The Day Watch (21 page)

I tore myself away from my surprisingly vivid memories.

So I did have a past after all? Or were these merely the forms of memories with nothing real behind them?

I had to try to figure it out.

From the passport I also gleaned the entirely useless piece of information that I had “exercised the right to privatize without payment the following volume of living space”-the volume was not indicated-“subject to the standard maximum of 24.3 square meters.”

And that was all.

I thoughtfully put the document away in my pocket-the same one, on the left side of my chest, and looked hard at the bag. What will you help me remember, my black-and-green traveling companion with the foreign inscription FUJI on your bulging side?

Well, let’s hope you’ll help me remember at least something…

The zipper opened with a quiet whoosh. I threw back the flap of cloth covering the contents and looked inside.

The polythene bag on the top contained a toothbrush, a tube of Blend-a-Med toothpaste, a pair of cheap disposable razors, and a small, fragrant black bottle that obviously contained eau de cologne.

I put them on the bunk.

In the next plastic bag I discovered a warm wool sweater that was obviously knitted by hand, not on a machine. I set that aside too.

I spent two or three minutes rummaging through the other bags-clean underwear, T-shirts, socks, a warm checkered shirt… Aha, here was something that wasn’t clothing.

A small cell phone in a leather case, with an extendable aerial. My memory instantly reacted: When I get to Moscow, I’ll have to buy a card…

The charger was there too.

And finally, at the very bottom, one more plastic bag. Filled with some kind of blocks. When I looked inside, I was astounded. This ordinary plastic bag, with its logo half worn away so that it was completely unrecognizable, contained wads of money stacked in two layers. American dollars. Ten wads of hundred-dollar notes. That was a hundred thousand.

My hand automatically reached out for the door and clicked the latch shut.

Jesus, where had I got this from? And how was I going to get such a huge amount of money across the border?

But then, I could probably stick a hundred dollar bill under every customs officer’s nose and they’d leave me alone.

The discovery aroused almost no associations, apart from the memory of how expensive hotels are in Moscow.

Still in a mild state of shock, I put all the things back in the bag, zipped it shut and pushed it under the bunk. I felt glad there was a second, unopened, bottle of beer standing beside the one I’d already started. I don’t know why, but the sedative substance had a distinctly soporific effect on me. I was expecting to spend a long time lying there, listening to the hammering of the wheels, screwing up my eyes when the bright light suddenly broke in for a few moments, and racking my brains painfully.

Nothing of the sort happened. Before I’d even finished the second bottle of beer, I slumped onto the bunk, still fully dressed, and crashed out on top of the blanket.

Maybe I’d got too close to something taboo in my memories? But how would I know?

I woke up with cold winter sunshine flooding in through the window. The train wasn’t moving. I could hear indifferent official voices in the corridor: “Good morning, Russian customs. Are you carrying any arms, narcotics, or hard currency?” The replies sounded less indifferent, but most of them were unintelligible. Then there was a knock at the door. I reached out and opened it.

The customs officer turned out to be a burly, red-faced guy with eyes that were already turning puffy. For some reason, when he spoke to me, he abandoned the standard routine and simply asked me, without any officialese:

“What have you got? Get the bag out…”

He looked around the compartment carefully, got up onto the steps, and glanced into the luggage rack just under the ceiling. Then he finally focused his attention on the bag lying all alone in the middle of the bottom bunk.

I lowered the other bunk and sat down without saying anything.

“Open the bag, please,” the customs officer demanded.

Can they smell money, or something? I thought sullenly and obediently opened the zipper.

One by one the plastic bags migrated to the bunk. When he reached the bag with the money, the customs officer brightened up noticeably and reached out in a reflex response to slam the door of the compartment.

“Well, well, well…”

I had already prepared myself to listen to a hypocritical tirade about permits and even to read a paragraph from a book-like every written law, this one consisted of perfectly understandable words strung together so that they made absolutely no sense at all. To listen, read, and then ask hopelessly: “How much?”

