The Night Watch (Watch 1)

Looking at Semyon in his crumpled, Russian-made check shirt, scruffy Turkish jeans and battered Czech sandals, I could easily picture him drinking beer poured out of a three-litre metal keg. But it was hard to imagine him in the Penta.

'You reprobates,' I said, appalled.

'Why? My friend was very pleased. He said now he understood what real Russian drunkenness was all about.'

'What is it about?'

'It's about waking up in the morning with everything around you looking grey. Grey sky, grey sun, grey city, grey people, grey thoughts. And the only way out is to have another drink. Then you feel better. Then the colours come back.'

'That was an interesting foreigner you found yourself.'

'Sure was!'

Semyon poured the vodka again – this time not filling the glasses so full. Then he thought twice and filled them right up to the top.

'Let's drink, my man. Here's to not having to drink in order to see the blue sky, the yellow sun and all the colours of the city. Let's drink to that. We go in and out of the Twilight and we see that the other side of the world isn't what everyone else thinks it is. But then, there's probably more than one other side. Here's to bright colours!'

I downed half my glass, dumbfounded.

'Don't wimp out, kid,' Semyon said without changing his tone.

I drained my glass and followed the vodka with a handful of the sweet-and-sour cabbage.

I asked him:

'Semyon, why do you behave like this? Why do you need to shock people with this image of yours?'

'Those are very clever words, I don't understand them.'

'But really?'

'It's easier this way, Antosha. Everyone looks after himself the best way he can. This is my way.'

'What should I do, Semyon?' I asked, without explaining what I meant.

'Do what you ought to do.'

'And what if I don't want to do what I ought to do? If our bright, radiant truth and our watchman's oath and our wonderful good intentions stick in my throat?'

'There's one thing you've got to understand, Anton,' said the magician, crunching a pickle. 'You ought to have realised it ages ago, but you've been tucked away with those machines of yours. Our Light truth may be big and bright, but it's made up of lots and lots of little truths. And Gesar may have a forehead a yard wide and the kind of experience you could never even dream of. But he also has haemorrhoids that have been healed by magic, an Oedipus complex and a habit of rejigging old schemes that worked before to make them look new. That's just for the sake of example, I don't really know what his oddities are, he's the boss after all.'

He took out another cigarette and this time I didn't try to object.

'Anton, I'll tell you what the problem is. You're a young guy, you join the Watch and you're delighted with yourself. At last the whole world is divided up into black and white! Your dream for humanity has come true, now you can tell who's good and who's bad. So get this. That's not the way it is. Not at all. Once we all used to be together. The Dark Ones and the Light Ones. We used to sit round the campfire in our cave and look through the Twilight to see where was the nearest pasture with a grazing mammoth, sing and dance, shooting sparks from our fingers, zap the other tribes with fireballs. And as an example, just to be entirely clear, let's say there were two brothers, both Others. Maybe when the first one went into the Twilight he was feeling well fed, maybe he'd just had sex for the first time. But for the other one it was different. Some green bamboo had given given him stomach-ache, his woman had turned him down because she said she had a headache and she was tired from scraping animal skins. And that's how it started. One leads everyone to the mammoth and he's satisfied. The other demands a piece of the trunk and the chief's daughter into the bargain. That's how we became Dark Ones and Light Ones, Good and Evil. Pretty basic stuff, isn't it? It's what we teach all the Other children. But whoever told you it had all stopped?'

Semyon leaned towards me so abruptly that his chair cracked.

'That's the way it was, it still is and it always will be. For ever, Antosha. There isn't any end to it. Today if anyone runs riot and sets off through a crowd, doing Good without authorisation, we dematerialise him. Into the Twilight with him, he's a hysterical psychopath, he's disturbing the balance, into the Twilight. But what's going to happen tomorrow? In a hundred years? In a thousand? Who can see that far? You, me, Gesar?'

'So what do I do?'

'Do you have a truth of your own, Anton? Tell me, do you? Are you certain of it? Then believe in it, not in my truth, not in Gesar's. Believe in it and fight for it. If you have enough courage. If the idea doesn't make you shudder. What's bad about Dark freedom is not just that it's freedom from others. That's another explanation for little children. Dark freedom is first and foremost freedom from yourself, from your own conscience and your own soul. The moment you can't feel any pain in your chest – call for help. Only by then it'll be too late.'

He paused to reach into the plastic bag and took out another bottle of vodka. He sighed:

'Number two. I have a feeling we're not going to get drunk after all. We won't make it. And as for Olga and what she said . . .'

How did he always manage to hear everything?

'She's not envious because Svetlana might be able to do something she didn't do. And not because Sveta still has everything ahead of her while Olga, to be frank, has it all behind her at this stage. She envies Sveta because you love her and you're there for her and you'd like to stop her. Even though you can't do a thing about it. Gesar could have done, but he didn't want to. You can't, but you want to. Maybe in the end there's no difference, but it still gets to her. It tears at her soul, no matter how old she might be.'

'Do you know what they're preparing Svetlana for?'

'Yes,' said Semyon, splashing more vodka into the glasses.

'What is it?'

