The People's Act of Love

by James Meek

  – Busy remaking the world, man forgot to remake himself.

  Andrei Platonov, Nursery Of The New Man

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Samarin

  The Barber And The Berry Gatherer

  Mutz

  Balashov

  The Convict

  Anna Petrovna

  The Widow

  The Husband

  Matula

  The Tribunal

  The River

  The White Garden

  The Fields

  The Legion

  In

  Out

  Causes

  The Avakhi

  Songs

  The Reds

  Cannibals

  In Dark Heaven

  At Mutz’s Execution

  The Locomotive

  The Nature Of The Burden

  Declarations

  Samarin’s Request

  Tripping The Demons

  The Gift Horse

  Among The Worlds

  Acknowledgements And Notes

  About the Author

  Praise

  Copyright

  Samarin

  When Kyrill Ivanovich Samarin was twelve, years before he would catch, among the scent of textbooks and cologne in a girl’s satchel, the distinct odour of dynamite, he demanded that his uncle let him change his second name. He didn’t want to be ‘Ivanovich’ any more. The Ivan from whom the patronymic came, his father, had died when he was two, soon after his mother, and he had lived with his uncle ever since. His uncle’s name was Pavel; why couldn’t he be called Kyrill Pavlovich? When his uncle told him he couldn’t change it, that this was the way things were done, that dead fathers had rights and required respect, the boy went into angry silence, pressed his lips together and looked away, breathing loudly in and out through his nose. His uncle knew these signs. He would see them every few months, when one of the boy’s friends let him down, or when he was told to put his reading lamp out and sleep, or when he tried to stop his uncle punishing a servant.

  What the boy did next was not familiar. He looked at his guardian and grinned, and began to laugh. The effect of the boy’s deep brown eyes looking up into his uncle’s, together with that laugh, not a man’s yet – the boy’s voice hadn’t broken – but not a child’s either was unsettling. ‘Uncle Pavel,’ said the boy. ‘Could you call me just “Samarin” from now on, until the time when I can choose my own names?’

  So the twelve-year-old came to be called, at home at least, by his family name alone, as if he were living in a barracks. The uncle was fond of his nephew. He spoiled him when he could, although Samarin was hard to spoil.

  Samarin’s uncle had no children of his own, and was so shy in the presence of women that it was difficult to tell whether he liked them or not. He had little rank to speak of, and a large fortune. He was an architect and builder, one of those charmed individuals whose practical usefulness transcends any amount of snobbery, corruption and stupidity in the powers on whose patronage they depend. As Samarin grew up, people in Raduga, the town on the Volga where he and his uncle lived, stopped thinking of him as an unfortunate orphan and began to refer to him as schastlivchik, the lucky one.

  It didn’t harm the good name of Samarin’s uncle among the conservative gentry that he took no interest in politics. No circle of chattering liberals met at his town house, he didn’t subscribe to St Petersburg periodicals, and he refused to join reform societies. Reformers would keep asking him to sign up, all the same. He hadn’t always been aloof from causes. In the mad summer of 1874, long before Samarin was born, his uncle had been one of the students who went like missionaries among the peasants in the villages, urging them to rebellion. The peasants had no idea what the students were talking about, suspected they were being mocked, and asked them, with embarrassed whispers and some jostling, to leave. Samarin’s uncle was fortunate to escape exile in Siberia. He never recovered his lost pride. Once a month he would compose a long letter to a woman he had met in those days, who now lived in Finland, and, just before posting it, he would burn it.