But instead of that, I mentally reached out my hand toward the customs officer’s head, touched his mind, and whispered, “Go now… Go on. Everything’s fine here.”

The officer’s eyes instantly turned as stupid and senseless as the customs regulations. “Yes… have a good journey…”

He swung around stiffly, clicked the lock open and staggered out into the corridor without saying another word.

An obedient wooden puppet with a skillful puppet master pulling his strings.

But since when had I been a skillful puppet master?

The train moved off about ten minutes later, and all that time I was trying to figure out what was happening. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I was doing exactly what was needed. First that creature in the park beside the factory, and now this customs officer whose mind had instantly gone blank…

And why, in hell’s name, was I on my way to Moscow? What was I going to do when I got off the train? Where was I going to go? Somehow I was already beginning to feel certain that everything would be made clear at the right moment-but only at the right moment, not before. Unfortunately, I wasn’t quite a hundred percent certain yet.

I slept for most of the day. Maybe it was my body’s reaction to all the unexpected answers and new skills. How had I managed to set off the customs officer? I’d reached out to him, felt the dull crimson aura with the shimmering greenish overlay made up of dollar signs… And I’d been able to adjust his desires.

I didn’t think people could do that. But what was I, if I wasn’t an ordinary human being?

Oh, yes. I was an Other. I’d told that to the werewolf in the park. And only just that moment did I realize it was a werewolf that had tried to attack me. I remembered his aura, that bright yellow and crimson flame of Desire and Hunger.

I seemed to be gradually clambering up a stairway out of the blackness, out of a blank chasm. The werewolf had been the first step. The customs officer had been the second. I wondered just how long the stairway was, and what would I find up there, at the top? So far there were more questions than answers.

When I finally woke up we had already passed Tula. The compartment was still empty, but now I realized that was because it was the way I wanted it. And I realized that I usually got what I wanted in this world.

The platform at Kursk Station in Moscow drifted slowly past the window. I was standing in the compartment, already dressed and packed, waiting for the train to stop. The female announcer’s muffled voice informed everyone that train number sixty-two had arrived at some platform or other. I was in Moscow, but I still didn’t understand what I was doing.

As usual, the most impatient passengers had already managed to block the way through. But I could wait, I was

in no hurry. After all, I’d be waiting anyway, until my slowly reviving memory prompted me or prodded me, like a muleteer with a stubborn, lazy mule.

The train gave a final jerk and came to a halt. There was a metallic clang in the lobby of the carriage; the line of people instantly started and came to life and spilled out of the carriage little by little. There were the usual exclamations of concern, greetings, attempts to squeeze back into a compartment to get things that couldn’t be taken out the first time…

But the confused bustling around the carriage was soon over. The passengers had already got out and received their due allocations of kisses and hugs from the people meeting them. Or not, if there was no one there to meet them. There were a few still left, craning their necks as they gazed around the platform, already shivering in the piercing Moscow wind. But the only people left in the carriage were waiting to pick up the usual parcels of food and other things that relatives had sent with the conductor.

I picked up my bag and walked toward the door, still not understanding what I was going to do in the immediate future.

Probably I ought to change some money, I thought. I didn’t have a single kopeck of Russian money, only our

“independent” Ukrainian currency, which unfortunately wasn’t valid here. Just before we reached Moscow I’d prudently slit open one of the wads in the plastic bag and distributed some of the bills around my various pockets. I always did hate billfolds…

What was that thought I’d had? Always… My “always” had only begun last night.

I shuddered reflexively at the cold embrace of winter and strode off along the platform toward the tunnel. Surely there had to be someone changing money at the station?

Rummaging about in my unreliable memory, I managed to establish two things: First, I didn’t remember the last time I’d been in Moscow but, second, I had a general
i.e.
of how the station looked from the inside, where to look for the bureau de change, and how to get into the metro.

The tunnel, the large waiting hall in the basement, the short escalator, the ticket hall-my immediate goal was on the second floor, beside another escalator.

