‘That’s it,’ said Chapaev. ‘That world no longer exists.’
‘Damn,’ I said, ‘the papyrosas were still in there…And listen – what about the driver?’
Chapaev started and looked in fright first at me, and then at Anna.
‘Damn and blast,’ he said, ‘I forgot all about him…And you, Anna, why didn’t you say anything?’
Anna spread her arms wide. There was not a trace of genuine feeling in the gesture and I thought that despite her beauty, she was unlikely ever to become an actress.
‘No,’ I said, ‘there’s something wrong here. Where’s the driver?’
‘Chapaev,’ said Anna, ‘I can’t take any more. Sort this out between the two of you.’
Chapaev sighed and twirled his moustache.
‘Calm down, Petka. There wasn’t really any driver. You know there are these bits of paper with special seals on them, you can stick them on a log, and…’
‘Ah,’ I said, ‘so it was a golem. I see. Only please don’t treat me like a total idiot, all right? I noticed a long time ago that he was rather strange. You know, Chapaev, with talents like that you could have made quite a career in St Petersburg.’
‘What is there new for me to see in this St Petersburg of yours?’ Chapaev asked.
‘But wait, what about Kotovsky?’ I asked excitedly. ‘Has he disappeared too, then?’
‘Inasmuch as he never existed,’ said Chapaev, ‘it is rather difficult to answer that question. But if you are concerned for his fate out of human sympathy, don’t worry. I assure you that Kotovsky, just like you or I, is quite capable of creating his own universe.’
‘And will we exist in it?’
Chapaev pondered my words.
‘An interesting question,’ he said. ‘I should never have thought of that. Perhaps we shall, but in precisely what capacity I really can’t say. How should I know what kind of world Kotovsky will create in that Paris of his? Or perhaps I should say – what Paris he will create in that world of his?’
‘There you go again,’ I said, ‘more of your sophistry.’
I turned and walked towards the edge of the circle, but I was unable to reach the very edge; when there were still about two yards left to its edge I suddenly felt dizzy and I slumped heavily to the ground.
‘Do you feel unwell?’ Anna asked.
‘I feel quite wonderful,’ I replied, ‘but what are we going to do here? Conduct a ménage à trois?’
‘Ah, Petka, Petka,’ said Chapaev, ‘I keep on trying to explain to you. Any form is just emptiness. But what does that mean?’
‘Well, what?’
‘It means that emptiness is any form. Close your eyes. And now open them.’
I do not know how to describe that moment in words.
What I saw was something similar to a flowing stream which glowed with all the colours of the rainbow, a river broad beyond all measure that flowed from somewhere lost in infinity towards that same infinity. It extended around our island on all sides as far as the eye could see, and yet it was not an ocean, but precisely a river, a stream, because it had a clearly visible current. The light it cast on the three of us was extremely bright, but there was nothing blinding or frightening about it, because it was also at the same time grace, happiness and infinitely powerful love. However, those three words, so crudely devalued by literature and art, were quite incapable of conveying any real impression of it. Simply watching the constant emergence of new multicoloured sparks and glimmers of light in it was already enough, because everything that I could possibly think of or dream of was a part of that rainbow-hued stream. Or to be more precise, the rainbow-hued stream was everything that I could possibly think of or experience, everything that I could possibly be or not be, and I knew quite certainly that it was not something separate from myself. It was me, and I was it. I had always been it, and nothing else.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘Nothing,’ replied Chapaev.
‘No, not in that sense,’ I said. ‘What is it called?’
‘It has various names,’ Chapaev replied. ‘I call it the Undefinable River of Absolute Love. Ural for short. Sometimes we become it, and sometimes we assume forms, but in actual fact neither the forms nor we ourselves, nor even the Ural exists.’
‘But why do we do it?’
Chapaev shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
‘But what if you try to explain?’ I asked.
‘One has to do something to occupy oneself in all this eternal infinity,’ he said. ‘So we’re going to try swimming across the river Ural, which doesn’t really exist. Don’t be afraid, Petka, dive in!’
