Ice Trilogy

by Vladimir Sorokin

  “So you see, my friends.” The secretary of the obkom patted Fer and me on the shoulders. “Suppressing enemies in the Far East — it’s not like shucking sunflower seeds. Comrade Deribas is tired, he’s overworked. He needs calm. Take care of your brother’s heart. The Party has great need of it.”

  “And so do we,” Fer replied.

  The Power of the Heart

  It took Ig five days to cry out all the tears. Emptied and cleansed by the heart crying, he lay on the sofa in a three-person ward and ate Crimean grapes with the caution of a weak old man. I sat in the armchair across from him; Fer, on the windowsill of the open window; Kta on a chair in the middle of the ward; Oa stood, leaning against the doorframe. Although it was the end of October, the weather was still warm, and a breeze lightly stirred the window curtain and Fer’s hair. An enormous floor clock had just struck four in the afternoon. The weary autumn sun warmed Fer, the putty-filled parquet, and the yellowing leaves of the acacia outside the window.

  We had met in Ig’s room in order to talk about the future. Kti and Bidugo weren’t with us: the heart awakening had shaken them harder than others; Ig had ordered that they be placed in a hospital ward while he recovered.

  We needed to understand just how we would live henceforth among people. And not just live but search for others like us. Myriad questions arose: where to live, who to be in this Bolshevist country, how and where to carry on our search, where to hide those we found, how to transport the Ice, where to keep it, and most important — what to do so that no one arrested us as conspirators, tortured us, and then shot us in the cellars of the OGPU.

  Everything that had happened was nothing short of a miracle. We realized that we had been incredibly lucky these last two months. But it would be extremely dangerous to place our hope on luck in the future. We had to calculate our future life. And come up with a plan of action.

  At that quiet hour of the fading autumn day our hearts were silent. But we didn’t feel like speaking in the language of humans, either. We sat looking out the window at the fading sun. No one moved; only Ig ate grapes slowly. His fingers tore off the violet fruit and put it in his mouth.

  Finally, I broke the silence.

  “How are we going to live?”

  Everyone turned to face me. Only Fer, sitting on the windowsill, remained immobile. Her lithe young figure was lit by sunlight. It was as though she were holding on to the light, refusing to let it be extinguished.

  “How are we going to live?” I asked again.

  Ig stopped swallowing grapes. The brothers remained silent. Their hearts as well. And suddenly for the first time since my heart had awoken I felt a sense of helplessness. As soon as my heart grew quiet, I became an ordinary person. And I began to look for protection in reason. From the moment of my awakening, when I hit my chest on the huge mound of Ice, it was as though I had been set on wheels, and had rolled and rolled along on them, not stopping, not doubting anything. Now my “train” had stopped. Something had happened in me and in us. I felt that it was no accident that the brothers were so quiet. They had nothing to reply. They had also stopped. Ahead of us lay the world of people. And no one had laid down the rails for our wheels. That world was stern and merciless.

  And for the first time, signs of earthly fear stirred in my head. My brothers’ faces grew pale: they felt the same thing. Ig’s hand holding the bunch of grapes convulsed into a fist. Reddish juice spattered through his fingers. His lips turned white.

  The Wisdom of the Light had abandoned our hearts.

  We felt loneliness. And we became AFRAID. It was terrible: the fear that I had conquered lying on the mound of Ice suddenly returned. I was afraid of fear. But far more frightening was the very possibility of fear. Its return scared and shook me more than the immediate fear itself.

  Suddenly Fer moved and with the greatest difficulty turned to us. Her face was petrified with terror. I had never seen her like that. She looked at us as though we were dying. The hair stood up on my head. In an instant I realized that we would never tear the block of Divine Ice from the Tungus swamp, never find all of us, would never become the Light. We were doomed to perish in this alien and ruthless world, which pulverized living creatures. In a world that had opened its funereal jaws to us.

  Human Death silently entered the sun-drenched room.

  We grew stiff and cold. Only motes of dust whirled in the rays of the sun.

  But suddenly Fer, who had been sitting in a stupor on the windowsill, began to raise her hands. It was impossibly difficult for her to do this. That mortal fear impeded her movement. But she fought. Her arms rose and stretched out toward us.

