The atmosphere of a madhouse obviously must install submissiveness into a person. Nobody even thought of expressing indignation or saying that it was impossible to spend so many hours on end drawing Aristotle. Maria was the only one to mutter something dark and incomprehensible under his breath. I noticed that he had woken in a bad mood. Possibly he had had a dream, for immediately on waking he began to study his reflection in the mirror. He did not seem to like what he saw very much, and he spent several minutes massaging the skin under his eyes and running his fingers round them.
Arriving very late in the practical aesthetics room, he made not the slightest pretence of drawing Aristotle as everyone else, including myself, was doing. Taking a seat in the corner he wound a yellow ribbon round his head, evidently intended to protect his hair against the winds raging in his psychological space, and began looking us up and down as if he had never seen us before.
There may not have been any wind in the room, but dark clouds certainly seemed to have gathered there. Volodin and Serdyuk did not pay the slightest attention to Maria, and I decided that I had been mistaken to attach so much weight to minor details. But the silence oppressed me nonetheless, and I decided to break it.
‘I beg your pardon, Mr Serdyuk, but will you not be offended if I attempt to engage you in conversation?’ I inquired.
‘Certainly not, indeed.’ Serdyuk replied politely, ‘by all means, do so.’
‘I hope very much that you will not find my question tactless, but can you tell me what it was that brought you here?’
‘Otherworldliness,’ said Serdyuk.
‘Indeed? But can one really be hospitalized for otherworldliness?’
Serdyuk measured me up with a long glance.
‘They registered it as suicidal vagrancy syndrome arising from delirium tremens. Although no one has any idea what that is.’
‘Tell me more about it,’ I asked.
‘What is there to tell? I was just lying there in a basement out on the Nagornoe road - for entirely personal and highly important reasons. I was fully and agonizingly conscious. Then this copper with a torch and an automatic appeared. Wanted to see my documents, so I showed him. Then, of course, he asked for money. I gave him all I had - about twenty roubles. He took the money, but kept on hanging about, wouldn’t go away. I should have just turned to face the wall and forgotten about him, but I had to go and start up a conversation; what d’you mean poking your porkies out at me like that, are you short of bandits upstairs or something? This pig turns out to be fond of talking -1 found out later he’d graduated from the philosophy faculty. No, he says, there’s more than enough of them up there, only they’re not disturbing the social order. What d’you mean by that, I asked him. Well, he says, your ordinary bandit, what is he? Sure, take a look at him and you can see that all he’s got on his mind is how he can find someone to kill and rob, but so what? And the guy who’s just been robbed, he’s not breaking any laws either. He just lies there with his fractured skull and thinks - so now I’ve gone and got robbed. And you’re lying down I here - he’s talking to me now - and I can see you’re thinking about something… Like you don’t believe in anything around you. Or at least you have your doubts.’
‘So what did you say?’
‘What did I say?’ echoed Serdyuk. ‘I only went and told him that maybe I did have my doubts. The sages of the East all told us that this world is an illusion - I just mentioned the sages of the East in a way he’d be able to handle, on his own primitive level. Then he suddenly goes all red and says to me: «What the hell’s going on here? I wrote my diploma on Hegel, and here you’ve read something in Science and Religion and you think you can crawl into some basement and lie around doubting the reality of the world?» In short, first they ragged me round to the station, and then round here. I had a scratch on my belly - I cut myself on a broken bottle - so I hey registered that as attempted suicide.’
‘What I’d do with anyone who doubts the reality of the world,’ Maria unexpectedly interrupted, ‘is put them away for ever. They don’t belong in the madhouse, they should be in prison. Or worse.’
‘And why’s that?’ asked Serdyuk.
‘You want an explanation?’ Maria asked in an unfriendly voice. ‘Come over here and I’ll give you one,’
Getting up from his place beside the door, he went over to the window, waited for Serdyuk and then pointed outside with his muscular arm.
‘See that Mercedes-6oo standing over there?’
‘Yes,’ said Serdyuk.
