Definitely Maybe Chapter 11 - Fire and Farewells

This is it. The last chapter. And the Strugatsky brothers end their novel exactly the way they should: with fire, cognac, and a question that has no answer.

The Scorched Apartment

Malianov walks into Vecherovsky’s apartment and it looks like a bomb went off. Black soot on the walls. Charcoal burns on the floor and windowsill. The smell of chemicals hanging in the air. Whatever hit Vecherovsky, it hit hard.

So the force went after him physically. Not with beautiful women or grocery deliveries or career offers. With actual fire. They tried to burn him out. And looking at the state of this apartment, they nearly succeeded.

This tells you something important. The pressure escalates based on how resistant the target is. Malianov got soft persuasion first: Lidochka, food, promises. When that didn’t work, they went after his family. But Vecherovsky? Vecherovsky is so stubborn, so immovable, that the only option left was to try to incinerate his apartment around him.

The Pile on the Desk

Malianov puts his white envelope on the desk. Then he sees what’s already there. Weingarten’s folders. Glukhov’s orientalist materials. Gubar’s electronics schematics.

Everyone has surrendered their work to Vecherovsky. Every single one of them walked up those stairs, knocked on that door, and handed over the most important thing they ever created.

This is so painful to read. All these brilliant minds, all this original research, all sitting in a pile on one man’s desk like lost and found items. Vecherovsky’s apartment has become a graveyard for abandoned dreams.

The Two-Week Secret

Here is the reveal that changes everything you thought you knew about Vecherovsky.

He’s been under pressure himself. For two weeks. His own work was being targeted the entire time.

Two weeks. While he sat calmly in meetings. While he played devil’s advocate. While he asked careful questions and poured coffee and looked at everyone with those steady eyes. He was being attacked the same as them. Maybe worse.

The man has unbelievable self-control. He never once let on. He never asked for sympathy or help. He just absorbed the pressure and kept thinking clearly. I don’t know if I should admire him or worry about him. Maybe both.

He’s changed out of his ruined suit into a suede lounge outfit. His eyebrows and eyelashes are singed from the fire. He pours them both rare Armenian cognac, Akhtamar. The good stuff. The kind you save for occasions that matter.

Malianov Breaks

Malianov says his reason for giving up: “I have Bobchik.”

And then it hits him. Really hits him. This is the end. A line of fire now separates him from Vecherovsky, and he’s on the wrong side of it. He’s going to stay behind with Weingarten, Zakhar, and Glukhov. They’ll meet sometimes. Have tea or vodka. Be embarrassed to look each other in the eye. Settle into comfortable mediocrity.

And Bobchik will never be proud of him. Not for this. His son will grow up with a father who had a chance to do something important and walked away from it.

That thought alone is devastating. He surrendered to protect his child, and the result is that his child will have nothing to be protected for. The cruelty of this situation is almost elegant in how perfectly it traps you.

Vecherovsky’s Plan

But Vecherovsky is not surrendering. He’s adapting.

He plans to leave. Go to the Pamirs. Become a meteorologist. Take everyone’s research with him and look for the connections between all of it. He wants to study this law of nature instead of fighting it.

He tells Malianov: “This isn’t for a day or for a year. Maybe more than a century. There’s no hurry. A billion years to the end of the world.”

There it is. The original Russian title of the book. One billion years to the end of the world. Vecherovsky is playing the long game. If the universe has a homeostatic mechanism that suppresses breakthrough science, then understanding that mechanism is itself the breakthrough. You can’t fight it directly. But you can study it. You can learn its rules. And maybe, in a hundred years or a thousand, someone will figure out how to work around it.

This is the most hopeful thing anyone has said in this entire book, and it comes from a man with singed eyebrows sitting in a scorched apartment.

The Ending

The novel closes with Malianov sitting hunched, clutching his white envelope. He repeats a line: “Since then crooked, roundabout, godforsaken paths stretch out before me…”

And here’s the thing the Strugatsky brothers do that makes this ending perfect. They leave it ambiguous. Is the envelope still in Malianov’s hands? Or did he leave it on the desk with all the others? Did he walk out empty-handed, his work safely with Vecherovsky? Or did he take it back, unable to let go?

The reader decides.

I’ve thought about this for days. And I think the answer doesn’t matter as much as the question. The point is that Malianov is broken either way. Whether he kept the envelope or left it, he’s lost something he can never get back. The version of himself that was brave enough to keep working.

Some books end with resolution. This one ends with a man sitting on a staircase, holding or not holding an envelope, while the storm rolls on outside.

That’s the whole story. And it’s one of the most honest endings I’ve ever read.

Previous: Chapter 10 - Surrenders and Storms Next: Afterword and Translator’s Note

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