‘Arnold,’ Maria said in confusion, rising to her feet. ‘What are you doing that for? Stop it!’
But Schwarzenegger didn’t answer, and a moment later the plane banked steeply and Maria was sent tumbling along the wing. On the way she banged her face several times against various protruding objects, and then suddenly there was nothing holding her up any longer. She decided she must be falling and squeezed her eyes shut in order not to see the trees and roofs hurtling up towards her, but several seconds went by and nothing happened. Maria realized that the roaring of the engine was still as close to her as ever and she opened her eyes again.
She was hanging under the wing. The hood of her jacket had snagged on the empennage of some protrusion, which she recognized with some effort as a rocket. The sight of the rocket’s swollen head rather reminded her of the antenna she had been handling just a few minutes earlier, and she decided Schwarzenegger must be continuing with his loveplay. But this was too much – her face was probably covered in bruises, and she could taste the blood from a cut on her lip.
‘Arnold,’ she yelled, waving her arms furiously in an attempt to turn towards the cockpit, ‘stop it! I don’t want to do this! Do you hear me? I don’t want to!’
She finally managed to catch a glimpse of the cockpit and Schwarzenegger’s smiling face.
‘I don’t want to do this, d’you hear me? It’s hurting me that way!’
‘You won’t?’ he asked.
‘No! No!’
‘Okay,’ said Schwarzenegger. ‘You’re fired.’
A moment later his face zoomed back and away from Maria as she was thrust ahead of the plane by a force of unimaginable power; in just a few seconds the plane was transformed into a tiny silver bird which was connected to her only by a long streak of smoke. Maria turned her head to see where she was going and saw the spire of the Ostankino television tower veering towards her. The swollen lump at its centre grew rapidly as she watched and a split second before the impact came Maria had a clear view of some men in white shirts and ties sitting at a table and gazing at her in amazement through a thick pane of glass.
There was the ringing sound of a glass shattering and then something heavy fell to the floor. Someone started crying loudly.
‘Careful, careful,’ said Timur Timurovich. ‘There now, that’s better.’
Realizing that it was all over, I opened my eyes. By this time I could more or less see. Everything close to me was quite distinct, but objects further away shifted and blurred, and the overall perspective was as though I were sitting inside a large Christmas-tree decoration with the outside world daubed on its inner surface. Timur Timurovich and Colonel Smirnov towered up over me like twin cliffs.
‘Well,’ said someone in the corner. ‘So much for Arnold Schwarzenegger and Just Maria.’
‘I would like to point out,’ said Colonel Smirnov, clearing his throat and turning to Timur Timurovich, ‘the distinctly phallic relevance of the fact that the patient sees dicks everywhere. Did you notice that? The antenna, the rocket, the Ostankino tower?’
‘You military men always take things too literally,’ replied Timur Timurovich. ‘Not everything’s that simple. Russia cannot be grasped by logic, as the saying goes – but neither can it be entirely reduced to sexual neurosis. Let’s not be too hasty. What’s important here is that the cathartic effect is quite evident, even if it is attenuated.’
‘Yes,’ agreed the colonel, ‘the chair’s even broken.’
‘Precisely,’ agreed Timur Timurovich. ‘When blocked pathological material rises to the surface of consciousness it has to overcome powerful resistance, and so it often produces visions of catastrophes or conflicts of various kinds, as we’ve just seen. It’s the clearest possible sign that we’re working along the right lines.’
‘Maybe it’s just the shell-shock?’ said the colonel.
‘What shell-shock?’
‘What, didn’t I tell you about that? Well, when they were shelling the White House, a few of the shells went straight through, in the windows on one side and out of the windows on the other. And one of them landed in a flat just at the very moment when…’
The colonel leaned over to Timur Timurovich and whispered something in his ear. ‘Well, of course…’ – I could just make out odd words here and there – ‘…to smithereens…under security with the corpses at first, and then we saw something moving…Massive concussion, obviously.’
‘But why on earth have you kept this to yourself for so long, my good fellow? It changes the entire picture,’ said Timur Timurovich reproachfully. ‘I’ve been struggling so hard…’
He leaned down over me, parted one of my eyelids with two fat fingers and looked into my eye. ‘How about you?’
‘I’m not quite sure,’ I replied. ‘Of course, it was not the most interesting vision I have ever had, but I…How can I put it? I found the dreamlike facility with which these delirious ravings acquired for several minutes the status of reality quite amusing.’
‘How do you like that?’ asked Timur Timurovich, turning to Colonel Smirnov.
The colonel nodded without speaking.
‘My dear fellow, I was not inquiring as to your opinion, but your condition,’ said Timur Timurovich.
‘I feel quite well, thank you,’ I replied. ‘But I am sleepy.’
This was no more than the simple truth.
‘Then sleep.’
He turned away from me.
‘Tomorrow morning,’ he said to an invisible nurse, ‘please give Pyotr four cc’s of taurepam immediately before the hydraulic procedures.’
‘Can we have the radio on?’ asked a quiet voice in the corner.
Timur Timurovich clicked a switch on the wall, took the colonel by the arm and led him in the direction of the door. I closed my eyes and realized that I did not have enough strength to open them again.
