out a pair of chervonets from a leather shovel purse and pushed them under the plate with the crayfish remains.
“Let's go,” he nodded to Andrey and, without looking back, moved through the haze to the exit. Andrey looked around helplessly, grabbed his crumpled cap from the counter and some pickled fishtails that were nearby, and followed him outside.
Naum arrived at the table only a quarter of an hour later but found only empty mugs and plates, from which the local punks even dared to clean the fish bones. Just a couple of lonely coins under the plate.
Naum put the mugs and crayfish on the marble countertop and looked around, just in case. Andrey and the mysterious stranger were nowhere to be found.
“Oh well,” said the artist to himself. “Looks like I’m lucky today!”
And he knocked away the first mug. Ahead was a wonderful evening, worthy of a genuine servant of the muses.
“And then we Comrade Kurchatov gave his lecture, and I finally realized that my vocation is nuclear energy.” Andrey stopped and stared at the Cat. He looked at him with a mocking squint. “Why are you so interested in this? You don’t look like you’ve even been through seventh grade, and now you’re talking about splitting atoms.”
The man pushed back his cap and threw some careful glances at either side of them. The Moscow evening was noisy all around. Girls in light dresses flocked along the Tsvetnoy Boulevard alley. Under the tree canopy, the old men crowded around the benches in groups, concentrating on their chess games played out, probably for years, since the pre-war days.
A gang of boys cheerfully drove a shabby bicycle rim without a tire in front of them. It rattled desperately along the gravel of the path and strove from time to time to run off into the roadside acacias. Still, the boys deftly guided it with a branch in the right direction.
The capital was moving away from the nightmare of war. Men in shabby tunics with bandaged wounds were becoming increasingly rare, and the city filled with crowds of workers eager to take their places behind the machines, which had missed those hands so much during those four terrible years.
Almost all the enterprises were working again. The morning crowds of workers hurried to the factory gates. In the evenings, tired but satisfied they lived through another peaceful day, the freshly painted subway trains delivered them to their homes.
Stalinist skyscrapers rose skyward. The new MSU building would soon adorn the Lenin Hills, just as the giant apartments on Kutuzovsk and Kotelniy Embankment reached for the heavens. And on Smolensk Square, the new building of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs stood tall and proud. Moscow grew and expanded, throwing off the last traces of the recent fighting with her discarded blackout camouflage.
Andrey noticed a moment’s confusion in his new acquaintance but interpreted it in his own way.
“What’s up, comrade? Haven't you been to the capital recently?”
Kotov turned to Andrey and laughed.
“Look at that… No, comrade Fomenko, I haven’t been out of here in a while. Business, you know. I just can't get enough of a peaceful Moscow. How everything has changed here. For the better, Andryusha, for the better, of course. Where is all this dullness, constant fear of bombing, balloons in the cloudy sky?”
Andrey laughed.
“So when was it? Five years already have passed since then, or even more. If you recall, when the Germans have driven away from their trenches.”
“That’s what I’m talking about,” laughed Kotov. "But before my eyes, there’s still that Moscow, unbroken, belligerent. But what am I talking about? Let’s move on to something more serious. So, you say, Comrade Kurchatov lectured you.”
Andrey gasped as he remembered the quiet talk of a lecturer that was not familiar to anyone. It was later that they were simply fascinated by this unknown speaker. At first, against the background of eminent professors, he was merely a modest man with disheveled hair. To them, he seemed to be an assistant professor, a ‘loser’ who accidentally came out to replace one of their venerable teachers. But only until that moment when he uttered the first sentence of the first lecture: “My friends, remember: man's life is not eternal, but science and knowledge cross the threshold of the centuries!” And then the journey to the fantastic country began, where the atom reigns.
“Yes, he was amazing!”
“Didn’t you want to work in this scientific field?” The Cat looked deep into Andrey's eyes, which made chills run down his spine, not from fear, but from the anticipation of significant changes.
“Of course,” the young man choked, suddenly frozen. “Who are you, comrade? We must now say goodbye, and it would be better if you’ll never cross my path again. I’ll surely turn your over to the first militiaman I can find and let them deal with you as they see fit.”
The Cat raised his hand.
“But, but, young man, you want songs, and I have them, as they say in Odessa. The organs are already nearby.”
He pulled a red booklet out of his inner pocket, and Andrey's eyes were drawn by the gold-embossed blue letters: ‘The Ministry of State Security of the USSR’. He slowly raised his head and looked into the eyes of this mysterious man.
“That’s what this entire show was for? You couldn’t just introduce yourself, and then there’s the suspicious conversation, hints… In fact, what have I done to interest your institution in the first place? I did nothing, couldn’t have done anything, nor was I ever involved in anything until now, as they say.”
The Cat burst out laughing:
“What do you think we’re doing, youngster? Despite the films you may have seen, we don’t spend our days jumping about the roofs. No, buddy, we have a lot of things to do in other areas as well. To begin with, I will introduce myself in the full form: Major of State Security Kotov, Sergey Vladimirovich. You, my friend, I know all about right back to the seventh generation, so don’t bother introducing yourself.”
“That much is clear,” Andrei muttered. “Even so, why am I here?”
Kotov scanned the surrounding area and nodded towards an empty bench:
“Shall we sit down? And talk?”
Andrey shrugged his shoulders and headed in that direction.
When they both settled down in the shade of a spreading willow, the major suggested in a conspiratorial tone:
“Would you like to work for the good of the socialist motherland?”
Andrey laughed, and Kotov liked his laugh: such a pure laugh, without mockery, open.
“But I’ll work for her benefit according to the distribution. Then I'll just get my diploma first. I’m going to some giant factory; they are building so many of them now. I’ll work hard and make the most of it.”
Kotov chuckled:
“Cheeky. A cheeky young man, taking into account who you’ve just involved in this philosophical conversation.”
“Why, I know who I’m talking to, comrade Major. It’s just that I have nothing to fear before Soviet law.”
Kotov looked absentmindedly at the sky: in the high June blue,