‘Are you telling me that’s an illusion too?’
‘Very probably.’
‘You know who drives around in that illusion? The commercial director of our madhouse. He’s called Vovchik Maloi, and his nickname’s «the Nietzschean». Have you seen him around?’
‘Yes.’
‘What do you think of him?’
‘It’s obvious. He’s a bandit.’
‘So think about it - that bandit could have killed a dozen people to buy himself a car like that. Are you telling me they all gave their lives for nothing, if it’s only an illusion? Why don’t you say something? Can’t you see where that leads?’
‘Yes, I can see.’ Serdyuk said gloomily and went back to his chair.
Maria apparently felt a sudden desire to draw. Picking up his drawing-board from the corner, he sat down beside the rest of us.
‘No.’ he said, peering through half-closed eyes at the bust of Aristotle, ‘if you want to get out of here some time, you have to read the newspapers and experience real feelings while you’re doing it. And not start doubting the reality of the world. Under Soviet power we were surrounded by illusions. But now the world has become real and knowable. Understand?’
Serdyuk went on drawing without speaking.
‘Well, don’t you agree?’
‘It’s hard to say,’ Serdyuk replied gloomily. ‘I don’t agree that it’s real. But as for it being knowable, I guessed that for myself a long time ago. From the smell.’
‘Gentlemen.’ I intervened, sensing that a quarrel was ripening and attempting to lead the conversation into neutral territory, ‘do you have any idea why it’s Aristotle we are drawing in particular?’
‘So it’s Aristotle, is it?’ said Maria. ‘I thought he looked pretty serious. God knows why. Probably the first thing they came across in the junk-room.’
‘Don’t be stupid, Maria,’ said Volodin. ‘Nothing happens by accident in here. Just a moment ago you were calling things by their real names. What are we all doing here in the madhouse? They want to bring us back to reality. And the reason we’re sitting here drawing this Aristotle is because he is that reality with the Mercedes-6oos that you, Maria, wanted to be discharged into.’
‘So before him it didn’t exist?’ asked Maria.
‘No, it didn’t.’ snapped Volodin.
‘How so?’
‘You won’t understand.’ said Volodin.
‘You just try explaining,’ said Maria. ‘Maybe I will understand.’
‘Okay, you tell me why the Mercedes is real.’ said Volodin.
Maria struggled painfully with his thoughts for a few seconds.
‘Because it’s made of iron.’ he said, ‘that’s why. And you can go up to the iron and touch it.’
‘So you’re telling me that it’s rendered real by a certain substance of which it consists?’
Maria thought.
‘Yeah, more or less,’ he said.
‘Well, that’s why we’re drawing Aristotle. Because before him there was no substance.’ said Volodin.
‘What was there then?’
‘There was the number one heavenly automobile.’ said Volodin, ‘compared with which your Mercedes-6oo is nothing but a heap of shit. This heavenly automobile was absolutely perfect. And every single concept and image relating to automobiles was contained in it and it alone. And the so-called real automobiles that drove around the roads in ancient Greece were no more than its imperfect shadows. Projections, so to speak.
Understand?’
‘Yeah. So what came next?’
‘Next came Aristotle and he said that of course the number one heavenly automobile existed, and of course all the earthly automobiles were simply its distorted reflections in the dim and crooked mirror of existence. At that time there was no way you could argue with all that. But, said Aristotle, in addition to the prototype and the reflection, there is one other thing. The material that takes the form of the automobile. Substance, possessing an existence of its own. Iron, as you called it. And it was this substance that made the world real. This entire fucking market economy started up from it. Because before then all the things on earth were merely reflections, and what reality can a reflection have, I ask you? The only reality is what makes the reflections.’
‘You know,’ I said quietly, ‘that really is quite a big question.’
Volodin ignored what I had said.
‘Understand?’ he asked Maria.
‘Yeah.’ Maria answered.
‘What do you understand?’
‘I understand that you’re a psycho all right. How could they have automobiles in ancient Greece?’
