Exploitation: Fourth Floor
© 2020 by Walter Reimer


Thumbnail art by Stock Footage


I’m sure it must have been funny to see my ears, followed by a paw, erupt from under the landslide of paper. I wasn’t in a position to see the joke.

Still isn’t funny.

I blinked, shook my ears and headfur out, and fished out my flashlight. I had to shake it to get the damned thing to work, and when it finally cooperated I started looking around at what I was still half-buried in.

Newspapers.

Newspapers? I pulled one out of the pile and stared at it.

It was Pravda, yellowed and starting to crumble away even as I held it. The cover picture showed Stalin, lying in his casket. Nineteen fifty-three? Good Lord. I scrabbled around and fished out a few equally-moldering old papers, and as I sat there thinking my ears swiveled at the sound of a voice.

It was a woman’s voice, old and reedy, and I had to hold very still and strain to figure out what she was saying: “Govoryu vam, Genrikh, ya pochuvstvoval skvoznyak. On spustilsya po Chetvertomu Tunnelyu.” There was a pause, followed by the woman’s quavering voice raised in a shout. “Genrikh!”

A moment later I heard a man’s voice, almost as old (maybe older). “Chto eto takoye, Finni?”

“Nas vsekh ub'yut v nashikh krovatyakh!” I heard the woman wail, obviously frightened. “Murdered in our beds” certainly sounded like something more than the stereotypical Russian paranoia.

I started to climb out of the pile of old newspapers I was mired in. The papers had been piled up against what was left of the stairwell door and more was piled up in the hallway beyond, creating a tunnel. Probably the ‘Tunnel Four’ that the old woman claimed she felt a draft coming from. I clambered over the pile and stepped into the space, having to stoop a little. “Allo?” I called out.

“Ona ochen' milo zvuchit, Finni,” the man, ‘Genrikh’ I guess, said. I was actually pleased with myself; considering everything I’ve been through so far today, sounding “very nice” was a plus.

The old woman, ‘Finni,’ was having none of it, though. “Ya zhe skazal tebe, chto tebe sleduyet zakryt' etu dver'!”

“Vy ne mozhete poluchit' drova, vy znayete.” The old man sounded apologetic. Yes, I imagined that finding wood would be a little difficult, even for boarding up the doorway I’d just come through. I tried to get an idea of where their voices were coming from, and headed in that direction.

The air was musty, smelling of stale musk and old paper. Kind of like I’d think a feral burrow might smell like, and I took a deep sniff. No, not rabbit, but . . . hmm, not a canine or feline . . . too small for a deer . . .

I was so preoccupied in sniffing my way along that I had to stop and remind myself why I was in this maze in the first place. I took a side tunnel into one of the rooms, and I –

Wow.

The room wasn’t anything special, but the walls and bed were lined with busts of Lenin, with books surrounding each bust to create niches for them. I poked my head into the bathroom. Sure enough, more busts, with one of Marx sitting on the toilet seat.

Fitting.

I stepped back into the room proper, scanning about with my flashlight, and noticed that all of the books seemed to be the same. I had to be careful pulling one free, partly because of the years of accumulated dust, and partly because I didn’t want to bring the entire thing down on me. I shone the light on it and saw that it was Relatively Legal: The Great Combinator Speaks, by Ostap Bender. Gingerly opening the book, I read that the book was copyrighted nineteen twenty-seven, and was a first edition.

I looked around. There must have been a thousand copies of the book, likely a significant fraction of the print run, and my brain started working feverishly.

There were booksellers and collectors who’d give the fur off their tails for one of these. What else was on this floor?

I moved back out into the hallway. “Hello?”

“Hello,” I heard the old man say, to my – left?

“Where are you?”

“I’m at home, you silly person,” he said, and I facepalmed.

“I’d like to talk to you.”

“Isn’t that what we’re already doing?” the old man countered. “I must say, you are an odd young woman.”

I closed my eyes and silently counted backward from ten in French. “I’m in a room with a lot of busts of Lenin and copies of a book by Bender,” I said loudly and clearly. “I would like to speak to you, in this room, about what you have collected here.”

“Why are you talking like that? I’m right here,” came a quavering man’s voice right behind me. Once again, a half-second later I damned near leaped out of my fur.

When I got my heart rate down I straightened up and put on my best business manners. “Hello, my name’s Alice. I’m an art appraiser and collector.”

“I am Genrikh Kron.” He was a pika, and squinted up at me. Despite his crooked back, he was easily three inches shorter than me. “Are you the woman who broke into our home?” Without waiting for me to reply he raised his voice and said, “Afina! Give our guest some . . . TEA!" The last word was delivered in a cracked shout.

"All right, comrade, I'll warm up the machine gun,” I heard the woman say.

"’Warm up the machine gun?’" I inquired.

"Yes, it usually takes three belts to get the water nice and hot,” Kron said equably. “I must speak to the owners of the building about the hot water."

From far away I heard Afina (the ‘Finni’ that Genrikh had been talking to) say, "It's those horrible SPIES, Genrikh. They're stealing all the hot water and shipping it to Chicago."

"Why?" I asked. I couldn’t help it.

The pika replied, "Soviet hot water is superior, and we’re not going to share. There was a shortage of shortages." With these cryptic words, he led me out of the room and down a hallway, past a car embedded in papers, books and parts of washing machines.
The words Ey! Davayte yezdit'! were painted on the side of the car.

I kept playing the beam of my flashlight around, gaping at all the things these were hoarding. Records, phonographs, books, reels of film (I hoped it wasn’t nitrate; if any of it ignited the fire might never go out), and two life-sized statues of the stars of Nu, Pogodi!

“Where did you get the machine gun?” I asked.

“Oh, well, it came with the tank,” Genrikh said.

That brought me up short. “You – you two have a tank up here?”

“Oh yes,” the pika said. “A T-34. There’s bits of it scattered all over. Finni uses the gun mantlet as a planter.”

“Why do you have a tank?”

“Just in case those Germans come back. Sneaky devils.”

I refrained from telling him about the billboard on the roof of the hotel. I didn’t want to start the Great Patriotic War again.

We rounded another corner and I saw a femme pika, just as old as Genrikh, fussing over a machine gun. She paused and squinted up at me. “Oh, hello, young woman. I’m Afina Perila. Can you stay for tea?”

I smiled. “I’m afraid that I can’t. In fact,” and as clearly and slowly as I could, I explained who I was and why I was here. When I was finished, the two hoarders were exchanging horrified looks.

“Wait!” I said as they started wailing, and when they quieted down I explained that a lot of the things that I’d seen could be sold, and the cash would help them find a new place.

"You hear that, Finni?” Genrikh said, his mood lightening considerably. “We could retire to a dacha in the Crimea."

"But what about Rio de Janiero, buddeh?"

"Never mind them in Rio. I'm sure the drains pong!"

While they started talking all the things they could sell, I made my way to the elevator. As soon as the doors opened I jumped in. Good thing, too; the door almost closed on my tail.

As the doors closed and the elevator descended, I heard Genrikh say, "There's a box here marked ‘Ark of the Covenant,’ Fin. I wonder what that means."





<NEXT>

<PREVIOUS>

<FIRST>