The Anonymous Novel

by Alessandro Barbero

  “Yes, I’m telling you. Three days! He has spent three days going round the shops. He hasn’t had a chance to enjoy his leave, and he had to go back yesterday. I hardly saw him at home – lunch and supper, and then he was away. But the worst of it is that they didn’t find a thing; you should have seen how depressed he was about it, my poor little Shurik.

  They will never believe me, he said, down there they always say that you can find anything you want in Moscow… And yet, he found nothing! You see, the captain had asked him to buy a tyre for his son’s bike. He punctured it on the gravel, and it can’t be mended again, and you just can’t buy things like that in Odessa! You know what my Shurik is like: so innocent that he would move mountains to help others, and so, of course, he immediately promised he would. Of course I’ll get you that tyre… So then another officer butts in: you, he says, buy me a pair of tights in Moscow for my wife; here all the shops are empty, and they even put the money in his hand. If there’s anything left over, keep it for yourself… And then another one, I have not understood who – the lieutenant colonel, is there such a rank? Well anyway, he’s a big fish. It turns out that he has a small baby and you can’t even get powdered milk in Odessa: it would be good for the baby, buy me a few tins. He turned up really happy, and the first day, he says, Mum, now I’m off to the department stores, as the officers have asked me to buy some stuff. I immediately asked him what he had to get, and he reeled off the list: a bicycle tyre, women’s tights, powdered milk. Well, my son, I said, let’s hope that you are in luck, because I’m not sure that you’ll find all that stuff. Come off it Mum, he says, don’t you know that you can find everything in Moscow? Poor thing, he has had enough of that Odessa place and cannot wait to finish military service. He’s still got a good three months, poor Shurik! Well, as I said, he went out and in the evening he came back very down in the dumps; he had not found a thing! Shurik, I tell him, leave it be. You’ll never find a thing. And he was desperate: Mum, you’ll not believe me, but I have to find it! And so he spent three days running from one department store to another, and could you believe it? Still not a thing. Not a single thing!

  Well, we knew about the tights already. It’s quite some time since they disappeared, but come on, at least the powdered milk! What do mothers with small babies do? In our days, you could always find that at least. And do you know what they said to him when he asked where he should go to get this bloody powdered milk? No, they told him, there isn’t any, and you can’t buy it anywhere, and that’s that! Can you believe that? What can one say? There was a time when such things just simply could not have happened!”

  Our Valka gets very angry, and her son’s misadventures make her absolutely furious. She has already called three different fellow gossips, and each time she tells the same story with a few different embellishments, and the others are sighing and marvelling: No, really, but who would have thought it? What strange times! Fortunately they have two telephone lines at the Institute, and although one of them is Obilin’s private line from his office, people can phone in to it, if they really need to. Besides, the old man’s away today and if you want to use it, you just have to ask for the key from the deputy director, Sarabyanova: just go and phone!

  But if it weren’t for that line, well let’s face it, the Institute would be cut off from the rest of the world every time dear Shurik comes home from Odessa on leave: Call at whatever time you like, and you’ll find it engaged! Today however, Valentina Leonidovna has gone over the top; okay, there’s lots of things to chat about, but does everyone really have to hear the story of the powdered milk not once, but three times over! And with the embellishments! Come on, how can we work in here? Up till now, Tanya has been forcing herself to ignore the matter, but now she cannot stand this mindless uninterrupted chatter; she lifts her head from the second chapter of her thesis and looks around sighing…

  The office door suddenly opens and two young men appear, two bright young sparks, perhaps overly so. Arbuzov and Dekanozov, both junior researchers, are wearing expensive and well-cut clothes; compared with these, Tanya’s flower-patterned dress sewn by her mother seems little more than a rag. Well of course, one is the son of Professor Arbuzov, the director of the Institute of African and Middle-Eastern Studies, while Dekanozov’s dad trades in fish and supplies the markets in Moscow and also a few other people… So why be surprised that people, when talking about institutes like ours, call them the “toffs’ talking shops”, even though they do have the occasional authentic proletarian amongst their number, such as Tanya Voznesenskaya herself. Of course, the directors weren’t born yesterday; the wind could change direction at any time and they have to keep their backs covered! The young blades look around and assess the situation: No, the old man isn’t here either. Clearly he isn’t in today, but we’d better be sure.

  “Hey, Tanya! Have you seen the boss about?”

  Tanya shakes her head to say she hasn’t.

