The Last Sleep of Reason

A novel by Dmitri Lipskerov

Translated from the Russian by Dmitri Priven

Dmitri Lipskerov, a playwright, businessman, and prose writer successively, has been one of the most talked about authors in Russia of the past decade. He has published several novels (Ñîðîê ëåò ×àí÷æîý, 1996; Ïðîñòðàíñòâî Ãîòëèáà, 1998; Ïîñëåäíèé ñîí ðàçóìà, 2000; Ðóññêîå ñòàêêàòî - áðèòàíñêîé ìàòåðè, 2003), collections of short stories, and plays (Ðåêà íà àñôàëüòå, 1989, staged at Tabakov's Studio, Moscow; Øêîëà äëÿ ýìèãðàíòîâ, 1990, staged at Lenkom, Moscow). Lipskerov has had several nominations for the Booker Prize and is one of the founders of the Debut independent literary prize.

Dubbed as a "Russian Marques" on several occasions, Lipskerov, however, has developed his own literary style, often perceived in the framework of magical realism. The metamorphosis of love and death seems to be the main theme in The Last Sleep of Reason. One of its protagonists is the Tatar Ilya Ilyasov, a fish salesman getting on in years, whose several lives and deaths are intertwined with the lives and deaths of a few dozen characters in the novel. Unable to consummate their love for each other as teenagers, Ilya and his beloved Aiza are destined to meet and copulate again and again in different incarnations (as birds, fish, and insects). The other protagonist, police captain Vladimir Sinichkin, who, incidentally, happens to be investigating one of Ilyasov's deaths, is destined to repeatedly give birth to Aiza's several incarnations, bearing in turn Aiza the bird, Aiza the fish, and Aiza the dragon-fly in his pregnant thighs. Ilya and Aiza's surviving progeny, three human children hatched out of fish eggs, are adopted by some of the characters and grow up rapidly to become a prophet slowly turning into a tree, a guardian angel-like creature, and a Mongolian warrior. The only main character to survive the metamorphosis is Captain Sinichkin. The chronotop of the novel (this seem to have been one of Lipskerov's trademarks throughout his literary career) is a reconstructed reality. Although the setting is unmistakably Russian, few details give away the period the action takes place in.

This translation of Chapter 4 from The Last Sleep of Reason to the best of our knowledge is the first published translation of Lipskerov's prose into English. The translation of the whole novel is a work in progress, so any comments are welcome and appreciated.

Chapter 4. BIRTH

Captain Vladimir Sinichkin, of the Pustyrki precinct, was in bed in the departmental hospital, waiting for the Guinness Book of Records man to arrive with his film crew. Waiting for the Guinness man were also the whole staff of the hospital, and the owner of the phenomenal thighs was being treated with something slightly more homemade than one would find in the hospital cafeteria.

The detective lay with his wealth spread over three beds, and dreamed of fame.

"Unto each his own!" concluded Volodya. "Some people sing, some write books, some are brilliant composers or orchestra conductors. Me, I've got a pair of brilliant legs!". He lay still for a moment to get the feeling in his thighs and found that they were not sore at all. On the contrary, they felt pleasantly cool. "That's also good," rejoiced the captain.

He also fantasized a bit about (why the heck not!) getting an early promotion, or better yet skipping a rank and becoming Major Pogosian's superior.

The detective closed his eyes and imagined himself as a general, parked in a fancy wheelchair, his front all decorated. Beside him standing to attention would be Zubov, offering him a handful of pumpkin seeds… Gradually he got completely carried away to a different kind of life - an international stardom - where he traveled around the world, all expenses paid by the Guinness Book, displaying his outstanding limbs for a hefty sum. He saw his wife Anna Karlovna and himself staying in five-star hotels, his other half very proud of her husband's achievements…

But that day did not see the Guinness Book of Records man, the Bulgarian Zhechka Zhechkov, show up. A special courier arrived at the hospital, announcing that on that day, in one of the city parks there was to be cook-up of a record quantity of perogies. Two hundred and fifty thousand of them were to be cooked simultaneously in one hundred cauldrons and consumed by a thousand eaters. The last thing the courier said was that the Guinness representative would show up the following day with a group of independent medical experts.

"Those bloody guzzlers!" concluded Sinichkin and sighed, for his dreams would not be coming true for another day.

Yet the night brought an unbearable chill to Volodya's thighs. The chill went right to the bone of detective's limbs; he reached under the blanket and discovered that the diaphanous skin on his legs was covered with ice, that is to say, hoarfrost.

"My body temperature is negative," concluded the captain and whimpered for the nurse.

The nurse called Petrovna appeared and rubbed Volodya's frigid legs warm with alcohol until dawn, humming something ancient for the poor darling to fall asleep.

The captain dozed off, but found his legs in the morning drastically thinner. It was as if the limbs had deflated in half, like balloons. They did not require three beds anymore; two was enough.

The assistant - that is, the acting head physician - was called in; after examining Sinichkin, he frowned and lamented reproachfully: "Why couldn't you wait until the evening! The Guinness man is coming today, you know!"

The detective was embarrassed but expressed hope that the size of his thighs might still be sufficient for a record.

"You think you're the only one, don't you?!" the assistant exploded. "Damn it, legs like yours are a dime a dozen!"

