by Andrei Bitov
But “Tishka” was neither his double, nor his nickname; nor was it some intimate part of himself. It was his closest friend, Tishkin, a great scientist who had invented a contraption for flying to the Moon.
Although I was wary of not believing him by now, since everything he related had somehow turned out to be true, I wished to know a bit more—not about the Moon, but about the circumstances of the death of Robert Scott. Anton balked and clenched his jaw.
He said, “You’re the one who says that a live dog is better than a dead lion. And I say to you: if a lion were a fox, he would be cunning.” (As I have already said, Anton liked to flaunt his English, though in this case he had no idea he was paraphrasing William Blake.)
“I’ll kill him!” he announced.
“Who?”
“That Finn!”
It turned out he was referring to Roald Amundsen.
“What for?”
“He had better dogs. And he took advantage of it … Ah, Robert, Robert! Why didn’t you listen to me? Why didn’t you take me along?” Anton burst into tears.
I had no choice but to believe in his sincerity, as well.
This is the story as I eventually came to understand it.
* * *
Anton purchased, very economically, the right horses, and Lieutenant Bruce recommended him for the expedition. Scott liked him, too, and Anton was taken on as a member. He was entrusted with the task of meeting and seeing off those setting out to the South Pole. He longed to follow them all the way but was left with the horses because of his youth. (“Again because I am Russian,” Anton moaned. “Though what kind of Russian am I, anyway, when I’m a khokhol?” I won’t belabor the distinction, but it seems that a khokhol is just a Russian with a different haircut.) Even with the horses in tow, he reached 84 degrees south latitude. “I just had six more degrees to cover!” he said. “Although I did climb a volcano. Almost made it to the top, but I got scalded.”
This also appeared to be the truth, though he did call Mount Erebus “Elbrus.” (There is a dormant volcano by that name in Russia.)
For his exploits he was decorated by Her Majesty. For these, too, he was barred from the next expedition and now had occasion to grieve the death of his idol Scott. News of the tragedy drove us to the counter of a pub that bore the name A Tired Horse.
“But where’s the plot?” you will ask. “Tyoo-tyoo!”* I answer, recalling my lost friend’s favorite little word. “I’m getting around to it.”
And that’s just what happened to Anton. Pfft! He disappeared just as suddenly as he had appeared, as though he had drowned in one of the mugs.
Anton had many favorite little words and expressions, some of them even English. Not only was there “knowmen,” but also “knowhow.” “Neekhuyaneeknowhow-knowhowneekhuya,” he intoned sadly, and this rang very pleasantly in my ear.
“Neekhuyanee … means ‘nothingdoingness’?”
“More like ‘doingnothingness.’”
“A subtle difference! So, which one is more correct?”
“Both are worse than neekhuja!” (You can imagine my surprise when I learned some years later that his expression meant, more literally, “Nofrigginknowhow-nohowfrigginway.”)
“Again,” he said. “You have ‘network,’ together, but it’s separate for us: ‘net work. No work.’”
* * *
But if I had a fairly good grasp of everything he told me when I was on the bar stool, a grasp that increased the longer I was on it, that didn’t mean I understood even a smidgen of what he wrote me in a letter I received a few years later.
Deap fpehd! Raitin English fyurst taim in mai laif! I rite uyo in zaimke, haunting uan Amerikan. Zei a not rial soldgeps! Bat weri welll ekvipt! We a hauntin zem laik kuropatok—smol Rasshn vaild hens—uan prope shot end sri aurs ken bi dresst. Its raze kold tu veit—I dreem abaut a guud shot of Whiskey—luuk! I remembe hau it voz rittn on ze botel!—viz uyo, mai Dalink! Bat tuu fa iz yoz Anton! Drug (vor-frend) creep op tikhoi sapoi viz samogon (aue Whicky) …
I won’t try your patience or mine by copying out the whole missive. Even with the help of a friend of mine, a Slavist by profession, it was not easy to decipher. At first I thought that since Anton had been fighting the Germans he was mixing up the two languages: these “deep horses”* as a form of salutation were somewhat bewildering. The Slavist got stuck on zaimke and wandered around for a long time in his “castle” (zamke), until he was finally mired for good in tikhoi sapoi. Even when it was translated into something resembling English, it still didn’t make a great deal of sense:
Dear Friend, I’m writing in English for the first time in my life! I’m writing you from a pit, I’m hunting for an American. They are not real soldiers, but very well equipped! We are hunting them down like kuropatkas (small Russian wild hens): you can dress three with one good shot. It’s quite cold waiting here—I’m dreaming of a good gulp of Whiskey (look how well I can spell that—I remember the word from the bottle!) with you, my dear friend! But your Anton is too far away. My fighting friend (drug) crawled quietly into the trench with moonshine (Russian whiskey) … to your health!…
I was very touched when it was finally deciphered for me, and I immediately drank to Anton’s health, while trying to fathom the Russian turn of phrase “to hunt for an American.”
