‘Pyotr. For obvious reasons I am not able to shake your hand.’
‘No need for that. Well, well, Pyotr, my lad. How did you manage to get yourself into such a mess?’
The eyes that watched me were friendly, even sympathetic, and the goatee beard made him look like an idealistic supporter of the liberal reform movement, but I knew a great deal about the Cheka’s cunning tricks, and my heart remained unstirred by even the slightest flickering of trust.
‘I do not believe that I have got myself into any particular mess,’ I said. ‘But if that is how you choose to put things, then I did not get into it on my own.’
‘Then with whom exactly?’
This is it, I thought, it has begun.
‘If I understand you correctly, you expect me to provide you with details of addresses and hiding places, but I am afraid I shall be obliged to disappoint you. My entire life since childhood is the story of how I have shunned all company, and in such a context one can only speak of other people in terms of a general category, if you take my meaning?’
‘Naturally,’ he said, and wrote something down on a piece of paper. ‘No doubt about that. But there is a contradiction in what you say. First you tell me you didn’t get into your present condition on your own, and then you tell me you shun other people.’
‘Oh, come now,’ I replied, crossing my legs at some risk to my immediate equilibrium, ‘that is merely the appearance of a contradiction. The harder I try to avoid other people’s company, the less successful I am. Incidentally, it was only quite recently that I realized why this is the case. I was walking past St Isaac’s and I looked up at the dome – you know how it is, a frosty night, the stars shining…and I understood.’
‘And what is the reason?’
‘If one tries to run away from other people, one involuntarily ends up actually following in their path throughout the course of one’s life. Running away does not require knowing where one is running to, only what one is running from. Which means that one constantly has to carry before one’s eyes a vision of one’s own prison.’
‘Yes,’ said Timur Timurovich. ‘Yes indeed, when I think of the trouble I’m going to have with you, it terrifies me.’
I shrugged and raised my eyes to the poster above his head. Apparently it was not a brilliant metaphor after all, merely a medical teaching aid, perhaps something taken from an anatomical atlas.
‘You know,’ Timur Timurovich continued, ‘I have a lot of experience. Plenty of people pass through my hands here.’
‘Indeed, I do not doubt it,’ I said.
‘So let me tell you something. I’m less interested in the formal diagnosis than the internal event which has prised someone loose from his normal socio-psychological niche. And as far as I can see, yours is a very straightforward case. You simply will not accept the new. Can you remember how old you are?’
‘Of course. Twenty-six.’
‘There you are, you see. You belong to the very generation that was programmed for life in one socio-cultural paradigm, but has found itself living in a quite different one. Do you follow what I’m saying?’
‘Most definitely,’ I replied.
‘So what we have is a prima facie internal conflict. But let me reassure you straight away that you’re not the only one struggling with this difficulty. I have a similar problem myself.
‘Oh, really?’ I exclaimed in a rather mocking tone. ‘And just how do you deal with it?’
‘We can talk about me later,’ he said, ‘let’s try sorting you out first. As I’ve already said, nowadays almost everyone suffers from the same subconscious conflict. What I want you to do is to recognize its nature. You know, the world around us is reflected in our consciousness and then it becomes the object of our mental activity. When established connections in the real world collapse, the same thing happens in the human psyche. And this is accompanied by the release of a colossal amount of psychic energy within the enclosed space of your ego. It’s like a small atomic explosion. But what really matters is how the energy is channelled after the explosion.’
The conversation was taking a curious turn.
‘And what channels, if I may ask, are available?’
‘If we keep it simple, there are two. Psychic energy can move outwards, so to speak, into the external world, striving towards objects like…well, shall we say, a leather jacket or a luxury automobile. Many of your contemporaries…’
I remembered Vorblei and shuddered. ‘I understand. Please do not continue.’
‘Excellent. In the other case, for one reason or another, this energy remains within. This is the less favourable course of events. Imagine a bull locked inside a museum…’
‘An excellent image.’
‘Thank you. Well then, this museum, with its fragile and possibly beautiful exhibits, is your personality, your inner world. And the bull rushing about inside it is the release of psychic energy that you are unable to cope with. The reason why you are here.’
He really is very clever, I thought – but what an utter scoundrel!
‘I can tell you more,’ continued Timur Timurovich. ‘I’ve given a great deal of thought as to why some people have the strength to start a new life – for want of a better term, we can call them the “New Russians”, although I detest that expression…’
‘Indeed, it is quite repulsive. And also inaccurate; if you are quoting the revolutionary democrats of the last century, then I believe that they called them the new people.’
‘Possibly. But the question remains the same: why do some people actively strive, as it were, towards the new, while others persist in their attempts to clarify their non-existent relations with the shadows of a vanished world?’
‘Now that really is magnificent. You’re a genuine poet.’
‘Thank you once again. The answer, in my view, is very simple – I’m afraid you might even find it rather primitive. Let me build up to it. The life of a man, a country, a culture and so on, is a series of constant metamorphoses. Sometimes they extend over a period of time and so are imperceptible, sometimes they assume acute forms, as in the present case. And it is precisely the attitude to these metamorphoses that determines the fundamental difference between cultures. For instance, China, the culture you are so crazy about…’
‘What makes you think that?’ I asked, feeling my tightly bound hands clench into fists behind my back.
