"Simple as a child…. When you get the experience I have had, you realize that it takes more than a little spoken Russian and a little Soviet culture to modernize these Eastern peoples. What do you think he did in Mukden, with the Americans?"
"I wonder, now—" said the junior.
The old man interrupted. "I can tell you, as surely as if I had been there myself."
The young man's eyes opened wide. "What?"
"I'll wager he did steal their wrist watches and did trade them back for whiskey. Or else he waited for drunken Americans and, if they were drunk enough and helpless, he tripped them up and went through their pockets. The Americans could do no more with him than we could."
"Well, those three may not have been promising material for the Americans," said the young man, "but not all our stragglers are fools like that." He went on with the canned lecture which he had memorized in Moscow: on the necessity for combing the ranks of stragglers for the protection of state security.
The old deputy was not listening. He had lit a cigarette and was looking out of the window again. Sovietism had to come slowly, out here in the East. Wild childish figures like that poor little Asiatic with his easily detected thievery, his childish lamentation of guilt, his affected Russian surname which fitted him like a hand-me-down coat — what could you do with them? The little man had been so dreadfully simple, even though middle-aged. Most of these Asiatics never grew up. Well, the socialist future would be different, but it took its time coming.
The phone rang.
The young man picked it up. "Da… da… da…" his voice went mechanically. "Horasho," he ended. When he looked up, his pale eager face was smiling. "It's the customs lieutenant," he said, "and he says somebody got four wrist watches out of his locker today. What was he doing with four wrist watches, in the first place? He's stupid enough to say they were good ones. Do you think that Andreanov or the others?…"
"Do you think so?" asked the old man, sucking on the mouthpiece of his cigarette.