The Anonymous Novel

by Alessandro Barbero

  And what years, 1945 to 1953! Obilin knew from his work on the textbook that these were years you hurried over without going too far into the details: you just gallop along until you get to Sputnik and Gagarin into space. Then you can breathe freely again. In the end he had decided to see how it would turn out. Now that this was how it was turning out, he couldn’t complain that he hadn’t been aware of this eventuality. This was the fun his cunning had earned him!

  “My esteemed Abdul… Tokayevich,” he started hesitantly.

  With forenames and surnames of this kind, who knows if he remembered the man’s name correctly. “My esteemed Abdul Tokayevich,” he repeated more decisively once he had noted that the man’s mustachioed face showed no sign of surprise or disapproval at being addressed in this manner. “Voznesenskaya is a highly promising scholar, in whom the institute has the fullest confidence! No one here believes that her family background should constitute a reason to mistrust her.” And this was the absolute truth. Times had changed, and the arrest of a relation – perhaps even one you did not get on with – was no longer enough for the state to withdraw all trust in you as a Soviet citizen! Anyway what was that business in Tanya Borisovna’s family? Wasn’t it the paternal grandfather, or even the great-grandfather, or perhaps a great-uncle? No, this was all water under the bridge. Only in Baku would they still be worrying about such things. Viktor Nikolayevich continued to talk and became increasingly convinced by his own arguments. But then he noted the appearance on his guest’s face of that well-known objection capable of resisting every argument. It showed in the contemptuous twist of his mouth and heaviness of his eyelids: yes, yes, you can chatter on as long as you like but, my friend, that girl is not one of us! However the expression of the man on the other side of the desk was not what he would have expected.

  Although it was hardly encouraging, its hostility was not familiar. As for the other guest, he appeared completely uninterested in the conversation; he was more concerned about his briefcase, which he stroked absent-mindedly while looking towards the ceiling. Suddenly Obilin understood: it was all a pretext. Those two couldn’t care a damn about Tanya Borisovna and her family; they simply didn’t want anyone from Moscow ferreting around in their archives, even if that person had been Obilin himself. They didn’t want outsiders prying in their affairs; it was a simple as that.

  They must have had good reasons if they had come all that way to tell him. As this conviction became more firmly established, his eloquence dried up and finally he went quiet.

  “Most esteemed Viktor Nikolayevich,” the first visitor again took up the conversation with a sigh, “we fully understand your motives, and we would be very upset if you were to think that we are meddling in the institute’s work. But I feel that you should meet us half way. These are matters of a certain gravity, which should not be examined for the first time by such a young student. Believe me that things are no longer the same where we live either. Perestroika has reached us too, and we have not been left behind. We too could have allowed many theses on arguments such as these, but we chose not to. Why, do you suppose, did we do that?” The orator paused and stared gleefully into his eyes, while Obilin’s brain was struck by a disturbing thought: had he heard someone express themselves with these same words? Of course, he knew. The answer came instinctively.

  It was him, Stalin, whose Short Course was entirely written in that rhetorical style. “For we would not want our work,” his guest continued triumphantly, “to become entangled with what we might call meddlesome petitions from outsiders. Something that would in-ev-it-ably occur, if things continue in their current direction. You will excuse me if I repeat myself, but there is no need for me to explain such things to a man like yourself.”

  “Of course, I understand perfectly,” Viktor Nikolayevich replied as he shifted uneasily in his armchair. “But I have no idea how we can stop this study at this stage. The dissertation has been approved by the competent bodies, the permits to consult the archives have been granted, and the work is already underway. There is simply nothing I can do.”

  The guest smiled and clasped his hands together on his stomach, to reveal the large gold rings that decorated them, as Obilin was able to observe. He smiled good-naturedly, just as one might smile at an old drinking partner with whom one has gone swimming in the sea.

  “Viktor Nikolayevich,” he finally said. “Surely there must be some little thing that you need? Particular conditions are required for a responsible job like yours to be carried out in a manner that fully reflects your abilities and learning, and we are very keen to create the ideal conditions so that our people can work in the appropriate manner and show up the degenerate West. Think hard! Would you like a flat?”