  And we understood.

  Kta, who was sitting to Fer’s right, began to stretch his hand out to her. From the left, sitting in my chair, I stretched mine. From his bed, Ig reached for me, and Oa, standing in the doorway, reached out for Ig. Never in my life had it been so hard for me to stretch out my arms. My arms were heavy and wouldn’t obey. It was very difficult for the others as well. Shaking and straining, we reached out to one another. We accomplished the most intensely challenging work.

  For a moment I felt that the sunlight flooding the room was a viscous substance that we were trying to part with our hands. Our hands and arms stretched, stretched, stretched. Kta fell off his chair; I tumbled from my armchair; Oa and Ig collapsed and crawled along the floor. We all crawled toward the windowsill in torment, toward Fer who was sitting there. Our bodies were drenched in an icy sweat. Sweat flowed into my eyes. I could see only the blurry contour of Fer’s hand. Salvation lay in that hand. And I made it there. Kta made it to her right hand.

  We clutched one another’s hands. With our last bit of strength we formed a Circle. A Lesser Circle of Light. As soon as we had done this, our hearts shuddered. And came to life.

  The Light once again began to speak in them — with such force that cries of rapture burst from our lips. Fer had saved us! The Wisdom of the Light had not abandoned her. Our only sister had become the Great Savior of the Brotherhood of the Primordial Light.

  We crawled over to her and embraced her, crying from the rapture of salvation. She was still sitting on the windowsill. We loved our only sister. And she loved us. Squeezing our hands and laying them on her breast, she looked down at us. Tears of joy flowed from her eyes and dripped on our faces. The sunlight played in Fer’s tears.

  Our hearts began to speak with new strength.

  This continued all night.

  In the morning we knew what we had to do. An alien world surrounded us on all sides as before. But roads and tracks had now been laid down upon it. The strength of the heart had laid these roads. It was as though that strength had opened the world. And we could see the deep crevices that awaited us. We had to move along these roads without fear and trepidation, crawl into the crevices of the world, imitate it. And accomplish our great goal.

  In the language of people Fer said, “The Light will always be with us. It will teach us. And we will do everything that is necessary.”

  We never again trusted our reason alone. Any idea, any endeavor, any job, each of us checked first and foremost with the heart. The strength of the heart would show the way. Reason facilitated movement along this path. The strength of the heart nudged reason, backed it up. And reason moved, overcoming the world, taking everything we needed from it and tossing aside anything superfluous, anything that hindered us. False fears, uncertainty about the future, worry about the life of our brothers — everything flew away.

  In this sun-drenched ward we acquired complete freedom. Because we put our trust in our hearts fully forevermore. And we knew their might.

  The number of heart words increased, acquired in our hearts. The language of the heart became richer with every conversation. When we embraced, we learned from one another. Our hearts grew more certain.

  And the power of the heart was with us.

  Sisters

  Once ig was completely back on his feet, it was decided to make use
of his vacation to begin the search for our people in nearby towns. Getting in touch with the local OGPU, Ig obtained a car and driver. Fer and I were supposed to set off in the car on a search mission. According to the plan, we had an escort — a Chekist from the operations department of the Simferopol OGPU. Ig informed him in the iron voice of Deribas that he was sending Fer and me in search of a secret counterrevolutionary organization, which had escaped from Siberia to the Crimea for the winter, and whose members we knew by sight. Accordingly, the Chekist should cooperate with us in capturing the “masked enemies of the people.” As soon as the heart magnet found one of ours, we should point him out to the Chekist so that he could arrest him. It was decided not to take any of the newly acquired with us but to dispatch them immediately to the local jails. After Deribas’s vacation was over, it would be necessary to convey them to our train. On the way back we would have to collect the crates with the Ice in Rostov-on-Don, and on the long voyage to Khabarovsk we would hammer ours with the Ice hammer.

