The Anonymous Novel

by Alessandro Barbero

  That night Tanya slept very little; she was expecting her period to start imminently, and her belly was pumped up like a football. Now what is that you say? Not a respectful expression? Well, perhaps it was exactly the expression she used when justifying herself to Oleg. Leave me in peace, my stomach feels like a pumped-up football… So she tossed and turned endlessly on Tamara Pavlovna’s uncomfortable sofa, and also had to wave her hands to defend herself against the mosquitoes. When she did finally fall asleep, she dreamt that she was in a dark room in which someone was seated at a desk and telephoning without being aware of her presence. The lamp projected a cone of light onto the desk, with the result that Tanya could only distinguish the hands of the person who was on the phone. The left hand held an old-fashioned, black lacquered or gilt receiver, while the right hand drummed idly on the green felt surface of the desk. Tanya strained to identify the voice, but she could only hear a muffled murmur that alternated with long silences. At one stage the right hand stretched out to the opposite side of the desk and outside the cone of light, and she heard the sound of crystal and then water being poured into a glass. The voice went silent and Tanya could distinguish the dull sound of water going down the man’s throat. The right hand returned to the illuminated space and for a second it was still; then it was off again, and brought a blank sheet of paper and a pencil under the lamp’s light, and while the conversation continued uninterrupted, the hand started to doodle on the paper.

  Tanya came close on tiptoe, now she understood the man could not see her, and she spied on his drawing. With a few strokes of his pencil he had sketched an animal with a long muzzle, jaws wide apart, shaggy fur: a wolf in fact. He stopped for a bit while the voice on the phone became angry, and then he started to draw a second wolf, a third one and a fourth. Tanya looked on fascinated. An explosion of anger made her jump: the man was swearing and heaping insults on his interlocutor. The hand that held the receiver shook and the other hand threw away the pencil with which he had been drawing up to that moment. Then the fury started to subside, his voice went silent, and he was evidently listening to what the other person was saying on the phone.

  The conversation resumed in a calmer tone. The right hand returned to the illuminated area: he grasped a red crayon and methodically coloured in the wolves. In that moment, Tanya’s hair started to stand on end, although she could not understand why, and she woke up with a start – in the dark, trembling with fright and desperately searching for the light switch to drive away the shadows that had come to visit her.

  Even after the wave of panic that had overwhelmed her had dissipated, she continued to lie on the sofa with the light on, and without the courage to switch it off. Her heart was beating at a frantic rate. Fortunately Tamara Pavlovna, as we already know, was a deep sleeper, and Tanya could hear her snoring from behind the makeshift screen; her mother and grandmother would both have been wakened long before. She was afraid to go back to sleep as she knew that the dream was waiting in ambush, ready to leap on her at the right moment. She had driven it away once in the archive, and now once more, but only just: who could tell if she would manage the next time? And why did that hairy hand, which very slowly and methodically coloured the wolves red, instil such terror in her? Now the rest of us, who have of course read our Freud, would immediately think that those red wolves had a very simple meaning, because something red in her body was longing for liberation, even though she knew that once triggered it would pitilessly gnaw at her internal organs. Tanya had clearly never read Freud, and yet, who would have thought it, the same idea came into her head, albeit in a slightly vaguer form. She sat down and lifted her nightdress to check if she was losing blood, but found nothing; and yet, she said to herself tetchily, this should be exactly the right time! Red wolves, who would have thought it. Besides in other times, didn’t peasant women refer to their menstruations as the red cockerel?

  They were ashamed of it, the silly fools; otherwise they would have been able to use a more explicit word. The red cockerel, of course, what an absurd expression. But then why not the red hen or the red chicks? Why not make the whole damn henhouse red? And the red corner in a school’s entrance hall: there they keep the flag used in the processions, along with Lenin’s portrait. There too they had painted a cockerel, a red one. But it’s not a cockerel now I look at it carefully, it’s a telephone. That’s the famous red telephone; that’s used for speaking to America, and they only use it in the Kremlin. Without being aware of it, Tanya had fallen asleep with the light on and was snoring quietly. Her mouth was dribbling slightly and in the dream the red telephone changed colour, and with that metamorphosis the same man she had previously dreamed of reappeared. This unrelenting presence was still on the phone and was listening carefully, while occasionally saying a few words of his own.

