End to Ordinary History

by Michael Murphy

  “Yes!” Baranov exclaimed. “That amazed me. Rozhnov didn’t tell us he knew about such esoteric matters. Is he hiding something from us?”

  “Try to find out.” Kirov looked down at the moonlit river. “And let it be known discreetly that our project is under way. The study of the mind’s further reaches will gain a new prestige when people hear about it. Never has the Academy given the subject such an imprimatur.”

  “It is a remarkable opportunity,” Baranov whispered. “But there will be dangers. The stakes are higher now.”

  14

  TWO DAYS AFTER HIS last meeting with Kirov in Prague, Fall arrived at the National Hotel to occupy the room reserved in his name. It was on the third floor, facing Red Square and the Kremlin. Through swinging French doors he could see Lenin’s tomb and St. Basil’s Cathedral beyond it.

  That night Fall walked around Red Square. On this moonlit night the Kremlin buildings rose splendidly above their high brick walls. The city seemed more beautiful than ever. On Marx Prospekt down to the Kremlin Promenade, hundreds of people were strolling. Fall walked to the river, then around the Kremlin to St. Basil’s. It gave him special satisfaction to make this perambulation of the whole Kremlin expanse. Because the beauty of this autumn night filled him with energy, he turned into Marx Prospekt and went down to the river again.

  The promenade above the river was deserted, but as he stopped to admire the moonlit water, two men approached. One of them seemed familiar. Though his face was hidden between a large fur cap and an upturned overcoat collar, he walked with a gait Fall recognized.

  “Sergei?” Fall ventured. “Aitmatov! It’s me, Darwin Fall!”

  Kirov turned to see him. “Why, Fall!” he said. “When did you get here?”

  “Just a few hours ago. Isn’t this amazing!”

  “I will phone you,” Kirov said. “Will you be at the hotel in the morning?”

  “Yes.” Fall hesitated. “I’ll wait for your call. I talked to Atabet and he said that he had never heard of that mosque. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.”

  “Good. I will phone. Enjoy our magnificent city!” Kirov gestured toward the Kremlin, then walked off rapidly with Baranov.

  Fall watched him walk away with a chilling recognition. This Aitmatov was not the same man he had met in Prague. His carriage, his accent, his manner had changed.

  In the foreign currency bar, three Germans were talking quietly with two Japanese businessmen. They did not look at Fall when he sat near them. A blond waitress in her thirties came up, and he pointed toward a beer sign. “Heineken?” she asked, and he nodded. The barman, a dark, athletic-looking Georgian, looked at Fall with curiosity, then told the waitress he was an American.

  Fall thought of Aitmatov. In spite of his friendly greeting, the Russian had been guarded. Had he changed his mind about their meeting here? Would he disappear like Magyar and his friends in Prague? A melancholy French song was playing on a phonograph, something he had heard here before. The record was worn out, its static more prominent than the music. Was the hotel too poor to replace it? He signaled his displeasure, but the barman only shrugged and pointed toward the ceiling as if the matter were in the hands of higher-ups.

  As he finished the beer, he felt a sadness forming. Even here there was a sense of deprivation. That a leading hotel would hang on to worn, old records was a telltale sign of the country’s poverty. Or else the barman was too timid to change it. So many Russians were afraid of their bosses! Things hadn’t changed since 1969. There were reminders everywhere of Russia’s social cowardice.

  Absorbed in his thoughts, Fall did not see a redheaded man come up behind him. “What were you thinking?” the intruder asked. Grinning down at him was Nikolai Gorski. “What was it?” the large face insisted. “What was your thought!” Then he picked Fall up and hugged him.

  They kissed on both cheeks. “What a surprise!” the Russian said with a laugh. “I came as soon as I got your message.”

  During Fall’s visit three years before, Gorski had often tried to surprise a thought like this. It was part of his telepathy training. “You look different!” Fall exclaimed. “You’ve lost some weight.”

