The Price of Isolation by Alexander Arkhangelsky
Translation by Arch Tait
Published in Red Pyramid (Rossica 19), Academia Rossica, 2009
The carved black gates opened to reveal, in the depths of the estate, a grand yellow mansion, well back from Lenin Prospekt. Here in the midst of sodden Moscow the air was that of a pleasingly cool, aristocratic winter. The lawns were white with yesterday’s snowfall. The avenue had been swept with besoms, and lengthwise scars were imprinted on the remaining stubborn traces of snow. As in childhood, the side paths were sprinkled with dark, golden sand. No reagents, goodbye to chemicals, farewell hustle and bustle. The noise from the nearby highway was reluctant to intrude. In the cloakroom sat warm Soviet-era grannies in blue overalls, the stairs creaked just as they should, and the vast hall on the first floor was packed.
Squeezing in with some difficulty at the back, behind the lectern, Melkisarov surveyed the chamber. An endless succession of tables stretched into the distance like a straggly letter “n”. The members of the presidium, like the sly apostles awaiting the Last Supper on Semiradsky’s fresco, were seated in the centre facing the hall; ordinary academicians sat at the side tables in profile; doctors of science were scattered around on individual seats; and the walls were propped up by postgraduates. Arsakiev had secreted himself in a distant nook and waved to him from there. To the side of the presidium table Yegor Gaidar set himself down with an unearthly, absent expression on his face. He had lost weight, but with his general chubbiness and thin hair retained the charm of an infant prodigy. Alik Kokh, champion of privatisation, plonked himself down on a broad windowsill. His face was expressionless, his small eyes steely as he disdainfully looked over the crowd; always alert, in combat readiness to deliver a riposte, administer a rebuff, take anyone who offended him down a peg or two. He noticed Melkisarov and gave him a crooked smile, as if acknowledging him as one of the in-crowd, if only partly, and in the past. Sharp-nosed Andrey Illarionov, former aide of Putin, was leafing through a notebook preparing tricky questions. And there was Khodorkovsky’s lawyer, Yury Schmidt, a distinguished head of grey hair, the proud stoop of a man in his prime in the 1960s, the honest eyes of a Jew who understood everything only too well. Elderly geniuses and gurus were conversing with him in whispers: Dmitry Zimin, the inventor of mobile phone networks; Yevgeny Yasin, economic adviser. How similar they looked, like brothers who had grown old together: jocular, sturdy, diminutive, and agile.
The top table was discussing something among themselves while the audience, bored but docile, tried to overhear. At last the dropsical vice-president began to speak. His voice was high-pitched and torpid, betraying the fact that he had just enjoyed a good lunch. “There is science and tradition, and there are untypical instances, but these too are important for understanding... Welcome to this lecture by the extremely well-known Swedish scholar, Mr Olafson. Earphones have been distributed, and the Russian translation can be heard on channel 2.”
The doors flew open, there was the whiff of an electrical discharge, and into the hall hurtled a little man in a black jacket and dark jeans. He started talking in the doorway, even before reaching the lectern. So many thoughts, so many thoughts, he couldn’t wait, he dropped some of them before reaching the microphone but never mind they could be picked up in a moment. He had a high, jolly, volatile voice which everyone would be able to hear. His head was cleanshaven, and his bulbous pate gleamed.
“Believe it or not, gentlemen, something which could not happen just has: the enfant terrible of academic science is in the hallowed centre of Russian academicism! And that is the first illustration of what I shall be talking about. And what I shall be talking about is the impossible as a source of possibility.”
The Swede leapt out from behind the lectern, positioned himself in the space between the tables, extended his arms dramatically, and looked like the statue of a patron saint gazing down from a mountaintop upon his city. He took a deep breath, but then seemed suddenly to choke. A school bell had rung softly, the doors had opened once more, and the grannies breezed through the hall, still in their sateen overalls but now with lace collars attached to them and wearing white caps.
Silver tea-glass holders tinkled on brass trays, teaspoons rattled against glasses of ruby red tea. Ignoring the lecturer, the ladies supplied the members of the presidium with tea, sugar, and tiny biscuits; before run-of-the-mill academicians they placed tea and sugar, but no biscuits. Doctors of science could only look enviously at both. The startled Swede fell silent, wiped his bulbous head the way other people wipe their glasses, overcame his surprise, and jabbered on through the rattle of teaspoons.