‘Sometimes I think that all our soldiers brave,’ a man began singing in a mournful voice, ‘Who fell on battle’s bloody hills and plains, Were never buried in their native graves, But turned into a soaring flight of cranes…’
At these final words turmoil broke out in the ward.
‘Keep tight hold of Serdyuk!’ yelled a voice right beside my ear. ‘Who put those blasted cranes on? Have you forgotten, or what?’
‘It was you asked for it to be turned on,’ answered another voice. ‘Let’s change channels.’
There was another click.
‘Is the time now past,’ an ingratiating voice asked from the ceiling, ‘when Russian pop music was synonymous with provincialism? Here’s the chance to judge for yourself. The “Inflamed Ovaries” are a rare kind of Russian pop group, consisting entirely of women whose stage gear weighs as much as a “T-90” tank. Despite such ultra-modern features, the “Inflamed Ovaries” play mostly classical music, but in their own interpretation. Listen to what the girls make of a simple fugue in F by the Austrian composer Mozart, who is well known to many of our listeners from the cream liqueur that bears the same name, which can be bought wholesale from our sponsor, the trading firm “Third Eye”.’
I heard the beginning of wild music, like the wind howling in a prison chimney, but I was already, thank God, only half-conscious. At first I was overwhelmed by tormenting thoughts about what was happening, and then I had a brief nightmare about an American wearing dark glasses which seemed to continue the story told by the unfortunate Maria.
The American landed his plane in a yard, soaked it with kerosene and set fire to it. Into the flames he threw the crimson jacket, the dark glasses and the canary-yellow trousers, until he was left wearing nothing but the skimpy trunks. Rippling his magnificently developed muscles he searched for something in the bushes for a long time, but failed to find it. Then there was a gap in my dream, and the next time I saw him – horror of horrors! – he was pregnant: the encounter with Maria had obviously not been without its consequences. At that precise moment he was transformed into a terrifying metal figure with a sketchy mask in p
lace of a face, and the sun glinted furiously on his swollen belly.
3
The melody seemed at first to be floating up the staircase towards me, briefly marking time before it dashed in desperation on to the landing – that was when I could hear the short moments of quietness between its sounds. Then the pianist’s fingers picked up the tune, set it back on the steps, and the whole thing was repeated one flight of stairs lower. The place where all this was taking place seemed very much like the staircase in house number eight on Tverskoi Boulevard, except that in my dream the staircase extended upwards and downwards as far as the eye could see and was clearly infinite. I suddenly understood that every melody has its own precise meaning, and that this was one of the proofs of the metaphysical impossibility of suicide – not of its sinfulness, but precisely of its impossibility. And I felt that all of us are nothing more than sounds drifting through the air from the fingers of some unknown pianist, nothing more than short thirds, smooth sixths and dissonant sevenths in a mighty symphony which none of us can ever hear in its entirety. This thought induced a profound sadness in me, which remained in my heart as I came plummeting out of the leaden clouds of sleep.
For several seconds I struggled to understand where I actually was and what was taking place in this strange world into which some unknown force had been thrusting me every morning for the past twenty-six years. I was dressed in a heavy jacket of black leather, riding breeches and boots, and there was a pain in my hip where something was sticking into me. I turned over on to my side, reached under my leg and felt the holster with the Mauser, and then I looked around me. Above my head hung a silk canopy with astoundingly beautiful yellow tassels. The sky outside the window was a cloudless blue, and the roofs in the distance glowed a dull red in the rays of the winter sun. Directly opposite my window on the other side of the boulevard I could see a dome clad in tin-plate, which for some reason reminded me of the belly of a huge metal woman in childbirth.
Suddenly I realized that I had not been dreaming the music – I could hear it playing clearly just beyond the wall. I began trying to grasp how I had come to be here and suddenly, like an electric shock, yesterday’s memories came flooding back in a single second, and I realized that I was in Vorblei’s apartment. I leapt up from the bed, dashed across to the door and froze.
On the other side of that wall, in the room where I had left Vorblei, not only was someone playing the grand piano – they were playing the very Mozart F Minor fugue which cocaine and melancholia had drawn to the surface of my own mind only the evening before. The world quite literally went dark before my eyes as I imagined the cadaver pounding woodenly on the keys, fingers protruding from beneath the coat which I had thrown over him, and I realized that the previous day’s nightmare was not yet over. Glancing round the room I spotted a large wooden crucifix hanging on the wall, with a small, elegant silver figure of Christ, the sight of which briefly induced in me the strangest sense of déjà vu, as though I had seen this metal body in some recent dream. I took down the crucifix, drew my Mauser and tiptoed out into the corridor. My approximate reasoning was that, if I could accept that a dead man could play the piano, then there was some likelihood that he might be afraid of the cross.
The door into the room where the piano was playing stood ajar. Trying to tread as quietly as possible, I went up to it and glanced inside, but I could see no more than the edge of the grand piano. I took several deep breaths and then kicked open the door and stepped into the room, grasping the heavy cross in one hand and holding my gun ready to shoot in the other. The first things I saw were Vorblei’s boots protruding from the corner; he was still lying at peace under his grey English shroud.
