The Anonymous Novel

by Alessandro Barbero

  Suppose you went to the cinema to see one of those recent films – say Little Vera – and at the last minute you discover that the film didn’t turn up and they are putting on some film from thirty years ago – say When the Storks Fly Away.

  You can hardly leave, and so you stay there and after a bit you realise that you are not following the film but instead are wondering whether those who worked in cinema then were shagging each other as they do now. You try to imagine who might have had Tatyana Samoilova, she of the narrow thighs and big arse – she who gives you a hard-on even in black-and-white and dressed up in layers of those frumpy clothes they wore during the war. Maybe Smoktunovsky got off with her, just as in The Unmailed Letter when, at the moment she is about to get into her sleeping bag, she stops for a second, drops it and slips into his instead. Of course, you don’t see anything else; the camera take stops there, and anyway they have been lost for months in the taiga and are about to die of hypothermia. In such cases, I do not believe that you have a great desire for shagging. So it ends up on the screen with our brave soldiers returning from the war and a puffy-eyed Tatyana Samoilova running amongst them, forcing herself to smile as she searches for her Boris who will never return, while in the auditorium you are trying to imagine her sucking off Smoktunovsky, and it is not so difficult.

  You find this distasteful? More fool you! What’s the point of complaining? The desire for a fuck makes you forget everything else: good taste, decorum, common sense and intelligence. Others do worse and pick up a streetwalker in Three Stations Square. And who hasn’t done that on their return from a business trip or even their holidays? Train journeys stimulate meditation, and meditation desire: and when he left the station, there would be a girl – alone and waiting. Well, how could he resist? Oleg had more than once experienced this temptation to do what others do. He must have had sufficient money in his pocket: it wouldn’t be more that a few roubles or even just a bottle of spirits. One evening he nearly did it; there were no taxis, it was already late and he alone was waiting on the pavement. He rummaged in his pocket for a few coins for the phone, and a girl came up, her high heels clattering on the empty road.

  She was small, blonde and entirely dressed in white and green – her favourite colours, she told him. He said no, forgive me, I am not in the mood. Her response: don’t you fancy me? No, no, he protested, you’re lovely, as sweet as honey, but you’ll have to forgive me. She wanted a natter. She complained about her mother, she had no idea who her father was, and she only saw her husband now and then.

  She talked a great deal of nonsense and liked the sound of her own voice. Eventually a taxi arrived, and Oleg could get to his home, where he started to sneeze. Sore throat and high temperature followed; in other words, he went to bed with influenza.

  Some time later, he saw her again, standing on the pavement at night but this time with a black eye and a split lip. Oleg was returning home from Tanya’s and he told her to get into the car, but she didn’t want a lift home, or to the hospital – that would be folly! She allowed him to clean up her face with a handkerchief and that was all. “Did the police do this to you?” Oleg asked, and she said no – that she would spit on the police; it would be good if they occasionally turned up in some parts of the city at night.

  She had encountered one of those vigilante bands that wander around the city – to clean it up. They’re nearly all veterans from the Afghan War; she could see that from their badges and striped vests. “No big deal if my husband beats me up, but what did these people want? Motherfuckers!”

  She described in detail the vengeance she would inflict on them if only she had them in her power. Then she asked to be taken to her work, as she called it. She stepped out and disappeared into the mist somewhere behind Krasnoprudnaya Street, her high heels once more clattering on the pavement. For a while that was the last Oleg saw of her, even though he went that way almost every day. He thought that perhaps she had given it up, especially as her husband, she would say, was not at all happy with what she was doing. Of course, this too filled her with rage: why didn’t hubby think about his own fucking business? A few months later, there she was again, but now a little worn-down: her hair was pulled together in a ragged pigtail, and she was in jeans and leaning against a wall with a stand-offish air; so stand-offish that he changed his route to avoid passing in front of her. That evening he was once more in bed with influenza. Isn’t that strange?

  There was, however, no record for her amongst the three thousand five hundred in the possession of Major Agdeyev.