‘Your case history,’ said Timur Timurovich, picking up the very fattest of the files on his desk. ‘I was just leafing through it.’
He threw the file back down again. ‘Yes, China. As you may recall, their entire world view is constructed on the principle that the world is constantly degenerating as it moves from a golden age towards darkness and stagnation. For them, absolute standards have been left far behind in the past, and all that is new is evil insofar as it leads the world still further away from those standards.’
‘I beg your pardon,’ I said, ‘but this is a typical aspect of human culture in general. It is even present in language itself. In English, for instance, we are the descendants of the past. The word signifies movement downwards, not upwards. We are not ascendants.’
‘Possibly,’ Timur Timurovich answered. ‘I don’t know any foreign languages except Latin. But that’s not the point here. When this type of consciousness is embodied in an individual personality, then the person concerned begins to regard his childhood as a lost paradise. Take Nabokov. His endless musings on the early years of his life are a classic example of what I’m talking about. And the classic example of recovery, of the reorientation of consciousness to the real world is the contra-sublimation, as I would call it, that he achieved in such a masterly fashion by transforming his longing for an unattainable paradise which may never have existed at all into a simple, earthly and somewhat illegitimate passion for a little girl, a child. Although at first…’
‘Excuse me,’ I interrupted, ‘but which Nabokov are you talking about? The leader of the Constitutional Dem
ocrats?’
Timur Timurovich smiled with emphatic politeness. ‘No,’ he said, ‘his son.’
‘Little Vovka from the Tenishevsky school? You mean you have picked him up as well? But he’s in the Crimea! And what kind of nonsense is all this about little girls?’
‘Very well, very well. He’s in the Crimea,’ Timur Timurovich replied briskly. ‘In the Crimea. But we were talking about China. And the fact that for the classic Chinese mentality, any advance is bound to mean degeneration. But there is another path, the one followed by Europe throughout its history, no matter what you might tell me about language. The path that Russia has been struggling to follow for so many years, as it enters again and again into its ill-fated alchemical wedlock with the West.’
‘Remarkable.’
‘Thank you. In this case the ideal is conceived not as something left behind in the past, but as something potentially existing in the future. Do you understand me? This is the idea of development, progress, movement from the less perfect to the more perfect. The same thing occurs at the level of the individual personality, even if individual progress takes such petty forms as redecorating an apartment or changing an old car for a new one. It makes it possible to carry on living – but you don’t want to pay for any of this. The metaphorical bull we were talking about rushes about in your soul, trampling everything in its path, precisely because you are not prepared to submit to reality. You don’t want to let the bull out. You despise the positions that the times require us to adopt. And precisely this is the cause of your tragedy.’
‘What you say is interesting, of course, but far too complicated,’ I said, casting a sideways glance at the man in military trousers over by the wall. ‘And now my hands have gone numb. As for progress, I can easily provide you with a brief explanation of what that is.’
‘Please do so.’
‘It is very simple. If we put everything that you were saying in a nutshell, then we are left with the simple fact that some people adapt themselves to change more quickly than others. But have you ever asked yourself why these changes take place at all?’
Timur Timurovich shrugged.
‘Then let me tell you. You would not, I trust, deny that the more cunning and dishonourable a man is, the easier his life is?’
‘No, I wouldn’t.’
‘And his life is easier precisely because he adapts more rapidly to change?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Well then, there exists a level of dishonourable cunning, my dear sir, at which a man anticipates the outcome of change even before it is completed, and as a result he is able to adapt far more rapidly than everyone else. But far worse than that, the most sensitive of scoundrels actually adapt to change before it has even begun.’
‘What of it?’
‘In actual fact, all the changes that happen in the world only take place because of such highly sensitive scoundrels. Because, in reality, they do not anticipate the future at all, but shape it, by creeping across to occupy the quarter from which they think the wind will blow. Following which, the wind has no option but to blow from that very quarter.’
‘Why is that?’
‘It is obvious, surely. As I told you, I am speaking of the most villainous, sly and shameless of scoundrels. Surely you can believe them capable of persuading everyone else that the wind is blowing from the precise quarter in which they have established themselves? Especially since this wind we are talking about blows only within this idiom of ours…But now I am talking too much. In all honesty, I had intended to keep silent right up to the final shot.’
The officer sitting by the wall grunted suddenly and gave Timur Timurovich a meaningful glance.
‘I haven’t introduced you,’ said Timur Timurovich. ‘This is Major Smirnov, a military psychiatrist. He is here for other reasons, but your case has attracted his interest.’
‘I am flattered, Major,’ I said, inclining my head in his direction.
Timur Timurovich leaned over his telephone and pressed a button. ‘Sonya, four cc’s as usual, please,’ he spoke into the receiver. ‘Here in my office, while he’s in the jacket. Yes, and then straight into the ward.’
Turning to me, Timur Timurovich sighed sadly and scratched his beard.
