by Andrei Bitov
The Eye, who had retrained himself to hold his sword in his left hand so that he could see it;
The Afghan, munching the last of his brainy flat bread;
My Georgian brother, who had grown a beard, which was why he was being transformed into a woman;
The Murmansk drifter, dragging behind him a baby carriage full of manuscripts, the chronicle of our expeditions;
Tornike, who baptized us all from one glass, as was proper for a company, but we were a platoon—we got some extra drops;
Victoria, our Victoria! with her blind guide embracing a harp;
Zyablikov, our navigator, who lapped up our reserve supplies but stuffed us with dinosaur egg and other marvelous legends;
The Inventor Brothers, incessantly drawing the Trojan horse in any sand they came to;
Colonel Adidasov, constantly resoling his sneakers;
A barbarian who had attached himself to us, constantly lamenting his homeland, a Voronezh of foggy second-category Albion;
Million Tomatoes, who easily carried each of us under his arm across the wild torrent …
We were many in the bark! And Victory awaited us, victory over the Georgian usurper who had appropriated the tin fleece! And then, of course, the liberation of the monkeys, our little brothers incarcerated in so-called freedom and democracy.
Good heavens, they were all alive! They moved. This came hard for them, and they didn’t overexert themselves. Each had his heroic feat, but they weren’t seeking room for it. How gloriously they rested before battle!
My harmonious crew were enough for me. I needed no one else. Once a day, like Jason, I went down to the shore of the Pontus Euxinus to indulge in a cup of coffee—and even there they dogged me.
I saw no one. Fleetingly I glimpsed Dragamashchenka. Again, I thought I glimpsed the man from Murmansk, as if he had jumped down off the page. I imagined I noticed Valery Givivovich, too. But I only imagined it. Then I did, for sure, encounter the two of them together on the embankment, holding each other by one finger like children—the Murmansk drifter in the embrace of Colonel Adidasov. Ah, you don’t say! was my only thought. I indulged my subordinates’ weaknesses. The main thing was, not even one more warrior must be lost! I must bring them all through to the end, alive. Alive …
They were alive as it was. But how much I had arrogated to myself in becoming commander! In reducing them to the rank of characters, what responsibility I had shouldered for the fate of my novel’s personnel! Power! That was what the literary critics failed to consider in the scheme of literary devices. That was what had oppressed me for a whole year as something lost, that was what finally inspired me as something found: all this was mine. Mine! And you wanted to take it away from me? Not a chance! I won’t hand it over. Now I understand what you were all demanding of me, what you were trying to get, why you were after me. What will interest the powers that be, apart from power? Nothing—and this is their secret and strength.
I, too, was interested in nothing. I shared all the hardships of my subordinates: I didn’t eat, didn’t drink, didn’t sleep, didn’t wash, didn’t undress. Sometimes I brewed coffee on the windowsill, and then I would be amazed that there was a sea outside the window. Sometimes HE furtively munched something in the corner, strewing dry crumbs on himself; HE, too, slept without undressing, as he so loved to do—slept twelve, fourteen, sixteen! hours a day. I would jump up without dressing or even urinating, go to the typewriter, and begin to type out the next chapter, which was all prepared in those twelve to sixteen hours—where had I gotten what? The fewer the impressions left to me, the better suited they were to enter the text directly: I glanced out the window, and there was Million Tomatoes, already chatting about something with Valery Givivovich. About what? And my coffee boiled over …
I didn’t even have a Bible at hand. I had the three short pages copied from Father Tornike. “The two men are the heart and the soul. And within the soul are truth and sin. For truth is brought low by arrogancy, and sin devoured by humility … For the heart is a Pharisee … And the soul itself taketh the name of publican … ”
Two men went up into the temple … “Two horsemen, he saith, a publican and a Pharisee. And the Pharisee hath harnessed two horses that he may come unto eternal life: the one horse, a virtuous one, is fasting and prayer, but the other horse is pride and vainglory and condemnation. And pride hath cast a stumbling block before virtue, and the horse chariot is broken, and the conceited rider hath perished … ”
Then and there, the novel acquired a new turn. In the broken car, with the stocking streaming like a flag, as we were trying to save Tishka and escape from pursuit, my brakes failed me, and the author plunged into the abyss, dove into a wall—just at the very moment when I had finally given Tishka a lifesaving injection and contrived to get away from my pursuers. The live Tishka was meowing over me at the end …
“ … for no man, he saith, taketh this honour unto himself but he that is called of God. For the apostle saith: Sitting on the branch, thou bearest not the root, but the root thee.”
