And Sergey pressed. At the same moment he felt freezy air and saw the dazzling glow of clean snow instead of the walls of the laboratory. Remebering the instructions, he looked around attentively to see if he could let the disc go. There were no people in view, which meant that he could become visible.
The whiteness of the snow and the air with a tinge of stove smoke struck him. He thought that he had seen such snow only far out of town, because on the streets of Middlevolgashire the snow was defiled with salt and sand. On the central streets snow-removers scratched all the snow they could find from the pavements .
The frost was about fifteen below zero. Sergey hesitatingly walked in the direction of the street. As he was approaching the front door of the house close to which there was the exit from the yard, a young woman in a long gray coat came out. Sergey did not understand first what was unusual about her appearance. The woman looked backed as she heard snow crunching under his feet and he realised what it was.
First of all, she had no bag. It didn’t dangle on the shoulder and it didn’t hang on her hand. Therefore, her figure had an outlined womanly silhouette.
Secondly she was cradling her hands in a black Karakul muff! Sergey felt as if he was visiting a local history museum where visitors were allowed to take part in performances, acted out for them. He greeted her politely, went out into the street and stopped, perplexed.
Without any doubt, this was Volkov street. But there was no hotel "Holt”, for example. Because it simply hadn’t been built. It will appear in about thirty years. There were no other habitual landmarks, either. But, yes, the restaurant "Wave”, where Sergey often went and took Gulnara with him, was in its usual place — with all its extravagant columns and the sumptuous semi-circle porch. But instead of glass doors there were massive wooden ones with huge brass knobs, which added the restaurant a noble, even a majestic look. Opposite the restaurant, between two lamp posts was a crimson broadsheet which bore a slogan in clear white letters: "FORWARD, TOWARDS THE VICTORY OF COMMUNISM!”. Obviously the Communist Party instructed the boozy customers where to go in case they lost orientation and doubted which way to go.
Right now the dwellers of Middlevolgashire was heading for work . Streets were clearly short of cars. Judging by a thick coat of snow on the roads, the traffic was scarce. Sergey went in the direction of the "Wave” to go out onto the square, from which it was close to the Institute. A tiny red bus drove past him, jammed with passengers. He coud not recognize the square. The was no monument to Lenin, to start with, which was to remain there till the twenty first century — nobody would remember to pull it down. But this was not the main thing.
The main thing was that in his time the square was fenced by a huge gray building of Technical University — a long dull block. It was not there now, and the unscreened sight of streets with wooden log houses on the bank of the Volga river was pleasing the eye.
Sergey looked left. Lining the square there was hotel "Sovetsky” — with a lot of attached columns and tall semicircular windows. The ground floor didn’t yet look like a kaleidoscope of motley shop doors and gave the impression of massive oak tree beds with cherry red canopies over them, deep Voltaire armchairs and oak tree shests of drawers. It could be true, however.
In front of the impressive doors was a wooden snowbound trough, and the sweeped porch boasted of a new besom. It took some time for Sergey to guess that the besom was there for sweeping snow of boots. He looked at his sylish boots, stamped his feet and the snow fell off. Sergey had another look at the besom, shrugged and went on.
He passed the park — it looked just the same, at least, — and turned left, to the Communists’ street, which led to the Institute. The wooden houses, lining the street, were dwarfed by the four-storeyed building of the Institute, and it was seen from the distance. Right behind the Institute stretched a village.Sergey could remember its name which he had heard fromhis Grandad — Lapshino.
"Who could have thought,” he mused, "that the Institute had been built in the outskirts.” When he got to the Institute it was twenty minutes to eight. He felt vexed, preparing to hang around, waiting for the administration. He lingered near the entrance for a while, watching the students pouring in. Many took besoms, leaned against the wall, and thouroughly swept off the snow stuck to their felt boots. It was useless to stomp, trying to make the snow fall off. More stylish teachers, mostly women, had brown leather toes on their white felt boots. Simple felt boots were mostly black.
Everybody gave momentary stealthy looks at Sergey. Dressed in a bright brown sheepskin coat, black leather boots and black narrow trouses he produced a stunning impression. His brief case made men freeze to the porch and squeeze their deformed leather bags with the cover that flung over and had two shiny metal locks. Sergey in his turn looked enviously at their bags, privately deciding to get one for his father and one for himself.
It turned out, however, that the chancellor was there. He was looking thoughtfully at the ink stand with a hinged cover with a knob on the top and thinking if he should add ink there.
"Hello,” Sergey said energetically. "I am Sergey Alexandrovich Bahmetev.”
He was curiously examining the dark table, covered with green cloth, and black leather sofas standing at the walls. Valentin Dyakonov gave him a friendly look.
"Aha! Our young specialist.”
His look lingered at his coat and stuck at the case.
"Take a seat.”
While Dyakonov was looking through Sergey’s documents and throwing quick glances at him, Sergey was taking in all the interior details with as much interest. The inkset with a cleavage for an inkpen and a marble sloping press laid with blotting paper, portraits of Lenin, Stalin and a triple portrait of Karl Marx, Engels and Lenin between the windows.