  “I already have a flat,” Obilin muttered, almost choking with surprise.

  “Perhaps something that could assist you more directly in your profession? Foreign publications? Or a trip abroad?

  They say that the American libraries are quite fantastic; it is hard to believe that their research is so backward.”

  “I don’t need anything,” Obilin whispered, increasingly at a loss. There followed a moment of silence. As Viktor Nikolayevich looked at his unwanted guests, he realised he had not said enough and wondered what else he could add to soften the unpleasant sound of his last words. He almost regretted the fact that he had disappointed them; they seemed so obliging. It occurred to him that there must be something that after all might be useful to him, but what? He was just about to break the silence and exclaim: What should I do?

  You make a few suggestions! But then he felt ashamed and held his tongue. The first mustachio also went silent, and appeared unhappy with the turn of events. The unpleasant silence continued for more than a minute. The second mustachio was restless and, without saying a word, took out a black plastic wallet from the inside pocket of his jacket, and a card from the wallet. He held it out, but then seemed to reconsider his move, and before Obilin could take hold of it, he returned it to his wallet and put it away. He then looked venomously into Obilin’s eyes and pronounced very purposefully without the trace of an accent, “Obilin, do you understand Russian? Keep your filthy nose out of our affairs!”

  He then thrust his hand into his jacket pocket and extracted a ripe tomato, stretched his arm across the desk to a pile of corrected drafts and crushed the tomato on top of them with great emphasis. Next, he grabbed Obilin’s tie while continuing to stare him in the face, and used it to clean the tomato juice very carefully off his hands. He stood up and dragged the suitcase towards the door. The first speaker also got up, and threw Obilin a strange glance, half apology – “you see what people we have to deal with!” – and half reproach – “you, my friend, really asked for that!” They left the room, and Obilin was unable to move for several minutes, as though dumbstruck. Eventually and at the same time that the others had stopped a taxi and were heading towards the fruit and vegetables market with their briefcase which, it will now be clear, was full of tomatoes, Viktor Nikolayevich with trembling fingers started to undo his tie. Once he had it in his hands, he stared at it for a long time, and then almost without wanting to, he dipped his finger into the liquid which was dripping onto the desk and tasted it: with a little salt, it would have been delicious.

  II

  Love in the morning

  Moscow, November 1987

  Not long after the events just narrated, a young man called Oleg Viktorovich Prokhorov was padding around in his slippers in his bed-sit which is part of one of those oversized, brutalist apartment blocks on the outskirts – in the Yugo-Zapadny district. That’s it. He simply wandered around and wasted time. He had little desire to get dressed and finally make up his mind to set off for work. Fortunately for him, he was a journalist, and so there was no timetable.

