Rubin had rashly gone out into the hallway for a smoke, but not one of his fellow prisoners walked past without an irritating remark. Sick of the pointless argument out there, he crossed the room, hurrying back to his books, but someone on a lower bunk clutched his trouser leg and asked, “Is it true, Lev Grigorievich, that in China stoolies’ letters don’t need stamps? If so, would you call that progressive?” Rubin freed himself abruptly and went on his way. But an electrical engineer, hanging down from a top bunk, caught him by the collar of his overalls and began ramming home his last words on a subject they had argued about before.
“Lev Grigorievich! We have to adjust the conscience of mankind in such a way that people take pride only in the work of their own hands and feel ashamed to be overseers, managers, or party leaders. We must make it so that a minister conceals his rank just like a sewer man conceals his occupation. The minister’s job is no less necessary but is shameful. If a girl marries a state official, let it be a disgrace to her whole family! That’s the sort of socialism I would be content to live under!”
Rubin freed his collar, broke through to his bed, lay on his belly, and went back to his dictionaries.
Chapter 58
A Banquet of Friends
SEVEN MEN WERE SEATED AROUND a festive table made by pushing three lockers of different heights together and covering them with a piece of bright green paper, another prize of war from Lorenz AG. Sologdin and Rubin had joined Potapov on his bed. Abramson and Kondrashov sat by Pryanchikov, and the birthday boy had made himself comfortable on the broad windowsill at the head of the table. Zemelya was already dozing up above, and the other neighbors were missing. The two double bunks and the space between them, cut off from the rest of the room, were like a compartment in a train.
Nadya’s pastry straws, a confection never before seen in the sharashka, were displayed on a plastic dish in the middle of the table, looking comically inadequate for seven male mouths. Then there was ordinary cake, and cake smeared with “crème,” dubbed accordingly “patisserie.” There was also creamy toffee, made by heating an unopened can of condensed milk. Behind Nerzhin’s back lurked a dark liter jar containing the delectable something or other for which the wineglasses were intended. It was made from a few drops of spirits, obtained from the zeks in the chemical laboratory in return for a piece of “quality” insulating material. This was diluted (four parts water to one part spirits) and then colored with cocoa concentrate. The result was a brown liquid of low alcohol content, which was nonetheless impatiently awaited.
“What do you say, gentlemen?” Sologdin, reclining picturesquely, his eyes shining even in the half darkness of the closed compartment, had a suggestion: “Let’s each try and remember when he last sat at a festive board.”
“Yesterday, with the Germans,” Rubin growled. He couldn’t stand sentimentality.
Sologdin’s occasional use of the word “gentlemen” in company was, Rubin thought, a sign that twelve years of imprisonment had addled his brain. It was impossible to believe that any man could pronounce the word seriously thirty-two years after the Revolution. Sologdin had many other freakish notions, which could all be explained in the same way. Rubin tried to keep this in mind and not to flare up even when he found himself listening to something preposterous.
(Abramson, incidentally, thought Rubin’s partying with the Germans no less weird. Internationalism was all very well, but there were limits!)
“No, no,” Sologdin persisted, “I mean a real banquet, gentlemen.” He was glad for any opportunity to use that proud form of address. Since so much more of the earth’s surface was reserved to the “comrades,” it was Sologdin’s view that on the cramped islets where prisons stood, those who did not like the word “gentlemen” must lump it. “The marks of a real banquet are a rich, pale-complexioned tablecloth, wine in cut-glass decanters, and, needless to say, elegant women.”
He wanted to go on savoring the feast in anticipation, but Potapov inspected table and guests with a critical housewife’s eye and interrupted in his grumpy way. “Listen, boys, before ‘Midnight strikes and the unsleeping watch descends’ to catch us with this poison, we’d better move on to the official part of the proceedings.”
He gave Nerzhin the signal to pour.
They were silent, but while the glasses were being filled, memories, welcome and otherwise, crowded in.
“It’s a long time ago,” Nerzhin sighed.
Potapov came out of his trance: “So long I just can’t remember.”
He had some vague recollection of somebody’s wedding in the midst of a mad whirl of work before the war, but he could not be sure whether it was his own or one to which he had been invited.
Pryanchikov woke up. “Well, if you can’t, I can. Avec plaisir. Let me tell you about it. In Paris in 1945, I was—”
Potapov stopped him.
“Wait a bit, Valentulya. Let’s just—”
“To the friend in whose honor we are gathered here!” Kondrashov-Ivanov pronounced the toast more loudly than was necessary, drawing himself up still straighter. “May he be—”
But before the guests could reach for their glasses, Nerzhin raised himself slightly from the sill—there was barely room for him by the window—and said quietly, “My friends! Forgive this departure from tradition, but. . . .”
He took a deep breath; he was agitated. The warmth beamed on him from seven pairs of eyes had forged some purpose within him.
“Let us be fair! Not everything in our lives is black! We have, for instance, this form of happiness, the ease and freedom of high school conviviality; we can exchange thoughts freely, without fear or concealment. Were we so fortunate when we were free?”
“Well, we weren’t free all that often,” Abramson said with a laugh. Childhood apart, he had spent less than half his life at liberty.