And I rejected this finale, for I was not the root. The trunk was the plot, the branches the heroes, and the Author had seated himself on the main hero’s branch. I decided to name the main hero Author: Author-Khan, of mixed barbarian, Scythian, and Kipchak origin, became leader of the detachment. It was he, however, who managed to lead his detachment through the blazing conflagration of Empire N. He led them out of the barbaric Baltic swamps, skirted seething Muscovy, bypassed the vicious Kipchaks over the smoking steppes, and for some reason found a Pontus other than he had calculated, the Hyrcanian. He needed another long while to reach the narrow spaces of Iberia,{95} and a long while to master these spaces, too, before once again reaching the swamps, this time of Colchis.
But that was all superficial, nothing but envy and mastery of the Georgian novelist’s experiment. The essential point was that a conspiracy was ripening within the detachment. No one in the detachment even suspected it yet, not even the leader, or even his author, because the conspiracy was ripening within the author. The authorial “I” came up against my own “I”—and they were off! Who was more important? who had done what to whom? who was HE, who was I? And already it was a struggle for power. “But let none be led into temptation, forasmuch as man’s reason is divided in two. The thought is cut off from the word, for, he saith, the flesh warreth against the soul. Two adversaries there be in us, ceaselessly contending: for greed riseth up against fasting, vainglory against virtue, drunkenness against chastity, fornication against spiritual purity; hatred and wrath against love; pride against humility; against truth—falsehood and calumny and other wickednesses. ”
A conspiracy! No wonder they were on my trail. It wasn’t me they were after, it was my novel. That is, my detachment. Nothing could stop me anymore. I must lead all my men out and save them.
And before I could put the final period—Givivovich was knocking on my hotel-room door, at the crack of dawn, dressed for the march. In sneakers! Our sneakers would be a Rafik furnished by Dragamashchenka, who had volunteered to escort us to the monkeys himself. Valery Givivovich, as I myself must understand, had not had an easy time of it, getting all this organized especially for me.
This was fame already! All the earth’s vainglory resounded triumphantly in the author’s triumphant soul. “Two men … ” A certain friend once said in answer to my lament, having understood me in his own way: Why strive for world fame? It’s enough to achieve it on the scale of a region or district, he said, for the wise man to see what it’s worth. And then? For this very friend, even world fame was not enough.
We were going. To me, there was no novelty in this, or in my future fame. This had all been lived out, burned out. Simply, they had stopped me, yet again, from getting them written, my Monkeys. I was ready again—and they prevented me again. Before, they had prevented me from reaching the monkeys lest I know what to write about. Now, when I finally knew what about and was actually already writing them,
they were forcing them on me, so that I would be unable to write them for a new and different reason: they wanted to stop me by making my imaginings real. One way or another, but I mustn’t write them. That was their devilish mission! And yet … wasn’t this too sophisticated?
With this thought on the sophistication of evil, I submissivelv boarded the van. Right again: a place of honor had been set aside for me next to the driver, and he, too, alone among them all, was a Russian man. A Russian man driving their van for them. Nothing new! My thought on the sophistication of evil was succeeded by a thought on its primitiveness. What is evil, after all?
The transparent thought was revolving, propellerlike, on its sharp point. I was ready to catch it like a dragonfly … “Look to the right.” To the right was a long, dismal cement wall, but my thought was already gone. Wasted terrain, barbed wire topping the wall, a tower. “The largest juvenile colony in the Union,” Valery Givivovich said, commenting like a tour guide. Oh, this I knew a lot about, thanks to the Eye’s manuscript. Which I promptly reported in full, under the polite scrutiny of the group, under the reproachful eye of Valery Givivovich: Why say any more than necessary in his presence? force him to remember? “ ‘Do not fire on a juvenile!’ ” I recounted. “Do they have such a regulation? I never heard it before.” The reluctance to receive information was a professional habit in Valery Givivovich. “Brake here!” And he disappeared through the entrance gate to the colony. Perhaps they also had an adult division here? A prison gate—this was a fine place to wait! … Two shy, overgrown youngsters brought out a pail and a box. Valery Givivovich showed them where to put the things.