  Samarin seemed to take after his uncle in politics, though not in his dealings with women. He went through school and on to the local university, where he enrolled as an engineer, without joining any of the debating societies or discussion clubs or semi-underground Marxist circles populated by the radical students. Nor did he enjoy drill, or mix with the militant anti-semites who would loiter on the university steps, gawking at hooknosed, bloodsucking Jewish caricatures in pedlars’ chap-books. He read widely – his uncle would buy him any book he wanted, in any language – went to dances and, in his late teens, took long summer trips to St Petersburg. When a friend asked him about luggage labels in German, French and English on his travelling trunk, he smiled and said that buying the labels was much cheaper than actually travelling abroad. He had a great many friends, or rather a great many students counted him as a friend, even though, had they stopped to think about it, most of them would have been able to count the hours they’d spent with him on the fingers of one hand. Women liked him because he danced well, didn’t try to get drunk as quickly as possible when the means were to hand, and listened with sincere interest when they talked. He had a way of devoting attention absolutely to one woman, which not only pleased her during their conversation, but left her with the feeling afterwards that the time they’d spent – no matter how brief, and usually it was brief – was time offered to her from a precious store, time which could and should have been used by Samarin to continue a great task. The fact that nobody knew what this great task was only intensified the feeling. Besides, he dressed well, he stood to inherit a large estate, he was clever, and everything about him, his wit, his strength, even his looks – he was tall, a little gaunt, with thick collar-length brown hair and eyes that shifted between serene remoteness and a sudden sharp focus – suggested a man holding himself back from revealing his full self out of consideration for the less gifted around him.

  The voices which spoke of alternative Samarins never gained a patient hearing, not because they were thought to be motivated by envy, but because their slanders were deemed too obscure. They were received like the small paragraphs in newspapers reporting bizarre happenings in other small provincial towns similar to Raduga (though never in Raduga): they were read with interest, but not believed, let alone acted on. There was the story of how somebody had seen Samarin and his uncle walking together when the nephew was fifteen, and how it had been the nephew talking, gesturing as if explaining something, and the grey-haired uncle who was listening, silent, nodding, hands behind his back, almost respectful. In those days there was unrest in the countryside. Manor houses were being burned down by peasants angry at the compensation they still owed landowners for the privilege of being freed from serfdom forty years earlier. Samarin’s uncle would be called on to supervise the reconstruction of the manor. He would take Samarin with him to visit the families of the burned-out gentry. What one witness said, and it was only his word against everyone else’s, was that he had overheard uncle and nephew together after one such visit, to a family of the most minor nobility, who had lost everything, and that the two of them had been laughing about it. ‘I heard the boy laugh first, and then the uncle joined in!’ So the witness said.

  In 1910, when he was 21, Samarin began spending time with Yekaterina Mikhailovna Orlova – Katya – a student in his class and the daughter of the rector of the university. They went for walks together; they talked in the corner at parties; they danced. One day in early spring, Katya’s father ordered that the relationship end. Samarin had humiliated him, he said, during his annual address to final year students. When Orlov had
talked about how fortunate the students were to be young in an era when Russia was becoming a wealthy, enlightened democracy, Samarin had started to laugh. ‘Not a snigger, or a chuckle,’ said Orlov. ‘A great roaring, bellowing laugh, like a savage beast in our academic groves.’

  There was a holiday, and Orlov took his daughter to the country house of one of the university’s patrons. Samarin found out that another student had arranged to meet Katya in the grounds of the house, to read her his poetry. Samarin persuaded the student that they should go together to the gates of the estate. Samarin warned him that Katya preferred men to be dressed in light-coloured clothes. Not long after the two men set out along the country road to the house, Samarin on a bicycle and the other on a horse, there was an unusual accident. The horse, normally docile, threw the poet, just as they were passing an area of deep, wet mud. The poet’s white suit and beige English raincoat were covered in dirt, and he hurt his ankle. Samarin helped him onto his mount again and the poet turned back. Samarin offered to deliver the poems to the house before riding back to chaperone the poet safely home, and the poet agreed. They parted.

  A mile short of the house, Samarin dismounted and walked on, wheeling the bicycle with one hand and holding the student’s poems in the other. The verses were heavily influenced by the early work of Alexander Blok. The words ‘moon’, ‘darkness’, ‘love’ and ‘blood’ occurred with great frequency. After reading each one, Samarin stopped, tore the paper into eight neat squares, and dropped it in the ditch running along the side of the road. There was no wind and the paper spread out onto the surface of the meltwater run off the fields.

