Going out into the corridor, I saw that it was almost dark already. I walked up to the end door and knocked. Nobody answered. Opening the door, I saw the interior of a large saloon car. At its centre stood a table set with a light supper for three and two bottles of champagne; above the table candle flames flickered to and fro in time with the swaying of the train. The walls were covered with light-coloured wallpaper with a pattern of gold flowers; opposite the table there was a large window, beyond which the lights of the night slowly cut their way through the darkness.
There was a movement at my back. I started and looked round. Standing behind me was the same Bashkir whom I had seen outside the carriage. After glancing at me without the slightest expression of any kind, he wound up the gramophone with the glinting silverish horn that was standing in the corner and lowered the needle on to the record that had begun to revolve. Chaliapin’s solid cast-bronze bass began singing - it was something from Wagner, I think. Wondering for whom the third place was intended, I reached into my pocket for a papyrosa.
I was not left to wonder for very long before the door opened and I saw Chapaev. He was wearing a black velvet jacket, a white shirt and a scarlet bow-tie made of the same shimmering watered silk as the red stripes on his greatcoat. He was followed into the saloon car by a girl.
Her hair was cut very short - it could hardly even be called a style. Down across her scarcely formed breasts, clad tightly in dark velvet, there hung a string of large pearls; her shoulders were broad and strong, while her hips were a little on the narrow side. Her eyes were slightly slanted, but that only added to her charm.
Beyond the slightest doubt, she was fit to serve as a model of beauty - but a beauty which could hardly have been called womanly. Not even my uninhibited fantasy was capable of transporting that face, those eyes and shoulders to the passionate, furtive gloom of a lovers’ alcove. But it was easy to imagine her, for example, on an ice-rink. There was something sobering about her beauty, something simple and a little sad; I am not speaking of that decoratively lascivious chastity with which everyone in St Petersburg was already so thoroughly fed up even before the war. No, this was a genuine, natural, self-aware perfection, beside which mere lust becomes as boring and vulgar as the raucous patriotism of a policeman.
She glanced at me, then turned to Chapaev, and the pearls gleamed against the skin of her neck.
‘And is this our new commissar?’ she asked. The tone of her voice was slightly flat, but pleasant nonetheless.
Chapaev nodded. ‘Let me introduce you.’ he said, ‘Pyotr, Anna.’
I got up from the table, took her cold palm in my hand and would have raised it to my lips, but she prevented me, replying with a formal handshake in the manner of a St Petersburg emancipee. I retained her hand in mine for a moment.
‘She is a magnificent machine-gunner,’ said Chapaev, ‘so beware of irritating her.’
‘Could these delicate fingers really be capable of dealing death to anyone?’ I asked, releasing her hand.
‘It all depends.’ said Chapaev, ‘on what exactly you call death.’
‘Can there really be any difference of views on that account?’
‘Oh, yes, indeed.’ said Chapaev.
We sat down at the table. With suspicious facility the Bashkir opened the champagne and filled our glasses.
‘I wish to propose a toast,’ said Chapaev, resting his hypnotic gaze on me, ‘for the terrible times in which it has been our lot to be born, and for all those who even in such days as these do not cease to strive for freedom.’
His logic seemed strange to me, because our times had been made terrible precisely because of the striving, as he had put it, of ‘all those’ for their so-called ‘freedom’ - but whose freedom, and from what? Instead of objecting, however, I took a sip of champagne - this was the simple precept which I always followed when there was champagne on the table and the conversation turned to politics. I suddenly realized how hungry I was, and I set about the food with vigour.
It is hard to express what I was feeling. What was happening was so very improbable that I no longer felt its improbability; this is what happens in a dream, when the mind, cast into a whirlpool of fantastic visions, draws to itself like a magnet some detail familiar from the everyday world and focuses on it completely, transforming the most muddled of nightmares into a simulacrum of daily routine. I once dreamed that through some exasperating contingency I had become the angel on the spire of the Peter and Paul Cathedral and in order to protect myself against the bitterly cold wind I was struggling to fasten my jacket, but the buttons simply would not slip into the buttonholes - and what surprised me was not that I had suddenly found myself suspended high in the night sky above St Petersburg, but the fact that I was incapable of completing this familiar operation.