  Oleg had carefully looked for it and, on the whole, he had forced himself to look at each one. Hers was not there. In any case, it would be worth telling the story of Major Agdeyev. Of the reports that Oleg had recently covered, this was unquestionably the most interesting. At the time, prostitution was, as we all know, a new and highly topical question: quite suddenly everyone had realised that the capital was suffering from MORAL DECAY – well, you can imagine. Thus they too had decided to publish a report on this delicate matter. They said that on this too we need transparency! It can happen, though, that no one knows where to start: amongst the journalists working there and even the editors there was more than one who must have had something to say on the subject because, as is generally agreed, it is no sin to have a little fun. And yet when it comes to having one’s say, no one does and quite unexpectedly everyone has got a great deal on. In the end, someone uncovers this retired policeman who for fifteen years had worked in the police unit for the Three Stations and, as a hobby, had kept records on all the prostitutes he had had dealings with. On his retirement, he had simply taken the archive home. Well, it didn’t belong to the state, as no one had asked him to do that work… When Oleg’s desk editor, Fayna Nikolayevna heard about this, she became very excited and wanted an interview and photographs. So off went our man, along with the photographer Grant Gukasov, to see this Major Agdeyev. The major lived in Khimki and the taxi took more than an hour to get there, what with the traffic and the fog. The photographer was a bit hyper, having drunk quite a lot, nor was the taxi-driver as sober as a judge, but by the time we got to the destination their sparkle had become a little flat, given that a lorry almost ploughed into them on the ring road. The major had been waiting for quite a while, and he was now rather agitated. He immediately wanted to know if he was going to be photographed, and was enormously satisfied when they had him pose in the sitting room.

  You have to picture the scene. The flat in Khimki was entirely unremarkable, with little furniture and not even a picture or a carpet on the walls. The slight exception was the three or four icons which Agdeyev, we were to find out later, had painted himself since going into retirement – just for the pleasure of it. The major, who was living alone, was a wiry little man with grey moustaches. The archive was kept in his bedroom wardrobe in a whole lot of shoe boxes with the householder’s clothes and uniforms hanging above them. Three thousand five hundred records on yellow card, each with a photograph glued on – the mug shots the police take with a front-view and side-view. Personal details were typed, and below them each woman’s story was written by hand. Gukasov lost no time in avidly seeking out the most harrowing stories, such as the nineteen-year-old who worked the hotels in the city centre until she was arrested for theft. She left prison a cripple and ended up in the Three Stations Square and was in and out of hospital suffering from syphilis and alcoholism. Then one winter’s night, some psycho picked her up at the Three Stations and took her to his sordid lodgings where he stabbed her to death. When he came across a story like that, the photographer said “Wow!” in English, and advised Oleg to take notes, but the journalist had thrown himself on the armchair and was flicking through handfuls of records quite randomly. In truth he was only looking for the faces of the prettiest girls.

  The major had brought a bottle and some appetisers, and so they stayed for several hours while he and the photographer read each other the most chilling stories, and Gukasov laughed like a madma
n. There was a record on Patrikeyeva, the one involved in the Marshalov affair. Oleg studied it at length, even though he was sure that Fayna Nikolayevna wouldn’t want any mention of her in the article, and she would have been quite right. The girl was thin and pale with blond hair and startled eyes.

  “Now,” Agdeyev said, “she’s in a labour camp in Perm.”

  “And the Georgian?”

  “The Georgian disappeared without a trace.” But my apologies, I should perhaps tell the story from the beginning. Between ourselves there is no reason not to.

  Well, Patrikeyeva worked in the centre close to the Manezh, and she had a friend, Marshalov. He was a drug dealer and had been inside for four years for some currency scam, but now he was out and more enterprising than ever.