  In the early Crimean morning the automobile fetched Fer and me from the sanatorium. We set off on a three-day trip: Sevastopol, Simferopol, Melitopol, Berdyansk, Rostov-on-Don. The search was easier for us now: we knew for certain that brothers and sisters of the Light were blue-eyed and light-haired. An endless line of people, faces and bodies, passed before us. We floated on a sea of people, parted it, plunged headfirst into it, and swam up again. We breathed the crowd. It smelled of the sweat of life and muttered about its own affairs. The crowd was always in a hurry. Our magnet saw straight through it. And the deeper we immersed ourselves in the process of searching in the human sea, the harder it became for us. The crowd grew thicker. Our hearts trembled from the tension.

  In Sevastopol we found two sisters.

  In Melitopol — one.

  In Simferopol — no one.

  And no one in the big city of Rostov-on-Don. We spent an entire day there. After a lengthy and difficult search, Fer vomited bile from the extreme tension. She became hysterical, and she frightened the Chekist who was escorting us. I collapsed from exhaustion and blood flowed from my nose. The automobile took us to the dormitory of the OGPU, and the chauffeur and the Chekist helped Fer to climb the steps of the porch. I followed, trying not to fall. The young, tan Rostov Chekists who met us were worried.

  “What’s happened, comrades?” they asked.

  Fer and I didn’t have the strength to move our tongues. We walked, holding on to the wall, to our room. And we heard the escort Chekist answer the locals: “There you go, guys, see how those Siberians sniff out enemies of the people. Nonstop. Learn from them!”

  We fell onto the beds. The sea of people whirled in my head. And in it there wasn’t a single dear, familiar face! We embraced and sobbed.

  In small, cozy Berdyansk, however, our heart magnet found six of us! And they were all sisters! This affected Fer and me like a flash of the Light. But physically it completely crushed us: after the searches and arrests of the sisters we found, we fainted on the dusty pavement of Berdyansk. When we regained consciousness we were already on the backseat of the car: Fer and I were being taken to Yalta. I raised my head with great difficulty, and pushed myself up on weak arms. Outside the window, pyramid-shaped poplars flew by.

  “Has everyone we found been arrested?” I asked, though it was enormously difficult to remember the words.

  “And how!” replied the Chekist sitting in the front. “You can rest in peace on that one.”

  Relieved, I rested my spinning head on the leather seat back. Fer was sleeping.

  “What I wanted to ask,” said the Chekist, lighting a cigarette, “is why’s they all birds?”

  “Their husbands have already been arrested,” I muttered.

  “Gotcha,” said the Chekist, shaking his dark head seriously, and then asking, “Lots more to go?”

  “Lots,” I answered, stroking Fer’s sleeping lips.

  “That’s the ticket!” the Chekist agreed brightly. “Enemies ain’t gonna just go and disappear on their own. Well, all right then. We’ll clear the weeds out of the field.”

  On returning to the sanatorium, we lay in bed for a day, renewing our strength. The brothers were continually with us, helping our bodies and hearts. We were fed fruit by hand, like little children. All of ours were excited: they couldn’t maintain their calm, thinking of the nine sisters we’d found. The brothers asked for stories, stroked our hands, which had touched the sisters; they tried to feel them. But what could our lips tell them? Could the paltry language of humans possibly convey the rapture of discovery? We spoke with our hearts, holding the brothers by their hands. And they understood us.

  A week passed.

  Kta and Oa had gone through the cleansing by tears. They had been kept in the hospital wing. All the brothers coming to the sanatorium were under the patronage of Deribas, which meant — the OGPU.

  “Their nerves need to heal,” Ig told the head doctor of the sanatorium. “You know what our work is like.”

  The head doctor — a Jew from Yalta and a member of the intelligentsia who had lived through the horrors of the Civil War and by some miracle survived the Red Terror — nodded with understanding.

  Ig had fully recovered after his crying and with quadrupled strength set about furthering our great endeavor. For regular people he was one and the same Iron Deribas, tough and decisive, quick and merciless, energetic and straightforward. The nearly old man who lay quietly on the sofa on that memorable sunny day, with a bunch of grapes in his hand, had disappeared forever. The voice of Ig-Deribas rang through the hallways of the sanatorium, his boots squeaked triumphantly, his eyes glittered. He exuded the unseen energy of overcoming life, which people took as an absolute love of life. Short, quick, and forceful, he became the “soul” of the sanatorium. Everyone adored him: the military men in the dining hall, with whom he discussed fanatically the “arch importance of the Party-line gradient in overcoming the kulaks’ sabotage of grain procurements,” shared military reminiscences and dreams of world revolution; the director, with whom he played raucous games of billiards and argued about “local excesses in the ethnic question”; the female personnel, who laughed at his frivolous, crude jokes. He slept no more than three hours a day, swam in the autumn sea for a long time, played noisy games of skittles, sang louder than everyone during evenings of military songs.

