The Anonymous Novel

by Alessandro Barbero

  At five in the morning, Kaufman was still seated at his desk and torturing his pen. The bottle had somehow made its way there and was now almost empty; it wasn’t any old vodka either, it was Pertsovka, chilli flavour: by some exquisitely random chance, they were selling it in the shop down below. The notebook was open, and not at the same page as before; now the name at the top written in red felttip as usual was that of Malvina Landau, the shirtmaker.

  The page was full of notes, scribbles and deletions, as well as being swollen with newspaper cuttings. Mark had invented so many things about that girl, not only the obvious ones – judge for yourselves. For example, she was clearly living with her aunt – her aunt on her father’s side, I would have you please note; clearly they had escaped from Hungary, and perhaps she had never known her parents, as they had never set foot in Odessa. She certainly wasn’t wearing spectacles; she had no money, but her sight was not good. She had ruined her eyes by furiously sewing shirts in the basement next to the window, without lighting the lamp to save on the oil. No, Kaufman had always known these things – it was no longer this that occupied his mind; he now wanted completely different things about the shirtmaker.

  But what? Well, you know, the usual tittle-tattle: for example, who had taken her virginity and in what circumstances? And had this given her the itch for more?

  Did her aunt know about it or did she only suspect? Did the neighbours, and were they speaking ill of her? She’s a shameless hussy. A slut!

  In that instant, Mark, without any motive in this world, remembered that all these names belonged to real people who had lived and died, and what a death! He abruptly pushed his chair away from his desk and, appalled, he let his pen fall: forgive me, Lord, what am I doing? Dear boy!

  Did you think it would be that easy to write such a novel, a kind of joke? The list of characters was typed forty years ago by a German clerk. Perhaps, he wondered weakly, there is nothing wrong: no one will see this stuff, I’ll keep it all in the drawer and when I’m dead, the mice can come and chew it.

  Pah, what a coward! There is no way out, there is no excuse for all this. There is just one way out, as sure as there is a God in heaven: throw it all away, and do so immediately and never think of it again! Immediately, I said! Do I have the backbone? Dutch courage, that’s what I need. The actor rushed to the kitchen and opened the fridge. There was, of course, another bottle nicely cooling, no longer Pertsovka, but just the usual Moskovskaya, but we have put up with a lot worse! He popped the cork out with his thumb and down with the first swig! And another! All without a bite to eat!

  Then, considerably cheered, he brought his fist down on the table. That’s it, I have decided: I will burn everything – the notebooks and all the rest. He actually got up to look for the matches, but he didn’t even take a step. He just stood there with his jaw open. Who knows the cause? Perhaps it was the last fifty centilitres of vodka, which, please take note, came after having downed an entire bottle of the stuff. Or perhaps it was the long hours without sleep throughout the night, and on this point I have to make clear that although Kaufman did indeed suffer from insomnia, it had been a long time since he had been up for the whole night. Or perhaps it was something else; hell knows! In short, his grandfather Moses Katz was there in the kitchen in person.

  Mark was quite sure of this, even though he had never seen a photograph of him. There he was, sitting on the floor and fussing about the leg of a piece of furniture with a duster. It was the writing desk, yes the Tsar Alexander writing desk.

  God knows how it got into the kitchen. He was polishing it.

  He’d been dead for more time than anyone could remember, and yet he didn’t smell of sulphur – if anything, he smelt of turps. And he could speak.

  GRANDPA MOSES: And what do you think you’re up to?

  MARK KAUFMAN: What does it look like? I’m burning the manuscript…

  GRANDPA MOSES (he sighs, but does not say anything)

  MARK KAUFMAN: Why? Do you think I shouldn’t?

  GRANDPA MOSES: I haven’t said a word.

  MARK KAUFMAN: But I can see what you’re thinking!

  GRANDPA MOSES: Well then, don’t burnt it.

  MARK KAUFMAN: Easy for you, eh? But I’m the one who’ll have to pay the price. Just me, no one else!

  GRANDPA MOSES (spitting on his duster and getting back to his polishing): Why just you?

  MARK KAUFMAN: Well, why do you think? It’s not as though I can have a quick word with Mum, for instance: there might be some of her neighbours amongst those names!

  This might well have been the case! Let’s take the example of Chaim Gitler: he had been more or less the same age as Mark’s mother – perhaps they went to primary school together to spell out the Russian letters in the Revolution’s new and simplified alphabet… Of course, Chaim Gitler was not saved by his surname, even though it was identical to Adolph’s in the Cyrillic transcription – the Adolph over there in Berlin. And the SS would have wondered why the Ukrainian auxiliaries chortled and elbowed each other’s ribs every time the man raised his arm during the roll call. No, he could not speak to his mother. And who else was there?

  No chance here in Moscow, and even in Odessa no one wanted to talk about these things any more.

  GRANDPA MOSES: So you don’t want to talk to your mother about it?

  MARK KAUFMAN (shrugs his shoulders)

  GRANDPA MOSES: On with you! You should try.