  Now Marshalov not only forced her into prostitution, but liked to beat her. He whipped her with his trouser belt, extinguished cigarettes on her skin and occasionally cut her with razors. She was utterly in his thrall and would never have been able to free herself of him on her own. She was terrified and did everything he told her. But it happened that a customer, a Georgian with a lot of money, was deeply disturbed when he came across this frightened little sparrow. Well, let’s also say that he fell head over heels in love with her. He took her to his room, undressed her and immediately understood that something was not right. She was not only covered in bruises, which, it appears, is what happens to all the prostitutes who work the streets at night – no, not just that, there were cuts that had just healed and raw skin from being whipped and cigarette burns. The customer, of course, wanted to know what was going on, but she wouldn’t squeak – not a word. During the days that followed, they continued to see each other: he took her to restaurants and spent many nights with her. One evening when Patrikeyeva was particularly desperate and didn’t want to be touched, the Georgian got her drunk and she told him the whole story. He then asked her to run away with him, but Marshalov frightened her to death and she was not up for it. The Georgian had to leave and was very upset that he could not take the girl with him, but he solemnly swore that he would free her from her master and torturer, of whom he now knew everything, including his address.

  Naturally, she did not tell her friend anything. And so, one fine morning at the time Marshalov was in the habit of leaving home, four young men with moustaches and motorcycles appeared before his door and, as soon as he was out on the street, fired twenty-four pistol shots at him, of which only seven missed their target. And then they left as serenely as they had come. We all know that they had to scrape Marshalov off the pavement, and it took twelve hours just to identify him. He no longer resembled any of his photographs. The following day the police handcuffed Patrikeyeva and handed her over to the investigating judge, but she only cried and swore that she knew nothing about the Georgian; she barely knew his name, Veli, but she never knew his surname and patronymic. In Moscow he always lived in a hotel, but never the same one. Thus Marshalov abandoned the stage and Patrikeyeva ended up with three years inside. And who knows where Veli the Georgian went, or for that matter the four motorcyclists? But that goes without saying.

  Maybe this story was a little inconsequential. But then our thoughts go where they want to, and they never settle exactly where you would want them to. Where were we?

  Major Agdeyev, what a strange fellow, and what would Tanya say if she ever met him, Oleg thought. Every now and then she looks at me angrily, scolds me: Do you see what you’re like; you never tell me about your work! But if I try to tell her something, she soon becomes distracted; she is not interested in people she does not know. She has no imagination, but she is sincere when she fulminates, I want to know! Or when she says, Look, I don’t know anyone who works with you; it’s not fair, you know all my friends. Yet when she happens to meet someone from the newspaper, say someone like Grant Gukasov, sooner or later I encounter her discouraged expression: How do you manage to work with these people? Just as well you’re different… Hey, Tanya, Tanya! Oleg shook his head. She slept with me and then she went. Who knows when she’ll return, and once again she left me short-changed. But you know that I love you, he said. What more can you want? And meanwhile nothing of her remains in the bathroom, except a few hairs in the bath. In the kitchen there is the coffee cup in the sink. She didn’t even put sugar in it, and as for food, she hasn’t touched a thing. It’s late; she’ll already be at work.

  It’s dark outside and the snow is mixed with rain. I’m tempted to go back to bed. But how can we live this way?

  III

  Old newspapers

  Moscow, November 1987

  It’s time we left the Yugo-Zapadny district and went to the Lenin Library. We’ll take the underground, of course. The end of the line is right here – just a short walk away. Why not take the same carriage as Tanya. Here she is seated in a corner: a chubby, well-built girl with a bagful of textbooks and notebooks on her knees… What was that? No, you cannot sit beside her. The train is packed at this time of day; it is her good fortune that she managed to find a place.

  However, we can get inside her head and listen to her thoughts. This is no problem from a technical point of view, and if we don’t exploit this possibility to the full, what the hell are we doing here? Well, in this particular moment she is thinking about the headache she woke up with, and which, there can be little doubt, will not go away… “When I wake up like that in the morning, there’s very little I can do; I cannot pop pills every day of my life. Even the coffee was next to useless, and yet I did make it strong. But why don’t you eat, you really have to eat, Oleg keeps saying, but he understands nothing – in the morning my throat fells tight, a mouthful of anything would choke me. Why am I so tired, if I never do anything? The day has barely started and I’m already tired. His place is far too hot, suffocatingly hot. Did I remember everything? Whatever else I’ve forgotten, I really hope I’ve remembered the notebook… Here too it is far too hot, I’ll be covered with sweat – I wouldn’t mind having another shower. Not this evening, perhaps tomorrow morning. And what will Mum say? Another night without sleep; as soon as I get out of the underground, I’m having another coffee. These boots are nipping my feet, my corns are killing me. Christ, this train is always jumping about!