I sent him a concise and friendly reply, saying that I was awaiting a more detailed dispatch from him, and that he should rather write in Russian, since I had a translator on hand.
Ten years later I received a hefty parcel. Throughout its long years of wandering, it had accumulated multiple layers of torn wrapping paper, miles of twine, and pounds of sealing wax. Unsealing it and fishing out its contents, I felt like my friend Howard Carter when he entered the tomb of King Tut.
The letter was as long as it was incoherent. Some things, however, were more clear than others. It was almost as if, while not understanding the Russian language, I began to understand things in a Russian way. Now the initial incoherence took on the semblance of a plot. I lost the ability to understand anything in the English way.
The bulk of the parcel consisted of the manuscript of Dr. Tishkin, which was entrusted to my safekeeping, and which I was supposed to pass on to “the most scientific society in England.” Not only did I understand nothing of the Russian language and the accompanying scientific formulas, but the pages of the manuscript were mingled with Anton’s own notes on Dr. Tishkin and himself. I had no recourse but to sort through it all meticulously to find out what had happened to the two in Russia (or was it what had happened to Russia itself?).
I replied to Anton, assuring him that I had received everything and that I would do my best to carry out his request in regard to Dr. Tishkin, but that it might take some time. I never received an answer.
My Lord, how tired I am of all of this! Of these footnotes, of this whole pseudo-translation …
I did have a life of my own, after all.
It ended when I became a widower.
Now, during this forced, albeit sad, leisure, I will try to assemble a plot out of the bits and pieces of this veritable bird’s nest; to splice together our semi-drunken ramblings in the pub with the semi-coherent epistolary information. If a plot does not emerge, let it then be a sequence of events.
* * *
Before Lieutenant Bruce picked him up in Vladivostok, Anton spent quite some time in the city of Tobolsk, the birthplace of Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev (1834–1907), whom the Russians consider to have been the first to discover the Periodic Table of the Elements. I checked the Britannica,* and it wasn’t quite true that he was the first. Ours, of course, were the first; but he was the seventeenth [sic] son in the family, and he received a whole column, which is a great honor for a Russian. In any case, he was finally able to complete the Table with the help of valencies (I haven’t the faintest idea what those might be). Anton, as far as I remember, revered him not so much for this, as for the fact that he determined unequivocally that Russian vodk
a must be forty percent alcohol (no more, no less). This scientific discovery of his is not even mentioned in the Britannica; therefore, it may turn out to be true.
* * *
Do not think that I am so besotted by Russia that I am again getting sidetracked. This time I am already grappling with the subject—for the subject concerns precedence. Anton and I argued a great deal over this. It turns out that Russians thought of everything first: the dirigible, the steam engine and the locomotive, the telegraph and telephone, the electric lightbulb, the radio, the airplane—only they never brought it to fruition (“drove it into mind”). (He named a few more inventors, but I never found one of them in the Britannica. “Our encyclopedia is different,” Anton parried breezily. “It’s newer.”) “Could someone with a name like Polzunov† [‘Turtleson’] really have invented the locomotive?” Anton once said indignantly. “Instead of rolling like an engine, he crawled like a turtle. That’s why we ended up sitting in front of the Russian stove and the samovar for years on end. Now, Stephenson* is another story altogether. A wise man.” At that point he became agitated and broke into a “Dubinushka.”† I liked the song immensely, especially the part that went: “Hey, green one, you go on your own!” What green one? Where is it going?