I was experiencing something similar now. The unreality of what was happening was somehow bracketed out of my consciousness; in itself the evening was entirely normal, and if it had not been for the gentle swaying of the carriage, I might easily have assumed that we were sitting in one of St Petersburg’s small cafes with the lamps of cabs drifting past the windows.
I ate in silence and only rarely glanced at Anna. She replied briefly to Chapaev when he spoke to her of gun-carts and machine-guns, but I was so engrossed by her that I failed to follow the thread of their conversation. I felt saddened by the absolute unattainability of her beauty; I knew that it would be as pointless to reach out to her with lustful hands as it would be to attempt to scoop up the sunset in a kitchen bucket.
When supper was finished, the Bashkir cleared the plates from the table and served coffee. Chapaev leaned back on his chair and lit a cigar. His face had acquired a benevolent and slightly sleepy expression; he looked at me and smiled.
‘Pyotr,’ he said, ‘you seem thoughtful, perhaps even - pardon me for saying so - a little absent-minded. But a commissar… He has to carry people along with him, you understand.,. He has to be absolutely sure of himself. All the time.’
‘I am entirely sure of myself.’ I said. ‘But I am not entirely sure of you.’
‘How do you mean? What can be bothering you?’
‘May I be candid with you?’
‘Certainly. Both Anna and I are absolutely counting on it.’
‘I find it hard to believe that you really are a Red commander.’
Chapaev raised his left eyebrow.
‘Indeed?’ he asked, with what seemed to me to be genuine astonishment. ‘But why?’
‘I do not know,’ I said. ‘This all reminds me very much of a masquerade.’
‘You do not believe that I sympathize with the proletariat?’
‘Certainly I believe it. On that platform today I even experienced a similar feeling myself. And yet…’
Suddenly I no longer understood what exactly I wanted to say. Silence hung over the table, broken only by the tinkling of the spoon with which Anna was stirring her coffee.
‘Well, in that case, just what does a Red commander look like?’ asked Chapaev, brushing the cigar ash from the flap of his jacket.
‘Furmanov,’ I replied.
‘Forgive me, Pyotr, but that is the second time today that you have mentioned that name. Who is this Furmanov?’
The gentleman with the voracious eyes,’ I said, ‘who addressed the weavers after me.’
Anna suddenly clapped her hands.
‘That reminds me,’ she said, ‘we have entirely forgotten about the weavers, Vasily Ivanovich. We should have paid them a visit long ago.’
Chapaev nodded.
‘Yes, yes,’ he said, ‘you are quite right, Anna. I was just about to suggest it myself, but Pyotr set me such a puzzle that everything else entirely slipped my mind.’
He turned towards me. ‘We must certainly return to this topic. But for the present, would you not like to keep us company?’
‘Yes, I would.’
‘Then, forward,’ said Chapaev, rising from the table.
We left
the staff carriage and went towards the rear of the train. Events now began to seem even stranger to me: several of the carriages through which we walked were dark and seemed entirely empty. There was not a single light burning anywhere and not a sound could be heard behind their closed doors. I could not really believe that there were Red Army soldiers sleeping behind those walnut panels which reflected the glow of Chapaev’s cigar in their polished surface, but I tried not to ponder too much on the matter.
One of the carriages did not end in the usual little lobby, but in a door in the end wall, beyond the window of which the dark winter night rushed away from us. After fumbling briefly with the lock the Bashkir opened it and the corridor was suddenly filled with the sharp clattering of wheels and a swarm of tiny, prickly snowflakes. Outside the door there was a small fenced-in area beneath a canopy, like the rear platform of a tram, and beyond it loomed the heavy carcass of the next carriage. There was no way of crossing over to it, so it remained unclear just how Chapaev had intended to pay a visit to his new men. I followed the others out on to the platform. Leaning on the railing, Chapaev drew deeply on his cigar, from which the wind snatched several bright crimson sparks.