  Thank God I didn’t eat anything. Of course, he’ll still be in bed, and later he’ll get up, make some tea and cook some eggs. My dear boy, he has his little rituals. I’m sorry about last night, but I was just too tired. I had that dream again, and sooner or later I’ll tell him about it: once I used to dream of my father in hospital, and now this … Why am I so anxious about him leaving me? Perhaps I should keep him happier, but it’s such a drag, and now it’s started hurting down below. Perhaps it’s just about to start. When did the last one come? Wasn’t it the beginning of the month? I bet it’s going to be early this time too. He should know; he’s always so good at remembering dates. It’s hurting even now; it’s definitely going to start today: I’m impure – at least for Jews and Muslims – but not him; he’d like to do it even at this time of the month. Here it comes again, like a dog gnawing at my guts – I’ll feel ill, I’ll feel ill in the library … as long as I don’t faint – they say that the pain is less once you’ve had a baby; there’s not much time left to find out, soon I’ll be old. I’m twenty-three, all the girls who were at school with me are married; Yulechka Studentseva has two kids. A boy and a girl; I would like a girl, as my mother did, but I would like her to have my surname: but not now, not now. Injections … Right, but what have injections got to do with anything? Perhaps I fell asleep. It revolts me just thinking about it: the idea of something going inside me – into my mouth and my stomach, it drives me crazy. Pariah, therefore untouchable. He wouldn’t put up with a baby; that’s men for you. They need to take and not to give.

  I fell asleep! Which stop are we at? Lenin Hills: ages to go, thank God. Yet more people getting on – do not tread on my feet, not my feet! I mustn’t lose my bag. And this headache just won’t go away, bastard.
He would have already taken a pill, perhaps even two: that’s why men can never put up with pain. They pass their lives without ever knowing they have a body, and they just don’t want to know about it – but we can never forget that we do; this is the cause of every damn thing. Take medicine, for example: surgeons cut people up and just revel in getting into all that blood – Christ, I think I’m going to be sick – not yet please, not already, not here – cut and chuck bits away, that’s all their medicine is. Once it was the woman’s job to look after the body: philtres, herbs, potions, humours – now it is all steel and blood, men’s stuff. And when they can’t cut, can’t display their glinting blades under the lights, can’t dress themselves up with masks like samurai warriors, and can’t give orders to their nurse-slaves, then they are lost and have no idea of what they should do. Or maybe sex has nothing to do with it, and the fault lies with our white race:

  European medicine has swept away all those philtres and humours, the yin and the yang. If something is wrong, you simply cut it and remove it with violence, with iron and with fire, and afterwards everything will come back to life. We are a violent race, that’s what that writer said … They don’t care if it’s a cancer or a baby. “Abortion is the most orderly system,” argued the female gynaecologist; “it is healthy, while contraceptives are harmful and unreliable.” Varya agreed; it was her thirteenth, “and after the first one, I never felt the slightest thing, my dear.” And yet she was smoking one cigarette after another, while she was waiting to be called, and when she was, fear tugged at her insides, and the colour drained from her face, as though she wanted to be sick. They created a desert and called it peace – what has that got to do with anything? … Don’t fall asleep, stupid; to miss your station would be the tin lid. Doctors? After what they did to my father, I wouldn’t believe a single one of them – they’re utterly contemptible. I want to go back to the pranic therapist I consulted for Dad – I liked him, even though it was too late in his case, there was nothing the therapist could do at that stage. Oleg teased me for days when I told him. But who knows, perhaps he could rid me of this pain. No one else has managed it. An oddball if ever there was one! Everyone called him the colonel, and I’m not even sure that I can remember his surname: Ovchinnikov – no, it was Grebenshchikov, and the laugh is that he actually was a colonel and still in service, a party instructor to boot, and he only practised this other profession on Sundays.