  “I get in shape for my new part. I play a very old man.” As Gorski sat at the table, he drew in his cheeks to suggest an aged figure. “But what are you doing here?”

  Fall described his meetings with Aitmatov, making sure the waitress could not overhear them.

  “I’ve never heard of him,” Gorski whispered, “in all my telepathy experiments, here or in Leningrad. His behavior sounds very strange.”

  Fall told him what Aitmatov had said about Project Elefant. “That is crazy!” Gorski rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. “He thought we were signaling Soviet dissidents? Maybe the man is not all right.”

  “I saw him tonight by accident, walking with another man along the river, and he seemed different than he was in Prague. But I’m sure he’s not a kook. He knows Stefan Magyar. I met them together there. And he must have pull to get me a suite so easily. Maybe he’s connected to some government ministry that deals with parapsychology.”

  “Maybe.” Gorski shrugged. “But I’ve never heard of him or Project Elefant. I don’t know who he is.” He signaled the waitress for a glass of wine. “But tell me more about yourself. Your Atabet has fired my imagination!”

  “You got my letters?”

  “Both of them.” Gorski nodded. “They are printed on my brain. But I must ask you, are they true? This Atabet has lived out your theories!”

  “Our friendship is the greatest confirmation of my life. To have worked so long on these ideas, then find someone who embodies them . . .” Fall lowered his voice. “More has happened, Nikolai, than I said in my letters. I have seen him manifest the things we talked about! You remember our talks in ’69 and all the theories I had. One year later I met a living proof.”

  “It is hard to believe,” Gorski said, shaking his head with wonder. “How many know about him?”

  “Just six of us. He refuses to bring in others.”

  Gorski glanced around the room. “But if he is so gifted and showing you so much,” he whispered, “why are you over here? What makes you search for spiritual guidance in Russia?”

  “Nikolai, don’t ask me to be rational about this. I’ve had this obsession with Russia for years. Lately it’s focused on Vladimir Kirov. You remember the rumors about him here in ’69, the stories about his powers.” Fall glanced at the German businessmen. “But there’s more I’ll tell you when we can talk more freely. Rumor has it that Kirov’s in trouble now with the KGB bosses.”

  “I don’t understand,” Gorski said with a shrug. “We’ve tried to trace the rumors about him for the last three years with no success. We haven’t found a thing. Darwin, Kirov may be a ghost.”

  “But now I’m glad I came!” Fall said to change the subject. “Now I get to see you! I’m eager to hear about your work. What’ve you been doing?”

  “Very little lately.” Gorski frowned. “For an amateur parapsychologist things are getting tighter. It is hard to experiment freely. Naumov too is having trouble. I feel a tightening all around, in our parapsychology group, in my theater. Vozneshensky and Yevtushenko are restricted, and the underground music groups. They’re closing down, step by step. It is a reaction to the freedom of the sixties.”

  They were silent. “But you know,” the Russian said at last, “my telepathy experiments never made an impression. The universities and Academy ignored them. Only a few government bureaucrats got interested, and our friends. There is nothing, really.” His face filled with disgust. “It is all politics and technology, like we said before. Our two nations have put their faith in Fords and Volgas.”

  “But we shall keep the faith!” Fall raised his glass. “We proved that Moscow and America are closer than they think. You read my mind like a master!”

  Gorski laughed, his expression brightening.

  “You described the elephant,” Fall said. “I
ts grainy texture, its rump. And the trunk—you called it a movable nose dropper. That was best of all! And you described the chair I was sitting in exactly. We were all impressed.”

  “You see, the planet is a single consciousness!” Gorski raised his hands with delight. “Distance disappears like that!” He reached across the table to touch Fall’s shoulder. “But someone’s coming I want you to meet—a friend of mine, Avram Berg. I told him to come here.”

  Following Gorski’s look, Fall turned to see a short, stocky, bearded figure rapidly crossing the room. He wore a brown leather jacket and jeans. “Nikolai! They would not let me in downstairs,” he said in English. “You did not leave a message. The fool at the door tried to call the police!” His words had a throaty sound, as if they came directly from his chest. “The idiots! I had to flatten them!” With a mischievous smile he sat down between them and shook Fall’s hand. “That is what we do to these idiots, Fall. We flatten them!”