“So, as I was saying, the unacceptable is acceptable, the standard is non-standard!”
“But what about morality? What about, forgive me for the standard expression, God? What has happened to the Ten Commandments?” A short person had risen from one of the additional seats. He was wearing a grey jacket, had a goatee beard, and his face was strangely familiar. Never mind, his name would come back.
“An excellent question, a really, really, really good, super question!” The Swede clapped his hands joyfully, laughed, and rubbed the back of his head energetically. “I was giving a talk to some of our Protestant Congregationalists, or – I’m not sure exactly what they’re called, it’s not my area. One delightful minister exclaimed, “What a frightful world you have depicted! There is no place left in it for the church!” “Why not?” another objected. Incidentally, he looked very much like you, esteemed questioner, only he had a dog collar. “Why not?” he asked. “This is our market, these are our customers. We will work with them to deliver our spiritual product.” Very clever!”
The fabulous Swede blathered on. Like a veritable conjuror, he produced an old-fashioned alarm clock from his pocket, wound it up with a terrible rasping sound, and let it ring, arousing thought; he took a glass of academic tea off one aged academician and brazenly drank it. The galled academician walked out of the lecture.
Questions. Objections. Puzzlement. The concert was over. Curtain. Applause. The first academician rose again, gave a vote of thanks, and summarised:
“Well, as the great Russian poet Alexander Blok wrote, “Even the impossible is possible”. A ripple of laughter in the hall. “Let us thank our respected colleague for the interesting thoughts he has so generously shared with us, and ask non-members to leave. We have a number of internal matters to discuss.”
The crowd of scholars flowed slowly down the stately staircase and spilled out into the courtyard in front of the house. In the frosty sunshine Arsakiev was blissfully smoking a cigarillo. The weather had turned cooler during the lecture.
“May I offer you one? Quite right, it’s an affectation, and bad for you. What an odd lecture. That Swede is a fake. He was having us on. Good for him. “This is Funk: why don’t you invest a billion dollars in it! If it succeeds I can say, I predicted that; and if it goes bust I can say, well, we’re all human and there is such a thing as Providence. He’s a genius, there’s no two ways about it. But looking around, looking around! Gogol’s pigs’ snouts are still with us. Was I really like that for half my life? What do I mean, half? It was more! Omigod! What was I thinking of? Are you sure you don’t want to smoke?”
“Not now, Oleg. Not while I’m running around. After dinner I’ll collapse into an armchair and light up.”
“Forgive me, may I barge in on your conversation? Mr Melkisarov, do you not recognise me?” It was the intellectual with the goatee beard.
“Your face is familiar, very familiar, but who you are and what your name is I don’t remember. Forgive me.” Melkisarov was on his guard: most probably he was about to be asked for money.
“Tomsk, 1983. You tried to have me expelled from the Young Communist League.”
Ah. So that was it. Clear enough. In September 1983 ‘The Office’ uncovered a semi-sect of postgraduates and students at the polytechnic. They were strange young people and caused a great deal of trouble. If they could just have drunk vodka and champagne, kissed, and had abortions; or if they had just had the straightforward, human weakness of believing in the god of Orthodox Christianity and said the established prayers; but no, they went overboard for some ridiculous mysticism. First they became Buddhists, trying to rise to the astral plane, which on its own would not have been too bad because at that time everybody was taking an interest in India. Unfortunately, then they decided to bring it all closer to home. They created a Tomsk brotherhood in honour of the hermit Fyodor Kuzmich, who was rumoured really to have been Alexander I who had not died in 1825, and declared him the tsar of gurus. They invented their own liturgy, chanting all night and disturbing the neighbours: “Rejoice, oh Elder Fyodor, ye who abhorred a tsar’s crown, ye who attained great wisdom in the Faith.” Or something of the sort. Total garbage.
He gave them the Russian Tsar, all right. The girls were required to take leave of absence on the pretext of female problems. Melkisarov persuaded the boys to acknowledge their guilt, issued a severe reprimand, and let them continue their studies. Only one idiot dug his heels in and decided to hold out to the end. Back then he didn’t have the goatee beard and his hair hadn’t been going grey, but the sideways glance was the same. He held his head slightly to one side, one eyebrow slightly raised, and his eyes shone with sectarian fervour.
