Ice Trilogy

by Vladimir Sorokin

  I didn’t have the strength to handle it, so I stepped to the edge and with a desperate movement threw the machine gun overboard. It kept on firing as it fell. But the Yenisei soon swallowed up the machine of destruction.

  Gunpowder smoke drifted over the deck. The Komsomol was sailing. We broke into the wheelhouse. There the wounded helmsman in a sailor’s uniform writhed on the floor, and Fleabite lay dead with his mouth open. Ep stood at the helm.

  “Who else is on the ship?” I asked the helmsman.

  “Stokers...two...They locked them...Don’t shoot,” he moaned.

  “How do I get there?”

  “Behind the galley...the hatch...”

  We found the hatch. It was closed with a bayonet. The stokers were working in the furnace room like a piece of the steam engine. We returned to the deckhouse.

  “Hold the wheel,” I told Ep.

  “I’ve never steered a ship,” he said, squinting at the Yenisei.

  “And I’ve never shot a machine gun,” I answered.

  Fer and I descended into the captain’s quarters. The bound admiral had come to and was rolling around furiously on the floor, trying to free himself. We seized him and held him to the floor. He moaned and bit. He smelled of excrement: he had soiled himself when he felt the Ice with his unawakened heart. We tied him to the handrail of the ladder. Fer grabbed a piece of the Ice. My eyes scanned the place; there were no sticks or hammers to be seen. Next to a heap of animal skins lay some weapons. I grabbed a sawed-off rifle from the pile and tore a shoulder strap from the admiral’s jacket. With the thin belt we attached the Ice to the rifle. Fer held the head of the moaning, howling admiral against the handrail. I ripped off his skivvies, swung the Ice hammer back, and struck his tattooed chest with all my might. His breastbone cracked. The Ice shattered in all directions. The admiral jerked and then hung helplessly from the ropes. We froze: we heard nothing at all. His heart was silent. This couldn’t be happening. Just beyond the bulkhead, the iron heart of the steamboat beat faintly. “Hit him again! It can’t awaken!” Fer cried out.

  But the Ice hammer was destroyed. I looked at the floor: as it pitched, pieces of Ice slipped in and out of puddles. Fer grabbed the largest of them. We began to tie it to the rifle again. Suddenly the admiral twitched. We pressed against his chest, now red from the blow.

  “Rubu...Rubu...Rubu...” his heart spoke, awakening.

  We cried out joyously. Our hearts caught up the newly born heart. The admiral moaned and opened his eyes. We untied him and placed him on the ancient leather couch. Rubu again lapsed into oblivion. His heart was small and weak. In comparison to his, Fer’s heart seemed a mighty giant.

  I climbed onto the deck. Standing at the helm, Ep cried out. His heart knew what had happened in the captain’s quarters. I ran to the deckhouse and took the helm. Shaking and sobbing, he rushed below. And from the captain’s quarters came his joyous howl.

  Rubu was with us.

  He turned out to be a former sailor and Red Commander. For his thirty-seven years, Rubu, known in the world of men as Kazimir Skoblo, had had an extremely colorful biography. Before the Revolution, as a boy, he had run away from his prosperous family to join the navy. He did his naval service in the Baltics, working his way up from ship’s boy to bosun. Then he went underground, joined the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party, and carried out propaganda work; in Odessa, he married the bomber Marina Yezvovich, was arrested and sent to Siberia; his wife died in Kiev during a terrorist action, and he ran away from his exile to St. Petersburg. There he lived illegally and threw two bombs; during the October coup he was a commissar of the naval regiment, then worked in the Cheka; during the Civil War he fought in the Ukraine, where he was Commissar of the Proletarian Sword Division; in an argument he shot the commander of the division, for which Trotsky condemned him to execution. He ran away to join the anarchists, commanded a machine-gun platoon for Makhno, suffered a severe concussion, and spent three months lying in the attic of a small house under another name. He returned to the Reds, up beyond the Urals, joined the partisans, and was the political leader of the detachment; after the war he ran river steamboats on the Tobol, then on the Irtysh, and became a family man. Three months ago, a former division soldier recognized him; not waiting to be arrested, Kazimir Skoblo ran, taking the money from the steamboat with him, along with weapons and documents; while in hiding, he organized a small band of thugs, made it to the Yenisei, stole the tugboat Komsomol, and managed to plunder five villages and two cargo ships.

