"Shut up."

He looked at me pitifully, flopped his lips, and went on: how much silk it took for the lining. The gardens had ended by now, the clayey lot that used to be the town dump was under us. And I felt a light breeze. Except there was no wind at all, and suddenly there was a gust and the tumbleweed scattered, and I thought I heard something.

"Shut up, you bastard!” I said to Tender.

No, he couldn't shut himself up. He was on the pockets now. I had no choice.

"Stop the boot!” I said to Kirill.

He braked immediately. Good reflexes, I was proud of him. I took Tender by the shoulder, turned him toward me, and smacked him in the visor. He cracked his nose, poor guy, against the glass, closed his eyes, and shut up. And as soon as he was quiet, I heard it. Trrr, trrr, trrr … Kirill looked over at me, jaws clenched, teeth bared. I motioned for him to be still. God, please be still, don't move a muscle. But he also heard the crackle, and like all greenhorns, he had the urge to do something immediately, anything. “Reverse?” he whispered. I shook my head desperately and waved my fist right under his visor—cut it out. Honest to God, with these greenhorns you never know which way to look, at the field or at them. And then I forgot about everything. Over the pile of old refuse, over broken glass and rags, crawled a shimmering, a trembling, sort of like hot air at noon over a tin roof. It crossed over the hillock and moved on and on toward us, right next to the pylon; it hovered for a second over the road—or did I just imagine it?—and slithered into the field, behind the bushes and the rotten fences, back there toward the automobile graveyard.