– Yes, if the died not enemy – quietly parried Azores. – Our ethics consist in guarding interests of the class. So? In a word, I go to search for Hurges. You agree with me, companions?
– We cannot resolve such issue – the captain carefully told.
– Certainly – Azores confirmed. – I will be in Moscow and I will agree. But whether not too we are melochna?. Hurges, throwing a bottle into the sea, knew that she can be brought by the Gulf Stream Current and to northern coast of France, and to west banks of England, and to coast of Norway, even to New Earth and Franz Josef Land where Gulf Stream, by the way, leaves deeply. Hurges, if he is not a fool (and he, apparently, was not the fool), knew that his bottle can appear also in the capitalist country, and in the Soviet Union. He knew, of course, that will be interested in its code. However he was sure, it is obvious that without key its code will not be deciphered. Therefore asked to transfer as a last resort on a bilda. At last, the bottle could get lost in the ocean. Mere chance that we found it, but not Norwegians or Germans. It could fall into hands of fascists…
– Eventually, whether not too the great value is attached by us to all this? – Ginzburg asked. – What makes huge importance for Hurgesov – for us and for all others, perhaps, does not cost the eaten-away egg…
The correspondent accurately curtailed the letter and hid it in a pocket.
– In any case, having come back from Argentina, and maybe earlier, I will notify you on the progress. We still will manage to photograph the letter.
Strongly swung the trawler, wind rose. The captain passed into the cabin and accepted team.
BLIND OLD WOMAN
Azores looked for the street on which Hurges lived. Gloomy people suspiciously examined well dressed Azores and silently showed the direction – each time more and more in depth of slums of working quarter. Azores was a little alarmed. What would it mean? The one who threw a bottle traveled on “Leviathan” – by steamship of rich men. What affairs the wealthy businessman who tragicly died in the ocean could have with people of this suburb?
With great difficulties of Azoresu at last it was succeeded to find the street which he looked for. The gloomy place – near the cemetery of the poor and the new building of prison. “That, the authorities were provident, having arranged the cemetery and prison in this part of the city. Care of the working population of the quarter: to bring closer ‘public’ places with which it most often deals” – Azores thought.
Here and the house No. 344 if it is possible to call only these ruins the house… To call? There is no call. The door is half-open. Knocked… Nobody answers. Azores knocked stronger and, without expecting the answer, entered the room. The old shaggy dog hoarsely began a bark on Azores and with the last bit of strength rose on forepaws. Back were paralyzed.
– Who here? – Azores heard a rough aged voice and turned.
In a dark corner the old woman in tatters sat. She looked in emptiness unseeing eyes.
“Well and situation!” – Azores thought.
– Whether tell, be so kind as, there lives Don Hurges? – Azores asked, approaching the old woman.
The smile stretched her toothless mouth. The long hooked nose almost touched the sharp, raised up chin.
– Don – scoffing, it imitated. – Unless Dona live in such peasant houses?
– You after all did not answer my question.
– No Hurges exists here – the old woman angrily proshamkat.
Azores became gloomy.
– But, perhaps, he lived here? You live in this house long ago?
– Seventy six years – the old woman answered.
– And never heard about Hurges?
– Perhaps also heard. In seventy six years about whom you will not hear. Yes you who such and what it is necessary for you? – she asked suspiciously, and her nostrils began to move as if sense of smell could replace with it sight.
– I have a letter to Zhuan Hurges. Obviously, from his brother who died during the crash of “Leviathan”. The letter was revealed in a bottle and thanks to a happy occurence it appeared in my hands.
The old woman with interest listened. Azores monitored expression of her face. Obviously, she after all knows Hurges.
– Approach me, I will feel you – she unexpectedly told after minute silence.
Azores satisfied this strange request. The old woman diligently felt a sleeve of his jacket, forced to bend and quickly ran a dry wrinkled hand over the person from a forehead to a chin.
Survey, obviously, satisfied it. Having thought, she said:
– Yes, you Spaniard. And you here arrived recently…
Azores could not comprehend from what she drew such conclusion, however did not venture to ask about it.
– I assure you that I do not deceive and came to you as the friend – Azores hotly told. Seeing that the old woman begins to give up, he risked to open the card which could solve a game in its advantage. – I am a correspondent of the communistic newspaper “Barselonsky Proletary”.
The effect exceeded its expectations. The old woman became straight and severely asked:
– You tell the truth?
The communist Azores hotly and sincerely said an ancient Spanish oath, and it made a due impression. The old woman turned the face to a sound of its voice and said:
– I trust you.
Azores breathed a sigh of relief:
– Give me your hand.