‘Ugh.’ said Volodin, ‘how petty and precisely correct. They really will discharge you soon.’
‘God willing.’ said Maria,
Serdyuk raised his head and looked attentively at Maria.
‘You know, Maria,’ he said, ‘just recently you’ve turned real bitchy. In the spiritual sense.’
‘I’ve got to get out of here, don’t you understand? I don’t want to spend all my life stuck in here. Who’s going to want me ten years from now?’
‘You’re a fool, Maria.’ Serdyuk said scornfully. ‘Can’t you understand that the love you and Arnold have can only exist in here?’
‘You watch your mouth, stork-face! Or I’ll smash this bust over your stupid head.’
‘Go on, just you try it, you berk,’ said Serdyuk, rising from his chair with a face that had turned pale. ‘Just you try it!’
‘I won’t have to try.’ answered Maria, also rising to his feet. Til just do it, that’s all. People get killed for saying things like that.’
He stepped towards the table and took hold of the bust:
What followed lasted no more than a few seconds. Volodin and I leapt up from our seats. Volodin wrapped his arms around Serdyuk, who was advancing on Maria. Maria’s face twisted in a grimace of fury; he raised the bust above his head, swung it back and stepped towards Serdyuk. I pushed Maria away and saw that Volodin had seized Serdyuk in such a way that his arms were pinned to his body, and if Maria were to strike him with the bust, he would not even be able to protect himself with his hands. I tried to pull Volodin’s hands apart where they were clasped on Serdyuk’s chest. Meanwhile Serdyuk had closed his eyes and was smiling blissfully. Suddenly I noticed that Volodin was staring aghast over my shoulder. I turned my head and saw a lifeless plaster face with dusty wall-eyes slowly descending out of a fly-spotted sky.
5
The bust of Aristotle was the only thing I retained in my memory when I came round, although I am far from certain that the expression ‘to come round’ is entirely appropriate. Ever since my childhood I have sensed in it a certain shame-laced ambiguity. Round what exactly? To where? And, most intriguing of all, from where? Nothing, in short, but a cheating sleight of hand, like the card-sharps on the Volga steamers. As I grew older, I came to understand that the words ‘to come round’ actually mean ‘to come round to other people’s point of view’, because no sooner is one born than these other people begin explaining just how hard one must try to force oneself to assume a form which they find acceptable.
However, that is not the point. I regard the expression as not entirely appropriate to describe my condition because when I awoke I did not do so completely - instead, I became aware of myself, so to speak, in that non-material world familiar to everyone on the borderline between sleep and wakefulness, where one’s surroundings consist of visions and thoughts which momentarily arise and dissolve in consciousness, while the person around whom they arise is entirely absent. One usually flits through this state instantaneously, but for some reason I remained stuck in it for several long seconds; my thoughts were mostly of Aristotle. They were incoherent and almost entirely meaningless; the ideological great-grandfather of Bolshevism was not the object of any particular sympathy on my part, but neither did I feel any personal hatred for him as a consequence of the previous day’s events - the concept of substance which he had invented was evidently insufficiently substantial to have inflicted upon me any truly serious damage. Curiously enough, in my half-dreaming state I was furnished with the most convincing of proofs for this - when the bust shattered into shards under the force of the blow, it proved to have been hollow all the time.
If I had been struck on the head with a bust of Plato, I thought, then the result would have been far more serious. At this point I remembered that I had a head, the final fragments of sleep scattered and evaporated, and events began to follow the normal sequence of human awakening, as it became apparent that all of these thoughts had their existence inside the head, and that the head in question was aching intolerably.
I opened my eyes cautiously.