‘We’ll have to continue the course of medication for the time being,’ he said. ‘I tell you honestly, I regard it as a defeat. A small one, but nonetheless a defeat. I believe that a good psychiatrist should avoid using medication, it’s – how can I explain it to you? – it’s cosmetic. It doesn’t solve any of the problems, it merely conceals them from view. But in your case I can’t think of anything better. You’ll have to help me. If you want to save a drowning man, it’s not enough just to reach out to him, he has to offer his hand too.’
The door opened behind me and I heard quiet footsteps, then gentle woman’s hands grasped me by the shoulder and I felt the small cold sting of a needle piercing my skin through the cloth of the strait-jacket.
‘By the way,’ said Timur Timurovich, rubbing his hands as though to warm them, ‘one small comment; in madhouse slang the term “final shot” isn’t used for what we’re injecting you with, that is, an ordinary mixture of aminazine and perevitine. It’s reserved for the so-called sulphazine cross, that is, four injections in…But then, I hope we’re never going to reach that stage.’
I did not turn my head to look at the woman who had given me the injection. I looked at the dismembered red-white-and-blue man on the poster, and when he began looking back at me, smiling and winking, I heard Timur Timurovich’s voice coming from somewhere very far away:
‘Yes, straight to the ward. No, he won’t cause any problems. There may be at least some effect…He’ll be going through the same procedure himself soon enough.’
Somebody’s hands (I think they belonged to Zherbunov and Barbolin again) pulled the shirt off my body, picked me up by the arms and dumped me like a sack of sand on to some kind of stretcher. Then the door-frame flashed past my eyes and we were in the corridor.
My unfeeling body floated past tall white doors with numbers on them, and behind me I could hear the distorted voices and laughter of the sailors in doctors’ coats, who appeared to be conducting a scurrilous conversation about women. Then I saw Timur Timurovich’s face peering down at me – apparently he had been walking along beside me.
‘We’ve decided to put you back in the Third Section,’ he said. ‘At present there are four others in there, so you’ll make five. Do you know anything about Kanashnikov group therapy? My group therapy, that is?’
‘No,’ I mumbled with difficulty.
The flickering of the doors as they passed me had become quite unbearable, and I closed my eyes.
‘To put it simply, it means patients pooling their efforts in the struggle for recovery. Imagine that for a time your problems become the collective problems, that for a certain time everyone taking part in a session shares your condition. They all identify with you, so to speak. What do you think the result of that would be?’
I did not answer.
‘It’s very simple,’ Timur Timurovich went on. ‘When the session comes to an end, a reaction sets in as the participants withdraw from the state that they have been experiencing as reality; you could call it exploiting man’s innate herd instinct in the service of medicine. Your ideas and your mood might infect the others taking part in the session for a certain time, but as soon as the session comes to an end, they return to their own manic obsessions, leaving you isolated. And at that moment – provided the pathological psychic material has been driven up to the surface by the process of catharsis – the patient can become aware of the arbitrary subjectivity of his own morbid notions and can cease to identify with them. And from that point recovery is only a short step away.’
I did not follow the meaning of his words very clearly, assuming, that is, that there was any. But nonetheless, something stuck in my mind. The effect of the injection was growing stronger and stronger. I could no longer see a
nything around me, my body had become almost totally insensitive, and my spirit was immersed in a dull, heavy indifference. The most unpleasant thing about this mood was that it did not seem to have taken possession of me, but of some other person – the person into whom the injected substance had transformed me. I was horrified to sense that this other person actually could be cured.
‘Of course you can recover,’ Timur Timurovich confirmed. ‘And we will cure you, have no doubt about it. Just forget the very notion of a madhouse. Treat it all as an interesting adventure. Especially since you’re a literary man. I sometimes encounter things here that are just begging to be written down. What’s coming up now, for instance – we’re due for an absolutely fascinating event in your ward, a group session with Maria. You do remember who I’m talking about?’
I shook my head.
‘No, of course not, of course not. But it’s an extremely interesting case. I’d call it a psychodrama of genuinely Shakespearean proportions, the clash of such apparently diverse objects of consciousness as a Mexican soap opera, a Hollywood blockbuster and our own young, rootless Russian democracy. Do you know the Mexican television serial Just Maria? So you don’t remember that either. I see. Well, in a word, the patient has taken on the role of the heroine, Maria herself. It would be a quite banal case, if not for the subconscious identification with Russia, plus the Agamemnon complex with the anal dynamics. In short, it’s exactly my field, a split false identity.’
Oh, God, I thought, how long the corridors here are.
‘Of course, you won’t be in any fit state to take a proper part in the proceedings,’ Timur Timurovich’s voice continued, ‘so you can sleep. But don’t forget that soon it will be your turn to tell your own story.’
I think we must have entered a room – a door squeaked and I caught a fragment of interrupted conversation. Timur Timurovich spoke a word of greeting to the surrounding darkness and several voices answered him. Meanwhile I was transferred to an invisible bed, a pillow was tucked under my head and a blanket thrown over me. For a while I paid attention to the disembodied phrases that reached my ears – Timur Timurovich was explaining to somebody why I had been absent for so long; then I lost contact with what was happening, being visited instead by a quite momentous hallucination of an intimately personal character.
Buddha's Little Finger Page 5