“You see,” Anton said, having cheered up after the third Hey, whoop!, “you Englishmen are, of course, wise men … Still, everything that burns from the inside is ours. And when we finally manage to combine our Russian stove with the samovar, my Tishkin will show you! The Moon will become ours, just like Antarctica!”
Who is this Tishkin, you might ask? It’s not Anton himself, is it?
Alas, no. But Tishkin is the hero of our story.
* * *
Tishkin was a bombist (what we would call a terrorist), but not a warrior or a fighter. He was a man of science who developed the technology for making bombs, for which he was exiled to Tobolsk. After he had liberated himself from his primitive tinkering with explosives, he took a post as a teacher in a technical college and devoted himself entirely to his beloved Science. He invented a rocket for flying to the Moon. He was inspired by the fact that Mendeleev was also from Tobolsk. The scientific interests of Dr. Tishkin were, however, too heterogeneous not to distract him from his primary pursuit: local flora and fauna, mineralogy, astrology, folklore … He delved into everything, and concentrated fully on nothing. He was tall, broad-shouldered, pale, with a black beard. The local maidens fell in love with him on sight. But he paid no attention to them, since he himself was already head over heels in love. His chosen one, in her turn, paid no attention to him.
She was not one of the beauties, and not one of the maidens. She was small, round, red-faced, and taut, like a turnip. One would never have suspected that such a powerful voice resided in such a tiny body. She sang in a church choir but was more celebrated for her ancient folk chants, which she learned from various old grandmothers and remembered note for note, word for word. Initially, Tishkin took an interest in her as a folklorist with a natural talent. She was a natural talent in the sense that when she wailed and keened, she turned every heart upside down. But they called her Manya, and a mania she certainly created. She was considered to be rather light-headed: she liked to tipple, and she didn’t shun suitors. No one could say for certain whom she preferred. Therefore, they all lived in hope, and this would promptly reach the ears of our Tishkin. He had, as we say, fallen for her; but he was one of those for whom jealousy was the primary source of his passion. The deeper he sank into one emotion, the more another one increased.
I rolled on the floor with laughter each time I listened through the wall to Tishkin declaring his love to Manya. (The room had an especially creaky bed and floorboards, and they produced sounds in different keys: poing-poing and skreek-skreek, respectively.) Having satisfied his uncontrollable primary urges, he poured himself some Russian whiskey, handed her a glass in bed, puffed—to mark the degree of his satisfaction—on a pipe (the kind with a long mouthpiece), and then began pacing about the room, making the floorboards creak.
“You see, my dear Manya, on that day Mercury was especially close to your Moon. (You remember, that was the day I found the Coitus Necropolis, very rare in these parts.)”
“You mean the day you killed the bedbug?” Manya giggled. She was easily tired by his talk, and just as easily grew tipsy.
“A bedbug!” Tishkin was indignant. “Bedbugs don’t live in gazebos. What I want to know is, where did you run off to when you left the gazebo? You told me you went to a rehearsal, but what kind of rehearsal could it have been, when I found you the next morning in a disheveled haystack, in a likewise disheveled condition?”
“What was I supposed to do? Listen to you talk about your arthropod earsnouts? You pay court to them for all the world to see, but you have no sweet nothings to say to me.”
“What did you say? Earsnouts?” Tishkin’s voice sounded smug. “Is it possible that you’re jealous of a bedbug?”
“And how!” Manya laughed. “Get over here, quick! Now I’ve caught a real one.”
And the squeak changed key again.
He seemed to be an intelligent fellow, but the closer he came to an obvious fact, the less capable he was of accepting it. As a scientist, however, he believed only in facts, which Manya could easily strip him of.
“Look,” he said, beginning to simmer, “I ought to know when you’re lying and when you’re telling the truth.”
“As if I know myself,” she chortled. “Don’t listen to anyone else. Look at me. Can’t you see that I love only you? Who else is there to love in a hole like this?”
