I do not know quite how long I spent alone with my conscience, but at some point my attention was caught again by the monotonous voice of Timur Timurovich.
‘Watch the ball closely, Maria. You are quite calm. If your mouth feels dry, it’s only because of the injection you were given – it will soon pass. Can you hear me?’
‘Yes,’ came the reply, in what seemed to me more like a high male voice than a low female one.
‘Who are you?’
‘Maria,’ answered the voice.
‘What’s your surname?’
‘Just Maria.’
‘How old are you?’
‘They say I look eighteen,’ replied the voice.
‘Do you know where you are?’
‘Yes. In a hospital.’
‘And what brought you here?’
‘It was the crash, what else? I don’t understand how I survived at all. I couldn’t possibly have guessed he was that kind of man.’
‘What did you crash into?’
‘The Ostankino television tower.’
‘I see. And how did it happen?’
‘It’s a long story.’
‘That’s all right,’ Timur Timurovich said kindly, ‘we’re not in any hurry, we have time to listen. How did it all begin?’
‘It began when I went for a walk along the embankment.’
‘And where were you before that?’
‘I wasn’t anywhere before that.’
‘All right, carry on.’
‘Well then, I’m walking, you know, just walking along, and all around me there’s some kind of smoke. And the further I go, the more there is…’
I suddenly realized that the longer I tried to listen to the words, the harder it was to make out their meaning. It felt as though the meaning were attached to them by pieces of string, which kept getting longer and longer. I found myself unable to keep up with the conversation, but that was not important, because at the same time I began to see the wavering outline of a picture – a river embankment enveloped in clouds of smoke and a woman with broad muscular shoulders walking along it, looking more like a man dressed in women’s clothes. I knew that she was called Maria and I could see her, and see the world through her eyes at the same time. A moment later I realized that in some way I was perceiving everything that she was thinking and feeling: she was thinking that however hard she tried, this walk was never going to lead to anything; the sunny morning at the beginning of which she had arrived in this world of suffering had given way to this unholy mess, and it had happened so smoothly that she had not even noticed.
At first there was a smell of burning in the air, and Maria thought that someone somewhere must be burning fallen leaves. Then the first smell became mingled with that of scorched rubber, and soon she was swamped by a fog-like smoke that grew thicker and thicker until it hid everything from sight apart from the iron railings along the embankment and the few yards of space immediately around her.
Soon Maria felt as though she were walking through a long hall in an art gallery: in their trite ordinariness the segments of the surrounding world which appeared from time to time out of the all-enveloping gloom looked very much like bizarrely fashioned works of modern art. Drifting out of the gloom towards her came signboards bearing the words ‘Bureau de Change’, benches scored all over by penknives and a vast quantity of empty cans, bearing witness to the fact that the generation next still chooses beer.
Groups of agitated men carrying automatic rifles emerged from the mist and then disappeared back into it. They pretended not to notice Maria and she reacted in the same way. She already had more than enough people to remember her and think of her. How many was it – millions? Tens of millions? Maria didn’t know the exact number of them, but she was sure that if all the hearts in which fate had inscribed her name were to beat in unison, then their combined beating would be much louder than the deafening explosions she could hear from the other side of the river.
Maria looked round and screwed up her radiant eyes as she tried to understand what was going on.
Every now and then from somewhere close by – because of the smoke she couldn’t see exactly where – there was a thunderous crash; the booming sound was followed immediately by the barking of dogs and the roaring of a multitude of voices, like the noise from the crowd when a goal is scored at the stadium. Maria didn’t know what to make of it. Perhaps they were shooting a film near the White House on the other bank of the river, or perhaps some new Russians were squabbling about which of them was the newest. I wish they’d get on with it and finish dividing everything up, she thought. How many more of our handsome young men must we see fall on the roadway and spill out their heart’s blood on the asphalt?
