All the grounds of Assol were monitored by video cameras.
I put my suit on, knotted my tie and splashed on the eau de cologne that Ignat had chosen for me the day before. Dropped my phone into my inside pocket . . . 'Only dumb kids and sales assistants carry their mobiles on their belts' – that was one of Gesar's helpful little comments.
The phone was new and still unfamiliar. It had some games in it, a built-in disc player, a dictaphone and all sorts of other unnecessary nonsense.
I rode down to the lobby in the cool silence of the lift. And immediately caught sight of my new acquaintance from the night before – only this time he was looking really odd . . .
Las, wearing brand new blue overalls with Assol written on the back, was explaining something to a confused elderly man dressed the same way.
'This isn't a broom you've got here, okay! There's a computer in it, it tells you how dirty the tarmac is and the pressure of the cleaning solution . . . Come on, I'll show you . . .'
My feet automatically carried me after them.
Out in the yard, in front of the entrance to the lobby, there were two bright orange road-sweeping machines, with a tank of water, round brushes and a little glass cabin for the driver. There was something toy-like about the small vehicles, as if they'd come straight from Sunshine Town, where the happy baby girls and boys cheerfully clean their own miniature avenues.
Las clambered nimbly into one of the machines and the elderly man thrust himself halfway in after him. He listened to something Las said, nodded and set off towards the second cleaning unit.
'And if you're lazy, you'll spend the rest of your life as a junior yard-keeper!' I heard Las say. His machine set off, twirling its brushes merrily, turning circles on the tarmac surface. Before my eyes a yard that was already clean acquired an entirely sterile appearance.
Well, would you believe it!
So Las worked as a yard-keeper in the Assol complex, did he?
I tried to withdraw unobtrusively, so as not to embarrass him. But he had already spotted me, and he drove closer, waving his hand gleefully. The brushes started turning less vigorously.
'So you work here then?' I asked. I suddenly started having the most fantastic ideas – Las didn't live in Assol at all, he'd simply moved into an empty apartment for a while. There was no way anyone with a huge residence like that would go cleaning the yard!
'I earn a bit on the side,' Las explained calmly. 'It's good fun, I'm telling you! Ride round the yard for an hour in the morning, instead of your morning exercises, and they pay you wages for it. And not bad wages either.'
I didn't say anything.
'Do you like going on the rides in the park?' Las asked me. 'All those buggies, where you have to pay ten dollars for three minutes? Well, here they pay you the money. To enjoy yourself. Or take those computer games . . . sitting there, twitching that joystick about . . .'
'It all depends on whether they make you paint the fence . . .' I muttered.
'That's right,' Las agreed happily. 'But they don't make me do that. I get the same sort of buzz cleaning up the yard as Leo Tolstoy did from scything hay. Only no one has to wash it all again after me – unlike the count, whose peasants used to finish the job for him . . . I'm in their good books here, I get a regular bonus. So, do you fancy riding around too? I could get you a job, if you like. The professional yard-keepers just can't get the hang of this technical equipment.'
'I'll think about it,' I said, examining the briskly spinning brushes, the water spurting out of the nickel-plated nozzles, the gleaming cabin. Back when we were kids, which of us didn't want to drive a street-washing truck? Now, of course, after early childhood kids start dreaming about working as a banker or a hit man . . .
'Okay, think it over, but I've got work to do,' Las said amiably. And the machine set off round the yard, sweeping, washing and sucking up dirt. I heard singing from the cabin:
The generation of yard-keepers and watchmen
Have lost each other in the vast expanse of winter . . .