  “Now there’s a real bon vivant!” thought the frail head doctor as he straightened his pince-nez and watched Deribas laughing.

  But we knew the true nature of this “lover of life.” Brother Ig was preparing himself for the eternal struggle in the name of the Light. And he didn’t spare his human nature, pulling it back like a bow in order to deliver a smashing blow with his arrow. A telegram came from Khabarovsk: Ep and Rubu had been found and arrested. During their capture, they shot two Chekists, but they themselves weren’t hurt. We rejoiced.

  Ig’s vacation was coming to an end. It was time to continue our Great Endeavor. Three days before departure we gathered at dawn on the rocks of a cliff not far from the sanatorium’s beach. The sun had not yet risen, a weak tide rolled in over yellow-gray stones, and the cool air was bracing. Ig, Fer, Kta, Kti, Oa, and I climbed up the largest cliff, whose summit actually extended over the sea like the keel of a dreadnought. We sat down, forming a Circle, and held one another’s hands. Our hearts began to speak. They spoke of what was to come. A ray of sun sparkled on the horizon of the sea and stretched as far as us, illuminating the immobile faces with half-closed eyes. But we didn’t notice it. The sun dimmed beside the Light shining in our hearts.

  At the beginning of November, Deribas’s train set off from the station at Sebastopol. We didn’t leave any of the brothers in the Crimea, even those who hadn’t yet cried with the heart. The simple local leaders and tanned Pioneers saw us off. Veger, the obkom secretary, sent three enormous baskets of fruit; the local OGPU sent a huge pumpkin with the inscription TO THE CHEKISTS OF THE RED EAST FROM THE CHEKISTS OF THE RED SOUTH. Deri
bas, now dressed in the uniform of the OGPU plenipotentiary, with three red rhombuses and two medals on his lapel, stood, as he was expected to, on the back platform of the train car and waved. When the train moved out, the director of the sanatorium moved with it along the platform. Placing his hands on his plump chest as always, he spoke with his Georgian accent: “Comraid Deribass, faraway there in the Far East, you try to ketch all zee enemies in the vinter, I swear on my honest, so they doesn’t stop your coming back to us summertime!”

  Deribas saluted, wiped the smile from his face, and entered his compartment.

  In Rostov-on-Don we collected the Ice. And our nine sisters.

  When the soldiers with rifles brought them to the train and gave the order “Get in!,” the women cried and wailed; someone said that they were being sent to Siberia. Crying, they climbed into the car. But our hearts burned with joy. Fer and I were ready to kiss the feet of each of them. Light-haired and blue-eyed, the sisters differed considerably in age: from fourteen to fifty-six. Three of them, in the earthly sense, were real beauties.

  The sisters were locked into the guard’s car.

  As soon as the train moved, we began. The guards brought us the first sister — a pretty, rotund Melitopol Jewess with a reddish shock of hair and huge forget-me-not blue eyes. Strong and loud, she sobbed, calling out to her mama in Ukrainian, or muttering in Yiddish: “Gotyniu toirer! O gotyniu toirer!”

  Gagging her, we stretched her arms out on the door. Ig tore her dress, Fer and Oa moved the huge white breasts with light-pink nipples aside, I firmly held her fat knees, and Ig, trembling from heart rapture, whacked her tender chest with the Ice hammer, using all his strength.

  Her name was Nir.

  The next was a plump, sturdy Ukrainian. A merchant from the Sevastopol market with straight platinum hair and a tanned, round face, she tried to buy her way out, offering “nine tenners hidden under the floor.” When we started to undress her, she helped us, muttering in Ukrainian, “Whatever you want, just don’t shoot me.”