“What’s this I hear? From that point again, please, let’s have all the details. My dear Melkisarov, are you one of those who fought against all that was good and progressive? I never suspected!” Arsakiev was excited. “Tell us all about Mr Melkisarov. I am Oleg Arsakiev, by the way, engineer, businessman, and philanthropist. And your name, colleague?”
“Nedovrazhin. Konstantin Nedovrazhin. I was studying the tensile strength of materials, but now I am an artist living on grants. Don’t get me wrong. Mr Melkisarov did his best to save me, but I chose to expel myself. On the whole I don’t regret the decision. I didn’t get conscripted into the army, on health grounds. I went to evening courses at the university and took a different degree. All my life I had wanted to study art history, then came perestroika, one thing and another. I remained true to myself, and am very glad about that. I’ve been in Moscow for many years now. I was married, but presently live on my own. Between town and country.”
He probably thought he would now be asked why he was single and living between town and country, but Arsakiev was interested in something else.
“So what were you expelled for, if it’s not a secret?” “For my Faith, the Tsar, and the Fatherland,” Nedovrazhin elaborated succinctly.
“I have to say,” Arsakiev remarked sardonically, “that I would have expelled you myself. We always cracked down on people like you. Tsars and priests, coming out with all that mystical drivel, for heaven’s sake. Wherever you spit you find a priest! If I sense one I give him a wide berth.”
“I don’t have that much time for priests myself,” Nedovrazhin said, giving Arsakiev a sideways glance.
“I don’t need your god either, though.”
“It matters more that He should need you.”
Word by word they grappled.
Nedovrazhin lowered his head, tensed, tucked his hand in his belt like Tolstoy, and eyeballed him; Arsakiev put his right hand behind his lapel, put one foot forward, and shook his jowls spiritedly. Like two dogs encountering each other when out on a walk, one decrepit, the other younger but no longer too spry, they stood facing each other, their paws planted squarely, their hackles raised, growling from their bellies, but in no hurry to fly at each other.
It seemed just to be a way of livening up the day.
“Stop, gentlemen, stop! Good luck to this god of yours! I have an idea. My dear Nedovrazhin, we haven’t seen each other for many years. Oleg, you don’t have to go to work, and I need to get back to my dacha. I’ve had something delivered which I think you as ex-engineers will find interesting. Shall we drive back to Peredelkino? I have one or two things I can show you, we can have dinner, supper, and stay there overnight.”
Unexpectedly, both readily agreed. They piled into Melkisarov’s car, with Arsakiev’s jeep bringing up the rear, as heavy as a tank providing cover for the motorised infantry. They drove at a cautious, almost cowardly pace. The slush was beginning to freeze into black ice.
On the way to the dacha their ragged, disconnected conversation continued, with Arsakiev disparaging the priestly caste. As they were passing a small white church on a graveyard mound he contemptuously jabbed his finger at the massive merchants’ bell which appeared to be stuck in the tiny frame of the bell tower: “Look! Look! Look!” He left finger marks on the side window. “A gift to your church from the brotherhood! That’s some bell. A voice as coarse as a peasant woman’s, but itself as shiny as a samovar. It’s not a bell, it’s a pretentious loudmouth.” Nedovrazhin tried to interrupt, to break into the torrent of vituperation, but failed. Arsakiev talked on and on. At regular intervals Nedovrazhin stoically, monotonously repeating, “Oleg Olegovich! Oleg Olegovich, listen! My dear Oleg Olegovich!” In vain. The older man was on his hobby horse, he was in full spate. Then, suddenly, he was silent, as if his anger had run out of steam. He stared stonily out the window.
They drove on down past the churchyard towards the bridge across a little stream; the landscape was starkly black and white; the dry frost with so little snow gave him the beginnings of a headache. Old age is no fun.
Nedovrazhin seized the initiative. He filled the car with his droning voice, which had a strange, level intonation, a single note, neither rising nor falling. His words merged into a murmuring stream, like the chanting of a mantra in a Buddhist temple. When he became agitated he seemed to draw out the words, saying “it clos-ed”, “it seem-ed”. Nedovrazhin explained that the church was one thing but faith was quite another, that God was not a concept but a person. If even once in your life you had-a ha-ad? the good-a go-od? fortune to sense-a se-ense his presence, for example, a faint trace of Him on a forest path as dawn was breaking, you would never again be able to look away, never be able to rest until you had managed to find where He truly was. Like love, when suddenly your eyes open and you see a woman radiant and can’t live without her and she is wholly, wholly, wholly yours...