‘But will I be able to dive out again?’
Chapaev looked me over from head to toe.
‘Well, you obviously could before,’ he said. ‘Since you’re standing here.’
‘But will I be myself again?’
‘Now, Petka,’ Chapaev asked, ‘how can you not be yourself when you are absolutely everything that possibly can be?’
He was about to say something else, but at this point Anna, having finished her papyrosa, carefully ground it out under her foot, and without even bothering to look our way, threw herself into the flowing stream.
‘That’s it,’ said Chapaev. ‘That’s the way. What’s the point of all this shilly-shallying?’
Fixing me with a treacherous smile, he began backing towards the edge of the patch of earth.
‘Chapaev,’ I said, frightened, ‘wait. You can’t just leave me like this. You must at least explain…’
But it was too late. The earth crumbled away under his feet, he lost his balance and flung out his arms as he tumbled backwards into the rainbow-hued radiance. It parted for a moment exactly like water and then closed over him, and I was left alone.
For a few minutes I stared, stunned, at the spot where Chapaev had been. Then I realized that I was terribly tired. I scraped together the straw scattered around the circle of earth and gathered it into a single heap, lay down on it and fixed my gaze on the inexpressibly distant grey vault of the sky.
Suddenly the thought struck me that since the very beginning of time I had been doing nothing but lie on the bank of the Ural, dreaming one dream after another, and waking up again and again in the same place. But if that were really the case, I thought, then what had I wasted my life on? Literature and art were no more than tiny midges hovering over the final pile of hay in the Universe. Who, I wondered, who would read the descriptions of my dreams? I looked at the smooth surface of the Ural, stretching out into infinity in all directions. The pen, the notepad and everyone who could read those marks made on its paper were now simply rainbow-coloured sparks and lights which appeared and disappeared and then appeared again. Will I really simply fall asleep again on this river bank, I wondered.
Without giving myself even a moment’s pause for thought, I leapt to my feet, ran forwards and threw myself headlong into the Ural.
I hardly felt anything at all; the stream was simply on every side of me now, and so there were no more sides. I saw the spot from which this stream originated – and immediately recognized it as my true home. Like a snowflake caught up by the wind, I was born along towards that spot. At first my movement was easy and weightless, and then something strange happened; I began to feel some incomprehensible friction tugging at my calves and my elbows, and my movement slowed. And no sooner did it begin to slow than the radiance surrounding me began to fade, and at the very moment when I came to a complete standstill, the light changed to a murky gloom, which I realized came from an electric bulb burning just under the ceiling.
My arms and legs were belted tight to the chair, and my head was resting on a pillow covered in oilcloth.
Timur Timurovich’s thick lips materialized out of the dim half-light, approached my forehead and planted a long, wet kiss on it.
‘Total catharsis,’ he said. ‘Congratulations.’
10
‘Eight thousand two hundred miles of emptine
ss,’ sang a male voice trembling with feeling from the radio, ‘and still no place to spend the night…How happy I should be if not for you, Mother Russia, if not for you, my homeland…’
Volodin stood up and turned the switch. The music stopped.
‘Why’d you turn it off?’ asked Serdyuk, looking up.
‘I can’t bear listening to Grebenschikov,’ replied Volodin. ‘He’s talented, of course, but he’s far too fond of over-complicated phrases. His songs are all just full of Buddhism – he doesn’t know how to use words in a straightforward way. You heard that song he was singing just now about the homeland – d’you know where it comes from? The Chinese White Lotus Sect had this mantra: “Absolute emptiness is the homeland, the mother is the unborn.” But he’s wrapped it all up in code so you could burst your brains trying to understand what he’s talking about.’
Serdyuk shrugged and went back to his work. As I kneaded my Plasticine, I looked over every now and then at his quick fingers folding paper cranes out of pages from an exercise book. He performed his task with quite incredible dexterity, without even bothering to look at what he was doing. There were paper cranes scattered all around the aesthetics therapy room; many of them were just lying on the floor, although only that morning Zherbunov and Barbolin had swept a huge pile out into the corridor. Serdyuk took no interest whatsoever in the fate of his creations; once he had pencilled a number on each crane’s wing, he just tossed it into the corner and immediately set about ripping the next page out of the exercise book.