‘They are singing,’ said Anna, ‘can you hear?’
She raised an open hand, as though to protect her hair from the wind, but lowered it immediately - her hairstyle made the gesture entirely meaningless. The thought struck me that she must have worn a different style only a very short time before.
‘Can you hear?’ she repeated, turning to face me.
And indeed, through the rumbling of the carriage wheels I could make out a rather lovely and harmonious singing. Listening more closely, I could even catch the words:
Blacksmiths are we, our spirit is an anthill, We forge the keys of happiness. Oh, hammer mighty, rise up higher still, Smite harder, harder yet upon this iron breast!
‘Strange,’ I said, ‘why do they sing that they are smiths, if they are weavers? And why is their spirit an anthill?’
‘Not an anthill, but an anvil,’ said Anna.
‘An anvil?’ I echoed. ‘Ah, but of course. It is an anvil because they are smiths - or rather, because they sing that they are smiths, although in actual fact they are weavers. One devil of a confused mess.’
Despite the absurdity of the text there was something ancient and bewitching about this song ringing out in the winter night. Perhaps it was not the song itself, but the strange combination of innumerable male voices, the piercingly bitter wind, the snow-covered fields and the small stars scattered sparsely across the night sky. When the train curved as it went round a bend we could make out the string of dark carriages. The men travelling in them must have been singing in total darkness - and this filled out the picture, making it even more mysterious and strange. For some time we listened without speaking.
‘Perhaps it is something Scandinavian.’ I said. ‘You know, they had a god there, and he had a magic hammer that he used as a weapon. In the Old Edda saga I think it was. Yes, yes, see how well everything else fits! This dark frost-covered carriage before us, why should it not be Thor’s hammer hurled at some unknown enemy! It hurtles relentlessly after us, and there is no force capable of halting its flight!’
‘You have a very lively imagination.’ Anna replied. ‘Can the sight of a dirty railway carnage really arouse such a train of thoughts in you?’
‘Of course not.’ I said. ‘I am simply endeavouring to make conversation. In actual fact I am thinking about something else.’
‘About what?’ asked Chapaev.
‘About the fact that man is rather like this train. In exactly the same way he is doomed for all eternity to drag after him out of the past a string of dark and terrible carriages inherited from goodness knows whom. And he calls the meaningless rumbling of this accidental coupling of hopes, opinions and fears his life. And there is no way to avoid this fate.’
‘Why not?’ asked Chapaev. ‘There is a way.’
‘Do you know it?’ I asked.
‘Of course.’ said Chapaev.
‘Perhaps you would share it with us?’
‘Gladly.’ said Chapaev, and he clicked his fingers.
The Bashkir seemed to have been waiting for precisely this signal. Setting his lamp on the floor, he ducked nimbly under the railings, leaned out in the darkness over the invisible elements of the carriage coupling and began making rapid movements with his hands. There was a dull clanging sound and the Bashkir returned to the platform with the same alacrity with which he had left it.
The dark carriage wall facing us began slowly receding.
I looked up at Chapaev. He met my gaze calmly.
‘It is getting cold,’ he said, as though nothing had happened. ‘Let us return to the table.’
‘I will follow on after you,’ I replied.
Left alone on the platform, I went on gazing into the distance for some time. I could still make out the singing of the weavers, but with every second that passed the string of carriages fell further and further behind; suddenly they seemed to me like a tail cast off by a fleeing lizard. It was a beautiful sight. Oh, if only it were really possible, as simply as Chapaev had parted from these men, to leave behind me that dark crowd of false identities which had been tearing my soul apart for so many years!