“Nedovrazhin! Nedovrazhin! Nedovrazhin!” Now it was Arsakiev who could not force his way into the unyielding stream of Nedovrazhin’s words. Unable to contain himself, bursting with impatience, he took a deep breath and unloosed a militantly atheistic verse to counter all this theological ecstasy:
“At the last judgement, when it’s time for the showdown, calling out the name of my age, wordlessly God will take his place beside the rest of us in the dock!”
They were talking past each other. God is merciful, but children die; we have the divine sensation that He is beside us, but there are global catastrophes, cancer and death; there is the Devil, there is no Devil only the horror of our ineluctable end. No sooner, however, had Vassily gently slowed down to drive through the wooden gate when their arguing was stilled. The old fir trees were dark and heavy and it was so quiet you heard a ringing in your ears. Yesterday’s snow, nipped by a sharp frost, powdered yieldingly beneath their feet. A metal spade had been driven into a snowdrift. A twiggy yellow besom lay by the door.
It was exquisite. When they had looked around, they made themselves at home on the ground floor. For some reason
Melkisarov did not invite them upstairs. They sat down to supper. At first they were on their best behaviour, almost nauseatingly polite: “Could I ask you to pass the pepper?” “May I top up your glass?” “Here’s to the good health of our host.” “Yes, yes, here’s to you, Melkisarov.” “But really, that Swede!” Gradually, like the damp logs in the fireplace, the conversation began again to smoulder and smoke; it started to burn cheerily and brazenly, and then blazed pitilessly.
Arsakiev attacked indefatigably, but Nedovrazhin stood his ground, unyielding.
“Old women, even old peasants with their wood carving and their branding,” one would exclaim, shaking his mesmerising cheeks, “This person, that person, whatever, but you, I mean, an educated man, an ex-engineer even, what could attract you to the incense? Why bother to read books, I mean, why study science? How did you come to get mixed up with this god of theirs? You have no time for priests, I know, that’s good, that’s a step in the right direction; but what’s your god for?”
“Not, what is He for, Arsakiev, but why is He there? Because He alone is real. You need rather to tell me how you can live without Him. You are getting on a bit, but you are not frightened. You have set yourself major goals, you have brought up children... Why have you not just hanged yourself? Everything will come to end and be annihilated. Your progress makes my hair stand on end. The whole of life is a mere expectation of death. You dash around in the dark not knowing how to leap out into the light. All you see is money, money, money, and suffering without end.”
Hearing the word ‘money’, Arsakiev spluttered. What did intellectuals know about money? They loved parading their useless knowledge, but did not know the first thing about money. Money has its own philosophy and its own, I mean, religion. Money is like a jealous girl. If you don’t love it, it will not love you. Savages! All of them are convinced the world owes them a living. They expect someone to feed them, to pander to their every need, to produce and deliver; while their job is to look down on the producers. Arsakiev’s friends had established a very substantial prize out of pure philanthropy. Splendid speeches were made, academicians clicked their heels and thanked them politely. At the ceremonial fork buffet which, by the standards of those times, was sumptuous, and even by today’s standards wholly acceptable, a professor came up to him, the best friend of the prizewinner. He had been drinking and was jolly and relaxed. He had a greying beard, rather like Nedovrazhin’s, pink cheeks, hadn’t washed his hair, and had atrocious false teeth. His breath smelled like a dead cat, but he was stubborn and clinging. There was no moving away from him but he would immediately move towards you again, breathing in your face and all but twirling a button on your jacket. “It’s a remarkable fact,” the professor said. “You are, so to speak, a businessman, almost, indeed, a banker, but in fact altogether quite educated. Such a paradox.” He meant it as a compliment, but Arsakiev was speechless.