An investigation of sorts was carried out, at the end of which nurse Petrovna was fired in a twinkling of an eye for taking the matter into her own hands. Sinichkin saw her baffled back in the window and felt sad for the little old lady who had worked in the hospital for forty-five years: her career was ending so pitiably.

In the meantime, Volodya's legs continued to shrink; they were withering by the minute, and by the time the Guinness Book of Records man with his film crew arrived, they had turned into a pair of just overly fat limbs, which did not impress Mr. Zhechkov at all.

"What's with the legs?" inquired the representative.

"Got flat," replied one of the doctors.

"Well, no legs - no record!" said Zhechka indifferently, snapped his fingers and showed the film crew to the door.

"Wait a minute!" the acting head physician was beginning to panic. "You saw them yourself, didn't you?"

"I did," agreed the representative. "But we've got to have the proof! And you haven't got it! If the legs swell up again, call me. I'll come right away!"

Having said that, the Bulgarian headed off.

"Get him ready for discharge!" ordered the acting head, giving Sinichkin a hateful eye.

"What are you talking about!" protested the detective. "I can't even walk!"

"Ten officers are wounded in this city each and every day! You are taking up the bed of one of our heroes!"

"My legs glow in the dark!"

"Send him away to the psychiatric ward!"

"I'm ready for discharge!" Volodya instantly came to his senses…

Later that day he was discharged and his sick leave was over.

Anna Karlovna brought her husband home in a taxi and nursed him like a baby, heedless of her husband's malicious taunts about her barren German belly and Nazi relatives.

That night Volodya's legs got frozen over like a river in winter, and he was already grateful to his wife for bandaging his sore thighs with angora wool. A forgiving woman, she was stroking her husband's hair till the morning; he was crying bitterly, bidding farewell to his hopes for international recognition and generalship. Of all his fantasies only one remained: that Zubov would give him some of his pumpkin seeds, but then only if Major Pogosian commanded so.

The following morning Anna Karlovna found her husband's legs absolutely recovered, at least exactly the same as they were before the relapse - just slightly swollen at thighs. Tenderly she rubbed grandma's live cell ointment into them and helped her husband into the boots.

The police department welcomed Sinichkin back with mixed feelings. Major Pogosian patted him on the shoulder, but then lifted up his hands with typical Armenian sadness and talked at length that fame can spoil you and it is all good that the record did not happen.

Karapetian was scratching his sideburns without saying a word, but thought deep down that Captain Sinichkin was a complete nobody, wearing on his shoulder-straps the star that was rightfully Karapetian's.

As usual, the Armenian lunch was served at two; poor Zubov again was getting bashed. The topic chewed over was Russian woman's influence on Armenian man's psyche. One of the officers even suggested that a relationship with a fair-haired people causes the Caucasus man to lose hair five times as fast, and not only on the head but also chest and back.

Sergeant-major Zubov tried to elucidate what the connection was between the psyche and baldness, but was commanded to shut up; however, swallowing a piece of roast lamb, Zubov-Zubian expressed protest in the form of unbuttoning his uniform. A perfect silence reigned over the table when the dining audience had beheld a stupendous sight, which Sinichkin named to himself "A Sheep Before Shearing". The sergeant-major's chest was a darker shade of black so dense was the hair on it. His skin was not showing one bit under the brunette vegetation, and the seasoned Armenians sulked in view of such hormonal assets of their colleague.

Zubov offered to model his back and behind, hinting vulgarly that the degree of shagginess on those body parts is no less than on his chest, but the officers waved him off, and Major Pogosian warned that he would shoot the moron if he took his pants off at the dinner table.

Such was Sergeant-major Zubov's little victory over his fellow countrymen, and he was flashing a conceited smirk from under his multi-tiered nose all afternoon.

After lunch Major called Sinichkin to his office for a briefing.

"The blood on the clothes we found is identical to the blood on that ear fragment, so we've got ourselves a crime! It's a fact!" concluded Pogosian and beamed at captain. "You, my friend, will find the owner of the clothes and the body with a bit of its ear ripped off! We're all here for you, but you know, everybody's up to their ears in work, so you're going have to manage by yourself!"

Sinichkin started to object faintly that he had never studied how to do a proper investigation, sir, that his body was still weak after his condition, sir, but Major interrupted his inferior by saying "Looking good, you son of a bum!" and commanded to proceed with the task.

"Where's the matchbox?" asked Sinichkin as he was leaving.

"What matchbox?"

"The one the ear was in? I said I'd give it back!"

Instead of answering, the boss gave his inferior such a look that Sinichkin shuddered under his dark-eyed gaze and surprisingly quickly retreated from the office. For some reason, he was wondering why their department had so many Armenians.

"What are we, on Mount Ararat or something?" he shouted out, but he had been already outside, heading towards the quarry where the criminally implicated clothing was found.

He had no idea why he was dragging his feet to the pond, what else he would be looking for there, but he had no idea what else to do either. He kept walking along the sandy shore, listening to the gases from the rich Armenian grub rambling and rumbling in his guts, and looking down dismally the way camels do.

First he saw a ripped-up fishing net, and thought: why is it here, what's there to fish; then he cast a glance at a pile of rotting planks of wood with someone's bluish toes showing underneath them.