  About two months earlier Kazimir Skoblo had had a dream: he was a seventeen-year-old sailor on leave in Vyborg, in the small room of a prostitute; they were sitting on the bed, in front of which there was a small table; a bottle of New Bavaria beer stood on it, as did a bottle of the sweet water Fruit Honey; there was a pound of Crawfish Tail candies, a pound of French cookies, and a pack of Vazhnyia cigarettes — all that he could buy with the money he had. Kazimir had never had a woman before; the prostitute’s name was Lyalya, and she had already slept with his friends — the sailors Naumov, Sokhnenko, and Grach. Kazimir was nervous, he tried to behave roughly, he was embarrassed that his member had been standing up like a stick for quite some time now, pushing against his black bell-bottoms; the prostitute noticed this and laughed at him; she shoved him with her chubby shoulder and blew cigarette smoke into his ear; he blushed, laughed stupidly, and poured the beer into glasses. They drank and smoked; the prostitute asked him to pour some Fruit Honey into her beer; Kazimir poured it nervously, in a hurry; the prostitute’s glass was full to the brim. She giggled and gave Kazimir one condition: if he could bring the glass to her lips without spilling it, she’d sleep with him; if he spilled it, she’d kick him out. Kazimir didn’t know whether she was joking or speaking the truth; he carefully lifted the glass, carried it to Lyalya’s red, laughing lips; suddenly, outside, there was a distant but very powerful clap of thunder; Kazimir froze with the glass in hand; he looked at the curve of the overfilled glass and saw barely noticeable waves running along it. He felt that they came from that far-off, powerful thunder. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the miniature, sweeping waves and kept on staring and staring at the glass; suddenly, in the liquid he saw a blind pilgrim who came to their house on occasion to drink water when he was eight years old: she had been born blind, she didn’t have any eyes at all, but she could heal all sorts of illness and foretell fates. To the young Kazimir she said, “When you grow up and become utterly confused about yourself and life, two brothers and a sister will come to you and they’ll show you something that will change you forever.” She left, and Kazimir forgot her prophecy; he remembered it only now, when he heard the distant thunder; he dropped the glass, the prostitute laughed, and when he looked at her — she had no eyes. At this point he woke up.

  On awakening, Kazimir remembered: this dream was what happened to him in reality, when, as a seventeen-year-old sailor in Vyborg, he had gone ashore from the mine cruiser Watch Guard. That time he dropped the glass. But the prostitute let him have her anyway. And he immediately forgot about his vision.

  He began to have the same dream frequently. At night, tortured, he tried to fight off the dream, he wanted to see something else in his sleep, but to no avail. During the day he felt a growing agitation, as though something enormous were moving inexorably toward him.

  Speaking with his heart, Rubu understood the meaning of the prophecy and sobbed. His past life seemed like a nightmare to him. As it did to all of us.

  We sailed down the Yenisei for two days and nights. On the third, the stokers locked in the boiler room informed us: all the coal had been used up. About twelve kilometers shy of Krasnoyarsk we ran the Komsomol up on a shoal and debarked onto the forest-rimmed shore. We took a pouch of money from the steamboat, gold dust, and some revolvers. We changed clothes as well: the bandits, having plundered five villages, had quite a lot of quality clothing. Rubu was weak, we held him by the arms. But we didn’t have to walk for long: a ro
ad ran along the shore of the Yenisei. The first cart that came by had been ordered to take a sick Red Commander to Krasnoyarsk. Riding into the city, we immediately rented a house on the edge of town and hid there: Rubu needed time to recover, his broken sternum hurt. But his new heart helped his body: our wounds healed more quickly than humans’ did. Four days later brother Rubu was already on his feet. We embraced him. Standing together on the small porch, the four of us silently rejoiced in one another. We didn’t need lightweight, short-lived human words. We had our own language. I opened the window onto the veranda: a golden autumn still held in Krasnoyarsk, the first snow hadn’t stuck to the ground. Silently, we gazed at the street with its wooden fences, birch trees, and one-story houses. It was evening. Watchdogs barked back and forth, somewhere an accordion played its wheezing notes. A drunken carter drove an empty dray down the street. His old horse plodded along unwillingly. The carter lashed her with the reins, cussed, and, noticing us, gave a drunken laugh, nodding at the horse.

