Ice Trilogy

by Vladimir Sorokin

  I struck her. It took four blows for her heart to call its name: “At!”

  She flooded us with her urine — as we howled with the joy of discovery.

  Sister Orti — a Komsomol beauty from Berdyansk — fought us furiously, threatening to complain to “Veger himself,” whose nephew was her fiancé. Oa, strong and broad-shouldered, took the Ice hammer in his hands for the first time; with the first shattering but imprecise blow, he broke her collarbone and beat the sacred name out of her heart: “Orti!”

  She lost consciousness from the pain and the awakening.

  We had a lot of trouble with the small, frail beggar girl taken from the front of the Sevastopol church. Her thin, dirty chest, covered with pus-filled pimples, withstood six blows; her heart only shook and then stood still for long periods, scaring us that it would stop. The impatient Bidugo finally grabbed the lifeless girl and pressed her against his body; then Ig hit her for the seventh time so hard that a shard of Ice flew across the room and almost put out Kta’s eye. Blood spurted from the beggar’s lips. But her heart came to life.

  “Nedre!”

  The tow-headed, angular, modestly dressed workers from a Berdyansk tannery, Zina Prikhnenko and Olesya Soroka, had been born twin sisters, it turned out. It was incredible, but they even worked in the same guild: that was how the Light’s craft brought them together. There was no doubt they had been waiting for us. Standing stock-still, they submissively entered Deribas’s compartment, obediently stood at the door, and allowed themselves to be tied by the hands. They stood, their pale blue eyes not blinking, while we unbuttoned their shirts, tore the underclothes covering their chests, and turned their crosses to their backs. But as soon as the Ice hammer was raised, their legs gave way and they lost consciousness: they had dreamed of the hammer, the Ice sparkled in forgotten childhood dreams, where shining and powerful people plucked at their child hearts sweetly, pursued them, giving them no peace. Bidugo struck them.

  “Pilo!”

  “Ju!”

  Klavdiya Bordovskaya, arrested in her fashionable atelier, which had survived NEP’s demise, largely owing to the beauty and amorousness of its mistress, had decided that she had been arrested for connections with the director of the regional trade association, a thieving morphine addict who had committed suicide. As soon as she was brought to us, she threw herself on her knees before Ig and, embracing his boots, shouted that she would “sign everything.” Noticing that Fer and I were tying the Ice to a stick, she decided that she was going to be “tortured with potassium chlorate salts,” and screamed so loudly that we had to gag her immediately. With a powerful and biting blow to her sleek breast, I ended the career of the fashion designer.

  “Khortim!”

  A well-bred lady of noble blood, a stately widow of a White Guard captain, with unfathomable ultramarine eyes, crossed herself furiously, as though we were demons, and cursed us with damnation of everything imaginable. While she was being tied to the door, malicious hissing and curses burst from her delicate lips. She burned with hatred, writhing in our hands. Once tied, however, she froze and grew silent, preparing for death. For her we were the “Bolshevist scum that ruined Russia.” The Ice hammer split the skin on her chest quite forcefully. She stood, grown pale, as though a marble sculpture, looking through us with her amazing eyes. Pressing my ear to her bloody, proud breast, I heard: “Epof!”

  The last one turned out to be the mother of seven children, a housewifely woman, all hustle and bustle, simple and kind, like the warm dough that her children so loved to eat, washing it down with cold milk. Invoking her children and her Red Army husband, she begged us to let her go. Born for the re-creation of life, to continue the race, she couldn’t allow herself to die. For her it was equal to a great sin. Brother Edlap, a former blacksmith, awoke her heart with one blow, forcing her to forget her children forever and to remember her name: “Ugolep!”

  And so, we acquired nine sisters.

  All the Ice we had taken with us was used up in striking their breasts. Pieces of it were strewn across the floor of Deribas’s compartment. They were melting, mixing with the urine of the awakened sisters. Pieces of the Ice-hammer sticks lay at our feet. Part of the Great Work had been successfully accomplished.

  There were now twenty-one of us.

  We rejoiced.

  And took care of the newly acquired in every possible way.