If that didn’t calm him down, she laid siege to him: “Heel, my little rabbit! Heel!” Although this pet name offended him, it always had a transformative effect—he seemed to press his ears back against his head. As she knew he would. The victory was always hers. A lean compromise is always better than a fat lawsuit. Let’s have a drink, let’s strike up a song! When she broke into “You Are My Sweetheart,” he was ready and waiting to take the bait, poor old chap. How much feeling she invested in the song! He, naturally, took everything at face value, to his own detriment. He wept from happiness.
She laughed it all off with well-honed expertise. He, to her: “Don’t torture me, don’t become my mania!” And she, to him: “What kind of mania? I’m Manya! And my surname is fitting: it’s Grand. I’m your delusion of grandeur. Do you suffer from megalomania?” “What kind of megalomania could I suffer from, when I’m a hopeless loser?” Tishkin objected. “In that case you have a persecution megalomania. Persecution by Manya Grand! Take your pick: either persecution megalomania or Manya Grand. Which do you prefer?” “Manya’s better,” Tishkin agreed. “At last. You chose correctly.” And she kissed him. And Tishkin bloomed. The floorboards began creaking again.
“Manya, you are a science; and science is my mania. Manya! There’s an idea. True science is nonlinear, like romance. There’s a novel in there, too, Manya. Romance, as in novel, capice? What other Roman? What do you mean—you’re having a romance with Roman? Who is this Roman? A baron! Oh, come now. Eyewash! I’m talking about a novel. A novel is nonlinear, too, like scientific discovery. Everything in it has to be revealed, uncovered anew, you see? This is how I explain it to myself: in real scientific discovery, the interesting thing is the nonlinearity of becoming, and not the results, however astounding they might be. That’s why I say it’s like a novel, romance or otherwise. I beg you, stop pestering me with your Roman! Oh, so there was a Roman? Well, all right, so he’s a baron. A baron is also a result, it’s a hereditary title. It’s passed along, transmitted like a disease. Aha, I see! So that’s where they came from. You brought them! From him!”
The scuffle turned into sobs and squeaking in the dominant key. Followed by the floorboards, again …
“You see, Manya, if the romance is a book, and the discovery is nonlinear, it’s already worth writing a real novel about. You realize that the book was also discovered, don’t you? No, no;
a book needs covers, of course. That’s part of what makes it a book. I mean discovered, like electricity, like America … No, in science only the path is interesting, not the actual achievement.”
Poing-poing! Skreek-skreek!
“That’s why you are a science, Manya. Or a mania, as you wish. And if it’s love? Passion?… Will you stop nattering on about that baron? The kerosene worked, didn’t it? You washed, and that was that? But kerosene also had to be discovered! Oh, that’s a long story, how it was discovered … More interesting by far are these whatchamacallits from the order … What are they? Okay, crabs. By the way, how did you pick them up? Ah, you don’t know. You don’t remember. You didn’t count. Of course, why count crabs? When I’m going to strangle you with my bare—!”
Poing-poing! Skreek-skreek!
You be the judge—an intelligent enough fellow …
But she had only to sneak out and disappear into the night for him to get all fired up again: Why so sudden? What was the hurry? At night, unable to get a wink of sleep because of his jealousy, he devoted himself to his other beloved—Science. But Science betrayed him, just like Manya. Even so, he defended it, too, with all his powers. He laid it out on a large tabletop, like a game of Patience: newfound minerals, plants, beetles, spiders, and butterflies, trying to align them with the disposition of the stars, and the stars with the sequence of the chemical elements. All with one goal: to expose Manya in a concrete act of infidelity. And each time, it turned out to be something that resembled a crossword puzzle more than a science experiment, but with a single, ever-recurring word: Manya. The links didn’t connect up—Manya slipped away. She left him bit by bit: now a hand, now a foot, now an ear … Manya became a mania.
Vacation time drew near, and in his despair he decided to set out on an expedition to a distant region, with the goal of building his flying contraption. He needed an assistant, and he bumped into Anton at that very moment. They suited one another to a tee: Anton called Tishkin Tishka, and Tishkin called Anton Toshka.
