‘Comrades! We have only a few minutes left here. The final chimes will sound, and we shall set sail for that mighty shore of marble – for those cliffs on which we shall establish our bridgehead…’
He spoke now without stammering, intoning smoothly.
We made our way through the ranks of workers which parted before us – my sympathy for them almost evaporated when I saw them at close quarters – and set off towards the station. Chapaev walked quickly, and I found it hard to keep up with him. Sometimes, as he responded to greetings from someone, he would raise a yellow cuff briefly to his astrakhan hat. To be on the safe side, I began copying this gesture and had soon mastered it so well that I actually began to feel quite at home among all these super-neanderthals scurrying about the station.
On reaching the edge of the platform, we jumped down on to the frozen earth. Ahead of us on the shunting lines and sidings stood a labyrinth of snow-covered carriages. There were tired people watching us from every side; the grimace of despair repeated on all of their faces seemed to form them into some new race of men.
I turned to Chapaev and asked: ‘Can you explain to me the meaning of “hand-deed”?’
‘What?’ Chapaev asked with a frown.
‘“Hand-deed,”’ I repeated.
‘Where did you hear that?’
‘If I am not mistaken, only a moment ago you were speaking from the platform on the subject of your commander’s hand-deed.’
‘Ah,’ said Chapaev with a smile, ‘so that’s what you are talking about. You know, Pyotr, when one has to address the masses, it is quite unimportant whether one understands the words that one speaks. What is important is that other people understand them. One has simply to reflect the expectations of the crowd. Some achieve this by studying the language in which the masses speak, but I prefer to act in a more direct fashion. In other words, if you wish to learn what “hand-deed” means, then it is not me you should be asking, but the men standing back there on the square.’
I thought I understood what he was saying. Indeed, I had long before come to very similar conclusions myself, only in regard to conversations about art, which had always depressed me with their monotony and pointlessness. Since I was obliged by virtue of my activities to meet large numbers of chronic imbeciles from literary circles, I had deliberately cultivated the ability to participate in their discussions without paying any particular attention to what was being spoken about, simply by juggling with such absurd words as ‘realism’ and ‘theurgy’, or even ‘theosophical value’. In Chapaev’s terminology this was learning the language in which the masses speak. However, I realized that he himself did not even burden himself with the knowledge of the words which he pronounced; of course, it was not clear to me how he was able to do this. Perhaps, having fallen into some kind of trance, he could sense the vibrations of anticipation projected by the crowd and somehow weave them into a pattern which it understood.
We walked the rest of the way in silence. Chapaev led me on, further and further; two or three times we stooped to dive under empty, lifeless trains. It was quiet, with no sound except the occasional frenzied whistling of steam locomotives in the distance. Eventually we halted beside a train which included an armoured carriage in its complement. The chimney above the roof of the carriage was smoking cosily, and an impressive Bolshevik with an oak-stained Asiatic face was standing on guard at the door – for some reason I immediately dubbed him a Bashkir.
We walked past the saluting Bashkir, climbed into the carriage and found ourselves in a short corridor. Chapaev nodded towards one of the doors.
‘That is your compartment,’ he said, taking his watch out of his pocket. ‘With your permission, I shall leave you for a short while, I must issue a few instructions. They have to couple us to the locomotive and the carriages with the weavers.’
‘I did not like the look of their commissar,’ I said, ‘that Furmanov. He and I may not be able to work well together in the future.’
‘Don’t go worrying your head about things that have no connection with the present,’ said Chapaev. ‘You have yet to reach this future of which you speak. Perhaps you will reach a future in which there will be no Furmanov – or, perhaps you might even reach a future in which there will be no you.’
I said nothing, not knowing what reply to make to his strange words.
‘Make yourself comfortable and rest,’ he said. ‘We shall meet again at supper.’