"I've found the body!" Sinichkin was proud of himself, but instantly stopped short as there were too few planks to cover a body. Quickly shoving off the rot, he saw a severed foot underneath.

"Man's foot" automatically determined Volodya. "Nails unclipped".

It also dawned on the detective that the ear fragment and the foot were biologically related and that the owner of the severed members rested at pond's bottom.

Sinichkin took a whistle out of his pocket and blew it with all his might; he succeeded in attracting the attention of the fishermen at the other end of the puddle.

"Call the police!" he yelled, causing anglers' intense frustration.

"Screw you!" simultaneously flashed across the fishermen's brains.

But among a hundred scoundrels there is always one decent person. On the beach too there was one like that who stepped forward. He knew that swearing caught no fish so he ran to the nearest payphone as fast as he could.

In fifteen minutes the police jeep parked at the quarry. Out of it, like a fat black poodle, rolled Major Pogosian accompanied by Lieutenant Karapetian, who was constantly tugging at his sideburns. Zubov was not interested, so he stayed in the car to listen to the radio and nibble on his pumpkin seeds.

"A foot, sir," Sinichkin shrugged his shoulders.

"You son of a bum!" the major was elated. "And -

"Looks like it matches the ear," deduced Volodya.

"And - "

"That's it."

Karapetian mumbled something in Armenian, which caused Pogosian to explode like a landmine. He was yelling in Russian that even his grandpa Tigran never swore like that, and who does everybody think they are, and he'll take everybody's you know what and stick it you know where!

"It wasn't you sir, major sir," Karapetian was making excuses apathetically, scratching his sideburns.

"Sinichkin is the only one who gets the job done!" the senior officer was all fired up. "And you, you shave your freaking ugly mug right now! Got it?!!" (no pause) "You stick the aqualung on and don't you come up till you fish out that body! Bloody bastard!"

The recovered foot was then wrapped up in a plastic bag and placed in the jeep to take it for tests. Already sitting in the car, Pogosian instructed Sinichkin to be sure to ask around if any of the residents in the neighbourhood had gone missing. Then he hit Zubov's elbow as hard as he could, which made the pumpkin seeds fly out the window and scatter freely on the autumn shore. The sergeant-major stepped on the gas, and the car jerked forward with the siren screaming.

For the whole day Sinichkin diligently scoured the blocks of flats in the neighbourhood, talking with the residents, mostly senior citizens, who were retired and therefore knew a lot.

The detective found out that in this world a lot of people do go missing, but then they come back. These are mostly married people trying to run away from their other halves, or alcoholics who forget how to get to their sweet home. But there was no one who had gone missing for good.

It was towards the evening that coming down the stairs of a sixteen-storey block of flats, Volodya Sinichkin ran into a female resident relentlessly ringing the bell at one of the doors.

"No one in there?" asked the captain.

"This is the third time he's not in!" answered the woman angrily. " You bloody Tatar!"

"I am Russian!" protested Sinichkin. "Actually, ethnic hatred in its extreme manifestations is against the law!"

"I wasn't talking about you!" corrected the woman. "It's about the man from this flat! Bloody uncultured Tatar! Not a word in Russian, not a single bloody word!

"Why bother coming to him then?" inquired Sinichkin.

"Well, he hasn't been to work for God knows how many days! And no one knows where the hell he's got to!"

"And you are…"

"His co-worker," answered the woman with a thunderous sneeze. "A-shoo… From the deli department".

Sinichkin had trouble making a connection between shoes and salami, so he asked the woman to clarify.

"Ilyasov is the name! Don't know how old exactly, but pretty old. He works in our shop, in the fish department, and I'm in meats and deli."

"What've shoes got to do with it?"

"Shoes? My shoes got wet, so I've got a cold!"

The woman wrinkled her nose so as to hold her next sneeze, and thought to herself that there were a lot of idiots on this planet, more than one could imagine. Obviously this man in uniform did not have a lot of brains under that hat.

"Well, who needs brains anyways?" said the sausage woman out loud, which left captain utterly confused. "The manager told me to go find Ilyasov, because he's an ace when it comes to fish!"

The detective had nothing more to ask, so he took down the woman's phone number and said that he would call if anything, and then let her go.

"Please do," permitted the woman, but thought to herself that the officer was a complete baboon.

They parted on the first floor, and Sinichkin went to the superintendent, who turned out to be a bulky female in overalls, with massive arms.

"Got to break into a flat!" ordered the captain.

"One break-in coming up!" croaked the female and got her hand on a toolbox.

They picked out witnesses, who happened to be the Mitrokhin family at full strength.

The patriarch was trembling all over; however, no one was paying any notice. Elizabeth vaguely remembered her neighbour crawling on the stairs stark naked and her father running around with a bloody rag. But the acne-riddled teen decided that she had been hallucinating, and was standing in front of Ilyasov's door now with her neatly combed head snug on her mother's shoulder.

"This door sure is flimsy!" observed the superintendent disdainfully, and with two clicks of the little nickel-plated locks took a chisel out of the toolbox. Sliding its metal tongue between the doorjamb and the lock, she pressed on the door with her shoulder, and it swung open as if it had not been locked at all. "Phooey!"

