Kutuzov came to beat the French and your son, as our lower ranks joke, came to kick the Chinese in the bollocks. Well, here’s the result. Sign on receipt.
By the way, they’ve written about our prodigious heroes in the newspapers too! Look here, in yesterday’s Evening News, on the third page: ‘Hard is the soldier’s path to the Order of St George’.
I enclose herewith.
‘It is a sad fact,’ our special correspondent reports from the theatre of military operations, ‘that the experience of the first days of war has demonstrated that no other way is possible: we have tried being merciful and received volleys of gunfire from thickets of kaoliang – Chinese sorghum – in our rear. And take a look at their proclamations, nailed up on every joss house!
‘There are no rains,
The earth is drying up:
The foreign devils have disrupted the universal harmony.
The wrathful heavens
Have sent down to earth
Eight million celestial soldiers.
Now we shall give the foreign devils short shrift,
We shall destroy the railroads:
Rain will pour down in heavy torrents,
People and spirits will be revived,
Cockerels and dogs will be pacified.
So kill one when you see him,
Kill him straightaway!
As often as you meet him,
Kill him every day!
‘The foreign devils, dear reader,’ the reporter continued in his report, ‘are subhuman heathens with dogs’ heads. We are the foreign devils.
‘We have disrupted the universal harmony. We are like holes in a perfect universe, through which warmth and meaning escape and an icy cosmic draught blows in. Call the universal harmony feng shui if you wish, call it the general service regulations, it makes no difference, the important thing is that it contains everything in plenty: life and death and – most important of all – human warmth.
‘Let me try to put this more simply. The universal harmony is the general service regulations, which are intended to teach new recruits that everything rhymes. Kasha and Masha, love and blood, snow and water, some such-and-such and her son.
‘The Celestial Empire is celestial because people there die, but they carry on living. Here everyone carries on living in the same houses, speaking the same words that are too inadequate to express anything, watching the sunset in the same old way as it tries so hard to please, trimming their toenails in the same old way after soaking their feet in a basin of hot water. Everyone is still where they were before. And their houses, their roads, their land, their sunset, their toenails must not be taken away from them.
‘In these regulations it is written: you must understand that you live on their land and walk their roads. And if you wish to hammer a nail into their wall, you must first ask permission. And when you build a house, you do not build it for yourself, but for everyone. For everyone living and not-living. For all the sunsets and toenails.
‘It is not even a matter of the sleepers and the rails, but that it was done without so much as a by-your-leave. It touches a raw nerve. A celestial nerve.
‘The foreign devils have disrupted the universal harmony, it must be restored. Therefore the foreign devils must be annihilated. We must be annihilated. We are the dog-headed ones, we must be put down like mad dogs. We are the ones ruining life for everyone.
‘The heavens themselves are outraged and have sent a celestial army to fight against our sons.
‘We are fighting against the heavens.
‘You should see them, dear reader, these celestial warriors!
‘They are mere children!
‘And all little girls.
‘They believe that uttering special words, celestial incantations, will make them invulnerable. They believe that a transparent golden bell will manifest itself around their maidenly bodies and protect them like armour against a bullet or a bayonet. And they also believe that they can set fire to houses with a single touch or glance, disappear and reappear in the most unexpected place, become invisible, hide under the ground and fly through the air. And in their hands even a kaoliang stalk becomes a weapon. They need only point it at a foreign devil for him instantly to be torn apart by invisible claws.
‘And they take no prisoners. The cruelty with which they treat their victims is distinctly unmaidenlike and they feel obliged to abuse the lifeless bodies. They dismember them, feed them to pigs and eat the hearts themselves. But this is not simple barbarity, it contains a profound meaning. These little girls who can fly cannot imagine that even without all this someone’s son will not be resurrected anyway, that he will never come again – neither on the third day nor the one hundred thousand and third.’
But let us return to our sheep, as the French say.
I return.
According to an instruction from Somebody-or-Other appended to the Letter-Writing Manual for General Staff Clerks, the present death notification should recount in brief the circumstances and causes of your son’s death, such as that he died, faithful to his oath, in the performance of a combat mission assigned by a boneheaded commanding officer, having demonstrated fortitude and courage or – if you prefer: Faithful to his oath, in the performance of a combat mission assigned by a boneheaded commanding officer, after having demonstrated fortitude and courage, he was seriously wounded and died. Another version is also possible if your boy died as a result of the careless handling of a weapon, illness or other causes, for instance, if he expired as a result of bloody diarrhoea – as you understand, we can’t write that to you, so it becomes: In the performance of a combat mission assigned by that same bonehead, faithful to his oath, he was taken seriously ill and died.
I recount herewith.
Your son was killed near Tongzhou on the banks of the Pei Ho river.
Or, rather:
Your son was killed, but he is alive and well.
But everything in due order.
We disembarked at the Taku Forts, which had already been taken by the allies.