Azores strongly shook hands the old woman.
– We should be careful, very careful – it continued, shaking the head – especially to such blind woman as I. Around spies and traitors. If I cut off to myself language in time, Zhuan Hurges, perhaps, would not be where it now.
The old woman mournfully inclined the head. Obviously, she blabbed out already once and it ruined Hurges.
– Where it? – Azores asked.
– There, where to you not to reach – the old woman answered. She pointed to a window through which the roof of new prison was visible. – To me once here also came and asked: “Companion Hurges at you lives?” And I, the old hen, was caught on the word “companion”.
Azores was confused. The situation becomes complicated… The one whom he looked for sits at thick walls of prison…
– Tell, really it is impossible to meet it in any way?
– If you were the prosecutor or the chief of prison, then could see it daily – the old woman answered. – And so … – It sadly shook the head.
– But it has to have friends! They can help me. You are not familiar with someone from them?
The old woman pricked up the ears again and looked at Azores the whitish unseeing eyes as if she hoped to read Azores’s plans through a cataract film.
– I understand you – Azores told. – You are afraid to open the secret apartment. But the meeting can take place at you. There is rather deserted place, and companions can be convinced that “tail” of salted pork fats does not try to keep step with me. It is possible to appoint a meeting and in other place – where you want. Appoint hour and the place.
The old woman of minutes five was silent. Azores already began to lose patience.
– On Sunday in the tenth o’clock in the evening at the cemetery, near a chapel – she unexpectedly told, without looking at it.
Azores thanked her, shook hands and left. Then returned and a little perplexed addressed the old woman:
– Forgive me for my desire to help you and do not misunderstand it. – He put it credit cards. – There are twenty five dollars.
– Not to offend you, I will take, but not now, and then, after the appointment.
He understood it. This money could become the treachery price if Azores was a spy. The old woman had the right to be mistrustful to people.
Azores left.
AT THE CEMETERY
Azores was young, hot and had vivid imagination. It built the most courageous projects of an appointment to Hurges and even his releases. Perhaps, to give itself for the priest from Spain and to pass to Hurges under the guise of the confessor? But in prison the confessors… Undermining? Stealing from the prison-yard by plane? Bribery? Azores remembered several stories of difficult prison escapes. The imagination cleared up. With these thoughts he fell asleep and dreamed some gloomy underpasses, ladders, lattices…
He used the days which remained prior to a meeting at the cemetery on collecting materials for the newspapers. These days in Buenos Aires the strike of workers and employees of city transport broke out. Azores was in time everywhere, without forgetting also about Hurges. “A strange surname – he thought – sounds for foreigners as Spanish, however not Spanish. Hurges… Whom could it be?”
At last day of an appointment came. Azores came a little earlier and began to wander about the cemetery.
“Class privileges do not come to an end also with death”, Azores thought. Yesterday it happened to it to visit the cemetery of aristocrats and rich men. There is a marble city: mausoleums, family crypts, chapels, the wide, covered with yellow sand paths, flowers. Real exhibition! Here, on the cemetery of the poor, simple wooden crosses which are so closely put one near another that between graves it is difficult to pass. The same overpopulation, as well as in working quarters. The corpse did not manage to decay, and in its grave buried another… Here graves and without crosses. On others – only a column with an inscription, a red ribbon, a fresh wreath from red poppies… On a gray gravestone the sickle and a hammer are cut out.
Azores looked for hours. Without five ten. A quick step moved to a chapel. Darkened. From a narrow window dense red light of an icon lamp fell. In the sky – a sickle of a new moon. Smells of the svezhevynuty earth and smoke of the next factory.
Azores shuddered: someone’s steps are heard. Two men quickly approached a chapel.
– Companion Azores? – asked one.
– Yes, it I – Azores answered.
Apparently, it were workers. They shook hands with it.
Azores repeated the story and showed them the certificate of edition. Comers attentively read the document. At the same time they transferred views from a photograph of his face, being convinced of similarity. Having finished the certificate, asked to show the letter.
Workers long and attentively considered the document, then, having exchanged glances, returned it to Azores. One told:
– Companion Azores, we trust you. Let’s try to report about this letter of Hurgesu. You come to the old woman exactly in a week. – And, having said goodbye, went.
“And I?.” – Azores nearly screamed. He wanted to participate in all events. But, probably, it should be content with a passive role and to expect news.