Maria began thinking about how she could lighten the unbearable burden of this life for everyone who was writhing, God knows for what reason, in the grip of these black coils of smoke that obscured the sky and the sun. Her head was filled with clear, bright, uncomplicated images – there she was in a simple dress, entering a modest flat tidied specially for the occasion by its occupants. And there they were, sitting at the table with the samovar and gazing at her lovingly, and she knew that she didn’t have to say anything, all she had to do was sit opposite them and gaze tenderly back, paying as little attention as she could to the whirring of the camera. And there was a hospital ward full of people all bandaged up and lying on uncomfortable beds, and there was her image hanging on the wall in a place where everyone could see it. They gazed at her from their beds and for a while they forgot all about their woes, their aches and pains…
This was all wonderful, but she vaguely realized that it was not enough. No, what the world needed was a strong hand, stern and unrelenting, capable of resisting evil whenever the need arose. But where was this strength to be found? And what would it look like? These were questions Maria couldn’t answer, but she sensed that they were the very reason why she was walking along this embankment in this city that was expiring in its suffering.
For a second a puff of wind dispersed the smoke surrounding Maria and a ray of sunshine fell on her. Shielding her face with her hand, she suddenly understood where she should seek the answer. Of course, it lay in those innumerable hearts and minds that had summoned her and incarnated her here, on this smoky embankment. Through the millions of pairs of eyes staring at their television screens, they were fused into a single oceanic consciousness, and this entire ocean lay open to her gaze. She looked across it, at first seeing nothing that might help her. But no, of course there was an image of all-conquering power reflected in this consciousness, and in most cases its form was much the same: the figure of a young man with a small head and wide shoulders, wearing a double-breasted crimson sports jacket and standing beside a long, low-slung automobile with his feet planted wide apart. The image of the automobile was a little bit vague and somehow blurred, because all the people whose souls Maria could see imagined it in different ways. The young man’s face was much the same, it was a very generalized face, and only the hairstyle, a slightly curly chestnut-brown crew cut, was rather more clearly defined. The jacket, however, was drawn with quite remarkable precision, and with a little effort Maria could even have managed to read the words on its gold buttons. But she didn’t try. It didn’t matter what was written on the buttons, what mattered was how this all-conquering power could be united with her own meek and gentle love.
Maria stopped and leaned on one of the low granite posts that punctuated the iron railings of the fence. Once again she had to seek an answer in the minds and hearts that had placed their trust in her, but this time – Maria was quite certain of this – the lowest common denominators of thought would not do. What was needed…
There must be at least one intelligent woman out there, she thought.
And the intelligent woman appeared almost immediately. Maria didn’t know who she was, or even what she looked like, she just caught a glimpse of tall bookshelves, a desk with heaps of papers and a typewriter, and a pho
tograph hanging over the desk showing a man with an enormous curling moustache and intense, moody eyes. It was all in flickering, hazy black and white, as though Maria were viewing it from inside an ancient television with a screen the size of a cigarette packet that was standing somewhere off in the corner of the room. But the images disappeared too quickly for Maria to reflect on what she had seen, and then they were replaced by thoughts.
Maria understood almost nothing at all in the swirling vortex of ideas that appeared before her; apart from anything else, it was somehow musty and oppressive, like the cloud that appears when you disturb the dust of a long-forgotten lumber room. Maria decided she must be dealing with a consciousness that was extremely cluttered and not entirely normal, and she felt very relieved when it was all over. The catch netted by the pink void of her soul consisted of words whose meanings were not entirely clear – there was a brief glimpse of the word ‘Bridegroom’ (for some reason, with a capital letter), and then the word ‘Visitor’ (another capital letter), followed by the incomprehensible words ‘Alchemical Wedlock’ and after that the totally obscure phrase, sounding like a snatch of Silver Age poetry: ‘all repose is vain, I knock at the gates’. With this the thoughts ended, and then there was another brief glimpse of the man with the ecstatic eyes and the long, droopy moustache which looked like a beard growing from right under his nose.