  A watchman stood at the gate of the estate. One student looked much like another to him and, when Samarin introduced himself as the poet, it didn’t occur to him that the young man might be lying. Samarin asked if he could meet Katya at the summer house by the pond and the watchman went to fetch her. Samarin wheeled his bicycle over to the summer house, a sagging, rotten structure being claimed by bright green moss, leaned his bicycle against a tree, and sat on a dry patch on the steps. He smoked a couple of cigarettes, watched a snail working round the toe of his boot and ran his hand through a clump of nettles till he was stung. The sun came out. Katya came through the wet, uncut grass, wearing a long brown coat and a broad-brimmed hat. She smiled when she saw it was Samarin. She bent down and pulled something out of the ground. When she sat down next to him she was holding a bunch of snowdrops. Samarin told her what had happened to the poet.

  ‘I’m not supposed to see you,’ said Katya.

  ‘He gave me his poems,’ said Samarin. ‘I lost them. They weren’t good. I brought something else to read to you. Would you like a cigarette?’

  Katya shook her head. ‘Are you writing poetry now?’ she said.

  ‘I didn’t write this,’ said Samarin, taking a folded pamphlet out of his inside jacket pocket. ‘And it isn’t poetry. I thought you’d be interested. I heard you intend to become a terrorist.’

  Katya leaned forward and laughed. ‘Kyrill Ivanovich! What stupid things you say.’ She had perfectly regular little teeth. ‘Joking all the time.’

  ‘Terrorist. How does it sound? Because you need to get used to the word. “Terrorist.”’

  ‘Be serious! Be serious. When have I ever said a word about politics to you? You know better than anyone what a light-minded creature I am. Terror, I don’t even like to say it. Unless you’re talking about when we set off fireworks behind the ice fishermen at New Year. I’ve grown out of that. I’m ladylike now. Fashion. Ask me about that! Do you like this coat? Papa bought it for me in Petersburg. It’s pretty, isn’t it? Enough. So.’ Katya put the flowers down on the step between them. The stems were crushed where she had squeezed them in her fist. She folded her hands on her lap. ‘No wonder Papa doesn’t want you to see me if you’re going to make fun of me. Well, read, go on.’

  Samarin opened the pamphlet and began to read. He read for a long time. At first, Katya watched him with the kind of wonder that shows on people’s faces when somebody says something out loud which corresponds to their most deeply buried thoughts; equally, it could have been what shows when one person makes a lewd proposition to another much earlier than expected in their courtship. After a while, however, Katya’s blue eyes narrowed and the last patch of red faded from her smooth white face. She turned away from Samarin, took off her hat, brushed the gleaming blonde wisps from her forehead, took one of his cigarettes and began to smoke, hunched over her forearm.

  ‘“The nature of the true revolutionary has no place for any romanticism, any sentimentality, rapture or enthusiasm,”’ read Samarin. ‘“It has no place either for personal hatred or vengeance. The revolutionary passion, which in them becomes a habitual state of mind, must at every moment be combined with cold calculation. Always and everywhere they must be not what the promptings of their personal inclinations would have them be, but what the general interest of the revolution prescribes.”’

  ‘Listen to this part, Katya: “When a comrade gets into trouble, the revolutionary, in deciding whether they should be rescued or not, must think not in terms of their personal feelings but only of the good of the revoutionary cause. Therefore they must balance, on the one hand, the usefulness of the comrade, and on the other, the amount of revolutionary energy that would necessarily be expended on their deliverance, and must settle for whichever is the weightier consideration.”’

  ‘What does this strange document have to do with me?’ said Katya.

  ‘There’s a story of a plan to entrust you with a device, and a target.’

  ‘You should mind your own business,’ said Katya.

  ‘Don’t take it. I believe the intention is to spend you, and mark you down as a cheap loss.’