“Friends!” Nerzhin warmed to his theme. “I’m thirty-one years old. Life has pampered me at times and plunged me into the depths at others. In accordance with the law of sinusoidal motion, there may yet be sudden surges of hollow success and false greatness ahead of me. But I swear to you that I shall never forget that true human greatness that I have come to know in prison! I am proud that my modest anniversary today has brought together such a select company. Let’s not embarrass ourselves with pompous speeches. Let’s drink to the friendship that flourishes in prison vaults!”
Paper cups soundlessly bumped glass and plastic. Potapov smiled apologetically, straightened his primitive spectacles, and, carefully spacing his words, recited:
The sons of this illustrious clan,
Keen rhetoricians to a man
In anxious Nikita’s house assembled,
Or where discreet Ilya dissembled.
They drank the brown beverage slowly, trying to define its bouquet.
“It’s got a bit of a kick, anyway,” Rubin said approvingly. “Bravo, Andreich.”
“It certainly has,” Sologdin agreed. He was in a mood to praise anything today.
Nerzhin laughed. “A very rare occurrence! Lev and Mitya actually agree about something! I don’t remember it happening before!”
“Oh yes you do.”
“No, Gleb my friend. Don’t you remember Lev and me agreeing around New Year’s sometime that an unfaithful wife can’t be forgiven but an unfaithful husband can?”
Abramson laughed wearily: “Good heavens, what male wouldn’t say yes to that?”
“Well, that specimen over there”—Rubin pointed at Nerzhin—“maintained at the time that a woman could also be forgiven, that there was no difference.”
“You really said that?” Kondrashov asked quickly.
Pryanchikov’s laugh rang out. “What a nut! There’s an enormous difference!”
“The very structure of the body and the means of coupling show that there is an immense difference!” Sologdin exclaimed.
“No, it goes deeper than that,” Rubin protested. “It’s part of nature’s grand design. A man is more or less
indifferent to quality in women but has an instinctive appetite for quantity. Thanks to that, few women are completely overlooked.”
Sologdin raised his hand in a graceful gesture of acknowledgment. “Hence,” he said, “the charitable character of Don Juanism.”
“Well, then, women hanker after quality, if you want to put it that way.” Kondrashov wagged a long finger. “Their unfaithfulness is a quest for quality! That way their progeny is improved!”
Nerzhin defended himself. “Don’t blame me, friends! Look, when I was growing up there were red banners flapping overhead, with ‘Equality’ in golden letters! ‘Equality.’ Since when, of course—”
“Oh no, not equality again!” Sologdin growled.
“What have you got against equality?” Abramson looked indignant.
“Nothing, except that it doesn’t exist in the natural world! People are not ‘born equal’; that’s a myth invented by those idiots . . . those . . . those know-it-alls” (you had to guess that he meant the Encyclopedists). “They had not the least understanding of heredity. People are born unequal spiritually, unequal in willpower, unequal in ability.”
“Unequal in possessions, unequal in social status.” Abramson took up the tale, mimicking Sologdin.
“Well, where did you ever see equality of possessions? Where did you ever manage to create it?” Sologdin was getting heated. “There never was such a thing, and there never will be! It’s unattainable except by beggars and saints!”
Nerzhin interrupted before the argument could become a quarrel.
“Since then, life has hammered a bit more sense into my stupid head, of course, but in those days I thought if nations are equal and human beings are equal, surely men and women must also be equal. In all respects.”
“Nobody’s blaming you!” Kondrashov’s eyes were as emphatic as his words. “Don’t give in too soon!”
“These delusions of yours are pardonable only on account of your youth,” Sologdin ruled. (He was six years older.)
“Theoretically Gleb is right,” Rubin said hesitantly. “I’m ready to break a hundred thousand lances myself for the equality of men and women. But embrace my wife after somebody else has embraced her? Br-r-r! It’s a biological impossibility!”
“If you ask me, gentlemen, it’s ridiculous even talking about it,” Pryanchikov piped, but as usual he wasn’t allowed to have his say.
“There’s a simple solution, Lev Grigorievich,” Potapov said firmly. “You yourself mustn’t embrace anyone except your wife!”
“Well, you know how it is. . . .” Rubin made a gesture of helplessness, and a broad smile lost itself in his piratical beard.
The door opened noisily, and somebody came in. Potapov and Abramson looked around. No, it wasn’t the guard.
“What about it—delenda est Carthago?” Abramson nodded toward the liter jar.
“The sooner the better. Who needs a spell in solitary? Come on Vikentich, pour!”
Nerzhin poured out what was left, scrupulously ensuring that the shares were equal.
“Maybe you’ll allow us to drink a birthday toast now?” Abramson asked.
“No, brothers. As it’s my birthday, I shall claim one privilege—to break with tradition. . . . I saw my wife today. And in her I saw all our tormented, terrorized, and persecuted wives. We put up with our lot because there’s no escape. But what about them? Let’s drink to those who have voluntarily shackled themselves—”
“Yes! To those heroines!” Kondrashov-Ivanov exclaimed.
They drank.
And were silent for a while.
