The Innocent

by David Szalay

  ‘What do you mean you work with him? You try to teach him?’

  ‘We try to teach him, and we try to learn from him as well. Which is the same thing, really.’

  I smiled. ‘You’ve no reason, I suppose, to be suspicious of him in any way?’

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll tell you why I ask.’ And I told her about the warrant for his arrest that had been issued in 1942. ‘He was a Nazi sympathiser,’ I explained. ‘He was also a famous pianist. Did you know that?’ She said she did not. ‘For years we thought he was dead, that he had been killed in the war. That’s why it’s taken so long to track him down. You’re not surprised?’

  ‘I’m surprised. I suppose.’

  ‘So there’s nothing you’ve noticed,’ I said. ‘Nothing suspicious?’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t want to jeopardise your professional integrity in any way.’

  ‘I know you don’t.’

  ‘Nothing questionable, strange, nothing at all?’

  Smoking, she waited a while before shaking her head and saying, ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Okay.’ I stood up, and took my hat, and was about to thank her, when she said, ‘Well, there is one thing.’ She had obviously been wondering whether to say it.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘It’s not necessarily suspicious.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I mean … It’s a bit strange.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘His writing.’

  ‘Whose?’

  ‘Tolya’s,’ she said. ‘Yudin’s.’

  When I told Lozovsky that I knew about Yudin’s writing his face showed nothing, or only the slightest tightening of the jaw. ‘Yes?’ he said. I said I was surprised he hadn’t mentioned it. ‘Doctor Anichkova told you about it?’ he said. ‘It’s not as significant as you probably think.’

  ‘It seems significant.’

  ‘It isn’t. When you read what he’s written, you’ll see.’ From one of his desk drawers – we were in his office – he took some exercise books, the sort that are used in schools. ‘There,’ he said. ‘It’s true that to a very limited extent he can read and write … You probably think it means he’s less mentally impaired than you thought he was. It doesn’t.’ He lit a papirosa. ‘When I first knew him he was obviously illiterate, and in any normal sense he still is. If he tries to write by thinking about what he’s doing, he can’t. It’s hopeless. Just a mess. But if he doesn’t think about it, if he just does it, without lifting the pencil from the paper, he can write quite well. It’s another example of “muscle memory”, in fact. That is, it’s his hand that still knows how to form the words, not his head. And in fact it’s easier for him, in a way, to write than it is for him to speak. He can take his time. It’s a very slow process. He puts sentences together very slowly, word by word. It takes him hours to write just a few words. The actual writing, putting the words down on paper, isn’t the problem. The problem is finding the words in the first place. That’s very difficult for him.’

  I opened one of the exercise books. The unlined pages were filled with large, messy handwriting, and that each page had been written over several sessions was obvious from the variation in pencil quality, often from one line to the next. Turning them, I saw sentences, or parts of sentences:

  The name of a teacher I had at school …

  I imagine an enormous fly …

  A lake surrounded by trees …

  ‘If it’s so difficult,’ I said, ‘why does he do it?’

  Lozovsky said he did not know. Then he said, ‘I suppose through writing he’s able to make some sense, at least, of his existence. It also helps him piece together and understand the past. To some extent. He writes about the same few memories, mostly, over and over.’

  ‘What memories?’

  ‘Very early ones. That’s normal in amnesia cases. I told you that.’

  ‘What else does he write about?’

  Lozovsky shrugged. ‘His problems. He writes about his problems in interacting with the world. Which I suppose is the only thing he has any first-hand knowledge of now.’ He lit a papirosa with the end of the previous one. Then he said, ‘The sad thing is, he seems to hope that through this writing he’ll be able to find his way back to where he was when he was injured, and somehow pick up his life where he left off, and of course he won’t.’

  I know that Lozovsky had the highest esteem for Yudin. He once said to me, ‘For him everything seems meaningless, and he still tries to make some sort of meaning out of it. He never succeeds, yet he still keeps trying to see his experience as something meaningful, to make some sort of meaning for himself. Misguidedly, you might say. I don’t think so. That’s what I’m doing in my work. That’s what science is. And not just science.’ Yudin was obviously a sort of inspiration for him. Perhaps that partly explains what happened later.