  “But he hasn’t telephoned by any chance?” Arbuzov enquires further, or is it Dekanozov who speaks?

  “How do I know? He certainly hasn’t called the phone in this room, which has been requisitioned by Valka… If at all, he’ll have rung Sarabyanova, but who knows? Go and ask her!”

  “Well, we’re popping out for a moment,” the rakes rub their hands together. “Yes, we’re off… to drink a little kvass!

  There’s a water-truck full of it down below and we’ll have to rush before the queue builds up.”

  You and your kvass! Yes of course, they probably will drink it, given that men have a right to the occasional refreshment, but who will ever see them again. There’s a billiard hall in the courtyard behind this building, very convenient, and that’s where those two will be working on their theses. Besides, Arbuzov hasn’t even registered the title of his, and Dekanozov changed his when Comrade Chernyenko died. Before, as you can imagine, he wanted to study the successes of the Party in Dnepropetrovsk during the sixties, when the Leader of the Peoples was the first secretary down there, but then he suddenly decided that it was no longer a very stimulating or relevant subject…

  So finally they’re off, our two future academics, enslaved by the lure of a water-tank filled with kvass and the billiard cue. But in the meantime, Tanya’s line of thought has been interrupted and it is not easy to pick up that thread – damn those blockheads. Just when you’re struggling to find the right word, the one that will allow you to move ahead and not run your argument aground like a boat in the shallows.

  Do you think it is a trivial thing, that right word? And yet for years they have been telling us that writing history is a scientific activity and history is a science, just like chemistry or physics, and does not even differ in its terminology. And if you look at what is taking shape here with Tanya’s thesis, you might even start to believe that stuff: graphs and tables all over the place, so many arrested and so many shot in absolute numbers and percentages, and percentages for all tastes: of the members of the Regional Committee, of the Komsomol leaders, of the officers in the Military District, of the cadres in the petroleum enterprises; 70 per cent of one lot, 80 per cent of another, and here we have one with a 100 per cent; on other hands some groupings got off lightly, there’s a 50 per cent here and, my God, a 40 per cent, next to nothing… Well, you have to admit, Tanya reflects, the first impression really is of a science, just as they have always taught us. This argument was fostered by the academician Tarakanov, I know it off by heart, and Obilin questioned me on it at the last exam: before Lenin, he said, there was no reliable science that investigated the specific rules governing life and the development of society. On the other hand, Soviet social sciences… And off he goes, and there’s the famous comparison with the chemistry of colloidal solutions, which they also asked me about in the exam. And at the end, it was Sarabyanova of all people who asked me whether this risked descending into positivism!

  But I had done my studies, and Tarakanov had provided an answer to this too: No, he says, Auguste Comte, the
father of positivism, asserted very superficially in his own time that…

  Hem! What exactly did he assert? Christ, I’ve forgotten, but he asserted something in any case and he did it very superficially – I do remember that very clearly. As well as the chemistry of colloidal solutions… True enough, they weren’t talking about numbers, not at the time of Tarakanov; that particular mania had not started, and they were more interested in rigid and immutable laws, such as the determination of Soviet peoples, but it all came down to the same thing: history is a science! But when you set about writing it, you soon realise that this is not true! Without words, the right words, the ones that only you and no other person can find, because it was you who dirtied your hands on those dusty documents – well, without those words, all these laws and numbers only succeed in addling your brain, and the more you struggle along and sweat and despair, the more you realise it certainly isn’t a science; our people are just plain wrong, when they say these things. Oh my God, it’s an art… What does that make me? An artist? Now that really is a pisser. I’ll never find my way out of this tangle…

  Well, these are the worries that obsess Tanya on a daily basis, following her return from Baku. We know about that, she is given to worrying. But I would like to see how well you could concentrate when Valentina Leonidovna starts on the fourth telephone call to recount the misfortunes of her Shurik: you’d want to bash her head against the wall, I can assure you. So when the office door opens again and Sarabyanova comes into the room, Tanya is not unhappy about the interruption; in fact, she is even a little relieved. It is already clear that this chapter is not going to progress very far today. We’ll get back to it this evening at home. At least there is some peace and quiet there… Antonina Timofeyevna Sarabyanova also understands the situation as soon as she’s in the room: she pulls a face and shakes her head at Stark, and you know the result! The woman takes no notice – you’ll need to do a bit more than that!