  As long as his articles were ready in time, he could turn up whenever he wanted. Even the editor-in-chief did not put pressure on him – it was a real cushy number. It wasn’t that they didn’t care; it was ju
st the way the job was done. This isn’t the West, you know. Over there, they have you running till you’re ready to croak, just to get the news out not one day, not one hour, not even one minute after the event. To hell with them! Anyway Oleg was no slacker. He had only recently started working for the newspaper and was keen to further his career – no question. But on mornings like this, it was not easy to shift his arse. Why? Well, the tussled sofa bed said it all. There was the impression of not one but two bodies on the less than cleanly sheets: one belonged to him and the other to Tanya. Yes of course, this is the very same Tanya Voznesenskaya of the Institute of History of the CPSU, and now that she had gone, he couldn’t quite free his mind of that last tangible sign of the night they had spent together. Understandable really: they had been engaged for some time, and yet it was very rare for her to spend the night with him. And this morning, as was her wont, she was up early, had to leave in a hurry, already late and no time to grab a little something to eat; only time for her to kiss his forehead and she was off. In the rush, she forgot some books: a treatise on economics and a solitary issue of a magazine with a torn spine and loose pages. Oleg leafed through it hoping it might contain some clue, but there was nothing, just the slips of paper she used as bookmarks and a postcard from a school friend sent from Koktebel five years before. Oleg thought to himself that she would not like him rummaging through her things, but how could he stop himself? He would prefer to touch her, of course. Besides, there were things about Tanya he would never have understood without putting his hands in her books and in her drawers. He once got her to lend him a book – Edgar Allan Poe or something like that. He opened it and in the middle there was a small piece of folded, squared paper with a note she had written, a telephone number: 687394, Vadik. Who was this Vadik? a vexed Oleg thought. But before he could think properly, he had unfolded the paper and there he found a drawing done with the same pen: it was a sketch of a man’s head on a pillow – bald, closed eyes, a mouth twisted in a grimace and a bony hand protruding from the sheet. It was Tanya’s father in hospital. Oleg had only seen him a few times, and he – the father – was on the way out. He had undergone an operation for stomach cancer, and that was how he had ended up: skin and bones, and not a hair on his head. She visited the hospital every night and begged the nurses: please dear, get me a dose of morphine… When did she do that drawing? Its discovery unsettled him. He folded it and turned it over. On the other side there was another note from the same period: 335902, Dr. Saburov. 26/7, Injection. Zomaxin. 30/7, Dr. Kazakova.

  He turned the paper over again, and started from the beginning. Vadik: probably that guy she went out with in her first year at university? No, that was not his name, it was something else… I wonder who went to bed with Tanya before me, ran Oleg’s thought. Not many. She’s not that keen on making love. She has to have nothing else on her mind and a lot of time at her disposal before you can arouse her desire. But if the phone rings while she’s undressing, that’s enough to set her off thinking about other things. Still there certainly have been some, even though she never willingly talks about it. At least a couple of them, the ones that, one way or another, I have come to know about. Oh well, he thought, we’ve shared her, and for a moment, an absurd, comradely gratification crossed his mind. Men are beasts. Really. And yet I would like to know more about this Vadik. That at least was what he thought when that piece of paper turned up, but after several months and nothing more had been heard of him, he could safely say that Vadik was history. The incident was, however, another reason for glancing through Tanya’s books whenever the chance came his way. Oleg continued to wander around the house looking for some trace of her. Yesterday evening she had wanted to have a bath: the pipes had frozen at her house and she couldn’t use her own. He asked if he could undress her – just undress her and nothing else – but she said that she was embarrassed and felt dirty. She was close to the bath filled with hot water, down to her petticoat and tights, and he slipped the bra straps off her shoulders. Her naked breasts burst forward, and she turned her head away. Then Oleg kissed her nipple and left. On the other side of the closed door, he listened to the sloshing of her body in the water, and thought about the only time they had had a bath together. It was the previous summer and they had gone on holiday together – just themselves and no one else, like two lovers. Actually it wasn’t really a holiday. The newspaper had sent him to Kiev, and there they had an apartment provided by the job; it was all theirs for a week. But it was different and so shabby that they clung to each other as they had never done in Moscow. If he closed his eyes, Oleg could still feel his hands on her wet skin, which was like oily rubber. But it also felt like a distant memory and she had never wanted to repeat it. During that time in Kiev, she had had a pee for the first time in front of him – and did so quite naturally. She went into the lavatory and left the door open, she pulled down her pants, sat down with her legs wide apart and started to urinate, and he experienced the sensation of possessing her as he had never possessed anyone else. She had done this on a few other occasions, but Oleg had learnt that it meant nothing.

  Her hairs were stuck to the inside of the bath, as she always forgot to clean it. A few hairs from her head, and also a few short and curlier hairs… The previous evening after she had finished her bath, they watched The Nutcracker on television. Tanya liked ballet, but he considered it mindnumbingly dreary: he never went along with her to the theatre. But when they went to bed, she was the one who was yawning; she was always so tired these days! They touched each other, and at Oleg’s request, she licked his neck and face; he then even managed to remove her knickers, but Tanya had no desire to go all the way. This became all too clear to him: she was happy with just that.