The snooping mob barged into the flat, where after switching on the light, Sinichkin spotted traces of blood. To be precise, the crimson pools of blood on the floor could hardly be referred to as traces. A chilly wind was bursting in through the open window, blowing out whatever odours were in the room. The only thing stirring was a pigeon shuffling on the ledge, but it soon slid off the metal and vanished into the thin air.

"So how about that body?" inquired Sinichkin and thought this might be the awakening of his sleuthing talent. Otherwise how could he have found the ear, the bloody clothes, the severed foot, and now this flat with the evidence of a murder? Intuition, perhaps?

The mob looked into the bathroom, but there wasn't a body there either. Nor blood.

Since there was not anywhere else to search, the detective looked out the window thinking that the body could have been thrown out, but then he realized that if that were the case, the body would have been lying near the front entrance and long noticed. At that point Sinichkin had neither further questions nor answers, so he ordered the witnessed to stay put, dialed the department's number and told the officer on duty:

"Get the crime response team over here! Make sure the fingerprint guy is there and the rest of them too!" and put down the receiver satisfied.

"Screw you," swore the officer on duty as Sinchkin had forgotten to give the address where the team was to be sent.

It took time to figure out the address from the telephone number.

The sideburn scratching Karapetian in the jeep said something lengthy and offensive about the captain, to which Major Pogosian did not object this time and thought to himself that it would not hurt to make the department one hundred per cent Armenian! Even the pumpkin seed munching Zubov should get the hell out of here! He was going to whack the sergeant-major on the elbow again, but figured he was too tired at the end of the day and just gave a quick yawn…

People had crowded Ilyasov's flat in great numbers. Specialists were snooping around high and low, putting something in little plastic bags and taking pictures.

"Dismiss the witnesses!" ordered Pogosian. "We'll call 'em when we need 'em!"

"I had sensed something about this flat!" Sinichkin was narrating enthusiastically after the Mitrokhins had departed for their dwelling. "That it was the scene of the crime!"

"You son-of-a-gun!" was major's praise. "So why then were the clothes on the beach neatly folded?"

"Clothes?" the captain had to ask as he did not know what to say.

"That's the point! A whole lot of questions in this case! Ear at the dump, clothes on the beach, blood in the flat…

"I'm not too big on logic," sighed Volodya. "I've got intuition, but I don't know what to do with it!"

"Investigate, my friend, investigate," encouraged his superior…

At night, just about the time they show news on TV, Sinichkin did not feel well again. There was an awful pain in the legs, so he moved into the bedroom.

"Swollen again!" Anna Karlovna threw her hands up in the air after pulling her husbands pants off him. "My poor darling!"

Indeed, having looked over his limbs, the detective found them swollen about one third, which surprisingly pleased him.

"Wish they'd swell three times," he started fantasizing. "And then - whoopee!"

Sinichkin cut his incipient flight of fancy short and decided quite rightly not to count his chicken before they're hatched.

The night was sleepless since Volodya kept listening to his legs, feeling them grow, bulge, stretch the skin; he was holding his breath.

In the morning Anna Karlovna called an ambulance, and with the siren wailing Sinichkin was taken to the familiar police hospital, where they had not even moved his two beds apart as there had not happened to be any wounded heroes with badges on that day, all the bullets having gone awry. The captain was laid down in his old haunt.

In a short while the acting head physician showed up with a tape measurer and thoroughly gauged Sinichkin's legs.

"Seven feet exactly!" he announced with a smile, and the overjoyed detective decided to fuss a bit and demanded to give nurse Petrovna her old job back.

The nominee for the Guinness Book of Records could not be refused, so the little old lady was sent for.

The acting head retreated into his office and set about getting in touch with Mr. Zhechka Zhechkov so that he would come immediately and confirm the record. But the Bulgarian was out of town - he had departed into the countryside to authenticate the biggest potato that Mother Earth had graced this country with, all ten pounds of it.

"When will he be back?" inquired the acting head impatiently.

"In two days," was the answer.

At night Sinichkin noted to his satisfaction that his legs once again were glowing brightly; crouched underneath the blanket, he began to explore his transparent thighs where nothing was flowing about this time, but it seemed as if the skin had been inflated with some sort of blue ambience, as if the sky had made its way into the legs and clouds were floating in it.

"Beautiful!" Sinichkin was delighted.

For a split second it seemed to him that he even saw a bird fly through his hypodermic skies, and he chuckled, which annoyed his neighbour at the window bed.

"What's with the light? The hell are you giggling about in the middle of the night?!"

The detective thought it was the same old sergeant, so switching off the light down there, he reprimanded the cheeky bastard in an official tone of voice.

"If a sergeant with an elephant's testicle speaks like that to a captain, tomorrow he may be a private with two elephant's testicles!"

"First of all, I'm not a sergeant!" said the window bed with confidence. "I'm a colonel! Second, I don't have an elephant's testicle, I've just got appendicitis. Third, if you, captain, are not going to let me sleep with your stupid laughter, I will personally smack your face in!"

"Screw you!" the nominee for the Guinness Book of Records was not intimidated. "Think you scared me, colonel! I'm here on general's orders, so a colonel can quickly become lieutenant."