  “What do you expect?” Gorski remonstrated. “They do not let hippies in here. You must wear a necktie, or at least a shirt.” He pointed to the bit of dirty undershirt that showed at the neck of Berg’s jacket.

  Berg glanced around the bar as if deciding how loud he could talk. His startling appearance was heightened, Fall thought, by a beard shaved away from his broad, high cheeks in a manner both devilish and cherubic.

  “I told him about our experiment,” Gorski said to Fall. “Avram is a TV producer and is interested in the field of hidden human reserves.”

  “But listen!” Berg touched Fall’s arm. “These telepathic experiments should be shown on our television. I would like to film you and Nikolai this week. We can improve your results, and show it on TV to millions. Are you willing to do that?”

  “Willing to go on Russian TV!” Fall felt himself leaning away. “Doing experiments in telepathy? Nikolai, is this on the level?”

  “On the level?” Berg asked. “What is ‘on the level’?”

  “Are you serious?” Gorski frowned. “He wants to know if you mean what you say.”

  “On the level.” Berg savored the words, passing his hand across the table. “Yes, I am on the level. Absolutely flat!” He giggled. “As level as the floor. Nothing is going to roll off me!”

  “But I don’t know how long I’ll be here,” Fall said cautiously. “When would this program happen?”

  “I go to the authorities tomorrow.” Berg was urgent now. “Nikolai, we have no time to spare. My chief wants an American on his show to demonstrate detente. I told him about your experiment with San Francisco, and he was flattened.” He turned toward Fall with twinkling eyes. “You have to move when the bosses are interested, or you lose your chance. Can you do it?”

  “Do what, exactly?” Fall was unconvinced. “Repeat our experiment?”

  “Yes. But I will add Lozanov’s methods. We will speed up Nikolai’s responses with suggestology. I will do that part myself. Now look.” He started to whisper. “Every bloody Russian has his version of the American Dream, and my chief’s is to coproduce TV specials with your networks. I told him this would help. First we get you, then other Americans on programs here to talk about hidden reserves. We will do five or six of them—one on telepathy, one on spiritual healing, one on peak performance. . . .”

  “Telepathy and spiritual healing!” Fall exclaimed. “They’d let you do that? Nikolai just told me things were tightening up.”

  “In some places.” Berg tapped the table impatiently. “But loosening up in others. There are more Sufi, Gurdjieff, Zen, Cabala, Yoga groups than ever. Not to mention UFOs, lost continents, biofields, Kirlian photography, reincarnation, survival of bodily death.” He waved his arms expansively. “Russia is a great ashram, but still without a vision. Who said it—‘we live in the time between the old gods and the new’? Underneath what you see, Russia is like your California!”

  Fall looked to Gorski. “Is that right?” he whispered. “That’s what I thought in ’69.”

  Gorski shrugged, showing both weariness and wonder. “If Russia is a great ashram,” he said, “it is the strangest one the world has ever seen. It is buried deep, very deep, under the factories and five-year plans.”

  “But Kola,” Berg whispered. “Every one of your friends is a Cabalist! Or a student of hidden reserves. Or he believes in the continent of Atlantis. If we have these TV shows, that will help! When American scholars get interested in something, that influences our academics, then more and more people with pull. We are all in this together.” He pulled a worn paperback from a jacket pocket. “See this? Ken Kesey’s book One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. It is a bible for most of my friends. And why? Because our country—like yours—is an insane asylum! My friends all think they are McMurphy.” With a huge sigh, he pulled a package of postcards from another pocket. “These are scenes of San Francisco. Your city is my American Dream.” He looked at them one by one, then passed them along to Fall. “I have come to love your city. And to think that our missiles are pointed at it.”