We drove on.
And this became a journey in its own right. Outside the window a landscape appeared, picked up strength. Come to find out, Valery Givivovich was a simple man: his grandfather was an Armenian, his mother a Jew, his uncle a Russian, he himself a Georgian. Generally speaking, he was an alien—a Titan in a previous birth, later a Babylonian priest … but more on this later. It turned out I had been wrong about him. Givivovich was doing everything from the best of motives. Arranging my participation in the roundtable, my trip to the monkeys. I had been wrong that time, wrong to flee—had exposed him to, done myself a great deal of. One could do business with him: not flee, not say too much in front of outsiders. One could reach an understanding with him. Oh, and of course, one had no problems with tickets, with hotels. Do you think they’d have let you into the Abkhazia? Ah, so that’s how … What did you think?
We were stopping. There was someone already waiting for us. Yet another associate. An interesting man. A Greek by nationality. With a heavy box, from a Sony TV.
We were stopping. There was no one waiting for us. A fuss and bustle. Several times someone ran into the transport depot and back to the Rafik, promised to return in a minute and disappeared for twenty. At last he brought a tall stack of hot lavash. But did not come with us.
We were accumulating new companions. They were all monkey-colony associates, people of various interests. A historian, a biologist, a physicist, a speleologist, a salesman—we would have sufficed for a series of jokes. An Armenian meets a Ukrainian and a Jew; a Jew, a Russian and an Armenian; a Ukrainian, a Jew and a Tatar. Except that we had no Chukchi. In place of the Chukchi we had a man of still rarer vintage, part German, part Ossetian—a musician, a drummer by nationality.
Even Dragamashchenka proved to be an interesting person. He had come with us not only because he headed the scientific group and accordingly supervised the resettlement experiment—he also proved to be the only human boss over the monkeys. He was the alpha male! And that meant: wild beasts, you know! little lions! fangs this big! bite through to the bone! arms more powerful than your legs! gregarious animals—they obey their leader implicitly! together they can tear apart anyone they want! armed and very dangerous! the leader recognizes just one man, but forever! and that man is the alpha male! Dragamashchenka, that is! only with him could we approach the herd!
Dragamashchenka, it turned out, was our pass to the territory.
After discussing the customs of animals and people, after rejoicing in their similarity, in the triviality of their differences, we entered the nicely situated little town of Kamany. Someone was supposed to meet us here but did not. Givivovich declared a half-hour rest stop and set off with Dragamashchenka on reconnaissance.
We stretched our numb legs. Before us was beauty, somewhat marred by a small concrete-products plant and a quarry. But there were other places to look. The ravine, which we were supposed to penetrate further, was inviting; it promised absolutely untouched nature. Off to the left, soaring and reigning over the whole village, on a separate hill, a ruined church gaped with holes—but even in that form it was stunning in its proportions and appropriateness. I conceived a desire, and the group started slowly up the hill, overcoming their reluctance so as not to leave their guest unsupervised.
The ruin was best observed from a distance; up close, one could see its structure too plainly. Especially if coming uphill. As we grew near and out of breath, the proportions were obscured and the holes acquired shapes. And—what had we wrought!—the dome, along with its cross, was missing. It lay collapsed on the floor, and its stones were overgrown with tall weeds and coltsfoot, forming an independent landscape, a sort of dwarf Japanese rock garden. We entered not through the gates but from the side, where the path led us, through a hole that made a more convenient entrance. But it was cozy inside! And no papers, bottles, or trash heaps—that was the surprising thing. In a corner under the surviving portion of an arch, where the rain penetrated less, stood a lectern fashioned from discarded stools and night tables that someone had carried up here. A homemade icon of very inept workmanship, but which someone had painted himself, reminded me of Tornike’s paintings. And—there were candles burning! Brought here by someone not long before we came, and lighted by someone! It was a functioning church!