That was a bit far-fetched, which Sinichkin realized immediately as a robust individual got up from the window bed and silently proceeded toward his own bed.

Volodya got rather scared and shouted out so that the whole hospital could hear.

"Petrovna! Petrovna-a-a!"

The colonel interrupted his advance and stopped in the middle of the room, moonlit; he resembled a vampire from a horror film, who had just stumbled upon the frightened hero armed with an aspen stake.

"Stop yelling, you crazy moron!"

"I want Petrovna-a-a!," continued to plead Sinichkin.

"Stop yelling, I'm telling you!," officer was getting worried.

There was a sound of footsteps in the hallway, and colonel hopped towards his bed sheepishly, holding on to his operated flank, and covered himself with a blanket up to his eyes.

In the room appeared an old woman accompanied by two burly paramedics who stayed at the door. Her arthritic figure quickly shuffled towards Sinichkin's bed and inquired intimately why the poor darling was wailing, why he was appealing to her feeble comfort.

"It's patient abuse!" complained Volodya. "He's getting me all tense and uptight! And I'm supposed to go for the record!"

"Who does, love?"

"Colonel."

"Over there by the window?"

"Yeap".

"Why, we'll give him a teensy-weensy bit of prozalium, he'll stop raging in no time. And then down to the psychiatric ward, love. We're not a lunatic asylum here, we're not!"

Colonel knew exactly what prozalium was, so he simply said: "Not the prozalium, please!"

"Right," said the little old lady and stroked her advocate on the head. "Sleep tight, love."

And sleep Sinichkin did.

He was taken over by a sweet fancy, which can happen only to someone whose future holds only happiness. He saw beautiful little fishes in bright blue water and little birds fluttering around trees adorned with heavenly fruit; he saw the very young Anna Karlovna with her firm little bum and pointy little breasts…

Captain was smiling in his sleep, but early in the morning, around five, he was awakened by an awful pain and deadly chill that engulfed his swollen legs.

"Not again!" moaned detective feeling the icy crust, and started wailing aloud.

Petrovna appeared again, and the acting head was along soon.

"Take me to the roof!" groaned Sinichkin.

"What roof?" wondered the acting head.

"The hospital roof."

"Why on earth!"

"I'm dy-y-ying!"

"Poor creature!" Petrovna lamented. "Look at him suffer…"

"Get me up to the sky!" pleaded Sinichkin.

"Take him to the goddamn roof!" blurted the colonel who had just been woken up, wishing the captain would stay up there forever, for all he cared.

"The roof it is!" for some reason agreed the assistant head.

The paramedics grabbed hold of Sinichkin, shifted him onto a stretcher and wheeled him down to the cargo elevator, which brought the captain to the roof.

Apparently, it had been getting cold, and the earth was just about to give its last particles of warmth to the sky. The fog had filled up the space completely, so it was pitch dark.

"What am I doing?" the acting head asked himself, peering in vain through the impenetrable fog.

In the meantime, Volodya Sinichkin had shed the blankets and stretched his hyper-legs into the space, blending their whiteness into the milkiness of the fog. Something tore his skin apart, and if he could, he would have noticed a tiniest bird hatch out of his leg, a bird the size of a bee or a hummingbird; the hatchling took wing confidently in the dense fog and flew away into the cold darkness.

Police captain Volodya Sinichkin had just given birth again.

"That's it," he said in a tired voice and was taken back.

It was Petrovna who stayed with him until the morning, in a little chair, dozing off at times, but still true to her medical call of duty.

During the morning rounds it was evident that captain's legs had shrunk again and setting a new record was out of the question.

"You won't be admitted into this hospital anymore!" the assistant head said firmly. "Not only that, I will petition that you be punished for your practical jokes and demoted. Now put your clothes on and get out of this hospital together with that Petrovna of yours!"

Sinichkin felt humiliated and downtrodden . He walked through the hospital door with the nurse, who tried to take his arm so that she would not slip; captain pushed her hand away rudely.

"Get lost!"

Petrovna started back from him and it was as if she had shrunk by half. She looked at detective with her eyes welled up, and then, with her head held low, covered with a simple kerchief, set off to the land that only she knew about, the edge of which was the approaching death.

Why, the staff did not even bother to call his wife! He had to hobble out to the street to grab a taxi.

"Quite a pair of legs you've got yourself there!" grinned the cabby, not too skinny himself, when Sinichkin had all but squeezed himself into a reclining position in the back seat.

"Shut up and drive!"

"Why so rude," the driver was offended.

"Keep quiet!" roared detective and stuck his badge right in cabby's face.

"So you're not going to pay?"

"I am going to pay," sighed captain.

"Now we're talking…"

In the morning Sinichkin was back at work and right away found out that the blood splattered all over the missing Tatar's flat totally matched the piece of ear, severed foot, and crimson bloodstains on the clothes.

"I was positive about that!" he shouted.

"You son of a bum!" was major's praise. "Now go find Ilyasov or his murderer."

"We've got to scour the bottom of that pond!" claimed Sinichkin.

"They'll get us the aqualungs today and we'll set Karapetian on that pond. Let him take a close look down there!"

Down at the quarry with the arctic water and a thin crust of ice on the surface, Karapetian told his colleagues that he had never scuba-dived, he wasn't cut out for that, but announcing this despondently as he realized that this fact would not change anything in the scheme of things and that the submersion was imminent.

