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