‘How many still to go?’ asked Volodin.
‘I’ve got to get them all done by spring,’ said Serdyuk, then transferred his gaze to me. ‘Listen, I’ve just remembered another one.’
‘Go on then,’ I answered.
‘Okay, it goes like this. Petka and Vasily Ivanovich are sitting boozing, when suddenly this soldier comes dashing in and says: “The Whites are coming!” Petka says: “Vasily Ivanovich, let’s leg it quick.” But Chapaev just pours another two glasses of hooch and says: “Drink up, Petka.” So they drink up. Then the soldier comes dashing in again. “The Whites are coming!” Chapaev pours another two glasses and says: “Drink up, Petka!” The next time the soldier comes running in and says the Whites are almost at the house now. So then Chapaev says: “Petka, can you see me?” And Petka says: “No.” And Chapaev says: “I can’t see you either. We’re well camouflaged.” ‘
I sighed derisively and picked up a new piece of Plasticine from the table.
‘I know that one too, but with a different ending,’ said Volodin. ‘The Whites come bursting in, look round the room, and say: “Damn, they got away again.” ‘
‘That one is a little closer to the truth,’ I responded, ‘but it is still very wide of the mark. All these Whites…I simply cannot understand how everything could have been distorted so grossly. Well, does anybody have another one?’
‘I remember one,’ Serdyuk answered. ‘Petka and Vasily Ivanovich are swimming across the Ural, and Chapaev’s clutching this attaché case in his teeth…’
‘O-oh,’ I groaned. ‘Who on earth could possibly invent such nonsense?’
‘Anyway, he’s almost on the point of drowning, but he won’t dump the case. Petka shouts to him: “Vasily Ivanovich, drop the case, or you’ll drown!” But Chapaev says: “No way, Petka! I can’t. It’s got the staff maps in it.” Anyway, they barely make it to the other bank, and when they get there, Petka says: “Right then, Vasily Ivanovich, show me these maps we almost drowned for.” Chapaev opens up the case, Petka looks inside and sees it’s full of potatoes. “Vasily Ivanovich,” he says, “what kind of maps do you call these?” So Chapaev takes out two potatoes and says: “Look here, Petka. This is us – and this is the Whites.” ‘
Volodin laughed.
‘That one lacks even the slightest glimmer of sense,’ I said. ‘In the first place, if, after another ten thousand lives you, Serdyuk, should have the chance to drown in the Ural, you may regard yourself as extremely fortunate. In the second place, I simply cannot understand where all these Whites keep appearing from. I suspect that the Cheka crew must have been at work there. In the third place, it was a metaphorical map of consciousness, not a plan of military positions at all. And they were not potatoes, but onions.’
‘Onions?’
‘Yes, onions. Although for a number of highly personal reasons I would have given a great deal for them to have been potatoes instead.’
Volodin and Serdyuk exchanged a protracted glance.
‘And this is the man who wants to discharge himself,’ said Volodin. ‘Ah, I’ve remembered one now. Chapaev is writing in his diary: “Sixth of June; we have driven the Whites back…” ‘
‘He did not keep any diary,’ I interjected.
‘“Seventh of June; the Whites have driven us back. Eighth of June; the forest warden came and drove everybody out.” ‘
‘I see,’ I said, ‘no doubt that one was about Baron Jungern. Only he didn’t come, unfortunately. And then, he was not actually a forest warden, he simply said that he had always wanted to be a forester. I find this all very strange, gentlemen. In some ways you are really quite well informed, and yet I keep on getting the feeling that someone who does indeed know how everything really happened has attempted to distort the truth in the most monstrous fashion possible. And I simply cannot understand the reason for it.’