  We placed the sisters as well as we could — in the guest compartments, in the compartments for the arrested, in the dining room. They were shaken: moaning from pain, they cried tears of farewell to the life of humans; their bodies reset themselves; their hearts pronounced the first words. We helped them. And they were already crying with the joy of overcoming the old. The doctor put a splint on Orti’s broken collarbone. He didn’t understand what was happening on this train, going full steam from the south to the east of this vast country in which these strange and ruthless Bolsheviks had taken power. Deribas’s assistant didn’t understand anything, either. But the tradition of not asking the bosses superfluous questions had already taken root: all across the country the punitive apparatus of the OGPU had turned into a large machine that worked according to its own laws, hidden to the view of outsiders. If the Bolshevik Party still breathed with hot discussions, the OGPU grew increasingly mute, hiding from outside eyes. Chekists learned to work silently. Orders that came from higher-ups hadn’t been discussed for some time. Ig understood this and used it to achieve our own goals.

  Purposes grew like bushes. Our hearts swiftly defined the direction, our heads barely managed to figure out the opportunities. The Power of the Light carried us. In Saratov the train stopped. The Brotherhood made a decision: Fer, Oa, Bidugo, and I would go to Moscow. The rest would continue with Ig to Khabarovsk. Ig-Deribas sent a telegram to the capital: his influential friends in the OGPU should help us, find us jobs, provide us with living quarters. That way, the heart magnet would begin to work in the largest Russian city. And newly acquired brothers could speak with the heart.

  We said heartfelt farewells to our brothers and sisters. It was a powerful farewell: forming a Circle, we all held hands. And spoke in the language of the Light. The compartment disappeared. We hung in the void, among the stars. Our hearts lit up. Shining words flowed. Experienced hearts taught weak, recently awakened hearts. Time stopped.

  After several hours our hands parted.

  And we descended from Deribas’s train onto a wood platform. A Volga blizzard blew across it, caught up in snowy whirls. Huddled in clumps, passengers wrapped tightly for winter sat on their belongings in anticipation of the train. In the shivering crowd the fear of getting lost in the endless expanses of this cold and unpredictable country could be felt. But more than cold and hunger, they were afraid of one another. Their numb hands clutched their trunks, suitcases, and wooden chests with locks hanging from them. They waited for the train. In truth, they had nowhere to go.

  But we did have a destination.

  We walked past them.

  With the permit issued by Deribas, we were given seats on the arriving train.

  And we traveled to Moscow.

  Moscow

  On november 12 we arrived at Kursk station. I had not been in the capital of Russia for almost four years. It greeted us with freezing weather, sun, snow that was soot-gray, and crowds of people. The platform was flooded: some people rushed to a departing train; others exited arriving trains in throngs. We instantly found ourselves in a crowd of muzhiks who had come to the capital to make money. In rough sheepskin coats, felt boots, and fuzzy hats, they plodded along in a herd, carrying saws wrapped in sackcloth under their arms and on their shoulders — trunks from which ax handles protruded. The muzhiks smelled like the village. Moscow struck Fer’s sensitive heart: hundreds of thousands of people, ours among them, here, in this city!

  Fer immediately jolted me with her heart: we’ve begun! But I squeezed her hand: now wasn’t the time. She pulled her hand away from me, gritting her teeth, an
d cried out angrily. I seized her by the shoulders, shook her, stopping her.

  “This city will be ours,” I said.

  “Brothers are perishing every minute! We have to hurry!” she answered furiously.

  “No. We have to enter this city correctly. Then we will take it,” I replied.

  “There’s no time! No time, Bro!”

  “Fer, this city could destroy us. And then we will never find our own.”

  And I added to the statement with my heart. She replied.

  Oa and Bidugo listened to us. The Wisdom of the Light at this moment spoke through my heart: in Moscow it was imperative to act discreetly.

  Though furious, Fer understood. She embraced me in tears.

  Hiring a carriage, we rode through Moscow. Almost everywhere was the smell of food. Food was carried along the streets on trays, the store windows were bursting with rolls and sausage. Many passersby were chewing something as they walked. NEP was breathing its last, and it was as though people felt the coming of severe Stalinist socialism and were storing up food.

