Arkadi Strugatsky: The Ugly Swans

"God, am I sick of you," said Lola with unexpected spite. "If only you knew how sick I am of you."

"Time to go," thought Victor. "It's starting in -- sacred maternal wrath, the fury of the abandoned, and so forth. At any rate, I can't give her an answer today. And I'm not making any promises."

"I can't count on you for anything," she was saying. "A worthless husband, a talentless father -- one of your popular writers. Couldn't bring up his own daughter. Any peasant understands people better than you do. Just what am I supposed to do now? You're no help. I'm knocking myself out all alone, and I can't get anywhere. To her I'm a nothing, a zero; any slimy is a hundred times more important to her than I am. Never mind, you'll find out. And if you don't teach her, then they will. Pretty soon, she'll be spitting in your face the way she does with me."

"Drop it, Lola," said Victor, wincing. "Somehow, you know, you're ... I'm her father, true, but, after all, you're her mother.

You're throwing the blame on everybody else."

"Get out," she said.

"Look," said Victor. "I have no intention of quarreling with you. But I also have no intention of making rash decisions. I'll think it over. And you -- "

She was standing stiffly erect, all but trembling, savoring the intended rebuke and anticipating her entrance into the fray.

"And you," he said quietly, "try not to worry. We'll think up something. I'll call you."

He walked out into the foyer and put on his raincoat. The raincoat was still wet. Victor went into Irma's room to say goodbye, but she wasn't there. The window was wide open, and rain beat down on the windowsill. A sign in big red letters was hanging on the wall: "Please don't ever close the window." The sign was wrinkled, with dark stains on it and frayed edges, as if it had been torn down more than once and trampled underfoot. Victor closed the door softly.

"Goodbye, Lola," he said. Lola didn't answer.

Outside it was already dark. Rain drummed on his shoulders and the hood of his raincoat. Victor bent over and dug his hands deeper into his pockets. "This is the park where we kissed for the first time," he thought. "This house wasn't built yet, there was just an empty lot, and behind the lot was a garbage dump -- we used to go after cats there with slingshots. There used to be a hell of a lot of cats in this town and now for some reason I never see any at all. In those days we never opened a goddamned book, and now Irma has a roomful of them. What was a twelve-year-old girl in my time? A freckled giggler. Snow White, ribbons and dolls, pictures of bunnies, whispering in twos and threes, paper cones full of candy, bad teeth. Goody-goodies and tattletales, but the best of them were like us: scraped knees, wild bobcat eyes, masters of kicks in the shin.

"So the times have finally changed, have they? No," he thought. "It's not the times. That is, it's the times too, of course. Or maybe I've got a prodigy on my hands. There are such things as prodigies, after all, and I am the father of one. An honor, but a bother, and more of a bother than an honor -- in fact, it's no honor at all. ... I always liked this alley because it's so narrow. And wouldn't you know it, there's a fight. We just can't get along without fights, without fights we simply can't manage. Since time immemorial. And two against one."

There was a streetlight at the corner. A car with a canvas top dripped in the rain at the edge of the illuminated space. Next to the car two men in shining raincoats were forcing a third one, wearing something black and wet, down to the gutter. The three of them were stumbling along the cobblestones, awkward and strained. Victor stopped short, then moved closer. It wasn't clear exactly what was going on. It didn't look like a fight -- no one was throwing any punches. Even less did it look like a scuffle from an excess of youthful energy -- there was no wild whooping and braying. Suddenly the one in black, trying to tear himself free, fell on his back. The pair in raincoats jumped on top of him. Victor noticed that the doors of the car were wide open; either they had just dragged the one in black out of it, or they were trying to shove him in.

Victor went up close to them and barked, "Stop!"

The pair in raincoats turned. For a split second they stared at Victor from under their pulled up hoods. Victor noticed only that they were both young and that they were panting from the strain. Then with unbelievable speed they dove into the car, slammed the doors, and sped off into the darkness. The man in black slowly lifted himself up. Victor looked at him and took a step backward. It was a patient from the leprosarium -- a "slimy," or "four-eyes" as they were sometimes called because of the yellow circles that rimmed their eyes like eyeglasses. The lower half of his face was completely covered by a black bandage. He was breathing heavily and painfully; vestiges of eyebrows were raised in a look of suffering. Water streamed down his bald head.

"What happened?" said Victor.

The four-eyes wasn't looking at him, but past him. His pupils widened. Victor wanted to turn around, but at that moment something hit him in the back of the head.

When he came to, he found himself lying face up under a drain pipe. Water was gushing into his mouth; it was warm and tasted rusty. Spluttering and coughing, he moved away and sat up with his back against the brick wall. Water that had collected in his hood poured under his collar and trickled down his body. Bells, horns, and drums reverberated in his head. Through the noise, Victor made out a thin, dark face in front of him. A boy's face. Familiar. "I've seen him somewhere. Before my jaws got smashed together." He moved his tongue around and shifted his jaw. His teeth were okay. The boy collected a handful of water from the pipe and splashed him in the face.

"Thanks, pal," said Victor. "That's enough."

"I thought that you still hadn't regained consciousness," the boy said seriously.

Carefully, Victor placed his hand under his hood and felt the back of his head. There was a lump -- nothing terrible, no shattered bones, not even any blood.

"Who got me?" he asked, thoughtfully. "Not you, I hope."

"Will you be able to walk by yourself, Mr. Banev?" the boy asked. "Or should I call someone? The truth is, you're too heavy for me."

Victor remembered who it was.

"I know you," he said. "You're Bol-Kunats, my daughter's friend."

"Yes," said the boy.

"Fine. No need to call anyone and no need to say anything to anyone. Let's just sit here for a minute and pull ourselves together."

Now he could see that Bol-Kunats wasn't completely all right either. There was a fresh gash on his cheek, and his upper lip was swollen and bleeding.

"I think I'd better call someone," said Bol-Kunats.

"Why should you?"

"The truth is, Mr. Banev, I don't like the way your face is twitching."

"Really?" Victor felt his face. It wasn't twitching. "It just seems that way to you. So. Now we're going to get up. What is essential in order to get up? In order to get up, it is essential to pull your feet in under you." He pulled in his feet, which did not quite seem to belong to him. "Next, moving slightly away from the wall, shift the center of gravity in the following manner." He couldn't manage to shift his center of gravity; something was holding him back. "How did they do it?" he thought. "A good job, really."

"You're stepping on your raincoat," the boy offered, but Victor had already unraveled the mysteries of his arms, his legs, his raincoat, and the orchestra under his skull. He stood up. At first he had to support himself against the wall, but then it got better.

"Aha," he said. "So you pulled me over here, up to the pipe. Thanks."

The streetlight was still there, but the car and the four-eyes were gone. Everybody was gone. Only little Bol-Kunats was carefully stroking his cut with a wet hand.