I turned towards the piano.
Sitting at the keyboard was the man in the black military tunic whom I had seen the day before in the ‘Musical Snuffbox’. He appeared to be about fifty years old, with a thick black handlebar moustache and a sprinkling of grey at his temples. He gave no sign of having noticed my appearance; his eyes were closed as though he were entirely absorbed in the music, and his playing was truly excellent. Lying on the lid of the piano I saw a tall hat of the finest astrakhan fur with a red ribbon of watered silk and a sabre of an unusual form in a magnificent scabbard.
‘Good morning,’ I said, lowering the Mauser.
The man at the piano raised his eyelids and looked me up and down. His eyes were black and piercing, and it cost me a certain effort to withstand their almost physical pressure. Noticing the cross in my hand he gave a barely perceptible smile.
‘Good morning,’ he said, continuing to play. ‘It is gratifying to see that you give thought to your soul at such an early hour.’
‘What are you doing here?’ I asked, carefully placing the crucifix on the lid of the piano beside his sabre.
‘I am attempting,’ he replied, ‘to play a rather difficult piece of music. But unfortunately it was written for four hands and I am now approaching a passage which I shall not be able to manage on my own. Perhaps you would be kind enough to assist me? I believe you are acquainted with the piece in question?’
As though in a trance, I thrust the Mauser back into its holster, stood beside him and waited for the right moment before lowering my fingers on to the keys. My counterpoint scarcely managed to limp along after the theme, and I made several mistakes; then my gaze fell once again on Vorblei’s splayed legs, and the absurdity of the entire situation came home to me. I shrank sharply away from my companion and stared at him wide-eyed. He stopped playing and sat motionless for a while, as though he were deeply absorbed in his own thoughts. Then he smiled, reached out his hands and lifted the crucifix from the piano.
‘Splendid,’ he said. ‘I could never understand why God should manifest himself to people in the ugly form of a human body. It has always seemed to me that the perfection of a melody would have been far more appropriate – a melody that one could listen to on and on for ever.’
‘Who are you?’ I asked.
‘My name is Chapaev,’ the stranger replied.
‘I am afraid it means nothing to me,’ I said.
‘Which is precisely why I use it,’ he said. ‘My full name is Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev. I trust that means even less to you?’
He rose from the stool and stretched himself. As he did so his joints gave out a loud cracking sound. I caught a slight whiff of expensive English eau-de-Cologne.
‘Yesterday,’ he said, looking intently at me, ‘you left your travelling bag behind at the “Musical Snuffbox”. There it is.’
I glanced down at the floor and saw Vorblei’s black bag standing by the leg of the grand piano.
‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘but how did you manage to get into the apartment?’
‘I tried ringing,’ he said, ‘but the doorbell appeared not to be working. And the keys were in the lock. I saw that you were sleeping and I decided to wait.’
‘I see,’ I replied, although in actual fact it all remained a complete mystery to me. How had he discovered where I was? Who had he actually come to see – me or Vorblei? Who was he and what did he want? And why – this was the question that tormented me beyond all endurance – why had he been playing that cursed fugue? Did he suspect something? (Apropos of suspicion, I was discomfited least of all by the corpse beneath the coat in the corner – that, after all, was a perfectly ordinary element in the decor of many a Chekist apartment.)
Chapaev seemed to have read my thoughts.
‘You must obviously have guessed,’ he said, ‘that I came to see you about more than just your travelling bag. I am leaving today for the eastern front, where I command a division. I need a commissar. The last one…Well, let us simply say that he did not justify the hopes placed in him. I saw your agit-performance yesterday and you made quite an impression on me. Babayasin was very pleased as well, by the way. I would like the political work in the units entrusted to me to be conducted by yourself.’
With these words he unbuttoned the pocket of his tunic and held
out to me a sheet of paper folded into four. I unfolded it and read the following:
To Com. Fourply. By order of Com. Dzerzhinsky you are immediately transferred to the staff of commander of the Asiatic Division Com. Chapaev in order to intensify political work. Babayasin.
Below the message stood the now familiar blurred and- fuzzy purple stamp. Who is this Babayasin, I thought in confusion as I raised my eyes from the sheet of paper.
‘So what exactly is your name?’ Chapaev asked, screwing up his eyes as he looked at me, ‘Grigory or Pyotr?’
‘Pyotr,’ I said, licking my dry lips. ‘Grigory is my old literary nom de plume. It constantly causes confusion. Out of habit some people still call me Grigory, others call me Pyotr…’
He nodded and picked up his sabre and astrakhan hat from the grand piano.
‘Very well then, Pyotr,’ he said, ‘It may not seem very convenient for you, but our train leaves today. There is nothing to be done about that. Do you have any unfinished business here in Moscow?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘In that case I suggest that you leave with me without delay. I have to attend the embarkation of the Ivanovo weavers’ regiment immediately, and I would like you to be present. You might even be required to speak. Do you have many things?’
‘Only this,’ I said, nodding towards the travelling bag.
‘Splendid. I shall give orders today for you to be issued your allowances at the staff carriage.’
He walked towards the door.
Buddha's Little Finger Page 8