  “Is she still on the phone?” mutters Sarabyanova. Tanya shrugs her shoulders; everyone in the Institute knows that those two cannot stand each other, and Tanya has no desire to get mixed up in the petty dislikes of gossips, this bedlam of tittle-tattle: those who support the one, those who support the other and those who simply enjoy the sight of their arguments each with their beaks to the fore and their feathers ruffled, and each ready to pick the other’s nits. It appears that Sarabyanova is looking for a little company and must be tired of twiddling her thumbs in the director’s office; she opened the post some time ago and there’s nothing else to do there. Everyone knows that she isn’t doing any research, and they’ve known it for at least a couple of years, since she submitted her state thesis to the Academic Commission, and she’s still waiting for those guys to make up their minds. If only they would say something, anything, just a word, a single word. Clearly such situations wear down your nerves, and it’s difficult to get other jobs onto the production line… On the other hand, she might simply have decided to turn up here to irritate Stark and find out how long she can sit with the phone receiver glued to her ear. Sarabyanova is capable of such pettiness.

  “Are you working on your thesis?” she asks while taking a quick peep at the manuscript.

  “Yeah!” Tanya is desperately hoping that she will not ask anything else, particularly about how she managed to put together all that information and come up with such detailed tables…

  “So you haven’t changed the title, then? Oh well, as long as you’re happy with it… And when do you think you’ll have it finished?” Sarabyanova persists. It’s clear that she couldn’t care a damn about Tanya and still less about her thesis, thank God. Of course, she’s not the supervisor.

  Obilin’s the one who will have to scratch that particular sore. But she’s dying for a chat. She must be really bored today, and who knows why she comes to the Institute every day when she could easily stay at home. She could do that, but obviously home is even duller, the poor bastard.

  So Tanya, warming to the conversation, replies that, if all goes well, by the end of the year. All I have to do is write it…

  Then who knows how long they’ll make me wait, she hurriedly adds in order to associate herself with Sarabyanova’s resentment of that cursed commission.

  However, the other woman did not appreciate the comparison: what, in fact, could they possibly have in common?

  Tanya’s is merely a Ph.D. thesis, whereas she, Sarabyanova, had got her Ph.D. years ago. Hers is a state thesis: three volumes and one thousand six hundred pages. The argument is one of those really tough ones: “The activities of party cells in the 456th Rifles Division during the Battle of Stalingrad”. This division, it appears, boasted the highest percentage of communists on the entire South-Western Front. Its ranks included the two famous riflemen spoken of in all the primary-school reading books, the Byelorussian Mikhail Nachinkin and the Moldavian Yurko Tarakul, who on 13 September 1943 defended a three-storey building on their own against an entire German regiment. Clearly a work of this kind is incredibly demanding, and that is why the commission has been working hard on it for two years, and perhaps it will take another little while before they can reach a considered decision…

  “No,” says Sarabyanova with a suggestion of a smile that expresses sourness, “don’t you worry; they are much less strict with Ph.D. theses. You’ll find they won’t take long.

  However,” she suddenly frowns as though she has just remembered something disagreeable, “be careful about what you write.”

  Tanya’s ears prick up. Oh right, so here it comes!

  Perhaps this time I will find out what everybody in here thinks about my thesis, because up till now nobody has had any appetite for straight talking. Allusions, insinuations, evasive answers and then just at the right moment, other more pressing engagements that mean the conversation must come to an end: yes, she’s had plenty of those kinds of words. But straight talking never. Sometimes she couldn’t get hold of Obilin or Antonina even during the periods in which they were supposed to be receiving junior researchers. One thing is clear: at some point word has come down FROM ABOVE, and they took fright, but exactly how this happened and who went to all that trouble, well, she would like to know that… So Tanya lifts her head and presents Sarabyanova with two clear and trusting eyes – guilelessness itself: Tell me, Antonina Timofeyevna, what should I do? I am ready to follow all your advice! Fat chance, that one is as slippery as an eel; you thought you’d got her by the tail, and with one lash of her slimy coils, she has broken free from your hands. Or perhaps she doesn’t know anything herself. She has simply intimated that you need to be careful. So back to the grumping and innuendo… One thing is certain: she has gone into reverse. The serpentwoman has withdrawn into the narrow shafts of jagged rock, and there she lurks beyond the reach of your naked hands!

  “Because,” she says gravely, “you’ve already got yourself into trouble with this thesis…” And she looks at her without adding anything else, as though to say: Don’t play the innocent; you know better than I do what trouble you’re in.