  And he pointed to a corner of the kitchen: just a moment ago, there had been a fridge in that place; now there was a pre-war ice-box. A gaunt young woman was seated on the floor with her back against the ice-box; her breathing was laboured, she wore a military coat across her shoulders and her hands were clasped together in defence of an enormous belly swollen with child.

  MARK KAUFMAN: Who’s that?

  GRANDPA MOSES: Hell, that’s your mother.

  PERLE KATZ (her eyes wide with amazement): Dad! But how did you… then they didn’t take you away?

  GRANDPA MOSES (to Mark): Hell! Once again I’ve made a mess of this. You were right; this cannot be done. (He flicks his fingers and the woman disappears)

  MARK KAUFMAN (slowly): So the Germans did take you away? I never did know if you lived that long or if the Lord had shown mercy and taken you earlier. Mum never wanted to tell me about it. So you went through all that, and still want me to go ahead. Is that right?

  GRANDPA MOSES (polishing the mahogany with painstaking care): We’ll let that matter be, shall we? Perhaps there is no truth in it. Perhaps I boarded a steamer, and went off to enjoy my riches in California. Perhaps I died in Malibu and not in Auschwitz.

  MARK KAUFMAN (shakes his head)

  GRANDPA MOSES: Don’t you believe me?

  MARK KAUFMAN (continues to shake his head)

  GRANDPA MOSES (stretching himself out on a deckchair in Malibu and wearing Bermuda shorts, a straw hat and sunglasses): Don’t believe me, if that’s what you want. Right, where were we? Your mother. No, we can’t do that, you’re quite right. Why not get that girl to read it?

  MARK KAUFMAN: Which girl?

  GRANDPA MOSES: You know, the one that does the cleaning! What was her name? Lyuba?

  MARK KAUFMAN: Lyuda. I haven’t seen her for years.

  GRANDPA MOSES: Look, do whatever you want. But don’t burn the manuscript – that’s if you want my opinion.

  MARK KAUFMAN: Of course, but you people… I mean, for you…

  GRANDPA MOSES (he’s no longer in Malibu, and it is not that clear where he is; it’s misty and he is stamping on the snow with his worn and battered boots): Us? Why do you think that we could possibly care?… Nothing matters to us any more. Nothing. Hey! Hand over the bottle.

  And when the sun finally came through the window, shone through an empty bottly! This is strange, because Mark Kaufman still believes that he never touched it again after the first few swigs. And he could well be right; after all, who could drink two bottles in a single night on his own? That wouldn’t just re
sult in nightmares – that is the stuff of delirium and waking up strapped down hand and foot to a hospital bed. Well, the fact is that he didn’t burn the manuscript, and he still occasionally works on it, seated on a Tel Aviv balcony with the Mediterranean Sea before him.

  The wind scatters sheets of paper from the notebook in all directions…

  V

  The tenants of Chkalova Street

  Moscow, January 1988

  On that same winter morning in which the sun streamed into Mark Kaufman’s kitchen and sparkled on his empty bottle, the investigating judge Nazar Kallistratovich Lappa was hurrying off to the Office of the Public Prosecutor of the USSR. What do I hear you saying? Yet another character!

  You bastard, could you try not to get lost in your own plot, and remember: sooner or later you are going to have to gather up all the various threads and make some sense of it.

  Listen, my impatient masters, the threads will be gathered all in good time. Besides, Nazar Kallistratovich is one of this novel’s central characters and we will be returning to him on many occasions, so trust me… The judge had just turned into Gorky Street when he bumped into a fat young man who was handing out leaflets. The youth had a woolly hat that failed to cover his greasy locks, a cigarette hung loosely from his lips and his leather jacket was laden with metal studs. Hence the judge did not like the look of him at all, but still put out his hand to take one of the leaflets as he passed by. Well this was something that never used to be seen on the streets of Moscow. Now they are always pushing pieces of papers at people as they go about their business.

  Ever since this novelty started to occur, Nazar Kallistratovich took everything that he was offered on the street, and then carefully filed them away. To be sure, this mania for hoarding everything had got him into trouble… The leaflet, as was almost always the case, was simply a carbon copy of a typewritten text and not the first naturally, but the ninth or tenth, so it was almost illegible. The judge had to adjust his spectacles on his nose and stop under the shelter of an entrance to decipher it, while keeping one hand on the brim of his black felt hat to stop the wind from snatching it. By the way, don’t think that Nazar Kallistratovich was some kind of natty dresser just because he had a wide-brimmed felt hat. Quite the opposite, he weighed a hundred kilos and the black hat was the only affectation in the way he dressed.

  What was that? A provincial opera-singer? Well, yes, he was a little like that, but, of course, his grey woollen coat was worn at the elbows. His scarf was not blowing freely but carefully tucked in around his neck. Thus the judge unfolded the leaflet and read it, and a disdainful smile gradually froze on his lips. And it remained, as though forgotten, once he had finished reading and resumed his walk. In twenty ungrammatical lines with more than one spelling mistake, the unknown author exhorted the Russian people to rid themselves of the Jewish canker and start by sweeping away the institution that more than any other was in the service of a global Jewish plot, the Committee for State Security, known to most people by that telltale acronym: KGB. Judge Lappa smiled, not because he found any of this the least bit amusing: between the lines an image had appeared of the youth in the black jacket shovelling mud in a labour camp, and that tender thought produced his smile of satisfaction. Then he shook himself free of this reverie and let reason take control again: all right, spew out your poison; for all these years they have forced you to keep it to yourself and it has poisoned you…

  And yet why should WE, who are decent people, have to put up with such persons? For a moment he toyed with the idea of going back, screwing up the leaflet and throwing it back in its author’s face, but then he reconsidered the situation, carefully folded the specimen and slipped it into his bag. He adjusted his hat and continued on his way, but after a few steps a look of curiosity from a passer-by told him that he was still smiling, and he quickly composed himself, while feeling a little ashamed.