And it possessed its advantages. From inside we could continue to admire the landscape, each time revealed anew, framed anew—through each of the holes. Like the past, present, and future. I saw the road we had come by, our Rafik at the foot of the hill, the path we had climbed … When I looked at the ravine we aimed to visit, an undisturbed landscape opened up in the future … And through the third wall, my glance fell on the present: the concrete-products plant, the quarry, and a certain grayish compound enclosed by a wall exactly like that of the juvenile colony, only without towers.
I obtained the necessary explanations. It may indeed have been a prison compound at one time, but now it’s an old-age home, an asylum. In summer, they do all right—lots of pilgrims come and give alms—but in winter they’re cold and hungry. Yes, yes, pilgrims flock here from all over the Union. This is where the apostle John Chrysostom was murdered.
In the upshot, I didn’t believe a single word, especially since my escort of historians had obviously confused Chrysostom with St. John the Divine, calling him an apostle. “But how could that be!” I said indignantly. “The apostles—that was the first century!” “Well, and what if it was,” said our Armenian.
To them, the first century was nothing. In proof, a little old lady in black was scrambling up the mountain toward us with a little black goat, now pushing it, now clinging to it. A pilgrim, no less. Look, dragging herself up, they explained to me—down below they can see if anyone comes up here. Not a pilgrim, then. The old lady proved to be from the poorhouse. She had come for alms, and she was insistent. My ruble was not enough. Even three she looked at without pleasure. “I’ve come so high,” she said. The old lady was Russian. The goat grazed inside the temple.
I wanted to die. What did I care about monkeys? I was completely out of money. I flatly refused to borrow from Valery Givivovich. I would have to flee again. Good God, why couldn’t I give her everything? The little old lady tottered. Her gaze was firm—she was clinging by it. Whatever gave me the idea she was a “nice little old lady”? All churchly old women are vicious. And rig
htly so.
But why can’t you? HE said to me, snatching my wallet. Our escorts observed the scene with interest. Immediately on receiving my last twenty-five kopecks, the old lady quickly ran downhill, managing the slope with some agility. The goat barely kept up with her. Off to the store, they explained to me.
And we descended to the sacred spot. Nestled close to a yellowish gray cliff, the spring formed a creek and became a headwater. The stones around it were red. Which served as the main proof that this was where the “apostle” had been murdered. A ferrous spring, they explained to me. The pilgrims never fail to immerse themselves here. Very good for gout. I dipped a finger and pulled it out red—such was the temperature—the water was icy. But I went further—splashed my face, wiped my brow. Somehow it felt like a Muslim ritual.
My escort of historians was already disputing how he had been murdered. Had they cut off his head, or had they stabbed him?
Cut off his head was somehow more convincing. Over there on that red rock. They were confusing him with yet another John, this time the Baptist. Now they were disputing which rock. A huge one towered above the bank, with just its base submerged in water. The sole convincing point in its favor was its greater convenience for butchery. Another rock was fully underwater and therefore historically more justifiable, for the spring itself had formed as a result of the murder, from the blood of the “apostle,” which was why it was red. The small lake forming from the spring had covered the sacrificial rock with water. According to tradition, he who could lift this rock would be forthwith cleansed of all his sins.
Such a possibility could not but inspire HIM. Like any normal person, he instantly believed in the red rock. I could do nothing about it: HE was gripped by a violent ecstasy, I by a sacred terror of life. In the twinkling of an eye he had stripped off all his clothes and was standing in the creek, straining to lift the rock. I had never seen him like this: a mad gaiety illumined his face. The whole business was undeniably foolish. The rock was unliftable. There was no way he could grasp it, he broke all my fingernails … and suddenly his seeking fingers found two hollows, as if specially made, convenient as handles almost … the vein swelled on his forehead. “Died of the vicissitudes of travel,” I thought. But the rock shuddered and moved, more and more easily. Oh, yes, Archimedes’ law, I thought. But the rock had barely lifted its red brow above the surface when it became decidedly heavy. My escorts deemed this sufficient, however, and unanimously remitted all the athlete’s sins.
