his shoulders against the chill and moved to the yellow section of the main building.
Ivan crossed the creaky parquet of the corridors, filled with the light of the May sun, and went up to the second floor. He stopped in front of a door with the inscription 'Dean of the Faculty of Translation'. He looked around. The corridors were empty, everyone was in some class somewhere. There were still ten minutes left until the end of the second pair of classes. All his acquaintances were in lectures or seminars, so there was no one to even ask for support. Exhaling sharply, Ivan pulled up his jacket and pushed open the door, which had darkened with time. He remembered, for no reason, that the former owner of this building, Moscow governor Pyotr Yeropkin, had arranged balls here, which even little Pushkin visited.
In the waiting room, Lenochka gave him a sympathetic glance. Contrary to her habit of chatting with other visitors, she jumped up from her table and disappeared behind the oak door of the dean's sanctuary. She jumped back out in a couple of seconds and, leaving the door ajar, squeaked:
“Yakov Naumovich is waiting for you, Comrade Sarmatov. Come in.”
Ivan shook his head in surprise and stepped into the bowels of the familiar study. His wait for an audience with the dean had never been so short. Helena whispered after him: “Give ‘em hell, Vanya!” The door slammed shut behind him like the lid of a coffin.
The dean was sitting at the table, fingering the papers laid out in front of him. At the sound of the slamming door, he raised his head, took off his glasses, and glanced at the newcomer with a little squint.
“Sarmatov?” He glanced at the characteristic student's folder lying on top of the other papers, opened the first page, then slammed it again. “Why are you standing? Come in, sit down.”
“Hello, Yakov Naumovich,” the young man said as he plodded across the worn carpet, traversed by thousands of students, and sat down on a high-backed chair facing the all-powerful dean.
For some time, he looked at him in expectation, perhaps even with some kind of regret. Then, remembering someone, shook his massive head, grunted, and got up, calling to someone over his shoulder.
“He's yours, comrade. I pass him on to you, as they say, safe and sound.”
And the dean, grinning at some of his thoughts, exited. He left. His own. Office!
Dumbfounded, Ivan glanced in the direction where the dean nodded. Only now he noticed a stranger sitting to the side in a deep guest chair. The young man was astonished: he could have sworn when he had entered the room, this person was not here. Or he had not noticed him. He was so quiet and inconspicuous.
He was tall, not shorter than Ivan himself, in that he was at least six feet tall. The guest wore a beautifully tailored light gray European suit. An expensive shirt was unbuttoned around his neck, but a silk tie, Italian by the looks of it, was lying right there on the arm of the chair.
How old the newcomer was, Ivan would not have dared to say for sure: he could have been about thirty or well over forty. A muscular body, hidden under the expensive suit, belonged to an athlete, a sportsman. The face under the striped hat was rather Slavic – wide cheekbones, eyebrows, slanted eyes. The cold blue eyes themselves, however, gave him a detached, haughty expression, more Norman or Germanic. And those eyes scrutinized the student.
“Hello,” Ivan muttered, unaware of who he was dealing with at the moment. Yet, that Yakov Naumovich retired from his own office as if abandoning a sinking frigate led his thoughts in a certain direction.
“Hello.” The stranger's voice was soft and, in the circles of 'enlightened' youth, would be called velvety. Just enough to seduce the beauties on the Arbat, Ivan thought with quite a touch of envy. “Come, sit down closer.”
Sarmatov left his uncomfortable chair and moved to the chair, trying to spend as much time as possible dallying. He secretly hoped that the classes were about to end and the bell will save him. But the bell didn't ring, and the guest made himself comfortable in his chair. He threw one leg over the other, showing off chic black patent leather shoes and socks to match the suit. His first question immediately puzzled Ivan:
“How are you going to live, Falcon?”
For some time, Sarmatov stared blankly at the swaying toe of the stranger's patent leather shoe, pondering whether to send everyone and everything to hell right then and there. Yet the thought of what exactly his venerable father, academician, professor-anthropologist Pyotr Alekseevich would say at home, and in what tone, him from such rash action. He answered in his age-old habit, which so annoyed his teachers, the question with a question:
“What, I have options? Other than dropping out, of course?”
The stranger raised his eyebrows in surprise, looking at his counterpart with particular interest.
“Well, young man, there are always options. As well as a way out of any situation. Still, where does such pessimism about your future come from?”
“Don't you know?” Ivan snapped even more insolently. The stranger shrugged, which was an impressive gesture for his size, and reached into his pocket. Ivan watched his hand with sudden interest, as if right now, right at that moment, it could extract from the bowels of the stylish suit a scroll of indulgence for all his previous sins. But the hand returned with a round metal box, which the stranger held out to Saratov:
“Help yourself, it’s candy. You don't smoke, I know. Yes, and I've recently quit, a rubbish habit, more addictive than vodka. You don't drink, do you comrade?”
Ivan shook his head negatively. The stranger threw a candy into his mouth, put the box in his pocket, and laughed.
“Why do you think I have to deal with your attendance record? There is dear Yakov Naumovich for that. Let him care about your everyday academic life. No, my brother, I have entirely different reasons.”
Ivan sighed furtively, which did not escape the attention of the guest.
“Instead of sighing like a cow, you’d better consider why a major of the State Security was dragged to this charitable institution.”
The pointed look the stranger gave him dumbfounded Ivan. A minute passed. Another.
“Which major?” he muttered at last. The stranger laughed.
“Your freestyle wrestling coach said that you have excellent reflexes. And now you’re falling about. Was your coach kidding me?”
Ivan frowned:
“So far, I’ve had only three fights in my entire career on the mat. I’ve drawn two of them.”
“And I know it.” The guest was merry. “Okay, I won't torment you any longer. Come on, brother, let’s get acquainted! I am Kotov, Sergey Vladimirovich. For my own, ‘Yoshkin Kot’ or simply ‘Cat’.”
“Why ‘Yoshkin’?” asked Sarmatov. The visitor shrugged his shoulders.
“I come from Mariyka, from Yoshkar-Ola. There we have such a local character. And the 'cat', as you understand, is from the surname that I inherited from my father. Well, here’s my hand!”
He got up and held out his hand to Ivan, which turned out to be wide, like a shovel. Ivan also stood opposite, habitually shook it, and it felt as if his fingers were in a steel grip. Kotov was trying to determine how long the student could resist his vice-like grip, which was probably developed over many years of training.
Ivan
