The Flying Dutchman

Chapter 11

8

“Got seaweed there, you say?” asked Merinos, the head of the local police. He was bathing in the refreshing breeze of the old “Victory” fan with its rubber paddles like donkey’s ears.

“Yes, sir, seaweed. Not pondweed,” declared the phony gasman, the patch of sweat on his dark blue police shirt spreading.

“A scientist, then,” Merinos stated, helping the fan along by gently waving his small, pink lady-like hanky. “I don’t like their kind…”

“Who?” sergeant Vasily Safonov enquired hesitantly, donning his usual police uniform with relief.

“Those chaps, smarty pants. Students, doctors, professors of this, that or the other… Enemies, that’s what they are.”

“But maybe he’s a Soviet intellectual?” Vasily was warming up to this intimate conversation with the boss.

“Dream on! Soviet intellectuals, for your information, are careerists, and as for real intellectuals… Oh, they’re clever folks. But they’re not Soviet. Can’t even drink properly, don’t like fighting, and can’t utter so much as a single strong word! And that’s why I don’t like them. No simpleness in them.”

Hanging opposite one another, the portraits of the two Ilyiches— one bald, one eye-browed—exchanged approving glances.

Vasily didn’t bother to enquire why his boss didn’t like doctors. He himself was none too fond of medical staff – he once got such a boil from an injection ‘on the back of his face,’ as he liked to put it, that he avoided sitting on it at all costs, like you would avoid sitting on a wasp.

“Well, you keep an eye on him,” concluded his boss. “True enough, you can’t do much damage with seaweed – he can take some algae off us, as a matter of fact, the river’s choking up with it… But still, keep your ears pricked.”

The drop slowly creeping down the ginger Merinos’ freckled forehead finally reached the tip of his nose, and he swore, steadily and unhurriedly, as if to say that if swearing were a game, well, he’d play it on his own terms.