She looked around her in bewilderment. Still more or less surrounded by smoke, she thought that perhaps somewhere close by there might be a gate she was supposed to knock at, and she took several timid steps through the murk. Immediately she was enveloped by total darkness on every side, and felt so afraid that she scurried back on to the embankment, where at least a little light remained.
And if I do knock, she thought, will anybody actually open the gate? Hardly.
Behind her Maria heard the quiet growling of a car engine. She pressed herself against the railings of the embankment and waited apprehensively to see what would emerge from the smoke. Several seconds went by, and then a long black automobile slowly swam past her, a ‘Chaika’ decorated with ribbons of various colours – she realized it was a wedding car. It was full of silent, serious-looking people; the barrels of several automatic rifles protruded from the windows and on the roof there were two gleaming yellow rings, one larger and one smaller.
Maria watched the ‘Chaika’ as it drove away, then suddenly slapped herself on the forehead. But of course, now she understood. Yes – that was it. Two interlinked rings – Bridegroom, Visitor, Sponsor. She still couldn’t understand what alchemical wedlock was supposed to be, but if anything untoward happened, she had a good lawyer. Maria shook her head and smiled. It was so simple, how could she have failed to see the most important thing of all for so long? What could she have been thinking of?
She looked around, orientating herself approximately by the sun, and held out her arms towards the West – somehow it seemed clear that the Bridegroom would appear from that direction.
‘Come!’ she prayed in a whisper, and immediately she could sense that a new presence had appeared in the world.
Now all she had to do was wait for the meeting to take place. She ran on joyfully, sensing the distance between herself and the Bridegroom diminishing. Like her, he already knew, he was walking towards her along this very embankment – but unlike her he wasn’t hurrying, because it wasn’t in his nature to hurry.
Miraculously managing to leap across an open manhole that appeared suddenly out of the smoke, Maria slowed down and began feverishly rummaging in her pockets. She had suddenly realized that she had no mirror and no make-up with her. For a moment she was plunged into despair, and she even tried to recall whether she had passed a puddle in which she could view her own reflection. But then, when she remembered that she could appear to her beloved in whatever form she wished, Maria’s despair vanished as quickly as it had appeared.
She thought about this for a while. Let him see a very young girl, she decided, with two ginger plaits, a freckled face and…and…She needed some final touch, some naive and endearing detail – perhaps earrings? A baseball cap? Maria had almost no time left, and at the very final moment she adorned herself with padded pink earphones which looked like a continuation of the flame-bright flush of her cheeks. Then she raised her eyes and looked ahead.
In front of her, among the tattered wisps of smoke, something metallic gleamed for a moment and then immediately vanished. Then it appeared a little closer, only to be concealed again in the murk. A sudden gust of wind drove the smoke aside and Maria saw a tall glittering figure advancing slowly towards her. At the same moment she noticed, or so she thought, that with every step the figure took the ground shook. The metal man was much taller than her and his impassively handsome face expressed not the slightest trace of emotion. Maria was frightened and stumbled backwards – she remembered that somewhere behind her there was an open manhole, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the metal torso bearing down on her like the bow of some immense destroyer approaching an ice floe.
At the very moment when she was about to scream, the metal man underwent an astonishing transformation. First of all his gleaming thighs were suddenly clad in very domestic-looking striped underpants, then he acquired a white vest and his body took on the normal colour of tanned human skin and was promptly clad in canary-yellow trousers, a shirt and tie and a wonderful crimson sports jacket with gold buttons. That was enough to lay Maria’s fears to rest. But the delightful sight of the crimson jacket was soon concealed beneath a long grey raincoat. Black shoes appeared on the Visitor’s feet and sunglasses with glittering lenses on his face, his hair set itself into a gingerish crew cut and Maria’s heart skipped a beat for joy when she recognized that her bridegroom was Arnold Schwarzenegger – but then she realized it could never have been anyone else.
He stood there saying nothing and staring at her with those black rectangles of glass; the ghost of a smile played about his lips. Maria caught a glimpse of her reflection in his glasses and adjusted her earphones.