  Arriving at Lubyanskaya Square, we entered the large building where the OGPU was located. It was from here, from this yellowish-gray, many-storied mansion that the threads of this mighty organization stretched to all ends of the USSR. Deribas’s bosses sat here, his close friends worked here. I showed our pass. They took our luggage, weapons, and outer clothing. Soon Fer and I were walking along the squeaky parquet behind our escort. Oa and Bidugo remained outside in the waiting room. Our escort took us to the office of the assistant head of the Special Department of the OGPU, Yakov Arganov. We entered the secretary’s room, occupied by a handsome desk and a typist. The secretary announced our arrival by telephone, then threw open the leather-covered door; we entered. Arganov was sitting at his desk and scribbling something rapidly; he had a lively, cunning face, black hair, thick eyebrows, and an owlish nose. The secretary closed the door after us. Arganov raised his head and squinted. Then he smiled.

  “Aha! Deribas’s foundlings. So you made it to White-Stoned Moscow after all.”

  He adroitly extricated himself from behind the desk and came up to us; he was short and narrow-shouldered.

  “Now, let’s see, let’s see...”

  He fixed his black, birdlike eyes on us.

  “And you look like him! Well, come now, let’s introduce ourselves. Arganov.”

  He extended his small but tenacious hand. We shook it.

  “Alexander Deribas, Anfisa Deribas.”

  “Yes, yes. You’re straight from the train? Hungry?”

  “No, thank you, Comrade Arganov, we’re fine.”

  “How’s Terenty? Gotten his health back? What befell my combative friend?”

  “The doctors say it was exhaustion,” I answered.

  “Yeah, yeah! Devilish nonsense!” Arganov waved his short hand dismissively, turned sharply, walked over to the desk, and picked up a box of Cannon cigarettes. “Deribas could take on three of me. He’s called me the last three days in a row — his voice is normal. He sent a telegram off to Batrakov. Epilepsy, I ask you! What goddamn epilepsy? I’ve known Terenty since 1917. Epilepsy!” He offered us the open pack of cigarettes, but we shook our heads; he lit up quickly and with a whistle exhaled smoke from his large, thin-lipped mouth. “There’s idiots everywhere you look.”

  The telephone rang. He picked up the receiver.

  “Arganov here! Well? What do I care about your Kishkin? More nonsense! There’s Pauker’s order: sixteen special cars by four tomorrow morning! And you don’t need a lot of guards: these are nepmen, where they gonna run? Hell, it’s not 1920. No, you call yourself. You keep harping on that Kishkin, Kishkin...”

  He hung up the phone. Irritated, he took a drag on his cigarette.

  “Kishkin! Kishkin!”

  His unseeing gaze ran over us and he picked up the receiver again.

  “Anton, come in here.”

  The secretary entered.

  “Listen, I remembered the name of that Polish guy, you know...Gorbanya’s case. It wasn’t Kislevich, it was Kishlevski.”

  “Kishlevski?”

  “Kishlevski, that was it!” Arganov grew even livelier. “Give Borisov a call; tell him to free those Kisleviches. He got the wrong ones, Pinkerton! Nonsense...”

  “That’s why they’re not talking!”

  “Of course! As soon as Somov hanged himself, everything got mixed up! Good that I remembered. Kishlevski! Exactly! Go on, Anton, before someone tells Yagoda.”

  The secretary nodded and turned, but Arganov hadn’t finished.

  “Wait a minute. And there are these young people.”

  He could see us again.

  “Are you educated?”

  “I studied at the university,” I answered.

  “I can read and write,” Fer answered.

  “All right then, we’ll set you up in the archive. Take them to Genkin...no, better straight to Tsessarsky! And they should put them in the dormitory, in the old one on Solyanka. Got it? But first — Kishlevski! Understand? And no nonsense!”

  “Yes, Comrade Arganov, sir!”

  “There are two more with us,” I added.

  “Anton, figure it out...That’s it for now!” Arganov hurriedly shook our hands.

