Arkady Strugatsky - Definitely Maybe

I settled in at my desk, and for a while everything was quiet and peaceful. I worked, and worked with pleasure, but it was an unusual sort of pleasure. I’d never experienced anything like it. I felt a strange, serious satisfaction, I was proud of myself and respected myself. I thought that a soldier who remains at the machine gun to cover his retreating comrades must feel like that. He knows he will be here forever, that he will never see anything other than the muddy field, the running figures in the enemy uniform, and the low, grim sky. And he also knows that it’s right, that it can be no other way, and is proud of it. And some watchman in my brain carefully and sensitively listened and watched while I worked, remembered that nothing had finished, that it was all continuing, and that right in the desk drawer lay the fearsome hammer with the ax blade on one side and the spikes on the other. And the watchman made me look up, because something happened in the room.

Actually, nothing particular had happened. Irina was standing in front of the desk, looking at me. And at the same time something had happened, something unexpected and wild, because Irina’s eyes were square and her lips were puffy. Before I could say anything Irina tossed a pink rag right on my papers, and as I picked it up I saw it was a bra.

“What’s this?” I asked, absolutely bewildered, looking at Irina and back at the bra.

“What does it look like?” Irina said in a strange voice, turned her back to me, and went to the kitchen.

Chilled by premonitions, I toyed with the pink lacy garment and couldn’t understand. What the hell? What does a bra have to do with anything? And then I remembered Zakhar’s women. I got scared for Irina. I threw down the bra and raced into the kitchen.

Irina was sitting on a stool, leaning on the table, her head in her hands. A cigarette burned between the fingers of her right hand.

“Don’t touch me,” she said calmly and cuttingly.

“Irina!” I said pathetically. “Are you all right?”

“You animal…” she muttered, pulled her hands away from her hair, and took a drag of the cigarette. I saw that she was crying.

An ambulance? That wouldn’t help, who needs an ambulance? Valerian drops? Bromides? God, look at her face. I grabbed a glass and filled it with tap water.

“Now I understand everything,” Irina said, inhaling nervously and pushing the glass away with her elbow. “The telegram and everything. Here we are. Who is she?”

I sat down and took a drink of the water.

“Who?” I asked dully.

For a second I thought she was going to hit me.

“That’s really something, you noble bastard,” she said in disgust. “You didn’t want to contaminate the connubial bed. How noble. So you took her into your son’s bed.”

I finished the water and tried to put down the glass but my hand wouldn’t obey me. A doctor! I kept thinking. My poor Irina, I must get a doctor!

“All right,” Irina said. She wasn’t looking at me anymore. She was staring out the window and smoking, inhaling every few seconds. “All right, there’s nothing to talk about. You always did say that love was an agreement. It always sounded so good: love, honesty, friendship. But you could have been more careful not to leave bras behind… Maybe there’s a pair of panties, too, if we look hard enough?”

It came to me in a blinding flash. I understood it all.

“Irina! God. You scared me so badly. You gave me such a scare.”

Of course, that wasn’t at all what she expected to hear, because she turned to me, with her pale, beautiful, tearstained face, and looked at me with such expectancy and hope that I almost began to cry myself. She wanted only one thing: for this to be cleared up, explained away as nonsense, a mistake, a crazy coincidence, as soon as possible.

That was the last straw. I couldn’t take it anymore. I didn’t want to keep it to myself anymore. I dumped the whole horror story and the madness of the last two days on her.

My story must have sounded like a joke at first. But I went on talking, paying attention to nothing, not giving her a chance to get in sarcastic comments. I just poured it out, without any particular order, not worrying about chronology. I saw her expression of suspicion and hope change to amazement, then anxiety, then fear, and, finally, pity.

We were in our room by then in front of the open window—she was in the chair and I was on the rug, leaning my cheek against her knee; there was a storm outside. A purple cloud poured itself out over the rooftops, pelting rain, frantic lightning bolts attacking the high-rise’s roof and disappearing into the building. Large cold drops fell on the windowsill and into the room. The wind gusts made the yellow drapes billow, but we sat motionless. She caressed my hair quietly. I felt enormous relief. I had talked it out. Gotten rid of half the weight. And I was resting, pressing my face against her smooth tan knee. The constant thunder made it hard to talk, but I had nothing else to say.

Then she said:

“Dmitri. You mustn’t think about me. You must make your decision as though I didn’t exist. Because I will be with you always anyway. No matter what you decide.”

I hugged her tight. I guess I knew she would say that and I guess the words really didn’t help, but I was grateful anyway.

“Forgive me,” she said after a pause, “but I still don’t have it quite clear in my own mind. No, I believe you, of course I do—it’s just that it’s all so terrible. Maybe there’s some other explanation, something more, well, simple, more understandable. I guess I’m saying it wrong. Vecherovsky is right of course, but not about it being the—what did he call it?—the Homeostatic Universe. He’s right that that’s not the point. Really, what’s the difference? If it’s the universe, you have to give in; if it’s aliens, you have to fight? But don’t listen to me. I’m just talking because I’m confused.”

She shivered. I got up, squeezed into the armchair with her and put my arms around her. All I wanted to do was tell her in every possible way how terrified I was. How terrified I was for myself, how terrified I was for her, how terrified I was for both of us. But that would have been pointless, and probably cruel.

I felt that if she didn’t exist I would have known exactly what to do. But she existed. And I knew that she was proud of me, always had been. I’m a rather dull person and not too successful, but even I could be an object of pride. I was a good athlete, always knew how to work, had a good mind; I was in good standing at the observatory, in good standing among our friends; I know how to have a good time, how to be witty, how to handle myself in friendly arguments. And she was proud of all of that. Maybe just a little, but proud nevertheless. I could see her looking at me sometimes. I just don’t know how she would react to my becoming a jellyfish. I probably wouldn’t even be able to love her the right way anymore, I’d be incapable of that, too.

As though reading my mind, she said:

“Remember how happy we were that all our exams were behind us and that we’d never have to take one again to our dying day? It seems they’re not all over. It seems there’s still one more.”

“Yes,” I said and thought: But this is one test where nobody knows whether an A or a D is a better grade. And there’s no way of knowing what gets you the A and the D.

“Dmitri,” she whispered, her face close to mine. “You must really have invented something great for them to be after you. You really should be very proud, you and the others. Mother Nature herself is after you!”

“Hmmm,” I said and thought: Weingarten and Gubar have nothing to be proud of anymore, and as for me, that’s still moot.