‘Ave Maria,’ said Schwarzenegger quietly.
He spoke without expression, in a voice that was hollow but pleasant.
‘No, my sweet,’ said Maria, smiling mysteriously and clasping her hands together over her breast, ‘just Maria.’
‘Just Maria,’ Schwarzenegger repeated.
‘Yes,’ said Maria. ‘And you’re Arnold?’
‘Sure,’ said Schwarzenegger.
Maria opened her mouth to say something, but suddenly she realized she had absolutely nothing to say. Schwarzenegger carried on looking at her and smiling. Maria lowered her gaze and blushed, and then, with a gentle but irresistibly powerful movement, Schwarzenegger turned her round and led her away beside him. Maria looked up at him and smiled her famous stupid-mysterious smile. Schwarzenegger put his hand on her shoulder. Maria sank slightly under the weight, and suddenly her memory threw up something unexpected, a picture of Lenin carrying a beam at one of those communist working Saturdays. In the picture only the edge of the beam could be seen above Lenin’s shoulder and Maria thought that perhaps it wasn’t a beam after all, but the hand of some mighty creature at which Lenin could only glance up with a defenceless smile, as she was now glancing up at Schwarzenegger. But a moment later Maria realized that such thoughts were entirely out of place, and she promptly banished them from her mind.
Schwarzenegger turned his face towards her.
‘Your eyes,’ he intoned monotonously, ‘are like a landscape of the dreamy south.’
Maria trembled in surprise. She hadn’t been expecting words like these, and Schwarzenegger seemed to understand this immediately. Then something strange happened – or perhaps it didn’t really happen, and Maria simply imagined the faint red letters flickering across the inside surface of Schwarzenegger’s glasses, like running titles on a TV screen, and the soft whirring sound inside his head, as though a computer hard disk drive had been switched on. Maria started in fright, but then she remembered that
Schwarzenegger, like herself, was a purely conventional being woven by the thousands of individual Russian consciousnesses which were thinking about him at that very second – and that different people could have very different thoughts about him.
Schwarzenegger raised his empty hand in front of him and flicked his fingers in the air as he looked for the right words.
‘No,’ he said at last, ‘your eyes aren’t eyes – they’re orbs!’
Maria clung tightly to him and looked up trustingly. Schwarzenegger tucked his chin into his neck, as though to prevent Maria from seeing under his glasses.
‘There’s a lot of smoke here,’ he said, ‘why are we walking along this embankment?’
‘I don’t know,’ answered Maria.
Schwarzenegger turned round and led her away from the railings, straight into the smoke. After they’d gone a few steps Maria felt frightened: the smoke was so thick now that she couldn’t see anything, not even Schwarzenegger – all she could make out was his hand where it clutched her shoulder.
‘Where’s all this smoke from?’ asked Maria. ‘Nothing seems to be burning.’
‘C-N-N,’ Schwarzenegger replied.
‘You mean they’re burning something?’
‘No,’ said Schwarzenegger, ‘they’re shooting something.’
Aha, thought Maria, probably everybody who was thinking about her and Schwarzenegger was watching CNN, and CNN was showing some kind of smokescreen. But what a long time they were showing it for.
‘It’s okay,’ said the invisible Schwarzenegger, ‘it’ll soon be over.’
But there seemed to be no end to the smoke, and they were getting further and further away from the embankment. Maria suddenly had the terrible thought that for several minutes someone else could have been walking along beside her instead of Schwarzenegger, perhaps even the being that had put its arm round Lenin’s shoulder in that same picture, and this thought frightened her so badly that she automatically adjusted her earphones and switched on the music. The music was strcnge, chopped into small incoherent fragments. No sooner had the guitars and trumpets launched into a sweet song of love than they were swamped by a sudden electronic wailing, like the howling of wolves. But anything was better than listening to the sound of distant explosions from the area of the parliament building and the indistinct hubbub of human voices.
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