The wetsuit was a bit too tight for him and was not going on easily over the warm underwear Karapetian had prudently put on so as not to catch a cold.

"Hurry up, please!" Pogosian commanded, trying to warm his hand with his breath; he had forgotten his gloves at the station. He also thought that there would be the first snowfall that night, that the sky would share a bit of its purity and whiteness with the earth; he was looking forward to deflowering this purity with his boots on the way to work.

"Am I supposed to search the whole pond or what?" inquired Karapetian as he was about to bite on the mouthpiece.

"You've got two hours worth of air," the major informed him. "Plenty to search it five times over. Look carefully! He may be down there snug in the silt.!"

The lieutenant nodded and started moving backwards towards the water, leaving peculiar flipper prints on the sand.

Sinichikin was watching all these preparations with certain pleasure. He knew that Karapetian did not like him and considered him narrow-minded, which was why he was hanging onto each wondrous moment of his foe's humiliation.

"Takes a narrow-minded person to dive into this freezing water," the detective thought to himself. "Me, I've just about cracked this case, means I've got brains and huge talent."

A loud splash, and lieutenant's body vanished in the water breaking the thin crust of ice.

Once in the deep, Lieutenant Karapetian indeed came up with all conceivable profanities on Sinichkin's account, and when the chill had gradually penetrated through the wetsuit and reached his heat-loving skin, major Pogosian too was blessed with various ingenious swearwords.

But business is business, and the newly initiated scuba-diver Karapetian switched on the searchlight and pointing it at the bottom started moving his flippers.

He swam across the depth, and the longer he stayed submerged, the more he liked it. The Armenian suddenly imagined he was an explorer of the seabed; when he was surrounded by tiny fish, he even felt tranquil and at ease. And when he happened upon a fish egg laying down by a rotting tree stump, his heart was taken over by delight. The only doubt that flashed in his mind was why fish would lay eggs towards the winter, but he was no expert in those matters so he swam closer and started examining the hundreds of little balls joined as one...

"Such big eggs!" the diver was surprised. "The size of a tennis ball! Or is it the mask that makes them bigger?.."

He drew himself even closer to the eggs. What he could see through the egg membranes seemed absolutely extraordinary to the lieutenant, and he hurried back up to tell everybody of his find.

He started moving his flippers and his body was about to surface when out of nowhere five marvelously beautiful little fish appeared in front of his face and started dancing around his head, sparkling with their multi-coloured scales in Karapetian's eyes like Christmas lights. He could also make out the little hook-like teeth and wondered how such beautiful creatures could have such predatory teeth… At this point he remembered what brought about his emergency surfacing in the first place, and tried to shoo away the school of fish with his hand.

This turned out to be his last conscious movement.

The fish froze all of a sudden, then in a split-second synchronized motion dashed towards Karapetian's head and thrust their hook-like teeth into the exposed parts of his face.

It was so unexpected and so painful for Karapetian that he screamed with all his might trying to get rid of the mouthpiece which provided his lungs with oxygen, then started kicking frantically with the flippers and opened his big mouth wide; one of the fish immediately caught hold of his tongue and literally bit it out.

Karapetian went berserk like a taunted bull at the corrida, gathered his last bits of strength, and swam mightily towards the surface, where he stuck his head out of the water and started bellowing loudly demanding help with blood gushing out of his mouth.

"Hm!" Pogosian thought to himself seeing his inferior jolting in the middle of the pond. "Something must've gone on out there!"

"A-A-A-A!" yelled the lieutenant, and it looked like he was about to choke.

"Zubov, into the water!" ordered Pogosian. "Save your comrade!"

Zubov dashed into the icy lake without hesitation. At that moment he was not thinking about a decoration or promotion in the rank; he really wanted to help the drowning Karapetian. So in the wink of an eye, heedless of the chill, he swam up to the diver, turned him over on his back, and swam back to the shore with the diver's head resting on his shoulder.

"What's with the sideburns?" inquired Pogosian when Karapetian had received the kiss of life and had opened his eyes to face his colleagues.

Indeed, the sideburns, lieutenant's pride and joy, which he used to love to twist and scratch, were completely gone, as if a very skilful barber had shaved them off clean at the bottom of the pond.

"What happened?" asked Pogosian.

"A-a-a…," bellowed Karapetian and opened his mouth with the tongue missing.

"What do you know!" said Zubov, shivering and dumbfounded. "Bit your tongue down there?"

"That's just what we need!" the major was angry. "Call an ambulance!"

Zubov ran to the jeep while Sinichkin came closer to the victim and looked at him with a compassionate eye, no hard feelings.

"Hang in there, buddy!" he kept muttering, stroking the rubber of the wetsuit. "They'll take care of you!.."

An ambulance came quickly, and the paramedic asked on the way to the hospital if the officers had kept the severed tongue, and if yes, they could try to sew it back on, nowadays this kind of surgery was routine.

Volodya Sinichkin, who was accompanying his comrade to the hospital, made a helpless gesture and said that the tongue was most probably at the bottom of the quarry and there was no way to get it out of there.

"He's going to end up mute!" warned the paramedic.