  Perhaps you’re right, my esteemed Antonina Timofeyevna, I do know more than you, but I am beginning to think that means very little, and when it comes down to it, I know very little myself. I only know that from one moment to another, it became impossible to mention Baku in here without everyone suddenly having something else to do, and very urgent too. And I also know, Tanya would have liked to exclaim, that I had to go down there on my own without you people giving me a single kopeck for my expenses or a piece of official paper to cover my arse with. Not even a pat on the back. I went there, I found what I was looking for and, what is more, I managed to get back home safe and sound, although somewhat shaken, that’s true, and the fright has not entirely passed even now: every now and then in the middle of the night, I awake with a start, with the impresssion – no, what am I saying – with the certainty that that general is in my room and staring at me fixedly while I sleep… Yes, I have got myself into a spot of trou
ble, and so what?

  “Well, well, well! Here she is, our youthful Voznesenskaya!”

  Oh God, what a jump! And who’s this? Not our Professor Shvarts Ilya Pavlovich? So he too has crawled out of his hole today; there must be something in the air. It should be known that Shvarts conducted a lengthy and veiled campaign within the Institute to avoid sharing a room with Sarabyanova. It looked like a lost cause, because there weren’t any other rooms, and of course he was not going to be happy with a desk in the researchers’ common room – and him a professor! The other workers at the Institute, and even the students, looked on with curiosity: how is this all going to turn out? When the other professor there, Ivan Mikhailovich Kariofilli, retired, some betted that the situation would soon be sorted out, and there really was money changing hands on it; somebody was collecting the stakes and they must have lost a considerable sum. Ivan Mikhailovich was in fact leaving behind a magnificent desk in the office next to the director’s. It’s true, there is the custom of allowing Emeritus Professors to continue to use their studies for another year or two, so as to soften the blow of being put out to grass, but everyone was certain that they would unceremoniously dump poor Ivan Mikhailovich.

  Well, they weren’t wrong about that bit, and while the bottles from the leaving party were still on the floor – and can you believe it, not all of them were empty – Kariofilli’s desk had already disappeared and someone had even got the lock changed on the door so there was no chance that he would turn up and inconvenience them with his presence. Never mind that he had worked there for forty years, and you might even say that he had founded the Institute itself… But Obilin had not given the desk to Ilya Pavlovich. No, he decided to create a waiting room for his office, and he gave instructions for one of his secretaries to work there permanently or, if necessary, one of the junior researchers with fewer commitments – you’ve got to have someone handy in case of the expected and the unexpected: answering the phone, receiving students and, well, running along to get something at the shop… Of course, Shvarts’s nose was severely out of joint, but that did not put an end to his machinations, and in the end, through sheer doggedness, he found the solution: there was a windowless box room, where dusty lecture notes and dissertations from the before the war had been piling up since time immemorial, and there was even a globe that history had made entirely obsolescent; well one fine day, Ilya Pavlovich, who had managed to extract permission from Obilin God knows how, summoned the janitor Kiknadze, gave him a couple of roubles and had him get rid of all that wastepaper by having it sent directly to the rubbish tip. And of course, he had his desk moved in… He managed it, the old man; he broke off the cohabitation with Sarabyanova, who had become so irksome with the passing years. But you know at the beginning, we’re talking here of twenty years ago of course, and there was no longer anyone working there who could remember it (but the rumour was still passed down from one generation of researchers to another, and even amongst the students) – yes, at the beginning, as I was saying, Ilya Pavlovich and Antonina Timofeyevna were, to use the expression, courting each other; in fact he was the one – and everyone swears by this – who got her the professorship in the first place, and without him on the commission, she could forget it! So at that time, sharing an office was a delight for him, to say the very least… Then, as happens, they started to argue; perhaps it was that he was drinking or drinking more, because it seems that at that time he was quite heavy on the hard stuff, or perhaps he became jealous of his own creature – Sarabyanova’s successes started to irritate him, this too can happen. In any event, the romance ended badly, and no vestige of it remained. No, perhaps there was one: Ilya Pavlovich continued to dye his hair, a habit that he had taken up precisely at the time of this great affair of the heart… And that’s the point! He very rarely left his little hole, for he never knew when they might pull the chair from under his arse, if you’ll excuse the expression. So what then could have possibly chased him out of it and driven him to travel as far as that disreputable place, the researchers’ common room, where you find all the riff-raff of the Institute?