  “There’s a heartless nag, the old cunt!”

  Rubu winced. And we winced as well. The heartless carter reproached the horse for heartlessness, beating her and exploiting her. This was a living picture of earthly life, an example of the “harmony” of being. Rubu let out a sob and clutched at his chest. A shiver ran through his body, tears burst from his eyes. We understood: his weeping-heart time had come. Sobbing, he fell into our arms. Sobs wracked him for a week. When he emerged from them he was entirely different.

  We didn’t know what to do in Krasnoyarsk: the Ice was far from us, our hearts were silent, and we needed to be cautious with Rubu — the GPU was looking for him. But the help of the Light came to us. And a few days later, we understood the reason we had ended up in Krasnoyarsk.

  That morning we decided to take a look at the town. I was certain that the heart magnet Fer and I possessed could find others like us if the pull of the Ice had brought them to this old Siberian town. We hired a cabbie, sat in the carriage, and drove around as slowly as possible. Wandering the streets, we moved toward the center. Our hearts were silent. Finally we turned onto Voskresenskaya, the main street, and rode down it. Mourning flags hung near a large building that looked like a theater, and a crowd of people had gathered. It was impossible to go any farther: cavalry stood in front of us and a brass band waited. I ordered the driver to turn around. And suddenly out of the crowd a young man in glasses, wearing a Chekist’s uniform and a black ribbon tied round his arm, ran toward us.

  “Are you from Achinsk? Comrade Kudrin?” he asked Rubu anxiously.

  “Yes,” Rubu answered unexpectedly.

  “Well, what are you waiting for then, comrades?” The fellow in glasses waved his hands reproachfully. “They’re already about to bring the body out, and you still haven’t arrived! Let’s go, come on...”

  We descended from the carriage and followed him through the crowd. The guards standing at the entrance with black bands on their bayonets let us into the building. In the spacious hall it was quiet and calm. There was a coffin, covered in flowers and wreaths. In the coffin lay a balding, middle-aged man with a mustache in the uniform of a Chekist, with a medal. Around him stood an honor guard of the local top brass. At some distance was a crowd of mourners. Almost all of them were military or Chekists in leather coats and jackets. As in an Orthodox church, the women stood apart from the men. Fer went to stand with the women; Ep, Rubu, and I with the men. People approached the coffin single file to bid the deceased farewell: first the men, then the women. Then there was a modest, quiet command; the coffin was lifted and carried from the hall. People began to sort through the wreaths.

  “Comrade Kudrin! This one’s yours...” the same young man said, handing Rubu a wreath.

  Rubu took the wreath and nodded at me. I walked over to him and we carried the wreath. On the black band in gold letters were the words REST IN PEACE, OUR VALIANT FRIEND! FROM THE CHEKISTS OF ACHINSK. The most astonishing thing was that no one but us claimed this wreath. The rest of the people took their own wreaths. As soon as we were outside, the brass band thundered. The coffin was carried along Voskresenskaya Street. Behind it came the wreaths, then the authorities, strolling at a leisurely pace; the band marched, the cavalry rode carrying a flag, and then a huge crowd followed. Fer and Ep ended up in the first rows of the crowd. Walking in step with Rubu, I suddenly felt a slight excitement in my heart. Looking back, my eye met Fer’s. But she shrugged her shoulders. I had felt that we weren’t here by accident. Judging by the situation, they were burying the head Chekist of Krasnoyarsk.

  The funeral march played as we walked to the cemetery; we stood around the freshly dug grave. The coffin was set upon a wooden podium covered in red satin and black crepe. Next to the grave they placed a plywood cube painted a dark red. The crowd moved aside and a middle-aged Chekist in a uniform decorated with two medals stood on the cube. I hadn’t seen him in the auditorium during the farewell proceedings. Probably he had only just arrived. His face — resolute, intelligent, and rough — was framed by a small, light-chestnut beard and hair of the same color that was combed back unevenly. His grayish-blue eyes were stern. He scanned the crowed, rolled back his sloping shoulders, grabbed his belt with his left hand in a practiced gesture, and closed his right into a fist. Then he spoke.

