Arkadi Strugatsky - The Ugly Swans

"Where could they have gone?" asked Victor.

The boy didn't answer.

"Was I here by myself?" asked Victor. "Nobody else was around?"

"Let me accompany you," said Bol-Kunats. "Where would you prefer to go? Home?"

"Wait," said Victor. "Did you see how they wanted to make off with that four-eyes?"

"I saw someone hit you."

"Who did it?"

"I couldn't tell. His back was to me."

"And where were you?"

"The truth is, I was lying there around the corner."

"I don't get it," said Victor. "Or maybe it's my head. What were you doing lying around the corner? You live there?"

"The truth is, I was lying there because they got me even before they got you. Not the same one that got you; another one."

"The four-eyes?"

They were walking slowly, trying to keep to the roadway and avoid the runoff from the roofs.

"N-no," said Bol-Kunats, thinking. "I don't think any of them were wearing glasses."

"Oh, God," said Victor. He put his hand under his hood and felt his lump. "I'm talking about the lepers, people call them four-eyes. You know, from the leprosarium? Slimies -- "

"I don't know," said Bol-Kunats shortly. "In my opinion they were all perfectly healthy."

"Come on," said Victor. He felt a little uneasy and even stopped. "Are you trying to convince me that there wasn't a leper there? Wearing a black bandage, dressed all in black?"

"That's no leper!" said Bol-Kunats with unexpected vehemence. "He's healthier than you are."

For the first time, something boyish had appeared in him. It disappeared immediately.

"I don't quite understand where we're going," he said after a short silence, in his former serious, almost impassive tone. "At first it seemed as though you were going home, but now I see that we're walking in the opposite direction."

Victor was still standing in place, looking down at him. "Two peas in a pod," he thought. "He made his calculations, completed his analysis, but decided not to communicate the results. So he's not going to tell me what happened. I wonder why not. Was it a crime? No, not likely. But maybe it was? Times have changed, you know. Nonsense, I know what criminals are like nowadays."

"Everything is under control," he said and started walking. "We're going to the hotel, I live there."

The boy walked next to him, stiff, severe, and wet. Victor overcame a certain indecisiveness and put his hand on the boy's shoulder. Nothing special happened; the boy tolerated it. Although, most likely, he'd simply decided that his shoulder was needed for utilitarian purposes, to hold up someone in shock.

"I must say," remarked Victor in his most confiding tone, "that you and Irma have a very strange way of expressing yourselves. When we were kids we didn't talk that way."

"Really?" said Bol-Kunats politely. "And how did you talk?"

"Well, for example, with us your question would have sounded something like this: Wha-a-a?"

Bol-Kunats shrugged his shoulders. "Do you mean to say that it would be better like that?"

"God forbid! I only meant that it would be more natural."

"It is precisely that which is most natural," Bol-Kunats observed, "that is least fitting for man."

Victor felt a chill deep inside himself. An uneasiness. Or even fear. As if a cat had laughed in his face.

"The natural is always primitive," Bol-Kunats continued. "But man is a complex being, and naturalness is not becoming to him. Do you understand me, Mr. Banev?"

"Yes," said Victor. "Of course."

There was something incredibly false in the fatherly way he had placed his hand on the shoulder of this boy, who wasn't a boy. His elbow even began to ache. He carefully removed his hand and put it in his pocket.

"How old are you?" he asked.

"Fourteen," said Bol-Kunats absentmindedly.

"Oh."

Any ordinary boy in Bol-Kunats's place would have certainly been intrigued by the irritatingly indefinite "oh," but Bol-Kunats was not an ordinary boy. He said nothing. Intriguing interjections left him cold. He was reflecting on the interrelationship of the natural and the primitive in nature and society. He regretted having come upon such an unintelligent companion, the more so one who'd just been hit over the head.

They came out onto the Avenue of the President. Here there were many streetlights, and pedestrians, men and women hunched up under the incessant rain, hurried past. Store windows were lit up, and under an awning by the neon bathed entrance to a movie house stood a crowd of young people of indeterminate sex, in shining raincoats down to their heels. And above everything, through the rain, shone incantations in blue and gold: "Our President is the Father of His People," "The Legionnaire of Freedom is the True Son of the President," "The Army is Our Awesome Glory."

Out of inertia they continued to walk in the roadway. A passing car honked and chased them back onto the sidewalk, splashing them with dirty water.

"And I thought you were about eighteen," said Victor.

"Whaa?" asked Bol-Kunats in a repulsive voice, and Victor laughed, relieved. All the same, this was a boy, one of your ordinary prodigies who had devoured Geibor, Zurzmansor, Fromm, and maybe even coped with Spengler.

"When I was a kid," said Victor, "I had a friend who got the idea of reading Hegel in the original. He did it, but he turned into a schizophrenic. At your age, you undoubtedly know what a schizophrenic is."

"Yes, I know," said Bol-Kunats.

"And you're not afraid?"

"No."

They reached the hotel.

"Maybe you'll come up to my room and dry off?" proposed Victor.

"Thank you. I was just about to ask your permission to come up. First of all, there is something I have to tell you, and second, I have to make a telephone call. You don't object?"

Victor didn't object. They went through the revolving door past the doorman, who took off his cap to Victor, past the sumptuous statues with their electric candelabra, and into the completely empty vestibule, permeated with odors from the restaurant. Victor felt a familiar excitement. He anticipated the coming evening, when he would be able to drink and shoot his mouth off irresponsibly and shove off onto tomorrow all of today's leftover irritations. He looked forward to seeing Yul Golem and Dr. R. Quadriga. "And maybe I'll meet someone else, and maybe something will happen -- there'll be a fight, or I'll get an idea for a story. Tonight I think I'll have some marinated eel, and everything will be just fine, and I'll take the last bus to Diana's."

While Victor was getting his keys from the porter, a conversation started behind his back. Bol-Kunats was talking with the doorman.

"What the hell are you doing here," hissed the doorman, "hanging around restaurants?"

"I am having a conversation with Mr. Banev," said Bol-Kunats. "The restaurant does not interest me."

"As if a restaurant could interest you, you little punk. In one minute I'll send you packing."

Victor got his key and turned around. "Uh," he said. He had forgotten the doorman's name. "The young fellow's with me, everything's okay."

The doorman didn't answer, but he was obviously annoyed.

They went up to his room. With great enjoyment, Victor threw off his raincoat and bent over to untie his soggy shoes. The blood went to his head, and he felt painful, intermittent throbs coming from the vicinity of his lump. The lump itself was heavy and round, like a leaden egg. He straightened out immediately and, holding onto the doorjamb, pushed off one shoe with his other foot. Bol-Kunats stood next to him, dripping wet.

"Take off your things," said Victor. "Hang everything on the radiator, I'll get you a towel."

"If you don't object, I'll make a phone call," said Bol-Kunats, not budging from the spot.

"Go to it." Victor kicked off his other shoe and went to the bathroom in his wet socks. Undressing, he could hear the boy talking quietly and calmly. He couldn't make anything out. Only once, the boy said loudly and clearly, "I don't know." Victor rubbed himself dry and threw on a robe. He found a clean bath towel and went back into the room.