Time Will Run Back

Chapter 3

IT was growing dark. He found himself in a workers’ section. From up the street came the sound of marching in cadence. A column of men and women approached, four abreast. Every once in a while it would halt at a command, then start again. It came almost opposite. A hard faced woman was in charge. “Halt!... Numbers T349, T35o, and L184!” The column stopped; two men and a woman stepped forth, saluted, and marched past him into neighboring houses. The column moved again.

Peter stopped a passer-by. “Is this a parade, comrade?”

“Parade?” The man looked puzzled, then suspicious. “That is part of the workers’ army being marched home, just as on any other day!”

Peter mumbled his apologies.

He was getting hungry. Time to look for a good restaurant. He trudged endless blocks, occasionally coming on a dingy little eating place from which nauseating cooking odors oozed out.

Just as he was giving up hope, he found himself in front of a restaurant better lighted and cleaner than the others.

He was challenged immediately inside the entrance. “What are you doing here?” The waiter looked pointedly at Peter’s proletarian uniform.

“Why, I thought—” Peter looked around. The tables were occupied solely by Deputies in navy blue. He went into the next proletarian eating place that he found. It was noisy, crowded and dirty. In spite of his hunger, the stench of cooking made him feel faint. But he took his place on line as he was told. In time he came up opposite the desk of the registry clerk.

“Why aren’t you at your regular restaurant?” asked the clerk.

“I’m new in Moscow.”

At last a large registration book was shoved in front of him and he was told to fill in the blanks under the headings: Name; Address; Time of Entrance; Purpose of Visit....

“Purpose of visit?” asked Peter. “Does anybody ever come for any other purpose than to eat?” “They might come to conspire against the government by spreading false rumors,” said the man at the desk.

“Would they put that down in the registry book?”

“Probably not. But then the government could get them on the additional crime of perjury.”

Peter was led to a table for four. It was already occupied by three others. None of them spoke to him.

“What have you got tonight?” he asked the waiter with cheerful anticipation.

The waiter stared at him as if he had been guilty of some piece of impudence, and walked away. He came back in fifteen minutes with a dish containing some dark-gray mashed potatoes, brussels sprouts and mashed turnips covered with grease.

Was this, Peter suddenly wondered, the usual food of Wonworld? Had he been pampered up to now?

The grease on the handles of the cutlery came off on his fingers. The tablecloth was covered with coffee stains and cigarette ashes.

At intervals the waiter came over and looked at Peter’s plate. “Not finished even yet?” he asked. Peter gently pushed the plate toward him. “Wasting good proletarian food?” asked the waiter. Peter nodded. He was impatient for his coffee. It would take the taste of the food out of his mouth.

The coffee was lukewarm and tasted like mud.

Peter looked about. At a nearby table a big man with bushy eyebrows seemed disturbingly familiar. Then he remembered. It was the same man he had noticed, standing on the opposite side of the street, when he came out of the library. Odd coincidence that he should be here!

He took out his ration books and began to study them. They were bewilderingly complex. He didn’t know which to offer the waiter, so he pushed all of them at him.

The waiter tore out coupons from three of the books and turned them back to Peter with a new look of respect. “You are very well supplied, comrade. I see you even have entertainment coupons. You must be a Stakhanovite!”

Peter had not the slightest idea what the waiter meant, but gave a vague nod of confirmation. An idea occurred to him,

“Anything interesting to see or hear tonight?”

“What sort of thing do you like?”

“Music.”

“Ah, then you should certainly hear Eliena Bolshekov sing.”

“Who’s she?”

The waiter stared incredulously. “You must certainly be new to Moscow. She’s No. 2’s daughter.”

“No. 2?”

“Bolshekov! Bolshekov’s daughter!”

After standing on a long queue, presenting his ration coupons and identity card, and signing in, Peter got a good seat in the balcony.

He looked around. There was only a handful of proletarian uniforms. Most of the seat holders up here were Deputies. The boxes and the first dozen rows in the orchestra were filled with Protectors and army officers.

The opera was based on an historic story set in the Dark Ages, just prior to the birth of Marx. It represented a struggle between the capitalists and the rising proletariat. The proletarians, when they arrived late to work on the railroad, or fell down from the fatigue of stoking the engine, were repeatedly flogged. Bolshekov’s daughter, the heroine, took the part of a ticket seller on the privately owned railroad and was constantly flogged when she failed to sell her quota of tickets, which the railroad kept marking up in price. Her voice was only a little above mediocre, but she had wonderfully shapely thighs and wore red silk tights throughout the opera.

The music was mainly noise.

Eliena Bolshekov got tremendous applause and repeated curtain calls.

On his way out through the lobby Peter caught another glimpse of the big man with the bushy eyebrows.

He found that he had been assigned to a dreary little hotel room. His baggage was already there.