Arkady Strugatsky: Hard to Be a God

Higher. Even higher… Higher still… He was suddenly seized with the certainty that even if he turned his back to them, the heavy bolt would still sink right into the bridge of Pashka’s nose, between his cheerful green eyes. He opened his eyes and looked at Pashka. Pashka was no longer grinning. And Anka was very slowly raising a hand with her fingers spread, and her face was tense and very grown-up. Then Anton raised the crossbow even higher and pressed the trigger. He didn’t see where the bolt went.

“I missed,” he said very loudly.

Walking on unbending legs, he started down the trail. Pashka wiped his face with the red bundle, shook it, unfolded it, and started tying it around his head. Anka bent down and picked up her crossbow. If she hits me over the head with that thing, Anton thought, I’ll thank her. But Anka didn’t even look at him.

She turned toward Pashka and asked, “Shall we go?”

“One second,” Pashka said. He looked at Anton and silently tapped his forehead with a bent finger.

“And you really got scared,” Anton said.

Pashka tapped his forehead with a finger again and followed Anka. Anton trudged behind them and tried to suppress his doubts.

What did I do wrong, exactly? he thought dully. Why are they so mad? Well, Pashka I understand—he got scared. Except I don’t know who was more frightened, William the father or Tell the son. But what about Anka? She must have gotten scared for Pashka. But what could I have done? Look at me, trailing behind them like a cousin. I should just take off. I’ll turn left here, there’s an interesting swamp that direction. Maybe I’ll catch an owl. But he didn’t even slow down. That means it’s for life, he thought. He had read that it very often happened like this.

They came out onto the abandoned road even sooner than expected. The sun was high; it was hot. The pine needles prickled under Anton’s collar. The road was concrete, made of two rows of cracked, grayish-red slabs. Thick dry grass grew in the interstices. The side of the road was full of dusty burrs. Beetles were buzzing, and one of them insolently slammed right into Anton’s forehead. It was quiet and languid.

“Look!” said Pashka.

A round tin disk, covered with peeling paint, hung in the middle of a rusty wire stretched across the road. It seemed to show a yellow rectangle on a red background.

“What is it?” Anka asked, without any particular interest.

“A road sign,” Pashka said. “Says not to go there.”

“Do not enter,” Anton confirmed.

“Why is it here?” Anka asked.

“It means you can’t go that way,” Pashka said.

“So why the road?”

Pashka shrugged his shoulders. “It’s a very old highway,” he said.

“An anisotropic highway,” declared Anton. Anka was standing with her back to him. “It only goes one way.”

“The wisdom of our forefathers,” Pashka said pensively. “You drive and drive for a hundred miles, then suddenly—boom!—a do-not-enter sign. You can’t go straight, but there’s no one to ask for directions.”

“Imagine what could be beyond the sign!” said Anka. She looked around. They were surrounded by many miles of empty forest, and there was no one to ask what could be beyond the sign. “What if it doesn’t even say do not enter?” she asked. “The paint is mostly peeled off…”

Then Anton took careful aim and fired. It would have been fantastic if the bolt had shot through the wire and the sign had fallen at Anka’s feet. But the bolt hit the top of the sign, piercing the rusty tin, and the only thing that fell was dried paint.

“Idiot,” said Anka, without turning around.

This was the first word she had addressed to Anton after the game of William Tell. Anton smiled crookedly. “‘And enterprises of great pitch and moment,’” he recited. “‘With this regard their currents turn awry, and lose the name of action.’”

Good old Pashka shouted, “Guys, a car has driven this way! Since the thunderstorm! Here’s the flattened grass! And here…”

Lucky Pashka, thought Anton. He started examining the marks on the road and also saw the flattened grass and the black stripe left by the treads when the car had braked before a pothole.

“Aha!” said Pashka. “He came from past the sign!”

That was completely obvious, but Anton objected: “No way, he was going the other direction.”

Pashka raised his astonished eyes at him. “Have you gone blind?”

“He was going the other direction,” Anton repeated stubbornly. “Let’s follow him.”

“That’s ridiculous!” Pashka was outraged. “For one thing, no respectable driver would go the wrong way past a do-not-enter sign. For another, just look: here’s the pothole, here are the tracks of the brakes… So which way was he going?”

“Who cares about respectable! I’m not respectable myself, and I’m going past the sign.”

Pashka exploded. “Do what you want!” he said, stuttering slightly. “Moron. The heat’s gone to your head!”

Anton turned around and, staring fixedly in front of him, went past the sign. The only thing he wanted was to come across a blown-up bridge and to have to fight his way through to the other side. What do I care about some respectable guy! he thought. They can do what they want—Anka and her Pashenka. He remembered how Anka had cut Pavel down when he called her Anechka, and he felt a bit better. He looked back.

He saw Pashka right away: Bon Locusta, bent in two, following the receding tracks of the mysterious car. The rusty disk above the road swayed gently, and the blue sky flickered through the hole in the disk. And Anka was sitting by the roadside, her elbows propped on her knees and her chin on her clenched fists.

On their way back, it was already dusk. The boys were rowing, and Anka was at the rudder. A red moon was rising over the black forest, and frogs were croaking incessantly.

“We planned the outing so well,” Anka said sadly. “You two!”

The boys were silent. Then Pashka asked quietly, “Toshka, what was there, beyond the sign?”

“A blown-up bridge,” answered Anton. “And the skeleton of a fascist, chained to a machine gun.” He thought a moment and added, “The machine gun had sunk into the ground.”

“Hmm,” Pashka said. “It happens. And guess what? I helped that guy fix his car.”

When Rumata passed Holy Míca’s grave—the seventh and last along the road—it was already completely dark. The much-ballyhooed Hamaharian stallion, received from Don Tameo in payment of a gambling debt, had turned out to be completely worthless. He had become sweaty and footsore, and moved in a wretched, wobbly trot. Rumata dug his knees into the horse’s sides and whipped him between the ears with a glove, but he only dejectedly shook his head without moving any faster. Bushes stretched alongside the road, resembling clouds of solidified smoke in the gloom. The whine of mosquitoes was intolerable. Scattered stars trembled dimly in the murky sky. A mild wind was blowing in gusts, warm and cold at the same time, as was always the case in autumn in this seaside country, with its dusty, muggy days and chilly nights.

Rumata wrapped his cloak tighter and let go of his reins. He had no reason to hurry. There was still an hour until midnight, and the jagged black edge of the Hiccup Forest had already appeared above the horizon. Plowed fields flanked the road; swamps flickered beneath the stars, stinking of inorganic rust; barrows and rotting palisades from the time of the Invasion were visible in the dark. To his left, a grim glow was flaring up and dying down; a village must be burning, one of the innumerable indistinguishable places known as Deadtown, Gallowland, or Robberdale, though august decree had recently renamed them Beloved, Blessed, and Angelic. This country extended for hundreds of miles—from the shores of the Strait until the saiva of the Hiccup Forest—blanketed with mosquito clouds, torn apart by ravines, drowning in swamps, stricken by fevers, plagues, and foul-smelling head colds.