  I still have one of the exercise books. The first one, written in 1945. The first entry takes up half a page – ‘I’ve forgotten what whole things are like’. Underneath is scrawled, in smaller writing, ‘no thoughts no memories’. And then, on the next page, ‘I dont remember my sisters names of my sisters’. The first few pages are like this. Then the entries start to get longer.

  Because of my injury I’ve forgotten everything I ever learned or knew … I have to start again. Mostly it’s because of my memory that I find it so hard to understand things. I’ve forgotten everything I ever knew. I have to learn like a child learns. I have the memory a child has …

  The name of a teacher I had at school. Mariya Gavrilovna Lapshina. The names of my friends Sanka Mironov and Adya Protopopova and Volodka and Marusya.

  Sometimes I remember who Lenin is. I remember I have a mother and sisters. Images like visions suddenly appear but I don’t understand what they are …

  Some vague thoughts suddenly come into my mind … I don’t understand them. I try but I can’t. They vanish. I can’t remember them … Images of objects come into my mind. They vanish before I can understand what they are. Sometimes I remember words but they don’t have any meaning …

  Sometimes I remember who Lenin is. I remember I have a mother and sisters … Images like visions suddenly appear but I don’t understand what they are … Since I was wounded I seem to be a newborn thing that just looks and listens but has no mind of its own …

  I can remember my childhood even primary school.

  I remember the teacher I had at school Mariya Gavrilovna Lapshina and the names of my friends Sanka Mironov and Volodka Salomatin and Adya and Marusya. I go to Young Pioneers camp. I remember the camp and the things we did. I remember Sverdlovsk and parts of it and the whole town. Also my best friends Sanka Mironov and Volodka Salomatin and Adya Protopopova and Marusya Luchnikova. A teacher called Mariya Gavrilovna Lapshina.

  I have hallucinations … I see something ugly. A human face with enormous ears … When I close my eyes I see millions of tiny insects. Or I see faces that frighten me. There’s something strange and horrible about them. I can’t see whole things. I know that sounds strange. I’ve forgotten what they look like …

  Sometimes it seems like my head is enormous. That it’s as big as a table … Sometimes it seems like my head is very small like a coin. Sometimes I think my leg is near my shoulder. Above my head even. I know this can’t be true but I still think that.

  For some reason I can’t remember anything. My head is completely empty and flat. No thoughts no memories …

  When a doctor asks me to show him where my nose is I can’t do it. It’s strange but I can’t do it. I know the word nose is part of my body but I can’t remember which part … Because of my injury I can’t remember which part it is. I’ve also forgotten the words for the parts of my body …

  I see images of my childhood. The shore of the Iset where we used to swim … The buildings where I went to kindergarten and primary school … The faces of children and teachers I once knew. The strange thing is my mem ories are mostly from my childhood and
primary school years. Those are the memories I live with now …

  I’ve seen dogs. I know what they look like but since my injury I haven’t been able to imagine one. I can’t imagine or draw a fly or a cat. I just can’t imagine what they look like … What I see are some specks or tiny bodies. I can’t understand how wood is manufactured. What it’s made of …

  I want to write about my life. What my life is like … When I start I realise it’s impossible because I can’t remember the words I need. I spend so much time trying to remember the words I need … In the end I stop trying because it hurts my head and makes me angry and upset …

  I’ve started to rewrite the whole thing but my mind seems to work more slowly. I don’t seem to have the strength or memory. I have no thoughts or memories … Most of the time I’m in a fog like a heavy half-sleep.

  A beautiful view everywhere. On one side a lake surrounded by pine trees. Wherever I look there are huge trees and the sky seems bluer even though the sun is shining just shining with light everywhere …

  I wanted so much to write about my life and I worked so hard at it I finally felt sick. But this writing is my only way of thinking … If I stop I’ll be back in that know-nothing world of emptiness and amnesia …

  Is an elephant bigger than a fly? When I try to think about that I don’t understand. I imagine an enormous fly. I don’t understand what the question means. I know that sounds strange … What does bigger refer to? It can’t be the fly. I understand that an elephant is big and a fly is small … I can’t understand the question.