"That's too bad," replied the detective.

Volodya saw the lieutenant to the emergency room and then came back to work, where he recounted the distressing news over some shish kebob.

"I'm probably fired," deduced Major Pogosian to himself, chewing on a piece of lamb lethargically. "I had no right to send Karapetian down there without special training. No severance pay for me either…"

It had started to snow; the unusually big snowflakes had soon driven autumn off the streets and set the scene for winter.

Meantime, Volodya Sinichkin told his colleagues that Karapetian would remain forever mute, that his tongue had been bitten out, and that he would not be able to speak either Russian or Armenian.

"Here's a note from him," the detective passed a piece of paper to Pogosian.

The boss familiarized himself with the contents of the message and searched for something in his head, that is to say, in its outer part, scratching the bristle of his hair.

"Karapetian is getting a bit soft in the head!" commented the major. "Well, I don't blame him, what with the state he's in!"

He folded the message in four and stuck it into the pocket of his jacket hanging on a chair.

"Eat your shish kebob," he suggested to Sinichkin, and when the famished captain started biting into the juicy pieces of meat, his superior advised him gently: "There's been a complaint about you over the phone, see…"

The major crunched on a bulb of green onion and went on.

"Apparently, you've played a number of practical jokes on the hospital staff! Inflated your legs and deflated them at will! Screwed with a superior officer and dodged a world record! They want you reprimanded! And demoted in rank too…

Sinichkin could just sigh. "Stupid lot!"

"And you must be smart! The only flaming genius 'round here!"

Pogosian was starting to get fired up, subconsciously wanting to take his frustration out on Sinichkin.

"If you were smart, you'd've stuck this goddamn ear up your bum instead of serving it up on a golden platter!"

"What was I supposed to do with the foot?"

"Why the hell d'you keep hanging out at the quarry anyway? Don't you have any other sites?"

"But I did dig up a murder, didn't I?" Sinichkin was trying to make excuses.

"I don't give a crap about your murder! One of us got his tongue bitten off!"

"Who did it?" interrupted Zubov, who had had a shot to warm himself up and thus was feeling amiable.

"None of your business!" roared Pogosian. "Damn, what I am talking about?"

"But the Tatar did go missing, didn't he?" the detective was still trying to drive it home.

"To hell with him! He may be way down south in Tatarland, or what not!"

"Footless and earless!"

"Shut up!!" exploded major and immediately his nerves kicked in and gave him upset stomach, which made him scurry to the outhouse.

"Go check the messages!" Sinichkin ordered to Zubov, and while sergeant-major was eagerly carrying it out, fished out Karapetian's letter from the major's jacket, and read it hastily.

The message stated that the lieutenant had undergone an attack by some predator fish, which had bitten off his tongue and had taken his pride and joy - sideburns! - away from him. Further there were words that Sinichkin could only regard as ravings of a person in shock. What the message said was completely implausible; Sinichkin could not get his head around it. He put the letter back and burped involuntarily.

"You pig!" the detective heard the voice of his commander who had come back, and congratulated him on his relief.

"They'll fire me," the major spoke with sadness and desperation. "For putting one of my men on the line!.."

"We're all with you sir, major sir…," Sinichkin shook his fist. "The whole department's with you, sir! You're not the one to blame!"

"If I get fired, I don't know what I'll do! I've got no wife, no children. What's there to live for?"

"Who cooks for you?" asked the surprised captain.

"Myself, that's who," admitted major. "I'll go fight in Karabakh!"

"They're still fighting?"

"Who the heck knows?.."

The commanding officer and his subordinate were silent for a while, united in this unexpected soul-to-soul; both of them had their eyes welled up, but they held it in with their faces assuming a rugged expression.

Zubov came back and reported that there was to be a great chill the following day, down to minus twenty, and that the jeep would need winter tires, which cost money.

"Take some from the bookkeeper," gently permitted Pogosian, which took Zubov quite by surprise, but like a dog, he sensed that it was his lucky day which he had to seize.

"Five years, and still sergeant-major," he threw his hands up in the air. "Oh well, just doing my best."

"Get your shoulder-straps ready for the first lieutenant!" Zubov heard the sweet sound of his commander's voice. "For a heroic water rescue!"

"My, my, what a kind, gentle soul," thought Sinichkin about Pogosian.

"To hell with this stupid Zubov!" yelled Zubov. "I'm no bloody Zubov, I'm a natural-born Zubian! I don't give a crap about stupid Vasilisa or her daddy either! I'm going back to my forefathers' name! Hell, I'm Armenian to the bone!"

The newly promoted first lieutenant jumped up in his place and rushed to the bookkeeper to confiscate the money for winter tires.

"So should I keep working on the murder?" inquired Sinichkin. "I think we are pretty close to cracking this case!"

"Up to you," answered Pogosian with a sad expression. "It's not an easy case, a weird one, I'd say! We don't even have the body! No body - no murder! We can always reclassify it as a missing person case. Thousands of cases like that, and they're not too picky about those up there…"

"Maybe that's true," agreed Sinichkin. "I'll sleep on it, maybe I'll come up with something…"

"Go home! After all, you're just out of the hospital!"

"What do I do about that star? Take it off?"