The first thing that I saw was Anna, sitting close to my bed. She had not noticed that I had woken, probably because she was absorbed in reading - there was a volume of Knut Hamsun lying open in her hands. I watched her for some time through my eyelashes. I was unable to add anything substantial to my first impression of her, but no additions were necessary: perhaps her beauty appeared even more tormenting in its indifferent perfection. I thought with sadness that when a woman like her does fall in love with a man it is always either a commercial traveller with a moustache or some red-faced artillery major - the mechanism is the same as that by which the most beautiful schoolgirls are bound to choose ugly friends. It is not, of course, a matter of wishing to emphasize their own beauty by means of the contrast (an explanation on the level of Ivan Bunin), but of compassion.
There were some changes in her, however. Her hair seemed to be shorter and a little lighter, but that was probably a trick of the light. Instead of the previous day’s dark dress she was wearing a strange semi-military uniform - a black skirt and a loose sandy-coloured tunic, dappled now with trembling rainbow spots of colour from a ray of sunlight that was split as it passed through the carafe that stood on a table, which stood in turn in a room I had never seen before. But the most astonishing thing was that outside the window it was summer - through the pane I could see what appeared to be the silvery-green crowns of poplars soaring upwards through the noonday heat.
This room in which I was lying reminded me of a suite in an inexpensive provincial hotel; a small table, two firmly upholstered armchairs, a washbasin on the wall and a lamp with a shade. One thing it did not resemble in the slightest, however, was the compartment of the train hurtling through the winter night in which I had fallen asleep the previous evening.
I propped myself up on my elbow. My movement evidently took Anna entirely by surprise - she dropped her book on the floor and stared at me in confusion.
‘Where am I?’ I asked, sitting up in bed.
‘For God’s sake, lie down,’ she said, leaning towards me. I very thing is all right. You are safe.’
The gentle pressure of her hands forced me back down on to the bed.
‘But may I not at least know where I am? And why it is suddenly summer?’
‘Yes.’ she said, going back to her chair, ‘it is summer. Do you not remember anything at all?’
‘I remember everything perfectly well,’ I said. ‘I simply cannot understand how it happens that one moment I was ruling in a train and now suddenly I find myself in this room.’
‘You began talking quite often while you were delirious.’ she said, ‘but you never once came round fully. Most of the time you were in a coma.’
‘What coma? I remember that we were drinking champagne, and Chaliapin was sin
ging… Or was it the weavers. And then that strange gentleman… Comrade… In short, Chapaev. Chapaev uncoupled the carriages.’
Anna must have stared doubtfully into my eyes for an entire minute.
‘How strange,’ she said at last.
‘What is strange?’
‘That you should remember precisely that. And afterwards?’
‘Afterwards?’
‘Yes, afterwards. For instance, do you remember the Battle of Lozovaya Junction?’
‘No.’ I said.
‘Or what came before that?’
‘Before that?’
‘Yes, before that. At Lozovaya you were already commanding a squadron.’
‘What squadron?’
‘Petya, at Lozovaya you distinguished yourself. If you had not moved in from the left flank with your cavalry squadron, they would have wiped us all out.’
‘What is the date today?’
‘The third of June.’ she said. ‘I know that such instances do occur in cases of head wounds, but… I could understand it if you had lost your memory completely, but this strange selectivity is quite astonishing. But then, I am not a doctor. Perhaps this is also part of the normal order of things.’
I raised my hands to my head and shuddered - it was as though my palms had touched a billiard ball that had sprouted short stubble. I had been completely shorn, like a typhus case. And there was also something strange, some kind of hairless projection running through the skin. I ran my fingers along it and realized that it was a long scar lying diagonally right across my skull. It felt as though a section of a leather belt had been glued to my scalp with gum arable.
‘Shrapnel.’ said Anna. ‘The scar is impressive, but it is nothing to worry about. The bullet only grazed you. But the concussion is apparently rather more serious.’
‘When did it happen?’ I asked.
‘On the second of April.’
‘And since then I have not recovered consciousness?’
‘Several times. But for just a few moments, no more.’
I closed my eyes and tried to conjure up a memory of at least some of what Anna had spoken about. But the darkness into which I gazed held nothing except the streaks and spots of light that appeared behind my eyelids.
Buddha's Little Finger Page 13