  Tanya could not hear what was being said at the other end of the line, but unlike the preceding dream, she could hear very clearly what the man was saying. Besides, the room was now well lit and sunlight was streaming through the windows. The man on the phone had become clearly visible and he was Stalin. He was wearing a white military jacket, riding breeches and boots. There were a pipe and a tobacco pouch next to him on the desk. The young woman asleep on the sofa was terrified that he would turn towards her and recognise her. She held her breath as she listened to the quips he exchanged with his unknown interlocutor:

  “That’s exactly why I phoned you.”

  And then with irritation, “But of course, of course! What the hell do you think?” At the end in a voice both grumpy and almost amused, “You don’t defend your friends very well.”

  And he put the phone down. Tanya wriggled around trying to wake herself up, because she knew that the man in the white jacket would turn towards her and could not fail to look right at her face, but she was not successful. Luckily the dream went off in another direction: there were now other men in the room, and in fact the room was no longer the same room, but a kind of basement, prison or laboratory, or perhaps all these things together. The dictator was preoccupied with lighting his pipe, and Tanya smelt the distinctive and oppressive aroma of tobacco. He was smoking now, and with the pipe between his teeth was muttering something, “The critical mass… the critical mass… This too is a dialectical principle. In given conditions the critical mass is one thing, while in others, it is probably something different.” Tanya recognised something she had read recently – something to do with the atomic bomb. But what the hell is he talking about? she expressed her surprise to herself. Is this what his materialism consists of?

  This is idealism through and through: the objective reality does not exist, and you can push it around exactly as you please. But she must have articulated her thoughts out loud, because she was dismayed to perceive that the man had heard her and was turning towards her. They ended up looking each other in the eye, but neither of them spoke.

  But then someone behind her said, Don’t you worry, Iosif Vissarionovich, this is an insignificant irritant which we will resolve immediately. And then she started to scream so powerfully that she even woke up Tamara Pavlovna.

  The following morning, Tanya was sitting uncomfortably on the hard chair in the archive and keeping her legs tightly together, because her period really had come. Yet another box file was open on the table, and she tried to work out how many were left, and therefore whether she would be able to finish that afternoon, but her head was being uncooperative – it simply refused to carry out the calculation.

  Right in front of her, the girl-engineer was continuing coolly to copy out her numbers; Tanya stared at her with ill-concealed hostility. Here you have someone with not a care in the world: they sent her here to copy out statistics and she just gets on with copying. In that moment, the girl raised her eyes, encountered Tanya’s staring at her, and smiled.

  “So you too have no desire to work? Come on, let’s go out for a fag.”

  “I don’t smoke,” Tanya excused herself weakly.

  “And who cares? Ke
ep me company!” the other retorted.

  Well, thought Tanya, why always be so stand-offish? Why not go and get a blast of fresh air? On the floor above, the girl went to the locker next to the door, where those with permission to consult the Party Archive are required to leave their bags, and took out a small black bag from which she then extracted a packet of cigarettes. Tanya joined her and both of them went to lean against the stair rail on the landing.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Tanya.”

  “I’m Glafira. Glafira Viktorovna. My father is a colonel,” she added. Tanya nodded and smiled out of good manners.

  The girl smoked like a learner without inhaling the smoke, which she held in her mouth for a bit and then blew out ostentatiously. Her nails were varnished and her eyes made up – not in a vulgar manner, it has to be said, but sufficient for Tanya to feel an instinctive revulsion. Well, she had never applied the tiniest trace of makeup in her entire life:

  There’s no one like you in the world, Oleg would tease her as, all things considered, he would not have found a fiancée covered with makeup and nail varnish at all disagreeable.