  A little while later we were sitting in the department of cadres. Arganov’s patronage turned out to be considerable. His secretary helped us with the registration of Oa and Bidugo’s documents: we said that our friends had been robbed, and their documents as well, in the train. Oa introduced himself as a former artist (he actually did draw beautifully and painted icons); Bidugo (a carpenter from Rostov-on-Don) didn’t change his profession, calling himself a carpenter and cabinetmaker. Fer and I were set up in the archive department of OGPU: I was to help the archivist organize dossiers; she was to glue the folders and envelopes for these cases. Oa was sent to work in the department of visual propaganda at the OGPU’s House of Culture; Bidugo, to the warehouse as a carpenter. Fer and I were assigned to the OGPU dormitory; Oa and Bidugo were housed in a huge communal apartment densely packed with single workers.

  Thus began our Moscow life. At the OGPU we received grocery cards, tickets to the cafeteria, and a very tiny salary. But Deribas had given us a bit of money to take with us. We bought apples, carrots, cabbage, and grain with it. This is what we ate. In the dormitory we were called “derirabbits”: in the evenings we chewed on vegetables. We carried grain around in our pockets, trying to chew it on the street, where no one disturbed us with conversations. Soon our two main problems were identified: food and close contact with people. In the OGPU, as in all Soviet organizations, the expectation was that everyone went “to lunch” in the cafeteria together during the lunch break. It took an enormous amount of work for us to avoid this. It was almost unbelievable, but our hearts gave hints about what to do and how. We successfully avoided it. As “blood relatives” of Deribas, the Chekists tried to take care of us; they kept inviting us to dinner. We refused in a panic, using any excuse, even going as far as various illnesses: visiting people meant you had to drink wine and eat people’s food. The head of the archive accounting department, Genkin, wishing to “fatten us up,” gave us a ticket to the “good” cafeteria (normally we would have been expected to dine in the cafeteria for workers). We pretended that we went there, shuddering from the smell of the cafeteria alone: it was a place where they boiled and fried the corpses of rabbits. One time I couldn’t refuse and I swallowed a piece of fried baby rabbit. I vomited immediately. Fer drank some wine, which was literally poured down her throat on Stalin’s birthday, celebrated in the archive department. She was in terribly bad shape. In the department everyone decided that Anfisa Deribas had alcohol intolerance. But we could calmly inhale tobacco smoke into our lungs. Smoking helped us “be one of the group” in the Soviet collective. Naturally, we had no dependence on tobacco like genuine smokers. In the workers’ dining hall people were fed various kashas, but we couldn’t eat them, either: our organisms co
uld accept only whole food, untouched by decay and flame, not boiled, not frozen, not ground, not marinated. The corpses of living creatures were entirely indigestible for us, but neither could we eat still-living creatures: our hearts wouldn’t accept blood. Neither living nor dead. Only grain, fruits, and vegetables could be digested in our stomachs and give us strength. We only took that which was whole into our bodies, what had not been destroyed by humans. Smoke was whole. As was water.

  When the archivist, returning from the “good” cafeteria, picking at his teeth, muttered that “the baby rabbit today was to die for,” I nodded and muttered, “Of course.”

  On weekdays we worked, trying to merge into the mass of Soviet people, remembering their habits, life values, moral principles, humor, and fears. We penetrated alien skin, in order to be one of them. It was surprisingly easy for us to do this: the power of the heart helped. The Light speaking in us fortified our inner strength and multiplied our opportunities. After the awakening of our hearts each of us had become a genuine Proteus: each discovered within not only a capacity for transformation but also an incredible flexibility in dealing with the stern, unpredictable world. Having thrown off the stone armor of our past, dead life and broken kinship ties, it was as though we had become boneless and were able to easily bend and penetrate the crevices of the world. Nothing restrained us, only the Light shone ahead, led us to our secret goal. Our ability to mimic had no analogy in the world of people. It was the highest artistry, an artistry that no professional actor had ever dreamed of. No one could appreciate it because this theater had no audience: only a stage on all four sides.

  Furthermore, we were possessed of amazing endurance; we slept no more than four hours a day. At the end of the workday we didn’t feel tired and “voluntarily” took on new jobs, trying to seem “selfless and conscientious.” Soon Fer and I were called the “twin Deribases.” The bosses and co-workers were pleased with us. Oa and Bidugo also exhibited a “labor ethic and enthusiasm” at their work.