“Look at the snow!” Potapov remarked.
They all looked round. Behind Nerzhin, beyond the misted windows, the snow itself could not be seen, but they glimpsed a flurry of black shadows of snowflakes cast on the prison windows by the lamps and searchlights in the grounds.
Somewhere beyond the curtain of that copious snowfall, there were people, and Nadya Nerzhina was one of them.
“We’re even fated to see the snow as black, not white,” Kondrashov exclaimed.
“We’ve drunk to friendship. We’ve drunk to love! These are fine things, timeless things,” Rubin said.
“As far as love is concerned, I never had any doubt about it. But to tell the truth, before I served at the front and then landed in prison, I didn’t believe in friendship, especially the sort that . . . you know, that makes you ‘lay down your life for a friend.’ In the normal course of things, a man has his family, and that leaves him no room for friendship. Am I right?”
“That’s a view widely held,” Abramson replied. “There’s a song you often hear played by request on the radio: ‘I tread the valley’s even path.’ Just pay attention to the words! It’s one long nauseating whine, the self-pitying moan of a mean spirit:
Friends are friends, and comrades faithful
Only till the dark days come.”
The artist was outraged. “It wouldn’t be worth living a single day longer if you thought like that. Might as well hang yourself!”
“It’s just the opposite, really. Friendship begins when the dark days come.”
“Who wrote it anyway?”
“Merzlyakov.”
“What a name! Who’s Merzlyakov, Lev, old man?”
“Poet. Born twenty years before Pushkin.”
“You know his biography, of course?”
“Professor at Moscow University. Translated Tasso.”
“Is there anything Lev doesn’t know? Except higher mathematics?”
“Yes, elementary mathematics.”
“He keeps on saying, ‘Let’s open the brackets,’ and he thinks the square of a negative number is negative.”
Pryanchikov butted in, sputtering in his eagerness to be heard, like a child at table with adults. “Gentlemen. I feel bound to show you that Merzlyakov was sometimes right!”
He was in no way inferior to his companions; he had a quick mind, was witty and engagingly frank. But he lacked the self-control and composure of a grown man, so that he seemed fifteen years younger than they were, and they treated him like an adolescent.
“It’s a proven fact: The man who eats out of the same dish is the one who betrays you! I had a close friend; he and I escaped from a Nazi concentration camp and hid from search parties together. Later on, I got into the family of a big businessman, and he was introduced to a French countess. . . .”
“Really?” said Sologdin, impressed. Titles like “count” and “prince” still held an irresistible charm for him.
“There’s nothing surprising in that. Some Russian prisoners of war even married marchionesses!”
“You don’t say!”
“Well, when Colonel General Golikov began his repatriation swindle, I wouldn’t go, of course; in fact, I did my best to talk the other Russian idiots out of it, and suddenly I met this best friend of mine. And just imagine, he was the one who betrayed me! gave me up to the Geebees!”††††††
“What a wicked thing!” the artist exclaimed.
“Let me tell you how it was.”
They were nearly all listening to Pryanchikov’s story now. But Sologdin wanted to know how POWs came to marry countesses.
To Rubin it was quite clear that the jolly and amiable Valentulya, with whom it was perfectly possible to be friendly in the sharashka, had, looked at objectively, been a reactionary figure in Western Europe in 1945, and that what he called treachery on the part of a friend (meaning that the friend had assisted Pryanchikov to return involuntarily to his native land) was not treachery but the friend’s patriotic duty.
One story led to another. Potapov remembered the booklet that was handed to every repatriate, “The Motherland Forgives, The Motherland Calls.” It said in black and white that the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet had ruled against the prosecution even of repatriates who had served in the German police. These elegantly produced, profusely illustrated booklets, with their nebulous hints at unspecified adjustments to the collective farm syste
m and the social order in the Soviet Union, were confiscated during the search at the frontier, while the repatriates themselves were put into prison trucks and dispatched to counterespionage headquarters. Potapov had read one of these booklets with his own eyes, and although it had nothing to do with his own decision to return, he found this dirty little trick on the part of an enormous state peculiarly distressing.
Abramson was dozing behind his staring glasses. He had known that there would be all this silly talk. How else could the regime have rounded up that mob?
Rubin and Nerzhin had both spent the first year after the war in counterespionage depots and jails immersed in the stream of POWs flowing in from Europe. They felt as if they had themselves endured four excruciating years in captivity, and they were no longer particularly interested in the stories of repatriates. Instead, they joined in persuading Kondrashov to talk about art. Rubin regarded Kondrashov as a mediocre artist and not very serious person whose views were divorced from economic and historical reality. Yet whenever they conversed, without realizing it himself, Rubin drank in the artist’s words like living water.
Art, to Kondrashov, was not just an occupation or a branch of knowledge. It was the only possible way of life. All that he saw around him—landscapes, objects, people, colors—evoked one of the twenty-four tonalities. (Rubin was labeled “C minor.”) All that he heard or felt—a human voice, the mood of a moment, a novel, a tonality—had a color, and Kondrashov could tell you without hesitation what it was (the key of F-sharp major was dark blue and gold).
In the First Circle Page 55
