“I once saw a fire brigade newsletter called Between Two Fires.
Now that really nailed it.”
“You’re a real wordsmith!” gushed Lavoisian.
“Why don’t you just admit that you’re too lazy to write for the voice of the onboard community?”
The grand strategist didn’t deny that he was a real wordsmith.
If pressed, he was fully prepared to say exactly which publication he represented on this train, namely, the Chernomorsk Gazette.
But nobody pressed him, since it was a special train and therefore didn’t have any stern conductors with their nickel-plated ticket punches.
Lavoisian and his typewriter were already installed in the workers’ car, where his idea caused considerable excitement.
The old man from the Trekhgorka Factory was already working on a piece that called for a meeting to discuss industrial practices and for a literary reading on board. Others were searching for a cartoonist, and Navrotsky was charged with distributing a questionnaire that sought to determine which of the factories represented on the train was the most successful at meeting its quotas.
In the evening, a large group of newspapermen gathered in the compartment shared by Gargantua, Menshov, Ukhudshansky and Bender.
They were packed in, six men to a bunk.
Feet and heads dangled from above.
The cool night air refreshed the journalists who had suffered from the heat all day, and the rhythmic sound of the wheels on the tracks, which had gone on for three days, created a convivial atmosphere.
They talked of the Eastern Line, of their editors and office managers, of funny typos, and together teased Ukhudshansky about his lack of journalistic drive.
Ukhudshansky would raise his head and reply condescendingly:
“Gabbing?
Well, well . . .”
At the height of the fun, Mr. Heinrich appeared.
“May a capitalist lackey come in?” he asked cheerfully.
Heinrich settled down in the lap of the portly writer who grunted and thought to himself stoically:
“If I have a lap, somebody has to sit in it.
And so he does.”
“So how goes the building of socialism?” asked the representative of the liberal newspaper cheekily.
It just so happened that all the foreigners on board were addressed courteously as Mister, Herr, or Signor So-and-so, and only the correspondent of the liberal newspaper was simply called Heinrich. Nobody took him seriously; they all thought he was a blowhard.
So Palamidov replied to his question:
“Heinrich!
You’re wasting your time!
Now you’re going to start trashing the Soviet system again, which is boring and uninformative.
We can hear all that from any nasty old woman waiting in line.”
“That’s not it at all,” said Heinrich, “I’d like to tell you the biblical story of Adam and Eve.
May I?”
“Listen, Heinrich, how come you speak Russian so well?” asked Sapegin.
“I learned it in Odessa in 1918, when I was occupying that delightful city with the army of General von Beltz.
I was a lieutenant back then.
You probably heard of von Beltz?”
“Didn’t just hear,” replied Palamidov,
“I saw your von Beltz laying in his gilded office at the palace of the commander of the Odessa Military District —with a bullet through his head.
He shot himself when he heard there was a revolution in your country, Heinrich.”
At the word “revolution,” Mr. Heinrich smiled politely and said:
“The General was true to his oath.”
“And why didn’t you shoot yourself, Heinrich?” asked someone from the top bunk. “What happened to your oath?”
“Well, do you want to hear the biblical story or not?” asked the representative of the liberal newspaper testily.
They kept bugging him with questions about the oath for a while, and only when he got really upset and started to leave did they agree to listen to his story.
THE STORY OF ADAM AND EVE AS TOLD BY MR. HEINRICH
“Well, gentlemen, there was this young man in Moscow, a member of the Young Communist League.
His name was Adam.
And there was this young woman, Eve, also in Moscow and also a member of the League.
One day these two young people went for a walk in that Moscow paradise, the Park of Culture and Rest.
I don’t know what they were talking about.
Our young people normally talk about love.