  Berg’s mobile emotions had turned to sadness. “I know a guy who worked on one that was aimed at the Golden Gate Bridge. When I showed him this, he cried. He said that in a war he could not destroy heaven.”

  Fall watched him with amazement. Rarely had he seen so many moods cross a face so swiftly.

  “To prevent this,” Berg said, shaking the pictures, “we need more cooperative ventures. Beginning with this TV show. Will you do it?”

  Gorski shook his head sadly. “Avram,” he sighed, “we will do it when your chief calls. Until then, the thought of it will lift our hearts.” He winked at Fall, as if to say he had heard other such proposals from his friend, then signaled the waitress for drinks.

  “You doubt me,” Berg said. “But why? I can make my own specials now! I can’t get into trouble. I am not a dissident, not a criminal, not a spy. Fall, I am a neutrino—invisible to the hacks, weightless as far as they can see, with the ability to pass through walls. There are several of us, a whole cloud of neutrinos, carrying the same kind of message. You must have people like that in the States.”

  “There are thousands interested in things like this,” Fall said. “But we don’t have to hide it there, if that’s what you mean by being invisible.”

  “Yes, you don’t have to hide there.” Berg seemed chastened by the thought. “You don’t have to be neutrinos.” There was silence as he stared at his postcards.

  “Every Russian I know has an image of your country,” he said. “Though we know it is an insane asylum, it seems like the best one on earth. For each of us it takes a different form. Misha wants an American wife, Vadim an American guitar for his band—and a big muff amplifier. Another wants a U.S. jeep because he saw one in a movie. Your country fills our fantasy.”

  “And now a series of TV specials?” Gorski frowned. “Do you think that will help detente?”

  “Look!” Berg said with anger. “Both countries face their own crises. Here it is our demand for more freedoms and material things. Over there it is violence, drugs, and crime. But at the center is what? A lack of vision! A set of old-fashioned ideas! A spiritual hunger! Look. The old religions aren’t filling the void. Not the churches, the synagogues, or mosques. We need a vision for the modern age.” He pointed toward the ceiling. “A vision that includes both this world and that.”

  “You mean the bosses?” Gorski whispered, thinking Berg’s finger pointed toward the omnipresent bug.

  “Not the bosses,” Berg said loudly. “I mean the worlds our esoteric groups are looking for. The worlds that Socialism and science don’t show us!”

  The German businessmen had turned to see the source of this harangue, and the waitress approached with displeasure. “Shut up!” Gorski whispered. “You will get us into trouble.”

  “Give me glass of water, darling,” Berg said to the waitress. “I entertain my American friend.”

  She studied his face for a moment, then smiled. He had won her instantly. “See how I flatten
them?” Berg grinned. “Do not worry, Kola. Every Russian agrees with this, right up to Brezhnev himself!”

  “Where do you get this term ‘flatten’?” Fall asked. “I’ve never heard a Russian use it.”

  “From Scientology. I studied to be a Clear.”

  “Scientology!” Fall exclaimed. “Here in Russia! But that’s not the way they use the term. To ‘flatten’ an emotion means to reduce its negative charge. You don’t flatten a person like that waitress.”

  “I flatten them.” Berg pounded his chest. “No matter what the Scientologists do. That waitress is absolutely flattened.”

  Fall and Gorski stared at one another, aware that they were getting drunk. But their intoxication came from more than alcohol. Fall had felt the same mood here before, the same exhilaration and fear. All things seemed possible when Russians and Americans conspired like this about their nations’ futures. Suddenly the world lit up. But there were forces everywhere to thwart a man like Berg. “You have an audacious dream,” Fall said at last. “I would like to help you fulfill it.”

  “Good!” Berg whispered as if they were sealing a pact. “I will call in the next few days. We have no extra time.” He rose from the table, squeezed Gorski’s shoulder, then crossed the bar as if bouncing on springs.

  “Is he always like that?” Fall asked.

  “Always,” Gorski whispered. “Ever since I have known him. A new idea every day, and sometimes one actually happens. You will hear from him, though. No doubt about it.”