  She fell asleep as he caressed her. He could not sleep and got out of bed. He flicked through a few newspapers and then switched on the television, but transmissions were over. What would you do on a night like that? There wasn’t even a bottle of vodka in the kitchen, just a bottle of white wine that no one wanted to drink. He drank two glasses of the wine mixed with raspberry syrup, and then went back to bed. She had stretched out and over to his side, with her nightdress pulled up to her back and no knickers. She was in a deep, motionless sleep, as inert as a sack of potatoes.

  That morning, before Tanya rushed off, they talked about Obilin; she thought of nothing else since the old man had come up with that bizarre and convoluted proposal for her to change the subject of her thesis. “I’m going to give him a talking-to,” Tanya had exclaimed, her expression fiery, “I will find out what’s really going on here!”

  “What a strange woman you are,” Oleg laughed. “You speak of it as though he were a little boy who has been up to some mischief. Yet anyone else in your position would have taken fright.”

  “Frightened of Victor Nikolayevich?” Tanya countered with incredulity.

  “Of course, not of him. He was happily and calmly pottering along until somebody came along and asked if he was crazy authorising research on such a subject. They thought that he would be able to spook you in turn, and that would be the end of the matter. But then they didn’t know Tatyana Borisovna, who isn’t afraid of anything except writing on the wall.”

  She told him not to act the fool, but laughed and almost spilt her coffee. You have to know that when Tanya was sixteen, she went on a pilgrimage to Number 10 Sadovaya Street, where Bulgakov once lived. It was winter and the afternoon light was already fading. There was no one in the entrance hall and, frightened as though she was doing some forbidden thing, she climbed the deserted stairs running her fingers lightly over the graffiti-covered walls. On the firstfloor landing, she found herself before a portrait of Margarita, roughed out in black paint: a long nose, uncombed hair and staring eyes. But that’s me, she thought. Yes, that was her portrait – something of which she has remained profoundly convinced. When she saw it, she started to shake from head to toe, but continued to climb the stairs until she reached Apartment Number 50. There was still no one
around, and the single electric light was not sufficient to illuminate the landing. The graffiti was everywhere. “Are you atheists? NO, WE’RE NOT!”, and below, “Hand over the cash!” Then she took her courage in her hands, grasped the charcoal pencil she’d brought in her bag, and wrote upon the wall, “Even if I’m not Margarita, I will find my Master!”

  The first time Tanya told this story in public, she and Oleg had become lovers only a few days earlier, and he was idiotically proud of it: Now just look at the kind of woman I have got myself, you other men! Later she repeated the story at the home of his colleague Gurfinkel, but there was a specific reason, as they were talking about graffiti: some guy who studied medieval archaeology had returned from a dig at Tallin Castle and had said that on one of the dungeon walls, someone had written in sixteenth-century lettering the Latin, “Amor omnia vincit”, and underneath in another hand of the same era, there was the reply, “Mentiris sunt pecuniae”: That’s a lie, but money does. Then everyone started remarking on the fact that on the sixteenth-century Baltic coast, people knew how to write in Latin on the walls, while here we had Ivan the Terrible, and someone mentioned the graffiti in Woland’s house, and Tanya, who had drunk two or three glasses, told her story. But the laugh was that she spoke of it as the most courageous act of her life, and Oleg, who by then knew her better, could just imagine her: rummaging around for the charcoal pencil, glancing around to check that no one could see her, and then fleeing down the stairs after having scribbled her sentence to get away from the scene of the crime! An unlikely Raskolnikov…

  The young man returned to the kitchen and threw the fridge door open. The opened wine bottle was there, and all he had to do was stretch out his hand and grab it. But you can’t start drinking in the morning. You see what it’s like: living with a woman and not managing to touch her for a week might be fine for a drunkard or a poet perhaps. It excites the imagination: you always think about the same thing and in the street, you can see under a woman’s clothes. You discover, one might say, the recondite – the hidden nature of things. This happens to Oleg all the time.