"You have a very unusual combination — Maths and English,” said Dyakonov at last.
Sergey nodded.
"Actually my main specialty is Mathematics,” he explained, sticking a microphone to the bottom of the table. "I needed English to read special literature. So I had to study it.”
"By the way, where is your registration card?”
"???”
"Aren’t you a member of the Communist Party?” asked Dyakonov sternly looking straight into Sergey’s astonished eyes.
"M-member. Yes, member. Right. Of course.”
Dyakonov’s look became softer.
"You must become registered in our Party Committee right away, then. From what I can see, you have two diplomas and both of them are honours degrees. Great. Come along, I will introduce you to the Deans.”
Sergey courteously allowed Dyakonov to go through the door first and while leaviing managed to fix a camera on the portrait of Felix Dzerzhinsky over the exit. The camera on the forehead of the main guardian of law seemed to him especially funny and he grinned from ear to ear.
The Dean of the Faculty of Foreign Languages was a plump woman in a manly twin suit and a white blouse.
"Pleased to see you,” she lied and hesitated, looking at Sergey’s tie and jacket. They both didn’t seem to her appropriate for the educative work at the Faculty, but she failed to find evident discrepancy with the socialist norms of teachers morality.
It was arranged that Sergey would start working in two days, after he visited some practical lessons and study the teaching materials. He was to get the authorization to occupy a flat from the managing director.
He had prepared for a long and tedious procedure, but the managing director— a bald fat man with the spealing name of Nikolay Svinin, immediately held out the necessary document to him.
"Move in,” he said friendly.
"Flat number seven, a lucky number. Has your furniture arrived yet?” I
t took Sergey a couple of seconds to realize that Svinin meant his baggage which supposedly was to arrive from Moscow.
Svinin interpreted his silence as shyness and said hastily:
"We can collect some furniture for you. I have a good camp bed, so you will be quite comfortable before your furniture is here.”
"Thank you very much,”
Sergey said heartily and started to survey his new appartments. The appartments impressed.
The teachers house was in one step from the Institute. It was a small two-storeyed house coated with boards dark fortime. But it had a spacious roofed porch.A broad squeeky wooden staircase painted light brown led to the second floor. A corridor led right and left, three doors on each side. Sergey scrutinized huge trunks, wooden sledges and prams, stored in the corridor, and thickly clad doors.It seemed that each door had a plump feather mattrass on it, covered with black dermatin.
Flat number sevenwas on the second floor, in the right corner of the corridor. He put a massive key into the key-hole and opened the door.
A corpulent man in a brown striped pajamas showed himself from the next door. His thin hair was brushed back and big high temples lent him an important look.
"Has the young reinforcement arrived?” he murmured placidly and pulled his pajamas which, in Sergey’s opinion was not at all necessary because it squeezed his tummy so tightly as if it was stuck to him by a very strong glue. He stretched out his soft hand.
"Nikolay Vasilyevich Khvorov,” he introduced himself and rubbed his forhead.
"We have been waiting for you. We are a little short of teachers, you know.”
"I will join you soon,” Sergey promised, standing in the doorway, and looked around.
"Who lived here before?” he wondered.
"An enemy of nation,” said Nikolay Vasilyevich sadly. "Looking so harmless all the time. He turned out to be a spy. Was arrested for the attempt to poison the Barents Sea.”
"It’s a little far too far to the Barents Sea, it seems to me,” Sergey said ungrammatically in an utter surprise.”
Nikolay Vasilyvich gave a grieving sigh.
"Spies sharpen their knives, you know,” he said vaguely. "Who could have thought. His family left, seeking to hide from disgrace. They had very little time to pack their things, and left some furniture. It will come in handy for you."
Sergey nodded and entered the flat. He nearly sprawled out on the floor, javing stumbled on the high threshold. A tall dark oak cabinet stood in the corner of the room. Its lower part had a door, the top had two open shelves with latticed bars on the sides.
"A solid thing,” said Nikolay Vasilyevich approvingly. He had quietly followed Sergey into the room.
"Oak. One can put books…”
He couldn’t take his eyes from Sergey’s case, waiting for him to open it. Sergey didn’t make him wait. He put the case on the cabinet, turned the wheel of the numeric lock which gave a felightful clicking sound and raised the cover.
"Gee,” gasped Nikolay Vasilyevich.
"What the… what’s this — a lock?”
Sergey let him toy with the briefcase. Nikolay Vasilyevich turned the wheels with enthusiasm and asked:
"What’s this — wheels?"
Sergey nodded.
"What for?”
"It is a lock.”
"A lock? To … erm… actually lock things? Why?”
"Spies are on the alert,” Sergey replied vaguely, hanging his sheepskincoat on a nail in the wall. Nikolay Vasilyevich was impressed. But his attention was already absorbed by Sergey’d tie from Versace.
"Erm… Do they sell things like that in Moscow?”
