“Read and sign. Do you have a pen, student?”
Ivan took out of his inner jacket pocket a fancy 'Parker' – a gift from his father and an object of his classmates’ envy. Without reading it, he signed the document with a flourish. Kotov grunted and took the paper. He looked with regret at the fresh signature, and with a sharp movement, tore it up.
Ivan jumped up:
“What are you doing! I signed that document!”
“But you haven't read it.” Metal rumbled in the Major's voice, which made Ivan's nose seem to freeze like the Arctic suddenly rose.
“You broke two commandments of the Chekist at once,” Sergey Vladimirovich continued, “you didn't follow my orders and didn't read what you were signing. You can consult your friends at the Moscow University Law School about the perniciousness of the latter fact, even in everyday life. They’ll explain everything to you.”
“But I…”
“I understand. You trusted me. Flattering, but it doesn’t absolve you of responsibility for your actions. Seems I have to do everything with you more than once.”
From somewhere, the major took out a second sheet of the same kind – the twin brother of the first – and handed it to Ivan.
“Read and sign.”
Sarmatov nodded and read the paper, which turned out to be a statement that he undertakes to keep state secrets, not to communicate with foreign citizens or inform the relevant services about inevitable contacts, and so on, and so on. After reading to the end, he looked up at the grinning Kotov.
“All clear?” he asked sarcastically. Ivan nodded.
“It seems like it, yes. Can I sign?”
“Go ahead,” the major said as he nodded. “The most important thing is that you have no questions now. Questions that arise, we’ll answer elsewhere.”
From the face of Sarmatov, who signed the paper, it was clear that he had a lot of questions, but they were all irrelevant. After handing the sheet to the major, Ivan asked anyway.
“And where am I going to work? You hinted at a Hispanic country.”
Kotov put the sheet into a folder, the folder into the briefcase. He snapped the locks shut and, putting the leather monster aside, said:
“The hot Spaniards will be both mulattos and creole. In the meantime, we will assign you to Bureau № 1, kid. This is your main workplace, after you pass the exams, of course. And any outstanding tests, by the way. I can’t cancel your ninety-four hours of truancy, so I’ll have to correct the situation myself. In terms of study, of course, if we find you skipping out, so be it, we’ll write you off.”
Ivan nodded once.
“Thank you. But at the bureau, I’ll shift papers or do translations there, right? Bureaucracy, in a word.”
“Whatever the authorities say, you will do.” Kotov raised his finger instructively. “And to the point. From now on, you don’t belong to yourself. By the way, how will the venerable Pyotr Alekseevich, your old man, react to your choice? Will he approve?”
Ivan shuddered: in this mess, he forgot about the attitude of the venerable academician to the gloomy service, which was supervised by Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria himself. Sarmatov senior was extremely disloyal to the authorities. Well, he’ll have to face it, and he will have nowhere to go. Ivan is already an adult, and he has almost graduated from the institute, so it will all be figured out somehow.
Ivan expressed himself in a similar vein. Kotov just shrugged his shoulders, as if saying, do as you know. Picking up his briefcase from the floor, he remarked to Sarmatov:
“Sarmatov is from the word…”
“The Sarmatians were a Scythian tribe in antiquity,” Ivan hastened to explain.
He was already rather tired of explaining the origin of his surname to everyone, as many strove to find some Tatar or Uzbek trace in him, even though Ivan had no external resemblance to these peoples. Even though he had somewhat darker skin and dark hair, he looked more like an Italian or a Greek. The blood of his ancestors, of course, had an effect. Some of them lived in the foothills of the Caucasus, like his maternal great-grandfather, the wise Vakha, about whom legends circulated in the Sarmatian family.
“Scythians, you say,” the major muttered to himself, then smiled. “And what a glorious tribe. How did Blok put it? 'Millions of you, we are darkness, and darkness, and darkness! Try it, fight with us!’ It’s decided: you will be Skiff from now on, forever and ever. Amen, as they say, kid. See you in another life.”
“What is it like?” Ivan did not understand. The major shrugged his shoulders.
“You will see in due time. Greetings to Yakov Naumovich.”
The young man watched in amazement as the high door inched shut behind this mysterious man. Then the dean entered it, and Ivan lost all his sentimentality.
As predicted, a storm broke out at home. Sarmatov the elder, perching like a granite block behind his desk and raising an academic beard to the portraits of leaders hung on the walls of his study, shook the air with tirades that would have done honor even to the great orators of antiquity, like Lysias and Demosthenes.
He recalled his ancestors, who laid their heads on the altar of science, refusing, however, the modest offer of his wife, dearest Olga Arsenovna, to list them. And to her remark that the great-grandfather of the great academician and the beacon of anthropological thought was, in fact, a Yaitsk Cossack, he only blushed more and walked the Bolshoi Petrovsky Bend throughout his dynasty from the twelfth generation, who did not realize at one time the greatness of the victory of the Great October Revolution and that's why it was nearly the end of his, Pyotr Alekseevich's, career, almost ruined by their non-proletarian origin.
Ivan sat on a sofa upholstered in striped fabric and took in his father's dressing down in silence. Things were going the way he thought they would, so he was not too upset. Dad was predictable, like the seasons changing, but he did not need to make any more waves. That could have caused unwanted complications. And so far…
In the meantime, dear Olga Arsenovna moved to intercede for her son. At forty-five, she kept almost all the charm of youth thanks to her complaisant character and natural intelligence. She had a grace worthy of a royal maid of honor. She pulled out from the corner cabinet the cherished tray with the silver chalice, a green glass decanter, and lemon slices. After pouring some 'Shustov', as she called the Armenian brandy, she put all this beauty in front of the bright-eyed Pyotr Alekseevich. The academician's beard changed vector toward the chalice. He stared furiously at his wife for a second. Then, suddenly limp, plopped down on his carved back chair and burst out laughing.
“Well, Olenka, respect! As usual! You will always find a 'valid argument' in a dispute…”
The wife humbly lowered her eyes and, sitting down on the sofa next to her son, whispered:
“How do you think the wife of an academician should react to such escapades? Just look for another ‘valid argument'.”
The professor shook his head, then swept the chalice away with his hand, which was worthy of a port bumpkin, and, with a grunt, knocked it away in one gulp.
“This is cognac, Petya. Armenian, as you like it,” Olga Arsenovna said reproachfully. The academician looked in bewilderment at the bottom of the empty chalice:
“Yes? That's bad luck, and I haven't tasted it in my heart. Well, let’s fix that.”
He filled the second cup himself, and it soon followed the first. Pyotr Alekseevich froze, savoring the bouquet of the fine drink, and then, softening, he cast a now interested glance at his son.
“Now tell us, poor son, why… Why did you have to play this game with the state? For example, do you yearn to be a translator at an embassy? That’s worse than being a desk jockey!