  Oh well, accept me as I am.

  “I’m an engineer,” she heard Glafira say. “What about you?”

  “Me? I’m a historian.”

  The other woman went silent for a moment.

  “And where’s your fiancé?” she asked suddenly.

  Idiot, Tanya thought. “In Moscow. But he rings me every evening,” she decided to jest.

  Glafira eyes widened, “You’re a Muscovite! You are lucky!

  My boyfriend is in Nakhichevan, and we see each other at weekends. He was in Afghanistan, you know. Muscovite!

  They say that they don’t make Muscovites do military service…”

  Huh, you’re really stupid, Tanya thought again with irritation. “What are you working on?” the girl pressed her.

  “Nothing much,” said Tanya hesitantly, “pretty dusty stuff.”

  The other did not insist; it was clear that she wasn’t even listening, and was thinking about herself.

  “Well just imagine, I’m doing a thesis for a degree. It’s on the engineering systems used in petroleum plants. Such a bore!” Tanya would later kick herself for not having understood earlier: “What do you mean a thesis for a degree? I thought you had already graduated.”

  Glafira burst out laughing, “What did you think? It’s not for me! For a friend. You can earn a shedload of money, you know. I’ve already done others, and it’s the same, nice round figure for them all: a thousand roubles… But what’s up?” she broke off, seeing Tanya turn pale.

  “Nothing,” Tanya stammered, “just a little stomach pain.”

  And to herself she thought, But why? Why every month?

  What harm did I ever do? And this stupid girl grinning…

  Glafira was in fact winking with the air of someone who has understood it all.

  “Not feeling well, then? Do you know that I never feel a damn thing? I’m so lucky! Would you like me to come with you to the bathroom?”

  “No, thank you, I can manage on my own; I can still do that,” Tanya lost no time in reassuring her; listening to Glafira’s prattle was even more irritating than her stomach pains. And when she was on her own in front of the mirror hanging in the women’s toilets – cracked, but there to distinguish it from the men’s – she looked herself in the face. A thousand roubles… and why not indeed? In a month you earn more than you would earn in a year working as an engineer. I really am the most stupid of them all.

  She wetted her temples with a little cold water, shut her eyes and reopened them. Yes, I am pale; there’s no doubt about that, and my eyes have shadows under them. We’re in for three or four hellish days. She looked for a painkiller in her bag, and panicked on finding that there was only one capsule left, so she decided to keep it for later. Up till now, after all, the pain has been bearable, I’ve suffered a lot worse … When she went back to the hall, Glafira was standing in front of the locker for bags and was hurriedly taking something from Tanya’s bag and hiding it in a large, bulky bag of her own. There was a desk next to the locker, and one of the clerks should have been sitting there all day, but for some reason, nobody was in that particular moment.

  “What are you doing?”

  Glafira turned towards her with a frightened look.

  “What are you doing?” Tanya repeated as she came closer, and she tore the large bag from the girl’s hands and emptied it partly onto the top of the locker, the rest on the floor. And there in the midst of the exercise books in which the petroleum production figures had been copied with infinite patience, she found two of her own notebooks from which yellow and green cards fell and scattered across the floor. Almost without realising what she was doing and certainly blinded by her fury, Tanya grabbed the girl’s little bag, which was on the same surface and emptied it on the ground: lipstick, compact, necklaces, keys, handkerchiefs, pencils and bus tickets, these too were scattered across the floor. Only then did Tanya look Glafira in the eye. The girl had just been standing there without saying a thing, but the expression that Tanya encountered was one of defiance, in which however it was still possible to read a few traces of the fright she had just experienced. “Who sent you?” Tanya said grimly. Glafira shrugged. Again Tanya was overcome with anger, and she took her by the lapels. “Who sent you?” she repeated, but this time almost snarling. Fright was reawakened in the girl’s eyes, her mouth opened as though to scream, but Tanya shook her again, “Don’t scream! Don’t scream or I’ll gouge your eyes out! Who sent you?”