Azores came to the old woman and, having thanked her, invested her in a hand money. Now she did not refuse. On her wrinkled face something similar appeared on a smile. Azores did not know that the poor old woman supported several days the existence only by onions – a bulb for lunch, half of bulbs for dinner and a water bottle – that’s all. And her poor dog for hunger and weakness could not raise the head any more…
Again bustle, turmoil of correspondent work… For the second day Azores was involved in a bad story when photographed street fights of stachechnik with police and strikebreakers. Azores was arrested, and his device was confiscated – such pictures were forbidden.
In several days he managed to be released, but the device remained in police.
In the appointed day Azores came to the old woman, however, except her and the become cheerful dog, found nobody here. “Really and those workers are arrested?” – he thought. The old woman friendly nodded and gave it a note.
– The address – she told. – Go to this address. The person called in the address will offer to you explanations. Take with yourself the letter found you.
Azores thanked the old woman and said goodbye.
RIGHT HAND OF BLASCO JURGUES
From the suburb of the city of Azoresu it was necessary to walk almost to the center – on Mayskaya Street. Employees of transport continued to strike. On streets there was a silence, unusual to the huge city. Trams did not rattle, automobile sirens were not heard. Everywhere there were pickets. Heavy pogromykhivat the police tank. Over the city patrolled planes – searched for congestions of workers and on radio notified command of police groups.
Azores, continually wiping sweat from a forehead and a neck, went by empty shops. Crisis and a strike left the mark on the city – it was similar to the seriously ill patient. As leprosy spots, grew white on walls rhombuses and squares of the removed signs. The show-windows covered with iron curtains, untidy garbage on sidewalks, shreds of newspapers, the turned bus…
At the corner of the street near the closed white marble restaurant there was an old Indian with a torn blanket on shoulders. He held a big glass jug with water in which yellow segments of lemons floated in hand. Azores drank a glass of water – it was cold – and asked where the building of the electric company is located. The Indian vaguely shrugged shoulders. He did not deal with such important enterprises.
At last Azores found the necessary seven-story building with signs on a pediment. Entered the glazed lobby. He was met by the sleepy door-keeper. On a hanger only three straw hats.
– Tell, Mr. Kar lives here? – Azores asked.
– Does not live but only works. The seventh floor, the room seven hundred thirty two – dryishly answered the door-keeper.
Azores went to the elevator.
– Does not work – the door-keeper phlegmatically warned.
It was necessary to walk upstairs.
In flight between the fourth and fifth floors to it the pale young man, in appearance the clerk met. Having looked at Azores, he was obviously disturbed and several times turned back.
“Orders strange here! – Azores thought. – Do not work for them today, perhaps? The impression is such that the building is left. Perhaps, the company moved?”
But here and seventh floor. Azores’s steps were boomingly given in a long corridor. By the way he looked at the slightly opened doors. Long tables, on them – coils, lamps, accumulators, glass tubes, devices, devices… Obviously, laboratories. All rooms were empty. Any person. On all objects a film of dust. The corridor turned to the right, once again to the right. Here and room 732. Azores knocked. Behind a door fast paces, knock, rustling as if someone hastily cleaned the room were heard; then the door revealed, and on a threshold the scared figure of the little person with a red goatee grew. On it there was a shabby blue dressing gown.
– May I see Mr. Cara? – Azores asked.
– I am Carat. At your service – the person with a goatee answered and, having opened a door is wider, passed the guest. – What can I serve as?
– I in the matter of Don Blasco Jurgues.
– Blasco Jurgues? – having jumped up, the Carat screamed. – You sit down, please. – He began to fuss, moving up the guest a chair. – Blasco! He died, died, the poor creature… Died while his life was so necessary!. However what business can be? – And he suspiciously looked at Azores.
Azores told Cara everything, since the bottle caught in the sea and finishing visits of the old woman.
The carat listened, nodded, shook a goatee and repeated everything:
– So, so… Poor creature Blasco Jurgues!. Zhuan sits in a tyurma. It was to be expected. I can look at the letter?
Azores submitted the letter. The carat seized him, almost pulled out from hands, and stared hard at paper.
– So, so… It is his hand, its code…
– And a key from the code? – Azores asked.
The carat once again searchingly looked at Azores: whether it is possible to trust it?
– I am a communist – Azores resolutely told. – You will like it or not, but it so. You see, I am frank, be and you are frank with me.
– Oh, of course, of course! – the Carat began to fuss. – The code at me. Here, in this case where wires, insulators and any stuff are stored. The most reliable place! It is better, than on the apartment. This building as you already, probably, noticed, in essence without people. Yes, yes. Crisis. During a prosperity time the electric company organized the broadest research works here: radio tubes, photo cells, TVs… Hundreds of research associates, the most famous experts, inventors… And now all work is winded down, research associates dissipated in job searches.