Soon I began to feel cold. Turning back into the carriage and closing the door behind me, I felt my way along by touch. When I reached the staff carriage I felt such a great weariness that without even pausing to shake the snowflakes from my jacket, I went straight into my compartment and collapsed on to the bed.
I could hear Chapaev and Anna talking and laughing in the saloon car.
‘Pyotr!’ Chapaev shouted. ‘Don’t go to sleep! Come and join us!’
After the cold wind which had chilled me through on the platform, the warm air in the compartment was remarkably pleasant. It even began to feel more like water than air, as though at long last I were taking the hot bath I had been dreaming about for so many days. When the sensation became absolutely real, I realized that I was falling asleep, which I might have guessed anyway from the fact that instead of Chaliapin, the gramophone suddenly began playing the same Mozart fugue with which my day had begun. I sensed that I should not on any account fall asleep, but there was no longer anything I could do to resist; having abandoned the struggle, I hurtled down headlong between the minor piano chords into the same stairwell of emptiness which had so astounded me that morning.
4
‘Hey there! No sleeping!’
Someone shook me carefully by the shoulder. I lifted my head, opened my eyes and saw a face I did not recognize, round and plump, framed in a painstakingly tended beard. Although it wore an affable smile, it did not arouse any desire to smile in return. I understood why immediately - it was the combination of the carefully trimmed beard with a smoothly shaven skull The gentleman leaning over me reminded me of one of those speculators trading in anything they could lay their hands on who appeared in such abundance in St Petersburg immediately after the start of the war. As a rule they came from the Ukraine and had two distinguishing features - a monstrous amount of vitality and an interest in the latest occult trends in the capital.
‘Vladimir Volodin.’ the man introduced himself. ‘Just call me Volodin. Since you’ve decided to lose your memory one more time, we might as well introduce ourselves all over again.’
‘Pyotr,’ I said.
‘Better not make any sudden movements, Pyotr,’ said Volodin. ‘While you were still sleeping they gave you four cc’s of taurepam, so your morning’s going to be a bit on the gloomy side. Don’t be too surprised if you find the things or people around you depressing or repulsive.’
‘Oh, my friend,’ I said, ‘it is a long time now since I have been surprised by that kind of thing.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘what I mean is that the situation you find yourself in might seem quite unbearably loathsome. Inexpressibly, inhumanly monstrous and absurd. Entirely incompatible with li
fe.’
‘And what should I do?’
‘Take no notice. It’s just the injection.’
‘I shall try.’
‘Splendid.’
I suddenly noticed that this Volodin was entirely naked. Moreover, he was wet and he was squatting on a tiled floor, on to which copious amounts of water were dripping from his body. But what was most intolerable in this entire spectacle was a certain relaxed freedom in his pose, an elusive monkey-like lack of constraint in the way he rested his long sinewy arm against the tiles. This lack of constraint somehow seemed to proclaim that the world around us is such that it is only natural and normal for large hairy men to sit on the floor in such a state - and that if anyone thinks otherwise, then he will certainly find life difficult.
What he had said about the injection seemed to be true. Something strange really was happening to my perception of I he world. For several seconds Volodin had existed all alone, without any background, like a photograph in a residence permit. Having inspected his face and body in their full detail, I suddenly began to think about where all this was happening, and it was only after I had done so that the place actually came into being - at least, that was how I experienced it.
The space around us was a large room covered throughout with white tiles, with five cast-iron baths standing in a row on the floor. I was lying in one of the end baths and I suddenly realized with disgust that the water in it was rather cold. Offering a final smile of encouragement, Volodin turned round on the spot and from his squatting position leapt with revolting agility into the bath next to mine, scarcely even raising a splash in the process.
In addition to Volodin, I could see two other people in the room: a long-haired, blue-eyed blond with a sparse beard who looked like an ancient Slavic knight, and a dark-haired young man with a rather feminine, pale face and an excessively developed musculature. They were looking at me expectantly.
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