Volodenka!
How much time has passed by already?
Your mum phoned me then, but she couldn’t tell me. Your stepfather took the phone. He told me everything.
I lay down for two whole days without getting up. Why bother?
Everything turned to ice. My soul and my feet.
Then I got up and went to see your family.
You mother looked absolutely terrible. Her face was all swollen from crying. She looked at me as if she didn’t know me.
We sat down at the table. Pavel Antonovich stood beside her and kept his hands on her shoulders. Then he said he would make some tea and went into the kitchen.
She said:
‘If there was a coffin, if there was a grave, but there’s nothing – a piece of paper …’
She held out the notification to me.
‘Look, there’s a piece of paper, there’s a seal, there’s a signature. But where’s my son?’
Then her feelings overcame her, and so did mine. We wept our eyes out.
She kept repeating:
‘But why was he killed? What for? They could have crippled him, left him with no arms or legs, but alive. He’s mine, isn’t he! He belongs to me!’
Then we drank tea with ring-shaped cracknels. Your stepfather poured for everyone and I noticed the way he poured – until it reached his finger.
You know, this is probably the way it is: there’s a threshold of pain, a person loses consciousness in order not to die. And there’s a threshold of grief, it suddenly stops hurting.
And you feel nothing. Nothing at all.
You sit and drink tea with ring-shaped cracknels.
And another thing – there are lots of people around, but when something happens, they disappear. I read somewhere that there used to be prohibitions on associating with widows or widowers, because grief was thought to be infectious. People probably still think that. Or perhaps it really is infectious.
Today I walked through our park, just as they were boxing up the statues for winter with sheets of plywood. As if they were nailing them in their coffins.
One of them was in that natural pose, as if she’d just seen the painter.
I stood and watched. I simply couldn’t leave. I got frozen right through.
I was the one they were nailing in.
I’m the one in the coffin.
My Sashenka!
We’ve been unloading all day long and I’ve only just found a moment to write to you.
Do you know what is the most difficult thing for me now? It’s explaining to you the very simplest things, what I’m surrounded by here. It’s impossible to describe. Colours, smells, voices, plants, birds – everything here is different.
And today I also recorded my first death. A soldier was killed in a very stupid way: he was standing right under the windlass when something broke loose and he was crushed by falling crates.
I thought it would be special somehow, but my hand traced out the terrible words as if it was nothing out of the ordinary.
Maybe this is the beginning of what I wanted so much to happen inside me?
All my life, over and over, I have kept asking myself the same question.
And now sometimes it seems that I am getting close, not yet to the answer, but to some kind of understanding.
How I used to hate and despise myself – the person that I wanted to scrape off, like a tight shoe that had rubbed my foot raw! How I wanted to become like all of them: never despondent, mean, jaunty, rugged, never asking questions – everything’s already clear anyway. To learn to cling to life. To step beyond everything inessential, incidental, learned from books. To learn not to think about the fear of death or, rather, not to ponder on it. To learn to hit out when a blow must be struck. To take joy in what is and not rack my brains over what it’s all for.
There, I’ve written a report of a man’s death and my hand didn’t even tremble. Good.
Now in brief about these first two days.
Yesterday we reached the Taku Forts. The roadstead was already crowded with ships sailing under every possible flag, but the bay is shallow and large ships cannot enter the Pei Ho estuary. So we transferred onto barges first, and I felt rather queasy as I watched the horses being lifted and lowered down on the ships’ windlasses. They neighed in helpless fright, as if they had resigned themselves to their fate, and their long legs dangled hopelessly in the air.
We dropped anchor in the bay in the early evening and carried on unloading until late at night. When it got dark, the lights were lit on all the ships – entire constellations of electricity on all the masts and yards. You know, it was very beautiful! At first I regretted that you weren’t here with me. The reflections of the portholes in the black water, the lights of the launches and lifeboats. Every now and then the beams of the searchlights flared up, thrusting into the clouds and leaving patches of moonlight in them. I watched these illuminations and thought about you. There was a warm, light wind blowing from off the shore, bringing new, unrecognisable smells. I felt glad for some reason, and a bit afraid. The beams kept flashing on and off. I imagined that was how ships talk to each other, they send signals via the clouds.
It was already dawn when we were towed into the estuary of the river. On both sides of us were long, low lines of forts. Everything empty and dead. The forts had only been taken a few days earlier. Here and there on the walls we could see the marks left where shells had exploded.
I don’t know what they hauled on that barge before, but it was dirty and slippery, and my feet stuck to the deck.
You know, apparently in translation the name of the river means ‘White’. But the colour of the Pei Ho is reddish-brown with an ochre shimmer. And it carries along everything that can be carried from hundreds of towns and villages – refuse, planks, watermelon rinds, a hotchpotch of absolutely everything.
Sashka, I’ll never forget the way everyone fell silent the first time they saw a dead body float by, right up beside the barge, bloated, face downwards, we couldn’t even tell if it was a man or a woman – with a grey plait.