"I don't give a damn about those stupid medics! They may bloody well think they're in charge of promotions and demotions! They want their record, do they? Why don't they first sew Karapetian's tongue back on!"

By the evening the heat had been turned on in the neighbourhood. The meteorologists were right: by midnight the mercury had dropped down to minus twenty-three.

Sinichkin could not fall asleep for a long time reliving the recent events. He was especially under the impression of Karapetian's note. He kept thinking about it, and his mind was disturbed by its unfeasibility, its phenomenal fiction.

Perhaps it was aeroembolism that got the better of Karapetian under water and created hallucinations?.. But who then bit his tongue off? Maybe his jaws chattered and chopped off their inhabitant by themselves?..

Anna Karlovna was asleep but tossing and turning, and Sinichkin had a pang of heartfelt compassion towards his wife, a very faithful woman, who unwaveringly endured life's trials and tribulations like a genuine Russian woman, submissive and obedient…

Volodya clung to his wife's armpit and slept tight for three hours.

The alarm clock rang at six in the morning, when it was still pitch dark outside, and not a single dog owner had yet taken his pet out.

Trying not to wake Anna Karlovna, the captain put his entire police garb on, took a gulp from the kettle and sucked on a candy so as not to go out in the frost on an empty stomach.

In his winter overcoat, he headed straight for the quarry, enjoying the crunching sound his boots made on the fresh snow. He was breathing in the arrival of winter and arrived at his destination in no time.

The whole surface of the pond was covered with a crust of ice, already thick enough for ice fishers to tread on it in the morning. Sinichkin's breath was crystallizing thickly and rising to a magnificently clear and starry sky, and he sensed that in an instant the sun would appear from beyond the horizon and light up the universe with its short wintertime rays. Indeed, there was a flash of golden light in a distance, as if a giant crucible had melted equally giant gold nuggets and was about to pour it out into the whiteness; in the meantime there were only the flashes… Finally something in the elements clicked, the fiery rays shot up and gilded the snow down to where Sinchkin was standing, making his boots sparkle like jewellery, then all the way to the blocks of flats, into the whole city, and lighting the fire in the black holes of the windows. The day had dawned…

The detective's eyes were fixed on the pond, and when it had become light completely, it seemed to him that he could see an object right in the middle of it. The object was small and pale pink in colour. Volodya stepped onto the young ice bravely and treaded towards the object feeling the ice cracking treacherously under his feet. He tried not to pay attention to that and moved on fearlessly, and his reward for the risk taken was a chunk of pink flesh, which he immediately recognized as former Karapetian's tongue. Volodya picked up the frozen, rock hard tongue, wrapped it in his hanky and edged it with slivers of ice, and then ran to the hospital as fast as he could to save his comrade from the eternal muteness by presenting him with his own tongue!..

Just as he was about to step ashore, Sinichkin's boot hit a spot of thin ice, which readily gave way. Luckily it was shallow, so captain's boot scooped up only a little water from the hole it made; captain did not pay any attention to such trifling and disappeared amidst the high-rises.

Had he stayed a while longer, he would have experienced something much more unforgettable…

At the bottom of the pond, next to a rock, the fish eggs, now the size of a football, started to burst, and the progeny began to come streaming out of them. The newborns with their eyes wide open headed for the land. Urged on by the chill, frantically they swam straight to the spot where Sinichkin had broken the ice.

Awkwardly clambering onto the shore, the infant humans of both sexes started getting out of the small opening in the ice. They were slightly smaller than newborns are expected to be, but were walking on their own feet. Their naked little bodies were red from the chill, but their eyes were glowing with a lust for life.

Those already on land ran on the snow with their chubby little hands outstretched as if groping for their mother's comfort; the ones still making their way out of the hole were pushing the slow ones up or clinging onto them.

There were so many infants that it would have been difficult to even count them: at least a hundred boys and girls. They were running in the equally newborn sunlight in perfect silence, as if they had already given their first cry down at the pond bed.

Then the hundred suddenly stopped and shared their urine with the world, melting the snow down to the ground.

Just then it had grown dark. A black shadow blocked the sun and the whole sky. If the infants could have looked at the sky, they would have seen an enormous flock of crows that were poised for an attack like a squadron of fighter jets.

The crows swooped as one, lunging on the children with their sharp beaks and ravenous claws, tearing their tender little bodies apart in an instant. Fountains of scarlet blood were spurting here and there, melting the snow with its warmth and exposing the barren winter earth underneath.

The crows violently ripped apart human entrails, while somewhere up above, cooing desperately, shoved back by the black watchcrows, a lone bird was dashing about. Such agony, such unbearable torment did that cooing exude that if someone had seen it, he would not have been able to stand it and would long since have shuddered at the recollection.

All was over in ten minutes. The newborns had been eliminated, and their disfigured remains had scattered the whole beach.

But some unknown power let three of the infants escape the crow's beak. They turned out to be quicker or luckier than their brothers and sisters and darted in different directions as fast as they could, until strength had left them and they lay down in the snow, each in their own spot. One of the youngsters fell asleep near a sixteen-storey highrise, the other one lay down by the door of a nine-storey block, and the little girl made herself comfortable next to the garbage bins of an eleven-storey one…

© Dmitry Lipskerov

© Dmitry Priven

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