Nedovrazhin dismissed the incident as merely demonstrating that you find fools in every walk of life. “Money, though, money is an issue; that really is something we should talk about. We should talk, for example, about the way people live in provincial towns. The smaller the town, the more dreadful it is. Clever people at that, educated people, as you have had the goodness to observe. When were you, my dear Arsakiev, last fed those grey sausages with slimy pasta, and overcome with embarrassment that you were depriving little children of their food? You can’t remember such a time? That’s not surprising: your golden ghetto is built high up, on stilts, there’s no reaching it.” Nedovrazhin had recently been in a little out-of-the-way town near Vologda, visiting an old friend who was a museum curator.
“He dragged me home with him after work, and like a completely unforgivable idiot I never even thought of buying something, not even some sausage.”
They had gone up a rickety wooden stair, its paint eaten away by mould, which looked as if it might collapse at any moment. The friend’s wife seemed anxious when they arrived. She was ashamed of their living conditions. The scuffed wallpaper was peeling and had greasy marks on it, the table looked like scrap, there was a veneered sideboard from the 1960s, and holes in the carpet. Through from the next room, smiling artlessly, came two beautiful children, a little girl of about eight in a green flannelette dressing gown, and a scrofulous five-year-old boy straight out of some nineteenth-century novel about the life of the poor.
He was invited through to the kitchen for supper. On the table was a saucepan of glutinous macaroni, and those swollen frankfurter-style sausages. He had quite forgotten sausages like that had once existed, without the least bit of meat in them. His friend lived with his head in the clouds, unaware of anything around him, completely uninterested in everyday life. He was delighted to see Nedovrazhin, told him all about his excavations, treated him to bad beer. Meanwhile, however, his prematurely aged wife hunched her once lovely shoulders and said nothing. The children ate voraciously and were in raptures over a biscuit they got with their weak tea.
“Very touching, Nedovrazhin. I mean, you tell a great tear-jerker. You haven’t thought of trying your hand at politics? But there are any number of competitions for these friends of yours, these museum curators, any number. Why is this fellow not applying for them? There are grants, you know, grants!”
At the mention of grants Nedovrazhin winced but said nothing.
“Or does he apply, but fail to win them? Perhaps everything is not as black as you paint it? Not the same everywhere? One feels sorry for the children, of course, but they will grow up and be able to earn their own living. If he is not looking after them because he’s got his head in the clouds, whose fault is that?”
“You’ve got quite a philosophy there, I have to admit. Wholly in the spirit of our shameful times.”
“Were earlier times not shameful, then?”
“That’s just what I mean. Whether we face a red devil like Marxism or a yellow devil like Mammon makes no difference to us!”
A wide lampshade bathed the table in red light, but beyond the table the room was in darkness. Arsakiev was sitting in the shadows, but gesticulating in the lamplight. His arms appeared not to belong to him, like those of a puppeteer draped in black. From time to time he would suddenly lean forward and his nose and lips would move into the lit area. Nedovrazhin was in the light, leaning forward slightly and propping up his head, but his interjections were becoming increasingly dispirited. He seemed not so much angry as bemused. Why had everything turned out so moronically? The intention had been quite different.
They moved to the billiards room on the first floor. Here too the surroundings were those of a contented, well established writer. By the door was a chequered table with chessmen of various sizes, and in the far corner a card table with small armchairs for a long night’s game of poker. In the middle, under an excessively bright light, there proudly stood a dark green billiard table with ivory balls. It looked like the pitch seen from a helicopter during a televised football match.
Arsakiev and Nedovrazhin, continuing their amicable altercations, began a game of chess while Melkisarov, a dyed-in-the wool-cardplayer, looked on uncomprehendingly.
The doorbell rang downstairs, muffled but imperious, as if to say, “Open up, open up will you? How much longer do you expect me to wait down here?!”
Dust-like snow whirled in through the open doors. All this time it had been snowing steadily, methodically. The courtyard was blanketed in snow. The wind had risen and the air, lit up by the outside lights, was now glistening and opaque. In the doorway stood Borzhaninov, a figure from the past, a writer, a famous Soviet writer living on the royalties from translations of his works, and still able to rent an enormous flat on Tverskaya Street in the middle of Moscow, in a celebrated apartment block belonging to the Bolshoy Theatre. His shaggy fur coat was half open, and he was wearing a very large fur hat. Borzhaninov looked like a country gentleman coming in from the cold. His blue eyes were already fading, he had bushy ginger eyebrows, and his large potato nose had a flesh-coloured plaster stuck on it where a boil had evidently been squeezed. A man of about forty-five with curly black hair heavily streaked with grey was dancing about next to him. Borzhaninov paid no attention to his companion.