"Oh, yes. Exactly. In Moscow,” confirmed Sergey and went to the other room. Nikolay Vasilyevich stayed behind, eyeing his suit. Instead of the door the were two linen curtains in the doorway with fluffy balls hanging from its sides on short strings. In the middle the curtains were tied by the same string with balls, half opening the entrance. The second room was smaller and one had to step over a threshold to enter it. An oak writing table stood at the window. It had two small drawers.
"This is a writing table,” explained Nikolay Vasilyevich.
"Only you have nothing to sit on. I can get you a stool. I still have a couple of minutes before I have to leave.”
He looked at his watch.
"Well. You make yourself at home. And if you want to have a lie down,” he added, getting a key from the pajamas pocket,
"you may…”
"Oh no, no, thank you, — Sergey waved his hands. Nikolay Vasilyevich didn’t insist.
"As you like. But you don’t even have a sofa…”
"It is coming. With heavy luggage.”
"Oh, yes. Luggage. Of course. I forgot.”
He left at last.
Sergey sighed in the forthought of a difficult day. He paused, collecting his thoughts, and then opened the drawers. They were empty, of course. Only a white small sheet of paper got stuck between its bottom and the left wall. It was torn out of a school note-book and had slanting grids on. Sergey carefully pulled it out. It was a letter, written by large irregular letters.
"Dere Dad,” it said. "How do you liv in your Busynes trip? I liv vell. I will grow big soun and I will come to your Busyness trip too. And I will hit Dimka on his nouse. He cut our rope for shits when Mum hung Olya’s nappys to fry. They all falled to the pudle. Dere Dad, and when you...”
The letter ended there. Sergey became upset. "Damn,” he said and went to the window. He understood very well what this "Busyness trip” meant.
"Hold out, guys,” he said to the snow flakes whirling behind the window. "Hold out for another couple of months, and that will be the end to all "Busyness trips.”
It was time to get to work. It was not going to be simple. First of all he was to fix cameras and microphones. He scrutinized the bare walls. They were whitewashed from the floor to the ceiling. They had nothing on but thick wires wound by motley black and white cloth. One of the walls had a double wire and Sergey comfortable attached there all surveillance equipmatn Andrey had provided him with. This was quite a handful,though, because the adhesive paper wouldn’t stick to the whitewashed wall. Finally he stood infront of the camera, waved his had and articulated:
"Hi there. Attention, attnetion, over there. Registration card, registration card. Andrey, you have forgotten the registration card. Like a decent Communist, dedicated to the course of Lenin-Stalin, I must get registered, and you are a jerk," he concluded and imagined, not without pleasure, how Andrey was raging there in the lab.
He cast a glance at the watch and rushed to the Institute to meet his students and have a look at the programs and plans. Rushing through the University corridors he was conscious he could see his Grandad any time.
He worked at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics, where Sergey was to be especially careful not to reveal extra knowledge, which didn’t exist in nineteen fifty three. This is what Andrew and Barsob especially caitioned him against. He didn’t see Grandad yet, but he was curiously wathcing the crowd filling the corridors during the break.
Men in most wide bell bottoms and double-breasted jackets seemed almost square. Almost nobody had ties. Wide unbuttoned collars lurked underneath the jackets. Quite a lot of students were wearing shaggy skiing trousers.
But women were far more elegant than in Sergey’s time, he tought. In long dresses, close fitting in the waist but with flared streaming skirts, embellished with laces, soft collars, sophisticated cuffs, bearing fanciful coiffures with seducing locks around their foreheads or with plaits, making crowns around their heads, they looked sexy and attractive. They were sweeping through corridors, their necks tender and vulnerable, steps light, movements smooth, obviously ignorant of unisex. Sergey was to visit a seminar on stylistics first, where he planned to see his students and gradually join the team of the professors.
He felt quite certain about teaching English. Language will belanguage, and no technical novelties might affect it. So he felt quite optimistic and didn’t forsee any difficulties caused by time differences.
"… in ze light of ze struggle with foreign bor-r-owings…,” a pimpled shortish four-year students was mumbling, "works by our patriot-linguist Peshkovsky is of g-r-reat importance. The words ‘Makintosh’ and ‘Galoshes’ and…”
He stumbled, because the dedication to the course of the world revolution was clearly not enough to learn all the examples. There came a loud wisper: "transmission!”
A plump round faced teacher knocked her pencil on the table.
"Tovarish… that is, comrade Sekretaryova! Not prompt. Noprompting, that is. Erm. Comr-r-r-ad Kutuzov. Continja plizz.
"Comrade Kutuzov” looked up and rushed on: "Zese bourgeois words … we must pr-roclaim a dezizive str-r-r-uggle against zem. Zey must must be replaced by vernacular R-r-ussian vords… I mean words. Like "R-raincoat” and "Mudsteppers”. His eyes glared, he straightened up: "Soviet people must oppose zem to ze vords… words… vich the hostile capitalist vorld imposers…”
Sergey stared, half believing.
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