I was astounded by the absolutely peaceful atmosphere of the compartment; the window in the armoured wall was tightly curtained, and there was a vase of carnations standing on the small table. I felt absolutely exhausted; once I had sat down on the divan, it was some time before I felt able to move again. Then I remembered that I had not washed for several days, and I went out into the corridor. Amazingly enough, the very first door that I opened led into the shower room and toilet.
I took a hot shower with immense pleasure (the water must have been heated by a coal stove) and returned to my compartment to discover that the bed had been made and a glass of strong tea was waiting for me on the table. Having drunk my fill, I slumped on to the divan and almost immediately fell asleep, intoxicated by the long-forgotten scent of stiffly starched sheets.
When I awoke the carriage was shuddering to a regular rhythm as its wheels hammered over the joints of the rails. On the table where I had left my empty tea glass, in some mysterious fashion a bundle had now appeared. Inside it I found an immaculate two-piece black suit, a gleaming pair of patent-leather shoes, a shirt, a change of underwear and several ties, clearly intended to offer me a choice. I was no longer capable of surprise at anything that happened. The suit and the shoes fitted me perfectly; after some hesitation, I selected a tie with fine black polka dots and when I inspected myself in the mirror on the door of the wall cupboard I was entirely satisfied with my appearance, although it was spoilt just a little by several days’ unshaven stubble. Pulling out a pale-purple carnation from the vase, I broke off its stem and threaded the flower into my buttonhole. How beautiful and unattainable the old life of St Petersburg seemed at that moment!
Going out into the corridor, I saw that it was almost dark already. I walked up to the end door and knocked. Nobody answered. Opening the door, I saw the interior of a large saloon car. At its centre stood a table set with a light supper for three and two bottles of champagne; above the table candle flames flickered to and fro in time with the swaying of the train. The walls were covered with light-coloured wallpaper with a pattern of gold flowers; opposite the table there was a large window, beyond which the lights of the night slowly cut their way through the darkness.
There was a movement at my back. I started and looked round. Standing behind me was the same Bashkir whom I had seen outside the carriage. After glancing at me without the slightest expression of any kind, he wound up the gramophone with the glinting silverish horn that was standing in the corner and lowered the needle on to the record that had begun to revolve. Chaliapin’s solid cast-bronze bass began singing – it was something from Wagner, I think. Wondering for whom the third place was intended, I reached into my pocket for a papyrosa.
I was not left to wonder for very long before the door opened and I saw Chapaev. He was wearing a black velvet jacket, a white shirt and a scarlet bow-tie made of the same shimmering watered silk as the red stripes on his greatcoat. He was followed into the saloon car by a girl.
Her hair was cut very short – it could hardly even be called a style. Down across her scarcely formed breasts, clad tightly in dark velvet, there hung a string of large pearls; her shoulders were broad and strong, while her hips were a little on the narrow side. Her eyes were slightly slanted, but that only added to her charm.
Beyond the slightest doubt, she was fit to serve as a model of beauty – but a beauty which could hardly have been called womanly. Not even my uninhibited fantasy was capable of transporting that face, those eyes and shoulders to the passionate, furtive gloom of a lovers’ alcove
. But it was easy to imagine her, for example, on an ice-rink. There was something sobering about her beauty, something simple and a little sad; I am not speaking of that decoratively lascivious chastity with which everyone in St Petersburg was already so thoroughly fed up even before the war. No, this was a genuine, natural, self-aware perfection, beside which mere lust becomes as boring and vulgar as the raucous patriotism of a policeman.
She glanced at me, then turned to Chapaev, and the pearls gleamed against the skin of her neck.
‘And is this our new commissar?’ she asked. The tone of her voice was slightly flat, but pleasant nonetheless.
Chapaev nodded. ‘Let me introduce you,’ he said, ‘Pyotr, Anna.’
I got up from the table, took her cold palm in my hand and would have raised it to my lips, but she prevented me, replying with a formal handshake in the manner of a St Petersburg emancipée. I retained her hand in mine for a moment.
‘She is a magnificent machine-gunner,’ said Chapaev, ‘so beware of irritating her.’