“Neighbour, any chance of a drink here tonight? We’ve been at the graveyard and are frozen through. We don’t feel like going to the restaurant, and we’ve run out of supplies at home. We’ve been visiting my poor daughter, and before that we went to my son-in-law. Thank goodness they have put lighting in the graveyards now, you can see everything.” Borzhaninov had a booming voice and a speech impediment which turned his ‘r’s into flabby ‘w’s: ‘gwaveyard’, ‘fwozen thwough’. His diction was unhurried and elegant, however, with every word enunciated separately in a way reminiscent of the Maxim Gorky portrayed in Soviet films, only without the luxuriant proletarian moustache.
Borzhaninov’s home life had been wrecked two years earlier. He was still young when his wife died but had not remarried, bringing up a beloved daughter on his own, and generously finding her a husband when she was twenty-five. He was reluctant, however, to let go completely, and at every opportunity insinuated himself into the young people’s life. If they were going on holiday, he would buy a ticket too; if they wanted to drive somewhere at the weekend, to Pskov or Yaroslavl, or Narva, Borzhaninov was immediately at hand, cajoling them. “Children, your car is low slung, which is stylish and fashionable but not right for Russian roads. Why don’t we take the 4 by 4? I’ll drive and you can relax.” It was difficult for the children to refuse, and it made him happy.
That night Borzhaninov’s Land Rover had been cruising along the icy Minsk Highway. The road was lit sporadically, with one street lamp functioning and the next not. From a pool of brightness you plunged into an abyss of darkness and emerged again into the light. The glinting reflection was dazzling as large snowflakes flew out of the darkness and plastered themselves on the windscreen, obscuring the driver’s vision. Borzhaninov was driving cautiously. More haste less speed. What’s the hurry, there’s plenty of time. He liked to say, “God created time, and He created enough of it for everyone.”
Morning was approaching and there were more and more vehicles on the road. A powerful BMW 5-series whistled past, zipping right and left, overtaking two other careful drivers, and vanished in the darkness. Borzhaninov felt a pang of envy that such masterful people existed.
Some ten kilometres further on they encountered a dreadful sight. The BMW was lying in the middle of the roadway with its wheels in the air, like the paws of a dead animal lying on its back. An almost undamaged truck had crawled like an enormous caterpillar into the roadside vegetation.
“Daddy, don’t hurry. Let’s see what’s happened!” his daughter had said, and his son-in-law supported her. “We can get some water while we’re at it. Look there’s a kiosk with a light on. I am really thirsty.” Borzhaninov braked gently and carefully drove on to the roadside. Alas, why had he done that! They stood and stared. His son-in-law took in the scene: there was nobody there. He ran over the road. Bending almost double (he was a tall lad), he stuck his head in at the kiosk window, bought a bottle of mineral water, and ran back. He lost his footing, slipped, and dropped the bottle. He went back to pick it up just as a little Skoda came hurtling towards them. It avoided the crashed BMW. The son-in-law had no time to straighten up. He was tall. It takes tall people longer. There was a screech, a loose slap, a cry. The boy was thrown in the air, tossed up as if he had been gored by a bull. He fell back down soundlessly, lying at an awkward angle, something wrong. He didn’t move. The daughter screamed at the top of her voice and rushed blindly to her husband. Then there was an Opel, without winter tyres. That same terrible sound you can never forget, never erase from your memory. She didn’t reach him. She was already bearing Borzhaninov’s grandson. What a business.
They weren’t able to bury them together. There was space in the crowded Peredelkino graveyard only for Lyolka, the coffins side by side, in her mother’s grave. The son-in-law could have been buried there too, but only his ashes, and the father- and mother-in-law refused to have their son cremated. They took his body themselves, and buried him not far away, in the cemetery at Vostryakovo. The children were parted in death.
In his new novel, which had been awarded all the top prizes, Borzhaninov related the tale of how his daughter died, of her beloved cat, and of himself. Needless to say not directly, but those in the know understood.
Borzhaninov fell into an armchair and his boy sat on a chair next to him.