Rushes, scanty willows, murky waves, a sandy plain all the way to the horizon. This desert view was relieved by heaps of sea salt and banks of earth – graves, it was explained to us later. Sometimes we saw deserted villages. We didn’t come across a single living creature, apart from a pack of dogs. And black pigs also caught our eye, grubbing about on the silty banks of the river.
Soon Tong Ku appeared. From a distance we could see little yellowish-grey adobe houses, then large customs depots hove in sight, and warehouses, workshops, and a wharf cluttered with crates and bales.
We spent all night entraining right there on the wharf. Now they’ll move us out. I don’t know when I’ll be able to write to you next. A fiery glow hangs over the town all night long. The air is filled with the smell of burning. They say the inhabitants are setting fire to their own homes, but they accuse the foreigners of doing it, to provoke greater hatred for them. Half of Tong Ku is already burnt out, but the fires are still burning, especially since no one is even trying to extinguish them,
Do you know what part of the body is the worst afflicted? The nose. Even now the repulsive smell of burnt reeds is wafting on the air, together with an odd, unfamiliar aftertaste on the wind that makes me feel nauseous. I think I’ve already learned to distinguish that special, sickly-sweet stench.
Volodenka!
My beloved! My joy!
I’ve got frozen in the coffin, my feet are blocks of ice.
How can I explain it to you? I eat, change my clothes, go shopping. But wherever I might be, I’m still dead.
I did my practical training too, in the emergency department – I saw all sorts of things.
But today’s a day off, dark and frosty, I don’t have to go anywhere in the morning. The heating is poor, the room is cold. The windows are iced over. I lay there under two blankets and thought about you. How are you over there? What’s happening to you?
Then I forced myself to get up and did a bit of housekeeping. I could smell the rubbish bucket already starting to pong a bit and decided to take it to the tip.
A frozen yard. Trees covered in hoarfrost. Steam coming out of my mouth.
I went out and walked to the big rubbish skips. Steam coming out of their mouths too.
New Year trees draped in tattered tinsel, dumped in the dirty snowdrifts.
No one anywhere around.
I ask:
‘Is that you?’
It says:
‘Yes.’
I ask:
‘The message and the messenger?’
It says:
‘Yes.’
I say:
‘Go away!’
It says:
‘You don’t understand.’
I say:
‘I understand everything. Go away!’
It says:
‘It’s not even properly light yet and here’s the sunset already. Look at what a crossopterygian it is, with that webbing on the winter branches! And the moon there’s got out of the wrong side of the bed. Do you hear that music and laughter from the open window on the first floor – a feast in the time of head colds? And there’s a pram on that balcony, the baby’s woken up and it’s bawling. Only just been born, and already kicking against the pricks. You know, I’m the one who made you love this world.’
I say:
‘Yes. You made me love this world. Is that all you can do?’
It says:
‘I know it’s hard for you right now.’
I say:
‘Can you do anything at all?’
It says:
‘I know the names of all things and I can’t do anything.’
I say:
‘Why not?’
It says:
‘The answer’s a lemon. Didn’t they teach you anything at all in school? Didn’t you learn that there’s a past, an absent and a future?
In physics class you probably read thick novels under the desk, right? It’s all a matter of light. That’s what everything’s made of. And warmth as well. And bodies are bundles of warmth and light. Bodies radiate warmth. A body can lose its warmth and become cold, but warmth remains warmth. Don’t you understand that? For instance, you once had a date by a monument. But it’s really a monument by a date. The monument’s been whisked away, but that date’s still there.’
I say:
‘I can’t live without him. I need him. Why isn’t he here?’
It says:
‘You said yourself that you have to share things. If you’ve been given something, you have to give it away in order to keep at least something. And the more precious someone is to you, the more you have to give away. And in general, it’s only casual passers-by who stroll along, believing that everything terrible is already behind them. In one of those thick novels that you read under the desk, remember, the hero and heroine are somewhere close to each other all the time, but they don’t meet and they suffer because they simply can’t manage to meet and then, when they finally do meet, they realise they weren’t ready for each other before. They still hadn’t gone through all the suffering that was in store for them. Well, you’re not ready for each other yet – you still haven’t really suffered to the full. It only seems complicated, but it’s actually very simple. Like those felt hammers.’
I ask:
‘Simple as in easy?’
It says:
‘Don’t cavil over words. It’s only a translation. You know that words, any words, are only a bad translation of the original. Everything happens in a language that doesn’t exist. And those nonexistent words are the real ones.’
I ask:
‘What do you want from me?’
It says:
‘Take a look around. Everybody repeating their own selves, droning on about the same old thing, amazed that anyone can be Persian. There are whole lives with nobody alive in them, not even the people living there, they’ll die without ever hatching out. Is that what you want then?’
The Light and the Dark Page 9