  Katya gave a short, thin laugh. ‘Read more,’ she said.

  Samarin read: ‘“The revolutionary enters into the world of the state …”’

  Blowing out smoke and looking into the distance, Katya interrupted him. ‘“The revolutionary enters into the world of the state, of class and of so-called culture, and lives in it only because he has faith in its speedy and total destruction,”’ she recited. ‘“He is not a revolutionary if he feels pity for anything in this world. If he is able to, he must face the annihilation of a situation, of a relationship or of any person who is part of the world – everything and everyone must be equally odious to him. All the worse for him if he has family, friends and loved ones in this world; he is no revolutionary if he can stay his hand.”’ There. Now if you’re working for the police you can blow your whistle.’

  ‘I’m not working for the police,’ said Samarin. He folded the pamphlet and tapped it on his knee. ‘I could have lost this, with the poetry, couldn’t I? You memorised the Catechism of a Revolutionary. That was clever.’ He lowered his head a little and turned his mouth in a smile that failed to take. It came out as a grimace. Katya tossed her cigarette stub in the weeds and leaned forward to catch the expression of doubt in his face, an expression she’d barely seen before. Samarin turned his head away slightly, Katya leaned further forward, Samarin twisted away, Katya twisted after him, Katya’s breath was on Samarin’s cheek for a moment, then he straightened up and looked around. Katya made a little sound at the back of her mouth, scorn and amusement and discovery all at once. She put a hand on his shoulder and he returned to her, looking into her eyes from almost no distance. It was so close that they could tell whether they were looking into the filaments of the other’s iris, or into the black ports of the other’s pupils, and wonder what significance either had.

  ‘It’s a curious thing,’ said Katya, ‘but I feel I’m looking at the true you for once.’ Her voice was the voice of closeness, not a whisper but a lazy, effortless murmur, a cracked purr. With one finger Samarin traced the almost invisible down on her upper lip.

  ‘Why is it so unbearable?’ said Samarin.

  ‘What?’ said Katya.

  ‘To look into the looking part of the one who’s looking
at you.’

  ‘If you find it unbearable,’ said Katya, ‘don’t bear it.’

  ‘I won’t,’ said Samarin. He put his lips on hers. Their eyes closed and they put their arms around each other. Like a feint, their hands moved decorously across each other’s backs the more eagerly they kissed. It was on the edge of violence, on the edge of teeth and blood, when they heard shouting in the distance and Katya pushed him away and they sat watching each other, breathing deeply and sullen, like opium eaters over laudanum they’d spilled squabbling.

  ‘You have to leave,’ said Katya. She nodded at the pamphlet. ‘There. In there. Do you know Chapter 2, Item 21?’

  Samarin began leafing through it, but before he could find it, Katya began to recite it, pausing to gulp breaths: ‘“The sixth, and an important category is that of women. They should be divided into three main types: first, those frivolous, thoughtless and vapid women who we may use as we use the third and fourth categories of men; second, women who are ardent, gifted, and devoted, but do not belong to us because they have not yet achieved a real, passionless, and practical revolutionary understanding: these must be used like the men of the fifth category; and, finally there are the women who are with us completely, that is, who have been fully initiated and have accepted our programme in its entirety. We should regard these women as the most valuable of our treasures, whose assistance we cannot do without.”’

  It was months before Samarin saw Katya again. One morning he waited for her at the station. The university had a poor library and at intervals the authorities would send railway wagons, fitted out with bookshelves and desks, from Penza to give the students access to specialist titles. Samarin had all the books he needed at home but in the hottest days of May, when the railway library came, he was outside. Katya arrived, wearing a white dress and no hat and carrying a large, almost empty satchel. Her pale skin had burned and she was thinner and more anxious. She looked as if she had been sleeping badly. There was a hot wind and the poplars were hissing in their row beyond the station. Samarin called to Katya but she didn’t turn round. She went into the library wagon.