  But in that moment a look of superiority, almost mockery appeared in Glafira’s eyes.

  “Who sent me? You stupid bitch! What questions are these? Who sent me… You speak as though you had some idea of what you’re talking about!”

  Glafira’s voice was too shrill to mask the fear that had not altogether passed, but Tanya suddenly felt too tired to continue. A sound behind forced her to turn around, and there in the doorway an attendant had appeared – it was the same one that would bring her the boxes of documents in the basement. She was looking on calmly, as though nothing could happen in that building that would ever be of the slightest interest to her. Tanya looked at the flabby and ageless face under the black hairs that had worked themselves free of her scarf, the gold rings in her ears, the suggestion of a moustache on her upper lip, the flowerpatterned apron and the swollen feet in rubber shoes, and then she saw nothing else. The stomach pain suddenly grew worse and transformed into something ferocious that poked around in her innards like an iron blade. Tanya moaned with pain and fear, then blinded by a black mist, she staggered and grabbed onto the locker door to stop herself falling. The attendant was startled on seeing her face suddenly turn livid, and rushed back out of the door she had just come through. A second or two later, Svetlana Aleksandrovna appeared with her glasses on the end of her nose. She was scolding the attendant for no apparent reason in a brusque and boorish manner, but she immediately took fright herself, because Tanya had slipped down to the floor and, pale as a corpse, was gripping her stomach with her hands.

  “Tanya! But what’s wrong?”

  Tanya looked up and through a mist distinguished the terrified face of the archivist who was bending over her. She opened her mouth to speak but failed, and instead swallowed saliva. That iron blade continued to work away inside her, tearing at her flesh and penetrating ever further into it.

  “It’s nothing,” she managed to say at length. “Just a colic.

  I get them all the time. Would you accompany me to the toilets please, Svetlana Aleksandrovna?”

  Tanya crouched on the smelly lavatory and started to groan slowly; Svetlana Aleksandrovna stayed close and held her to stop her from falling.

  “Ah! I feel that I’m fainting,” Tanya muttered; she was now ashen-faced and covered in cold sweat. Svetlana Aleksandrovna slapped her with some force.

  “Don’t faint! Sit up! And you lot, go and
find some help!” she shouted at the attendants, who had all gathered there in a circle and chattered quietly in Azeri without any of them thinking of giving a hand. Tanya closed her eyes and emitted a louder groan, while an unbearable smell filled the poky washroom area. The archivist now had to use all her strength to keep her from falling.

  “Hold me, Svetlana Aleksandrovna! Hold me because I’m about to faint!” Tanya whispered and started once more to moan, “Oh, Christ, that hurts!”

  “The hospital! Call the hospital!” Svetlana Aleksandrovna shouted anxiously. Tanya reopened her eyes and feebly signalled by shaking her head that this was not what she wanted.

  “I’m getting over it! I know the pattern; it’s just a colic – oh, that hurts! Hold me, I might faint – but it’s nothing, it’s getting better,” she stuttered, more frightened by the panic she could read on the woman’s face than by the pain that was eviscerating her. “You have got to go to hospital,” the woman insisted.

  “No, no, leave it alone – this is not the first time. There’s a capsule in my bag… give it to me please – oh, oh! But it’s getting better,” she wanted to reassure her. But then she let out another lament, a prolonged howl of suffering. Svetlana Aleksandrovna looked around, the bag wasn’t there, and in the absence of anything better she wiped her forehead with the sleeve of her own blouse.

  “My papers!” Tanya shouted without warning.

  “Now forget your papers! No one is going to touch them,” the archivist was getting cross. “Who would have thought, she could die any second, and she’s worrying about her papers!”