Nobody broke the silence again for a while. I became absorbed in my work and started thinking through my forthcoming conversation with Timur Timurovich. The logic of his actions still remained entirely opaque to me. Maria had been discharged a week after he broke the bust of Aristotle over my head, but Volodin, who was as normal a man as any I had ever seen in my life, had recently been prescribed a new course of drug therapy. On no account, I reasoned with myself, must I think up answers in advance, because he might not ask a single one of the questions for which I might have prepared myself, and then I would be bound to throw out one of my ready-made answers at entirely the wrong moment. All that I could do was trust to chance and luck.
‘All right, then,’ Volodin eventually said. ‘Why don’t you give us an example of something that has actually been distorted? Tell us how it really happened.’
‘What exactly are you interested in?’ I asked. ‘Which of the episodes that you have mentioned?’
‘Any of them. Or we can take something else. Like this, for instance, I can’t imagine what could possibly have been distorted in this one. Kotovsky sends Chapaev some red caviar and cognac from Paris, and Chapaev writes back: “Thank you, Petka and I drank the moonshine, although it smelled of bedbugs, but we didn’t eat the cranberries – they stank of fish.” ‘
I laughed despite myself.
‘Kotovsky never sent anything from Paris. But there was indeed a rather similar incident. We were sitting in a restaurant and actually drinking cognac with red caviar – I know how bad that sounds, but they had no black caviar in the place. Our conversation concerned the Christian paradigm, and therefore we began discussing its terminology. Chapaev commented on a passage from Swedenborg in which a ray of heavenly light shines down to the bottom of hell and the spirits who live there take it for a dirty, stinking puddle. I had understood this in the sense that the light itself had been transformed, but Chapaev said that the nature of light does not change, and everything depends on the subject of perception. He said that there is no power that would prevent a sinful soul from entering heaven – but it happens that it simply does not want to go there. I could not understand how this could be the case, and then he explained that one of Furmanov’s weavers, for instance, would have taken the caviar we were eating for cranberries that smelled of fish.’
‘I see,’ said Volodin, who for some reason had turned rather pale.
I was struck by an unexpected idea.
‘Just a moment now,’ I said, ‘where did you say the cognac came from?’
Volodin did not answer.
‘What difference does it make?
’ asked Serdyuk.
‘Never mind,’ I said thoughtfully, ‘but now at last I seem to have some idea of who could be responsible for all this. It is rather strange, of course, and it does seem quite unlike him, but all the other explanations are so completely absurd…’
‘Listen, I’ve remembered another one,’ said Serdyuk. ‘Chapaev comes to see Anka, and she’s sitting there naked…’
‘My dear sirs,’ I interrupted, ‘are you not taking things just a little too far?’
‘It wasn’t me that made it up,’ Serdyuk replied insolently, tossing another paper crane into the corner of the room. ‘So anyway, he asks her: “Why haven’t you got any clothes on, Anka?” And she says to him: “I haven’t got any dresses to wear.” So he opens the wardrobe, looks inside and says: “What’s all this then? One dress. Two dresses. Hi there, Petka. Three dresses. Four dresses.” ‘
‘Really,’ I said, ‘I ought to just punch you in the face for saying such things – but somehow instead it brings back a deep feeling of melancholy. In actual fact it was all quite different. It was Anna’s birthday, and we had gone out for a picnic. Kotovsky immediately got drunk and fell asleep, and Chapaev began explaining to Anna that a human personality is like a wardrobe filled with sets of clothes which are taken out by turns, and the less real the person actually is, the more sets there are in the wardrobe. That was his present to Anna on her birthday – not a set of dresses, but his explanation. Anna was stubborn and she refused to agree with him. She attempted to prove that what he said was all very well in theory, but it did not apply to her, because she always remained herself and never wore any masks. But Chapaev simply answered everything she said by saying: “One dress…Two dresses…” and so on. Do you understand? Then Anna asked, if that was the case, who was it that put on the dresses, and Chapaev replied that there was nobody to put them on. That was when Anna understood. She said nothing for a few seconds, then she nodded and looked up at him, and Chapaev smiled and said, “Hello there, Anna!” That is one of my most precious memories…But why am I telling you all this?’
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