  Throughout the day in the Chief Prosecutor’s Office, Nazar Kallistratovich found himself unable to get that encounter out of his mind. It is not as though there weren’t all kinds of aggravations in any normal day at the office: for example, some guy rings wanting to know if one can sue the Council of Ministers, as though such a thing would be a trifle. What is more, the line is crackly and he can only understand half the words. Who knows when they will get it repaired? The man at the end of the line insists, I have a right to get a reply, and when you ask his reason for wanting to bring the action, he comes up with some highly complicated story of supplies that had been guaranteed and were then returned from one factory to another at the last moment, causing serious damage to the interested parties.

  But then when you try to find out who you are talking to and why he is getting so heated, it turns out that the guy has nothing to do with either of the factories. He is a retired foreman, and he merely wants to obtain the information on whether he, as a private citizen, is entitled to sue the government, by way of an example. What can you do? You can’t tell the choleric old man to go to the devil, partly because in your heart you can’t say that he is entirely wrong. So talk yourself hoarse, give the information and spell out the addresses… And then they telephone from some state institution, say the Ministry of Water Management with the acronym Minvodkhoz, whose task, should anyone not know this, is to squander millions of roubles on water diversion schemes, which, should they ever work, would have catastrophic consequences for the national economy. He hated Minvodkhoz which, like a foreign power settled in a conquered land, restructures our terrain as it sees fit and dries out our seas. So who knows what could happen, perhaps even a conversation along the following lines:

  “I’m listening.”

  “This is the office of the First Deputy Minister Polad-zade.

  I am now transferring you to the comrade Deputy Minister.”

  “Nazar Kallistratych? Polad-zade speaking.”

  “Good morning, Polad Alyevich.”

  “Listen, dear fellow, a matter has come up concerning your office, and I thought it might be better to speak to you about it man to man, so to speak. I have Sulimanov here with me; he’s a friend and he’s opened a cooperative. He’s observed all the points of law, but some charges have been brought against him – still pending, you know – and they won’t issue him with the relevant licence. Now I’ve been told that one of your colleagues has been handling the case… To keep it brief, you really should take a look at this matter and find out why it can’t be resolved.”

  “Excuse me, Polad Alyevich, what kind of licence are you talking about? Is it a cooperative working for you, a tender for waterworks?”

  “To hell with tenders for waterworks, Kallistratovich; we’re talking about a restaurant. You hear? A restaurant, and they’re not giving him a licence. They simply won’t give him one! See what you can do, as our friend Sulimanov has been waiting for some time! No, I don’t know where the charges came from, my dear fellow. That’s for you to find out. You’ll do me a favour. Let me know, okay? Yes, and my best wishes to your family! Goodbye, goodbye.” While the First Deputy Minister Polad-zade is wiping sweat from his bald head in his office at Minvodkhoz and reassuring Sulimanov that his licence is as good as in his hands, you’d better write a note and put it amongst the list of things to do, because Polad Alyevich, who also has a thick Caucasian accent and great crowds of relations in Baku who come rushing up here to the capital to ask favours, cannot be told to fuck off: a First Deputy Minister, think of that, and also your neighbour! And in the meantime, he treats you like an imbecile: a fine judge for special affairs, and what exactly are these special affairs… And then in comes Anna Andreyevna, the secretary, she looks at you with a strange, unusual expression and puts a file for signature in front of you. You open it and the top sheet of paper is a pink form with its copy. Which happy little bureaucrat came up with the idea that this form should be pink! I can tell you that Form 202/II has no charm about it: it is a notification that execution by firing squad has been carried out. The name on this particular
form is well known to you. The court’s presiding judge has already signed, and all it needs is the signature of the investigating judge – that’s you. Anna Andreyevna is standing there and staring at you. She wants to see your face when you do it, but you are not going to give her any satisfaction. In this office everyone believes that you should feel guilty. Poor thing, they say, he was so young – or rather they don’t say it, but you can tell that they are thinking it. They can all go to hell; what else would they have done in your shoes? So you sign, but the fountain pen is scratchy and ruins the paper. It has run out of ink. In other words, you have to raise your head and look Anna Andreyevna in the face, and then to gain a little time, you take off your glasses and start to clean them with your handkerchief, as though she weren’t perfectly acquainted with that gesture… Once again Nazar Kallistratovich’s day went from one complete waste of time to another – each more absurd than the other. And all the while for some inexplicable reason, the judge’s thoughts kept returning to the youth who had been handing out leaflets in Gorky Street.