They didn’t scare me, they bought me, understand, buddy? It’s a nice choice! Either they flatten you into a pancake or they give you a spanking-new institute over which two scientists have already back-bitten each other to death. I’ll do ten Nobel-winning projects at the institute, understand? Of course, the merchandise isn’t all bad, either. It’s sort of like my birthright. The right of Weingarten to have freedom of scientific curiosity. Not bad merchandise at all, buddy, don’t argue with me. But it’s been on the shelves too long. It belongs to the nineteenth century! Nobody has that freedom in the twentieth century anyway! You can take your freedom and spend all your life as a lab assistant, washing out test tubes. The institute is no mess of pottage, either! I’ll start ten ideas there, twenty ideas, and if they don’t like one or two, well, we’ll bargain again. There’s strength in numbers, buddy. Let’s not spit into the wind. When a heavy tank is headed straight for you and the only weapon you have is the head on your shoulders, you have to know enough to jump out of its way.”

He talked a lot longer, shouting, smoking, coughing hoarsely, running over to look into the empty bar, running away from it in disappointment, and shouting some more. Then he quieted down, ran out of words, leaned back in the armchair, rested his head on the back of the chair, and made distorted faces at the ceiling.

“All right, then,” I said. “But where are you taking your Nobel Prize? You should have taken it down to the boiler room; instead you lugged it up five flights to my place.”

“I’m taking it to Vecherovsky.”

I was amazed.

“What’s he going to do with your Nobel work?”

“I don’t know. Ask him.”

“Wait,” I said. “Did he call you?”

“No, I called him.”

“And?”

“What and?” He sat up in the chair and started buttoning his jacket. “I called him this morning and told him I choose the bird in hand.”

“And?”

“What and? And… he said, well then, bring your materials to me.”

We sat in silence.

“I don’t understand why he wants your materials.”

“Because he is Don Quixote!” Weingarten barked. “Because he’s never been pecked at by a barbecued chicken! Because he’s never bitten off more than he can chew.”

I suddenly understood.

“Listen, Val,” I said. “Don’t. The hell with him, he’s gone nuts! They’ll hammer him into the ground up to his neck! Who needs it?”

“What, then?” Weingarten asked greedily. “What?”

“Burn it, your damn revertase! Let’s burn it right now. In the bathtub.”

“Pity,” Weingarten said and looked away. “What a pity. The work… it’s first class. Extra special. Deluxe.”

I shut up. And he was out of the chair again, running back and forth across the room, out into the hall and back, and his tape was back on again too. It’s shameful, yes. Honor suffers, yes. His pride is hurt. Especially when you can’t tell anyone about it. But if you think about it, pride is sheer lunacy and nothing else. Just driving himself mad. Why, most people wouldn’t even think twice in our situation. And they’d call us idiots! And they’d be right. Have we never had to compromise before? Of course, hundreds of times! And will hundreds more! And not with gods, but with lousy bureaucrats, with nits who are too disgusting to touch.

His running in front of me, sweating and justifying himself, was getting me mad, and I said that it was one thing to compromise and another to capitulate. Oh, that did it! I got him badly. But I wasn’t sorry in the least. It wasn’t really him I was jabbing in the solar plexus, it was myself. Anyway, we had a fight, and he left. He took his bags and went up to Vecherovsky’s. At the door he said he’d be back later, but I told him that Irina was back, and he collapsed completely. He doesn’t like it when people don’t like him.

I sat down at the desk and got to work. That is, not work, but organization. At first I kept expecting a bomb to go off under the table or a blue face with a noose around its neck to appear in my window. But nothing like that happened and I got caught up in the work, and then the doorbell rang again.

I didn’t go to answer it right away. First I went to the kitchen and got the meat hammer—an ominous thing: one side has spikes and the other side is an ax. If something went wrong, I’d let him have it between the eyes. I’m a peaceful man, I don’t like fights or arguments, or Weingarten either, but I’d had enough. Enough.

I opened the door. It was Zakhar.

“Hi, Dmitri, please, forgive me,” he said with an artificial casualness.

I looked down the hall against my will, but there was no one else. Zakhar was alone.

“Come in, come in. Happy to see you.”

“You see, I decided to look in on you.” Still in that same artificial tone that didn’t go at all with his shy smile and highly intelligent appearance. “Weingarten disappeared somewhere, damn him. I’ve been calling him all day, he’s out. And since I was coming over to see Philip, I thought I’d look in here and see, maybe he was here.”

“Philip?”

“No, no… Valentin… Weingarten.”

“He went to Philip’s,” I said.

“Oh, I see!” Zakhar said with great joy. “Long ago?”

“Over an hour.”

His face froze for a second when he saw the hammer in my hand.

“Fixing dinner?” he asked, and added, without waiting for an answer: “Well, I won’t get in your way. I’m off.” He started for the door, then stopped. “Oh yes, I almost forgot… I mean, I didn’t forget, I just don’t know. Which is Philip’s apartment?”

I told him.

“Ah, thank you. You see, he called and I… somehow forgot to ask… during the conversation.”

He backed up to the door and opened it.

“I understand,” I said. “And where’s your boy?”

“It’s all over for me!” he shouted joyfully, stepped over the threshold, and…

Excerpt 20…. get me to do a major cleanup of this goat’s den. I barely got out of it. We agreed that I would finish my work, and Irina, since she had absolutely nothing else to do and was stir-crazy—she was incapable of just soaking in the tub and reading the latest issue of Foreign Literature —well, Irina would sort the laundry and take care of Bobchik’s room. And I promised to do our room, but not today, tomorrow. Morgen, morgen, nur nicht heute . But it would sparkle spotlessly.