But this currency exchange point looked to have been closed very securely for a very long time. No light showing in any chink, no essential board with the current exchange rates. All right. Then I had to go to the exit and turn left, toward the ramp sloping down to the Chkalovskaya metro station… and the place I needed would be near there.

A white trading pavilion, a staircase up to the second floor, empty little shop spaces flooded with light, a turn…

The security guard glanced up at me quickly and then relaxed when he recognized someone newly arrived in town.

“Go in, there’s no one inside,” he told me magnanimously.

I carried my bag into a tiny little room, in which the entire furnishings consisted of a rubbish bin in the corner and, of course, a tiny window with one of those little retractable drawers that had always reminded me of an eternally hungry mouth.

Hey, I reminded myself, don’t forget just how young your “always” is…

But even so-if I thought like a man who really had lived thirty-five years, surely there must be some reason for it?

All right, we could get to that later.

The hungry mouth instantly devoured five one-hundred-dollar bills and my passport. I couldn’t see who was concealed there behind the blank partition, and I wasn’t really concerned to get a look at them. All I noticed were the fingers with pearly polish on the nails, which meant it was a woman. The mouth reluctantly slid open and belched out a sizeable heap of one-hundred-ruble bills and several bills of smaller denominations. Even a couple of coins. Without counting the money, I put it into my breast pocket, under my sweater, keeping just the smaller bills and the coins for my trouser pocket. I put my passport in my other breast pocket and threw the receipt-a small rectangle of green paper-into the rubbish bin.

Right, now I was someone. Even in this insane city, which was just about the most expensive on the planet. But no… that wasn’t right. It had to be almost a year since Moscow had relinquished that dubious title.

Outside, winter greeted me again with its ice-laden breath. The wind carried fine hard crumbs, like grains of semolina, a kind of immature hail. I strolled back along the front of the railroad station and then down to where I wanted to be-on the metro circle line.

It felt like I was beginning to remember where I needed to get to. Well, I could enjoy making some progress, even if I didn’t enjoy the state of uncertainty. And I could hope that whatever business had brought me to Moscow was entirely good, because somehow I didn’t feel I had the Power to serve Evil.

Only native Muscovites go home from the railroad stations in taxis. If their financial status permits it, of course.

Any provincial, even if he has the kind of money I had, will take the metro. There’s something hypnotic about this

system of tunnels, with its labyrinth of connections, about the rumbling of the trains as they go hurtling past and the rush of air that fades away and then starts up again. About the constant movement. Down here there is unspent energy seething and swirling around under the vaults of the station halls: free for the taking, more than I could possibly use.

And there is protection. I think it’s connected somehow with the thick layer of earth above your head… and all the past years that are buried in that earth… Not even years-centuries.

The doors of the train parted and I stepped in. There was a repulsive, insistent buzzing from the loudspeakers, and then a finely modulated man’s voice announced: “Please mind the closing doors. The next station is Komsomolskaya.”

I was riding the circle line. Counter-clockwise. And I was definitely not getting out at Komsomolskaya. But after that… after Komsomolskaya I apparently would get out. That would be Peace Prospect. And, by the way, it would be worth walking up the platform at Komsomolskaya to get closer to the front of the train. Then I’d be nearer the exit for my connection.

That meant I was changing onto the brown line, and probably going north, because otherwise I’d have gone around the circle line in the opposite direction and changed at Oktyabrskaya.

The carriage shook as it moved, and since I had nothing better to do, I studied the numerous advertisements.

There was a long-haired man standing on tiptoe, but squatting down at the same time, who was advertising pantyhose for women, and someone with a felt-tip pen had taken the opportunity to endow the hairy poser with a phallus of impressive proportions. The next stick-on poster suggested that I should go chasing around the city after a jeep painted in bright colors, but I failed to grasp the point of this pursuit. A prize, probably. Miracle tablets for almost every ailment-all in a single bottle-real estate agencies, the most yogurty yogurt of all yogurts, genuine Borzhomi mineral water with a picture of a ram on the bottle… And here was Komsomolskaya.