He had already come up with an opening line.
The captain quickly caught up with the girl.
“Zosya,” he said, “I’m here, and this fact is impossible to ignore.”
He uttered these words with unbelievable impudence.
The girl flinched, and the grand strategist realized that his opening had sounded phony.
He changed key, spoke rapidly and incessantly, blamed circumstances, said that his youth hadn’t passed the way he had pictured it as a child, that life turned out to be harsh and low, like a bass key.
“You know, Zosya,” he said in the end, “every single person, even a party member, is under the pressure of an atmospheric column that weighs 472 pounds.
Haven’t you noticed?”
Zosya didn’t say anything.
They walked past the Capital Hill movie theater.
Ostap quickly glanced across the street, at the building that just a few months earlier had housed the bureau he had founded, and gasped quietly.
A large sign stretched across the entire length of the building:
In every window, one could see typewriters and portraits of political leaders.
A sprightly messenger, who looked nothing like Panikovsky, stood at the door with a satisfied smile.
Three-ton trucks, loaded down with horns and hoofs that met the industry’s standards were driving in through an open gate that bore the sign MAIN WAREHOUSE.
Ostap’s baby had clearly taken the right path.
“The ruling class is smothering me,” said Ostap wistfully, “it even took my offhand idea and used it to it’s own advantage.
And I got pushed aside, Zosya.
You hear? I got pushed aside.
I’m miserable.”
“A heartsick lover,” said Zosya, turning to Ostap for the first time.
“Yes,” agreed Ostap, “I’m your typical Eugene Onegin, also known as a knight who’s been disinherited by the Soviet regime.”
“A knight? Come on!”
“Zosya, don’t be mad! Think of the atmospheric column.
I even have a feeling that it puts a lot more pressure on me than on other people.
On account of my love for you.
Besides, I’m not a union member.
That’s another reason.”
“And also because you tell more lies than other people.”
“This is not a lie.
It’s a law of physics.
But maybe there really isn’t any column, and it’s just a fantasy?”
Zosya stopped and started taking off a glove that was the color of a gray stocking.
“I’m thirty-three years old,” said Ostap hastily, “the age of Jesus Christ.
And what have I accomplished thus far?
I haven’t created a teaching, I wasted my disciples, I haven’t resurrected the dead Panikovsky, and only you . . .”
“Well, see you,” said Zosya. “I’m off to the cafeteria.”
“I’ll have lunch too,” announced the grand strategist, glancing at the sign that read THE CHERNOMORSK STATE ACADEMY FOR SPATIAL ARTS VOCATIONAL COLLEGE. MODEL FOOD PREPARATION FACLITY. “I’ll have some model borscht du jour at this academy.
Maybe it’ll make me feel better.”
“It’s for union members only,” warned Zosya.
“Then I’ll just sit with you.”
They went down three steps.
A young man with black eyes sat deep inside the model training facility, under the green canopy of a palm tree, and studied the menu with a dignified expression.
“Pericles!” called out Zosya before she had even reached the table.
“I bought you socks with double-knit heels.
Here, please meet Femidi.”
“Femidi,” said the young man, giving Ostap a friendly handshake.
“Bender-Transylvansky,” replied the grand strategist snidely, instantly realizing that he was late to the feast of love, and that the socks with double-knit heels weren’t just a product of some pseudo-invalids’ co-op but a symbol of a happy marriage that had been sanctified by the office of the civil registrar.
“Wow!
Are you really Transylvansky as well?” asked Zosya playfully.