  “Comrades! Death has torn a valiant friend from our ranks, a comrade-in-arms, and an indefatigable warrior for the proletariat and world revolution, Comrade Valuev. The ardent heart of this faithful soldier of the Revolution gave out. A brilliant Communist, iron-hard Chekist, a man with an expansive soul and true Leninist-Stalinist temperament burned up in battle and the work of the Party. The fiery heart of this Chekist has stopped beating — ”

  He suddenly stopped speaking. And my heart beat faster.

  He paused, took a deep breath, and continued.

  “Today, Communist Pyotr Valuev, we are all distressed to be burying you in the damp earth. But for me, your old comrade, it is especially painful. We met, Pyotr Frolovich, in the era of bloody czarism. The czar exiled us to the same small town, to Obdorsk, for our underground revolutionary work. They wanted us to sit there quietly, cease our campaign, stop drilling into the oppressed people. But then you and I up and showed those vermin — bam!” Here he shot his fist forward sharply and fiercely. His sunken cheeks filled with blood for a moment.

  My heart could feel how Fer’s heart was throbbing. Our magnet had begun to work: we recognized a brother! There was no sweeter moment for our hearts. I closed my eyes. This resolute Chekist was one of us. That was why we had ended up in Krasnoyarsk.

  I opened my eyes. The Chekist spoke passionately, aided by his fist. His face burned with indignation. He truly did not want to believe in death. I looked at Rubu. His inexperienced heart did not yet know. But his brain recognized the speaker.

  “Who is that?” I asked.

  “Deribas. The head of the OGPU for the Far East.”

  I squeezed the fingers with which Rubu held the wreath. He looked me in the eyes. My face shone with joy.

  “Yes!” I whispered.

  And Rubu’s heart understood. Rubu began to shake, and tears poured from his eyes. We moved our excited gaze to our new brother. Who as yet had no clue. “It was not in battle that you fell, dear comrade, not near Kherson from a White Guard saber, not in Pavlodar from a counterrevolutionary bullet. You died on another front, Pyotr Frolovich. On the most difficult and most necessary battle with counterrevolution, with the hidden scum, vermin, and enemies of the people. To our bright future, to the great ideas of Lenin-Stalin! Our Party, our people, our Chekists will not forget you, Communist and Chekist Pyotr Valuev. Rest in peace, dear comrade!”

  He stepped off the red cube.

  Then the secretary of the oblast Party committee and coworkers of the deceased spoke in turn.

  They placed a cover on the coffin and nailed it shut. They lowered it and swiftly began to fill in the grave. Some Chekist waved his hand, and the hurried cavalry shot their we
apons. He waved it again — and the band played “The Internationale.” Everyone standing around the grave began to sing.

  They stuck a red star in the fresh hillock and covered it with wreaths. Fer and I, without saying anything, made our way through the crowd to Deribas. He stood with the secretary of the oblast committee, smoking. Chekists milled around them.

  “Comrade Deribas!” I said in a loud voice.

  The Chekists turned toward us. And the bodyguards immediately blocked our way. Deribas lifted his stern gray-blue eyes to look at us.

  “We have very important business with you,” I said.

  “Who are you?” Deribas asked abruptly.

  “Your brother.”

  He looked at me carefully. His heart was absolutely calm.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Bro.”

  At that moment his heart winced. Fer and I felt his heart.

  “What?” he asked again, frowning.

  “Bro!” I repeated loudly and grasped Fer by the shoulders. “And this is your sister, Fer.”

  Deribas’s sunken cheeks blanched. His heart flared up. But a very strong will struggled with his heart. Restrained it. And his heart yielded. Trying not to show this inner struggle, he finished his cigarette. He tossed the butt, stepped on it, and said, “Mikhalchuk, arrest them.”

  The Chekists aimed their revolvers. We were searched, they took my Walter and Fer’s Browning.

  “Put them on the train,” Deribas ordered. “We’ll have a chat along the way.”

  We were led through the crowd. I saw Ep and Rubu out of the corner of my eye. Standing stock-still, they looked at us. But we walked along calmly, without giving any signs: as usual, we didn’t know what to do, but we believed in our hearts. The Chekists took us to the station. There was a train with two cars surrounded by a chain of guards. We were led to the second car and locked in a compartment. We embraced joyfully: we had found another brother! Our hearts began to speak. They already knew each other well and knew how to gain strength from conversations of the heart. We didn’t notice the train setting off. Some time passed, and our heart conversation was interrupted: the door was opened by the sentry. Next to him stood a Chekist.