‘Could these delicate fingers really be capable of dealing death to anyone?’ I asked, releasing her hand.
‘It all depends,’ said Chapaev, ‘on what exactly you call death.’
‘Can there really be any difference of views on that account?’
‘Oh, yes, indeed,’ said Chapaev.
We sat down at the table. With suspicious facility the Bashkir opened the champagne and filled our glasses.
‘I wish to propose a toast,’ said Chapaev, resting his hypnotic gaze on me, ‘for the terrible times in which it has been our lot to be born, and for all those who even in such days as these do not cease to strive for freedom.’
His logic seemed strange to me, because our times had been made terrible precisely because of the striving, as he had put it, of ‘all those’ for their so-called ‘freedom’ – but whose freedom, and from what? Instead of objecting, however, I took a sip of champagne – this was the simple precept which I always followed when there was champagne on the table and the conversation turned to politics. I suddenly realized how hungry I was, and I set about the food with vigour.
It is hard to express what I was feeling. What was happening was so very improbable that I no longer felt its improbability; this is what happens in a dream, when the mind, cast into a whirlpool of fantastic visions, draws to itself like a magnet some detail familiar from the everyday world and focuses on it completely, transforming the most muddled of nightmares into a simulacrum of daily routine. I once dreamed that through some exasperating contingency I had become the angel on the spire of the Peter and Paul Cathedral and in order to protect myself against the bitterly cold wind I was struggling to fasten my jacket, but the buttons simply would not slip into the buttonholes – and what surprised me was not that I had suddenly found myself suspended high in the night sky above St Petersburg, but the fact that I was incapable of completing this familiar operation.
I was experiencing something similar now. The unreality of what was happening was somehow bracketed out of my consciousness; in itself the evening was entirely normal, and if it had not been for the gentle swaying of the carriage, I might easily have assumed that we were sitting in one of St Petersburg’s small cafés with the lamps of cabs drifting past the windows.
I ate in silence and only rarely glanced at Anna. She replied briefly to Chapaev when he spoke to her of gun-carts and machine-guns, but I was so engrossed by her that I failed to follow the thread of their conversation. I felt saddened by the absolute unattainability of her beauty; I knew that it would be as pointless to reach out to her with lustful hands as it would be to attempt to scoop up the sunset in a kitchen bucket.
When supper was finished, the Bashkir cleared the plates from the table and served coffee. Chapaev leaned back on his chair and lit a cigar. His face had acquired a benevolent and slightly sleepy expression; he looked at me and smiled.
‘Pyotr,’ he said, ‘you seem thoughtful, perhaps even – pardon me for saying so – a little absent-minded. But a commissar…He has to carry people along with him, you understand…He has to be absolutely sure of himself. All the time.’
‘I am entirely sure of myself,’ I said. ‘But I am not entirely sure of you.’
‘How do you mean? What can be bothering you?’
‘May I be candid with you?’
‘Certainly. Both Anna and I are absolutely counting on it.’
‘I find it hard to believe that you really are a Red commander.’
Chapaev raised his left eyebrow.
‘Indeed?’ he asked, with what seemed to me to be genuine astonishment. ‘But why?’
‘I do not know,’ I said. ‘This all reminds me very much of a masquerade.’
‘You do not believe that I sympathize with the proletariat?’
‘Certainly I believe it. On that platform today I even experienced a similar feeling myself. And yet…’
Suddenly I no longer understood what exactly I wanted to say. Silence hung over the table, broken only by the tinkling of the spoon with which Anna was stirring her coffee.
‘Well, in that case, just what does a Red commander look like?’ asked Chapaev, brushing the cigar ash from the flap of his jacket.
‘Furmanov,’ I replied.
‘Forgive me, Pyotr, but that is the second time today that you have mentioned that name. Who is this Furmanov?’
‘The gentleman with the voracious eyes,’ I said, ‘who addressed the weavers after me.’
Anna suddenly clapped her hands.