  Memories suddenly appear. I see things like the river where we used to go swimming. The house where we lived. If I try to imagine these things at other times I can’t do it. I can’t picture them … Sometimes I also remember people. Usually I can’t remember them. Children and teachers I used to know … Sanka Mironov and Volodka Salomatin and Adya Protopopova and … There was a teacher … We lived near a park where it was always very quiet …

  3

  SUNDAY. STILL NO end to the heatwave. He has opened the windows, and the thin brown curtains, half-drawn to hold out the white intensity of the sun, move and swish in the warm draught. The sun sparkles through their loose mesh. It is late afternoon. Somewhere children are shouting, and the radio is on in Mrs Chakovsky’s flat. There is, though, an atmosphere of stillness. The heat holds everything still. Sitting on the sofa he is reading the newspaper, though he knows it will just upset him – in Chile, Allende has formed a new government, and yet there is not a word about the way in which Nixon and Kissinger are doing everything in their power to stymie his struggle for a socialist society there. Not a single word!

  From the street, he hears the unfamiliar sound of a vehicle engine. With a short mechanical sigh – perhaps a well-timed stall – it stops. Holding open the curtain he sees Ivan emerging from his Lada. He seems to spot something, some imperfection, on its paintwork and scrubs it intently with the brown sleeve of his suit jacket. Then he makes a minute adjustment to the wing mirror. Then, looking up and down the quiet suburban street, he locks the Lada, smoothes his moustache, and walks up the short concrete path under the cherry tree.

  ‘You’re late,’ Aleksandr says, leading him up the stairs.

  ‘There was a problem at work.’

  ‘What problem?’

  ‘Just … They want us to rewrite an article that was supposed to go to press today,’ Ivan says. He is deputy editor of the main oblast newspaper, the Urals Worker.

  Sitting on Aleksandr’s mustard sofa – spartan in its square angles and lack of padding – he enthuses about his holiday in Yugoslavia. Not too much though. He knows Aleksandr’s views on these things – on foreign travel, to Titoist Yugoslavia in particular – and does not want to upset him. Aleksandr has never left the Soviet Union, and says he never wants to. ‘Why would I?’ he says. Ivan does not know whether or not this is sincere. If it is, he does not understand it. He himself has travelled widely – to several of the fraternal nations of Eastern Europe. Even – one of the highlights of his entire life – to Tokyo, as a sports journalist for the 1964 Olympics.

  Waiting for Aleksandr to dress, his eyes move impassively from the spines of the books – so many books! – to the small postcard portrait of Stalin, smiling warmly in his white generalissimo’s uniform. Involuntarily, Ivan wrinkles his nose and looks elsewhere. There are no images of the present leadership in the flat, of course. Nor even of Lenin. (In his office, Ivan has a modest alabaster head of Lenin, and there is an official photographic portrait of Brezhnev on the wall. These are not his own, though. They are part of the office furniture. In his flat there is a painting of Lenin in the hall, but that too is only for show.) Without thinking, he takes the pack of Golden Fleece from his pocket and lights one. There is, he notices, paper in the typewriter on Aleksandr’s desk. He has been writing something. And next to the door a small square of whiter wall, where something used to hang. What used to hang there? he wonders. He should have an image of it in his mind. He is perspiring and wipes his face with a folded handkerchief.

  The interior of the Lada is spotless, and the engine starts second time. However, it stalls as it moves out into the road, and Ivan has to restart it, which irritates him. He swears quietly, and sitting in the passenger seat, Aleksandr smiles to himself. ‘How’re the children?’ he says, as they trundle slowly over the un-tarmacked surface of the street. Ivan looks worried about his suspension. ‘Um, I spoke to Shurik yesterday,’ he says eventually. ‘On the phone. He’s got a German girlfriend.’ Shurik, his younger son, is doing a postgraduate degree in Leipzig.

