A real tank rolled onto the arena, desert-colored: beige with patches. On the turret, legs planted wide, stood a woman. A short black dress clung to a figure all breasts and backside.
Visibility was poor, the tank more than a hundred meters off. Looking closer, I got the suspicion that swaying her rolls of flesh atop the turret was Veronika Sergeyevna.
Nonsense! I wanted to prove such a thing was impossible! Such a stellar turn in Veronika’s fortunes didn’t square with reality. I was sitting on a slope in a collar. She was basking in glory on the arena.
No. It couldn’t be!
Then again, the train car’s other passenger, Vera, had also landed on her feet.
A jangling came from the tank, resolving into «oom-pah, oom-pah, oom-pah.» A two-four beat burst into the listeners’ ears. The singer on the tank swayed her backside to the rhythm and started singing in a thin voice. More like howling, with a mewing, yipping edge to it.
The armored diva had some trouble with her delivery. Thunder rolled down from the slopes: «Crap! Shit! Merde! Get her off!» and a thousand other unkind words. The howls of outrage drowned out the sound from the arena. A hundred or two listeners backed up their opinion with gunfire. The singer got blown clean off the turret. She ducked under the tank and…
…what was that?
The tank’s turret spun on its axis, booming away at the outraged crowd. One of the blasts thundered close by.
My ears rang from its force.
The smoke cleared.
Those sitting to the left had been scattered, smeared across the ground. Along the edges of the blast zone, the wounded and concussed thrashed about; ragged men from the crest finished them off with rocks. They took the freed seats and became full-fledged spectators.
Shouts of «crap!» kept going up here and there, but not at full volume, more under the breath, so the tank crew wouldn’t hear. The howls of outrage shrank to a discontented mutter.
The singer clambered back up onto the turret and went on with her mewing and yipping, but without the enthusiasm, without the swaying. The final chords drowned in applause: finally done!
The second act didn’t last long. The singer hadn’t bothered with tank support. The stage number — «two stomps, three claps» — was backed by a platoon of riflemen, wiped out within seconds by volleys from both slopes. I didn’t stick around for the third act. They pulled at my collar.
Anton led me to the field. Two riflemen jumped up, looking like a Pat and Patachon comedy duo.
The stocky, thickset one grabbed Anton by the arm and rattled off: «This one won’t last five minutes. One ticket, tenth row.» The other, tall and skinny, felt my biceps, slapped me on the neck, and said, flat and final: «Crap.» Simply, without ceremony, he spun me a hundred and eighty degrees and booted me back to Anton.
Anton said nothing, worked his jaw, squinted. Racking his brain for something to counter what he’d heard. He couldn’t come up with a convincing argument in my favor. From behind him, Vera spoke crisply:
— He’ll last twenty minutes. For two tickets, third row.
The fat man and the beanpole exchanged glances, smiled.
— If he doesn’t last, you get nothing. Deal?
— Deal, — Vera nodded.
They shook on it. Anton undid my shackles, and I was led to the unarmed crowd by the shed near the arena.
On the arena, a singer in the style of John Mayall was performing the blues, taking fire from every direction. He sang plainly but doggedly and persistently. He probably had a good backup crew — a company of snipers dropping the troublemakers before they could even open their unhappy mouths and take aim.
I liked the blues, but I wasn’t allowed to hear it out. Our crowd got herded into the shed and ordered, by gestures, to change into the black rags lying on the benches. Ah, tunics. Right away they handed out a round shield and a heavy sword each.
I settled the shield on my left arm, adjusted it, squared myself up, tapped the shield with the sword, and suddenly… for a split second… I fell into a haze in which I’d done these same motions before, marveled at it… and snapped back to reality with the command: «Line up!»
