I poured myself some juice, the fourth glass probably, took a sip and looked at the guard. A massive, square lad with jars of muscle bulging out from under his tracksuit. He had a very manly look. And how is he for speed? Probably not great. His muscles are pumped full of anabolics past the point of no messing. All right, we’ll test that later.
The door beside which the guard was sitting opened. Into the room came Mamon’s secretary, whose name was Sergei, I think. A pink-cheeked, well-fed fellow in glasses, decently dressed, unlike his boss. Covered in signet rings and cufflinks.
– If we refuse to cooperate with you, what then? – Sergei enquired.
– I haven’t considered that variant, but I can assure you that this place will be a burnt-out ruin. As will the site of your workshop.
– Really?
– Really. You have one day in reserve if I walk out of here alive, and three hours if I don’t.
– Harsh terms. Or maybe you’re joking?
– One of my jokes can be found under installation number two hundred and forty-one.
Sergei changed colour slightly, mumbled something and left the room.
Let him.
I set about the juice again. I had about an hour at my disposal until their answer, their positive answer. The lads had nowhere to go. Yesterday evening Mefody had taken me into the mysterious workshop whose installations churned out the poison for Mamon. I inspected the underground factory, studied the walls and load-bearing structures minutely, then asked Mefody how one might slip out unnoticed by the gatekeeper to a motor parked at the entrance and back again. Mefody satisfied my interest most phlegmatically. He told me about a small gap in the fence which is used by everyone who can be bothered to bend down. I could be bothered. I nipped out to Vovka, took three jerrycans out of the boot and came back with them into the workshop. Then I sent Mefody out of my sight so he wouldn’t interfere with my thinking. Mulled it over this way and that for half an hour, crawled over all the workshop’s supports, placed explosive here and there, then worked some magic with the soldering iron on the wires. Two hours later I went back to Vovka through the same gap, started him up and returned contentedly to Magda. That was yesterday. What will happen today?
I’ll tell you. Today Arbalet becomes a partner of the drug operators of the Moscow region, their stern friend and their mighty guide into the world of the Western way of life, which is impossible without narcotics. They have nowhere to go. That is exactly what I told Mamon – ship your oars or work with me. Your workshop is mined (the plain truth), the dacha is mined too (a crude deception), and you yourselves are being held in the sights by my accomplices (a barefaced lie). In the event of a refusal to work with me, I threatened, everything mined would be blown within two days. And in the event of bodily injury being inflicted on me, my sniper friends would immediately crack open their skulls with explosive rounds. For professionals a trifling matter.
I set it all up well.
The lads will think over my proposal, discuss the stalemate and come in here with open arms to enrol Arbalet as a friend and brother. And then the harsh prose of life will begin. My newly minted partners will start knocking out the poison, decanting it into ampoules and carting it to the German border. And I, in a week or two, will find five or so lads with nerve and set up the transfer of the dope from the border to the towns and villages of Germany. I had a few candidates for that business, just as I had a few connections with dealers. In a couple of weeks everything can be arranged. And then the carefree life of a freshly baked millionaire will begin, with a Russian past, a German present and a promising future, so dazzlingly bright that you want to screw your eyes shut with pleasure and transport yourself mentally to some Palm Beach…
I’ve got rather emotional, started daydreaming, let my drool run. Nothing has been done yet. What is this? What sort of Manilov daydreaming is this? The pallid Russian sky is pressing on me, drugging my head with grand schemes. I have done almost nothing, but I’ve already started reckoning in which order I’ll buy the Lamborghini Diablo, in which the white yacht, and in which the little house in the neighbourhood of the Swiss Alps.
Strange.
If I had been assigned this task there, in Germany, I’m certain I would have carried it out a hundred per cent. I would have found the dacha in three days, mined it in an hour and turned it into a heap of ash and slag in a moment. Then gone to Magda to report. Here everything worked out differently.
I turned into a self-sufficient unit, ready for any action. I had no need of Hans. I felt in myself the strength for independent action and acted according to my own plan. The first point of the plan was the conversation with Mamon. He was bound to agree to my terms, otherwise he was threatened with the loss of the workshop… Then again, Mamon struck me as a short-sighted bloke. A man like that could easily strike an attitude and give the order for my liquidation. For that turn of events I was ready. Fighting off his guards would have presented no difficulty.
Having received a refusal from Mamon, I would have taken Mefody as my partner. Yesterday I sketched out the situation for him briefly, omitting the unnecessary details. He listened attentively to it all, and then, to my point-blank question – «Are you prepared to organise production of the same filth?» – answered in the affirmative.
There it is. Time for me to become a pot-bellied capitalist, to open my own production in Russia and set up a trading network in Germany. I’m ready to make an initial contribution of a hundred thousand marks. And the return on them will be oh-ho-ho!
Daydreaming again. What is this? It must be something in the air here. Russia truly is a country of dreamers. Here the normal condition of a normal person is a relaxed lying about on the sofa, accompanied by the soaring of thought above the clouds. Why work? A German knows for certain that, having worked hard and honestly, he will receive a cosy little house, a well-fed and contented family, some hobby dear to his heart and a clean, well-earned old age. A Russian knows no less certainly that after many years of exhausting, gruelling work he will have nothing but calluses on his palms and a draught in his pockets, and that his old age, sick and rheumy-eyed, will always be a burden. Therefore it makes sense to do nothing at all, to lie about and idly reflect that if only this were to happen, and then that were to occur, and on top of that somebody were to arrange it so that… then I would really be something…
This is wrong. You have to fight for yourself. If you beat your forehead against a wall long enough, in one and the same place, you can hollow out a hole. A hole will certainly be hollowed out if you have the strength to peck at one and the same spot every hour, every minute, without reflections on the meaning of life. There is no meaning in life as such. There is a goal – to break through the wall! That goal will be the most important meaning of all.
I remembered Mila. I remembered a living illustration of the two eternal questions – «What Is to Be Done?» and «Who Is to Blame?»
Who is to blame that everything went askew for a girl who had been given much, very much? Why was she unable to realise even half the talents nature had laid in her? It’s all for the same reason. Life seemed a celebration in which there is no place for gruelling labour. She wanted to flit about brilliantly from place to place and taste nectar here and there from the little spoons held out by the Muses. It seemed to her that man’s original calling is to seethe with divine thought. Perhaps. But blessed heavenly seething has to be accompanied by accursed hellish labour.
I know for certain that there is no use in reflections on the meaning of life if you are too lazy to lift a finger to fill that same life with the least little content. There is no meaning at all in the talents laid in you by nature if you lack the patience to drag them out into the open. You shouldn’t judge yourself by your latent potential. The criterion of truth is not the midnight fluttering of a limp thought, but real work embodied in paper, canvas, performance. But if, doing nothing, you wait for success, and then, having waited in vain, spit on the whole thing, take offence and withdraw into yourself, the result is one more person concentratedly reflecting on the sources of worldwide injustice, global disorder, primordial baseness, the total war of good against evil. The blame for it all lies with the great Russian laziness, which makes of a man not a creator but a thinker. There it is – the core rod of the great Russian soul, mysterious, enigmatic, embodying in itself the agonising search for the meaning of life. Titans of thought are made by idle time-passing. When you work, no time is found for reflections on the transience of all that exists. And empty excuses are no good either: fate, that’s how life turned out. All empty. You have to act. Like me, for instance. I fight with fate. I tear my sinews, my own and other people’s, but I make my own future myself. I am ready to blow things up, to break, to build, to do anything at all, even break a wall with my head, so long as it brings my happiness closer. To bring it closer without relying on some kind uncle, an accidental gift of fate and the rest of it. I shall take everything myself.