'I can't answer that. I gave a written undertaking. Do you want me to take my shirt off, so you can see the sign of chastising fire on my back? If I say a word I'll go up in flames with this chair, and the ashes will fit into a cigarette pack. So I'm sorry, Anton. Don't try to squeeze it out of me.'

'Thanks,' I said. 'Let's drink. Maybe we'll get drunk after all. I certainly need it.'

'I can see that,' Semyon agreed. 'Let's get on with it.'

CHAPTER 3

I WOKE UP very early. It was quiet all around, that living silence you get in the country, with the rustle of the morning wind after it's finally turned cool. Only that didn't make me feel any better. The bed was soaking wet with sweat and my head was splitting. Semyon was snoring monotonously on the bed beside me – three of us had been put in the same room. Tolik was sleeping on the floor, wrapped up in a blanket. He'd turned down the hammock he'd been offered, saying his back was hurting – he'd injured it in some tussle in 1976 – and he'd be better off sleeping on a hard surface.

I held the back of my head in my hands to stop the sudden movement shaking it to pieces and sat up on the bed. I looked at the bedside locker and saw two aspirins and a bottle of Borzhomi mineral water. Who was this kind soul?

The evening before, we'd drunk two bottles between us. Then Tolik had turned up. Then someone else, and they'd brought some wine. But I hadn't drunk any wine, I still had enough sense left for that.

I washed down the aspirins with half a bottle of water and sat there stupidly for a while, waiting for the medicine to take effect. The pain didn't go away. I didn't think I'd be able to stand it for long.

'Semyon,' I called in a hoarse voice. 'Semyon!'

The magician opened one eye. He looked perfectly okay. As if he hadn't drunk far more than I had the day before. So that was what another hundred years of experience could do for you.

'Sort my head, will you . . .'

'I don't have an axe handy,' he muttered.

'Ah, you . . .' I groaned. 'Will you fix the pain?'

'Anton, we drank of our free will, didn't we? Nobody forced us, did they? And you enjoyed it!'

He turned over on to his other side.

I realised I couldn't expect any help from Semyon. And anyway he was right, it was just that I couldn't take it any more. I slipped my feet into my trainers, stepped over Tolik's sleeping body and left the room.

There were two rooms just for guests, but the door of the other was locked. However, the door at the end of the corridor, leading into our hostess's bedroom, was open. Remembering what Tiger Cub had said about her healing powers, I walked straight in without hesitation.

It looked like everything was against me today. She wasn't there. And despite my suspicions, neither were Ignat and Lena. Tiger Cub had spent the night with Yulia and the young girl was sleeping like a child, with one arm and one leg dangling over the side of the bed.

I didn't care who I asked for help any more. I tiptoed across, sat down beside the huge bed and whispered her name:

'Yulia, Yulienka . . .'

The girl opened her eyes, blinked and asked sympathetically:

'Hangover?'

'Yes.' I didn't risk a nod, someone had just set a small grenade off inside my head.

'Uhuh?'

She closed her eyes, I even thought she'd dozed off again, but she kept her arm round my neck. For a few seconds nothing happened, then the pain started receding rapidly. As if someone had opened a secret tap in the back of my head and started draining the seething poisons.

'Thanks,' I whispered. 'Thanks, Yulienka.'

'Don't drink so much, you can't take it,' she mumbled and immediately started snoring softly and evenly, as if she'd simply flipped a switch from work to sleep. Only kids and computers can do that.

I stood up, delighted to see the world in colour again. Semyon had been right, of course. You have to take responsibility for your actions. But sometimes you simply don't have enough strength for that. I looked around. The entire bedroom was decorated in beige tones, even the inclined window was slightly tinted. The music centre had a golden finish, the thick, fluffy carpet on the floor was light brown.

I really shouldn't be doing this. No one had invited me.

I walked quietly towards the door and when I had already half left, I heard Yulia's voice:

'You owe me a Snickers bar, okay?'

'Two,' I agreed.

I could have gone back to finish my night's sleep, but my memories of the bed weren't very pleasant ones. It felt like all I had to do was he down and the pain lurking in the pillow would pounce again. I just dropped back into my room to grab my jeans and shirt and put them on, standing in the doorway.

Was everybody really asleep? Tiger Cub was wandering about outside somewhere, but surely someone must have sat up until morning, talking over a bottle.

There was a little hall on the second floor. I spotted Danila and Nastya in there, sleeping peacefully on the sofa, and beat a hasty retreat. I shook my head: Danila had a very attractive wife, and Nastya had an elderly husband who was madly in love with her.

But then, they were only people.

And we were Others, the volunteers of the Light. How could it be helped if we had a different morality? It was like a frontline, with its field army romances and the young nurses comforting the officers and the men, not only in the hospital beds. In a war the appetite for life is just too strong.

I went to the library, where I found Garik and Farid. They had spent all night talking over a bottle – and not just one. And it obviously wasn't long since they'd fallen asleep in their armchairs: Farid's pipe was still smoking faintly on the table in front of him. There were piles of books that had been pulled off the shelves lying on the floor. They must have had a long argument about something, appealing for support to writers and poets, philosophers and historians.

I went down the long wooden spiral staircase. Surely I could find someone to share this peaceful morning with me?