“Good evening to you all. I am Victor Antonovich Borzhaninov, a teller of tales. With whom have I the honour?”
The guests introduced themselves in turn.
Knowing Borzhaninov, Melkisarov didn’t waste time and poured him a full glass of vodka. Good quality, greenish crystal. Borzhaninov raised the tumbler, admired it against the light, and looked intently into the eyes of those present in turn. “Your good health! Here’s to our meeting!” He unhurriedly drank half, paused for a moment, then ate a mushroom with gusto.
“People have forgotten how to marinate mushrooms. Why have you not poured one for my attendant?
Borzhaninov’s attendant repeated all Borzhaninov’s gestures, but perhaps speeded up. A crotchet in the bar faster, a bit more rushed. When he had downed it, he shut his eyes tight like the simple man he was and quickly munched a cabbage leaf.
Melkisarov made an effort to act the part of hospitable host. “My dear Victor” this... “My dear Victor” that... “Do have some salad.” “And what are you working on at the moment?”
Arsakiev and Nedovrazhin remained politely silent. The argument they had shared had gradually brought them closer, and in the presence of this new arrival, this outsider, they finally felt they were intimates. They now waited watchfully to see how the uninvited guest would behave; whether he would fit into their company, spoil the atmosphere, or merely skate over the surface and disappear without trace.
“It’s been a good day, no headache. No headache equals happiness,” Borzhaninov said.
There was a pause.
“What am I working on? I am writing a novel.”
“What about?”
Melkisarov adopted an expression of interest. Borzhaninov was amazed by the question.
“About love. What else are novels written about?”
Arsakiev could not restrain himself, and said tartly, “How original.”
Borzhaninov chose to ignore this cattiness and began outlining the underlying concept in some detail.
“Eh? What do you think of that? The rest of it I see spread out in the palm of my hand. Her whole life plays out automatically. I don’t need to invent anything.”
“Amusing, very amusing. But I do have – forgive me, I’m an old man and my character is getting worse, it’s only to be expected, so anyway – I do have a question. Do you really think it is possible to foretell someone’s destiny? Not to imagine it, as you do with your great talent, not to write it in fiction, but to predict it? You listen to someone, you see them, and you know what’s going to happen to them in the future?”
Borzhaninov (who by now was noticeably tipsy) smiled a disconcerting smile.
“Of course you can. Do you want me to conduct a séance baring souls? Do you want me to read you all right now? Is that what you really want?”
“Victor Antonovich can do that,” the boy whispered admiringly.
“Well, I mean, go right ahead! You are after all, dammit, an engineer of human souls, a connoisseur of the heart as they say.”
“Wait one second, one minute, if we may! We don’t need to be in quite such a tearing hurry.”
Borzhaninov again took his glass and drank audibly but steadily, marking each gulp with a sound like the whooping of a swan.
He pursed and smacked his lips, and ate a piece of sturgeon to settle the heavenly drink. His faded irises had turned completely white.
“Don’t forget my attendant, be so kind. And so, shall we begin? You, I believe, are Mr Arsakiev.”
“I am. What else can you tell me?”
“What else I can tell you is that you are already living your second life. In the first, I believe, you were a designer, an inventor, a ra-tion-a-liser. Look at the way your scientist’s eyes shine. They are interested in everything, they are drills! My goodness! Only designers have such eyes. I know. You had a great admiration for the poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Am I right? Yevtushenko lives here, quite nearby. Did you know that? We can drop in on him. He likes rich people. You probably are quite rich now, am I right? But you are not a thief, no, not a thief. You do not have... pretensions. That is evident. But you look down on people who don’t have money. Only a bit, but you do look down on them, am I right? And why? Because they sit on their bums and get bed sores. You are looking now at me, pretending to respect me, but actually thinking to yourself, what a bastard! What a bastard! Here he is living in Peredelkino and paying three rubles rent, enjoying official favour, and filching vodka off his neighbours. Yes, I do live here,” Borzhaninov bowed clownishly. “I do. And I filch vodka. And just try not to letting me have it. I won’t let you.