‘That reminds me,’ she said, ‘we have entirely forgotten about the weavers, Vasily Ivanovich. We should have paid them a visit long ago.’
Chapaev nodded.
‘Yes, yes,’ he said, ‘you are quite right, Anna. I was just about to suggest it myself, but Pyotr set me such a puzzle that everything else entirely slipped my mind.’
He turned towards me. ‘We must certainly return to this topic. But for the present, would you not like to keep us company?’
‘Yes, I would.’
‘Then, forward,’ said Chapaev, rising from the table.
We left the staff carriage and went towards the rear of the train. Events now began to seem even stranger to me: several of the carriages through which we walked were dark and seemed entirely empty. There was not a single light burning anywhere and not a sound could be heard behind their closed doors. I could not really believe that there were Red Army soldiers sleeping behind those walnut panels which reflected the glow of Chapaev’s cigar in their polished surface, but I tried not to ponder too much on the matter.
One of the carriages did not end in the usual little lobby, but in a door in the end wall, beyqnd the window of which the dark winter night rushed away from us. After fumbling briefly with the lock the Bashkir opened it and the corridor was suddenly filled with the sharp clattering of wheels and a swarm of tiny, prickly snowflakes. Outside the door there was a small fenced-in area beneath a canopy, like the rear platform of a tram, and beyond it loomed the heavy carcass of the next carriage. There was no way of crossing over to it, so it remained unclear just how Chapaev had intended to pay a visit to his new men. I followed the others out on to the platform. Leaning on the railing, Chapaev drew deeply on his cigar, from which the wind snatched several bright crimson sparks.
‘They are singing,’ said Anna, ‘can you hear?’
She raised an open hand, as though to protect her hair from the wind, but lowered it immediately – her hairstyle made the gesture entirely meaningless. The thought struck me that she must have worn a different style only a very short time before.
‘Can you hear?’ she repeated, turning to face me.
And indeed, through the rumbling of the carriage wheels I could make out a rather lovely and harmonious singing. Listening more closely, I could even catch the words:
Blacksmiths are we, our spirit is an anthill,
We forge the keys of happiness.
Oh, hammer mighty, rise up higher still,<
br />
Smite harder, harder yet upon this iron breast!
‘Strange,’ I said, ‘why do they sing that they are smiths, if they are weavers? And why is their spirit an anthill?’
‘Not an anthill, but an anvil,’ said Anna.
‘An anvil?’ I echoed. ‘Ah, but of course. It is an anvil because they are smiths – or rather, because they sing that they are smiths, although in actual fact they are weavers. One devil of a confused mess.’
Despite the absurdity of the text there was something ancient and bewitching about this song ringing out in the winter night. Perhaps it was not the song itself, but the strange combination of innumerable male voices, the piercingly bitter wind, the snow-covered fields and the small stars scattered sparsely across the night sky. When the train curved as it went round a bend we could make out the string of dark carriages – the men travelling in them must have been singing in total darkness – and this filled out the picture, making it even more mysterious and strange. For some time we listened without speaking.
‘Perhaps it is something Scandinavian,’ I said. ‘You know, they had a god there, and he had a magic hammer that he used as a weapon. In the Old Edda saga I think it was. Yes, yes, see how well everything else fits! This dark frost-covered carriage before us, why should it not be Thor’s hammer hurled at some unknown enemy! It hurtles relentlessly after us, and there is no force capable of halting its flight!’
‘You have a very lively imagination,’ Anna replied. ‘Can the sight of a dirty railway carriage really arouse such a train of thoughts in you?’
‘Of course not,’ I said. ‘I am simply endeavouring to make conversation. In actual fact I am thinking about something else.’
‘About what?’ asked Chapaev.
‘About the fact that man is rather like this train. In exactly the same way he is doomed for all eternity to drag after him out of the past a string of dark and terrible carriages inherited from goodness knows whom. And he calls the meaningless rumbling of this accidental coupling of hopes, opinions and fears his life. And there is no way to avoid this fate.’
Buddha's Little Finger Page 10