  Scudding down Komsomol Street, with soot-black exhaust fumes in their wake, they overtake slow trams. The sun flares on the polished bonnet, and Ivan leans forward, squinting. They travel in tense silence – kick-off is in less than an hour now. It is only two weeks since the USSR finally and formally acknowledged the existence of West Germany as a state, with a seat at the United Nations, and West Berlin as part of it – and now they meet in the final of the European Championship. There seems to be something more than sport at stake. Aleksandr stares out the window. Trams and dusty trees. The long brown façade of the Urals State Technical University.

  Ivan lives in a flat not far from 1905 Square. Looking at him in the slow lift – he himself is staring impassively into one of its polished walnut panels – Aleksandr says, ‘Do you dye your hair, Vanya?’

  Ivan looks up and smiles – a worried, self-effacing smile which makes Aleksandr think of the twelve-year-old who left their village and joined him in Sverdlovsk in 1929. Now his handsome teeth are nicotine-stained, and he is a man in his fifties, something which Aleksandr often forgets. There is a weariness, a sadness in the smile that was not there in 1929. ‘Is it that obvious?’ he says.

  ‘For Agata, I suppose.’

  ‘Actually she says she prefers it if I don’t, but I don’t believe her.’

  There are a dozen people in the large living room of the eighth-floor flat. Agata, of course, heavily made up, serving drinks. Andrey, Ivan’s older son, and his pregnant wife. A man with a little white beard, wearing a beige cardigan – Spiridon, one of Ivan’s subordinates on the paper. He hovers nervously, not saying much. Some other friends of Ivan’s – men and women in smart clothes, smelling of scent – whom Aleksandr does not know. It is unusual for him to be included in these sorts of events.

  In startlingly lifelike colour (some people ooh and ah – Ivan looks momentarily pleased) the teams file out onto the green pitch – the West Germans in white, the Soviets in red – and the national anthems are played. Khurtsilava and Beckenbauer shake hands in the centre circle. The teams take up their positions. In the warm living room Aleksandr is shivering slightly. It seems to him that he has never wanted anything as much as he wants the Soviet Union to win this match. The Austrian referee blows his whistle. It starts.

  The tension immediately takes on a new quality. Smooth, sickening, panicky. For the first few minutes every touch seems loade
d with terrifying significance. Every incipient attack is met with shouts of joy and aggression if it is the red shirts surging forward, fumbling terror if it is the Germans. After a while, however, a sort of enervated lethargy sets in. Aleksandr finds himself oddly uninterested in the minutiae of the match, the indecisive midfield play. For a moment, he even looks away from the screen – through the blue fug of cigarette smoke everyone’s eyes are on the television set. Even the women, standing in the low arch through to the shadowy hall. It is quiet, except for the measured, nervous voice of the commentator, and the occasional scrape of someone lighting a cigarette. Then Müller scores. From the television, there is a long explosion of white noise. It is the only sound in the smoke-filled living room. Everyone is staring at the screen in shock. The ball is in the net. White-shirted Germans are sprinting, smiling, sprawling on the turf. It’s as though someone’s died.

  Within moments of the second half starting – some people have not even retaken their seats – they score a second. This time, as Wimmer is mobbed by his ecstatic teammates, the ensuing silence lasts much longer – is in fact still more or less in place when, six minutes later, Müller surges through, and with an extraordinary shot extinguishes whatever unspoken hope still lingered in the sweltering living room. They watch what is left with silent loathing. Kick-off seems a long time ago, seems to have taken place in another world. It was another world – a world of wonderful possibility, that is now a world of sour outcome. The Soviet players are struggling to hold the strutting Germans. They have stopped tackling. They look shocked. The three shrill notes of the final whistle sound, and the winners – shaggy as hippies, skinny as drug addicts – fling their fists in the air. Rudakov sits slouched in front of his goal. Khurtsilava has tears in his eyes. When the King of Belgium hands Beckenbauer the silver trophy, Ivan turns off the tele vision. The last image they see on the fading screen is Beckenbauer hoisting the trophy over his head. He is not even smiling.