I don’t see any love interest in you, – Arsakiev, isn’t it? I’m not confusing you with someone else? – I don’t see any love interest in you. Well, don’t be offended, it’s too late for you now. Although you were a convinced... lesbian, and women, oh, women fancied you... but in the past, in the past. If I were to write a novel about you, what would I do? What I would do is have your past catch up with you. You would run away... change your clothes, use make-up, a false passport... to London, and wham, that’s where the tragedy would begin. Because, Arsakiev, you don’t know the first thing about hell. But I do. Hell is when you can do everything and don’t need anything. When you were young you used to dream of buying this and that, travelling here and there, outsmarting everybody else. Well, you bought those things, and yes, you outsmarted them all. But then somebody outsmarted you. You are walking in Hyde Park, a golden autumn, green grass, security, an astronomical pile of money, but nothing is interesting, there’s nothing you need, and you are trapped, really in hell. That zest for living... where are you without it?”
“Now you, young man,” Borzhaninov, increasingly in his cups, turned to Nedovrazhin, “You, young man, are also in your second life. In the first you were not in the arts, but also not in the military, and not a doctor. Something... mechanical. Did you perhaps graduate from the Bauman Institute? No? But now everything tells me you are quite different. Not an engineer, and also not rich. Not rich, but not poor either. We shan’t write a novel about you. About you we shall write lyric poetry. A selfless hero at the altar of the Fatherland. An altar, let me note, which has been improved in terms of design, with amenities, and a lean-to ladder so you can get down if things go wrong. Yes, yes, that’s exactly it: you are now a professional humanitarian. At Mr Arsakiev’s expense. Don’t get me wrong, I am of course talking figuratively. It’s not Mr Arsakiev personally, but somebody is feeding you, and you are dissatisfied. I too am dissatisfied. I live, as Mr Arsakiev has correctly observed, in the writer’s village of Peredelkino. I live here, and lose no sleep over that. I hate those who are encroaching on my domain. There are more and more of them moving here, there is more and more building.
“No, please don’t think I am unaware of who lived here before us writers. Do you know about the Samarins, the Slavophiles? You don’t? Well, you should. You should know about them. I incidentally am aware of them. I am aware of everything, and understand everything. I am aware that I am not Samarin. I am far below him. I am just very clever. It’s positively intimidating when I think how clever I am. It’s nauseating to be so clever. Why, for heaven’s sake, why am I so clever? Eh? Can you tell me that? Only, you know my dears, this is Russia. Have you heard of that country? Here it is like living on a frozen swamp. Don’t touch anything, don’t change anything, don’t build anything. But if by mistake something does get changed, if they shift the axis, if they have knocked life askew, leave it be. Don’t touch it! Don’t try to bring back the past! And we don’t need a future either. It’s wholly superfluous. Let me always be as I am, scrounging vodka off the neighbours, writing books for some reason. Beneath me is the ice, and beneath the ice are leeches, big black, juicy leeches, coiled, contracting and expanding! Did you know, Nedovrazhin, that you can’t just pull them off? The head will be left under your skin and cause gangrene, sepsis! The ice is already cracking, but it hasn’t cracked yet. Take good care of me. While I am here, for the time being, you will not drown!
“If, however, Arsakiev is the winner, then do not touch Arsakiev! Do you hear what I say! Do not touch him. Throw me on the scrapheap and forget about me for the rest of time. Take care of Arsakiev! The ice beneath him will split and groan, but it will hold. Arsakiev is dry, he will not fall through. But after him will come the deluge. That is why you should not touch him. Do not take umbrage, Arsakiev. I mean this kindly. Have you ever been in a swamp, Nedovrazhin? Do you know the smell of the swamp? Have you ever seen a wet viper slithering close by? Have you ever felt a tussock being pressed down into the water, like a yielding button, and found yourself in a quagmire, with those, what were they again, leeches. And have you gathered cloudberries, bittersweet cloudberries? Ginger-red and amber? Pushkin loved them. Did you know Pushkin loved cloudberries? Well there we are.”
Borzhaninov slapped his fat hands on his knees, took a deep breath, and stood up.
“Let’s be off, attendant! We’ve stayed too long already. Melkisarov, lead the way! Where can one pee?”
As he was leaving he slowed down to consider the disposition of the pieces on the chequered table.
“You’ve really swept this board. You’ve got the King hemmed in behind the pawns... Castling? Two queens, six pawns to two... one with aspirations to become a queen... but how can it with that hernia. Hardly, hardly... No, my friends, a typical stalemate.
