He spoke indistinctly and seemed to be short of breath, and Ch’an realized that now he would be an extremely important official. Then came lunch. Ch’an had never eaten anything so delicious. The Son of Bread did not put so much as a single morsel in his own mouth. Instead, the P.A.’s opened a small door in the cabinet, threw in several shovels of caviar and poured in a bottle of wheat wine. Ch’an could never have imagined anything like that happening. After lunch he and the First Deputy thanked the ruler of the USSR and went out.
He was driven home, and in the evening there was a festive concert, at which Ch’an was seated in the very front row. The concert was a magnificent sight—every piece involved an amazing number of players in incredibly close coordination. Ch’an particularly liked the children’s patriotic dance “My Heavy Machine Gun” and “The Song of the Triune Goal” as performed by the State Choir, except that during the performance of the song they trained a green floodlight on the soloist and his face became quite corpselike, but then Ch’an did not know all the local customs, so he did not ask his P.A.’s about anything.
In the morning, as he drove around the city, Ch’an saw crowds of people stretching along the streets. One P.A. explained that all of these people had come to vote for Pyotr Semyonovich Salami, that is, for him, Ch’an. In a fresh newspaper Ch’an saw his own portrait with his biography, which said that he had a third-level education and had previously worked as a diplomat. That was how in year eighteen of government under the motto of “Efficiency and Quality,” Ch’an the Seventh became an important official in the USSR.
A new life opened up. Ch’an had nothing at all to do, nobody asked him about anything, and nobody required anything of him. Occasionally he would be summoned to one of Moscow’s palaces, where he sat in silence on the presidium as some song or dance was performed. At first he felt extremely embarrassed that so many people were watching him, but then he took a look at how the others behaved, and began acting the same as they did, hiding half of his face behind his hand, and nodding thoughtfully at the most unexpected moments.
He acquired a circle of high-living friends: People’s Artists, Academicians, and General Directors skilled in the martial arts. Ch’an himself became a Victor of Socialist Competition and a Hero of Socialist Labor. In the mornings they all got drunk and went to the Bolshoi Theater to indulge in debauchery with the singers. Of course, if someone more important than Ch’an was taking his revels there, they had to turn back, and then they would stagger into some restaurant, and if the simple people or even the bureaucrats saw the sign “Special Party Service” hanging on the door, then they understood that it was Ch’an and his company making merry, and they kept well away. Ch’an also liked making trips to the botanical gardens to admire the flowers. On those occasions, Ch’an’s bodyguards would ring the Gardens to make sure the ordinary people didn’t get in his way.
The workers respected and feared Ch’an a great deal; they sent him thousands of letters complaining of injustice and asking him to help with all kinds of matters. Ch’an would sometimes pull some letter or other out of the heap at random and then help—this earned him a good reputation with the people.
What Ch’an liked most of all was not the free food and drink, not all his mansions and mistresses, but the local people, the workers. They were hard-working and modest, understanding. For instance, Ch’an could crush as many of them as he liked under the wheels of his immense black limousine, and everyone who happened to be on the streets at the time would turn away, knowing that it was none of their business, and the main thing was that they must not be late for work. They were so very selfless, just like ants. Ch’an even wrote an article for the main newspaper—“With People Like This You Can Do Anything You Want”—and they published it, with just a slight change to the title which became, “With People Like This You Can Achieve Great Things.” That was more or less what Ch’an had wanted to say. The Son of Bread was extremely fond of Ch’an. He would often summon him and burble something to him, but Ch’an couldn’t understand a single word. In the cabinet something gurgled and glubbed, and the Son of Bread looked worse with every day that passed. Ch’an felt extremely sorry for him, but there was nothing he could do to help.
One day, as Ch’an was resting on his estate outside Moscow, news arrived of the death of the Son of Bread. Ch’an took fright and thought that now he was bound to be seized and arrested. He wanted to strangle himself on the spot, but his servants persuaded him to wait for a while, and in fact nothing terrible happened at all. On the contrary, he was appointed to yet another post: now he was in charge of the country’s entire fishing industry. Several friends of Ch’an’s were arrested, and a new leadership was established under the motto “Renewal of the Origins.” During these days Ch’an’s nerves were under such great strain that he totally forgot his own origin, and even began to believe that he really had worked as a diplomat and not spent days and nights at a stretch drinking in a small remote village. During the eighth year of rule under the motto “The Workers’ Letters,” Ch’an became the ruler of Moscow, and in the third year of rule under the motto “The Radiance of Truth,” he married, taking as his wife the beautiful daughter of a fabulously rich academician. She was as elegant as a doll, had read many books, and knew dancing and music. Soon she bore him two sons.
The years passed and ruler followed ruler, but Ch’an only grew stronger and stronger. Gradually a large circle of devoted officials and military officers consolidated itself around him, and they began saying in low voices that it was time for Ch’an to take power into his own hands. Then one morning it happened. Ch’an now discovered the secret of the white grand piano. The Son of Bread’s main responsibility was to sit at it and play some simple melody. It was considered that in doing this he set the fundamental harmony which was followed in every other part of the government of the country. Ch’an realized that the difference between rulers lay in which tunes they knew. The only thing he could remember very well was The Dog’s Waltz, and for most of the time that was what he played. On one occasion he attempted to play the Moonlight Sonata, but he made several mistakes, and the following day a rebellion broke out among the tribes of the Far North, and there was an earthquake in the South, in which however, God be praised, nobody was killed. The rebellion caused quite a lot of bother, though: for five days the rebels with their black banners bearing a yellow circle fought with the “Brothers Karamazov” crack paratroop division, until they had all been killed to the last man.
After that Ch’an took no more risks and he played nothing but The Dog’s Waltz, but he could play it any way at all—with his eyes closed, with his back to the piano, or even lying on it belly-down. In a secret drawer under the grand piano he discovered a collection of melodies composed by the rulers of ancient times, and he often leafed through it in the evenings. He learned, for instance, that on the very day the ruler Khrushchev played The Flight of the Bumblebee, an enemy plane was shot down over the country’s territory. The notes in many of the melodies had been masked with black paint, and there was no way of telling what the rulers of those years had played. Ch’an had now become the most powerful man in the country. As the motto for his reign he chose the words “The Great Reconciliation.” Ch’an’s wife built new palaces, his sons grew, the people prospered, but Ch’an himself was often sad. Although there was no pleasure that he did not experience, many cares still gnawed at his heart. He begun turning gray and hearing less and less well in his left ear.
In the evenings Ch’an dressed himself up as an intellectual and wandered about the town, listening to what the people were saying. During his strolls he began to notice that no matter where he wandered, he always came out onto the same streets. They had strange names, such as Little Armory Street or Great Armory Street, they were all downtown, and the most distant street on which Ch’an ever found himself in his wanderings was called Ballbearing Street. Beyond that, they said, there was Machine Gun Street, and even further out, the First and Second Caterpillar
Track Passages. But Ch’an had never been there. When he dressed up to go out he either drank in the restaurants around Pushkin Square or dropped in to see his lover on Radio Street and take her to the secret food stores on Corpse Street. (That was its real name, but in order not to frighten the workers, all of the signs there had the “r” missing.) His lover, a young ballerina, was as happy as a little girl when he did this, and Ch’an’s heart felt a little lighter, and a minute later they would be back on Great Armory Street.
For some time now the strange narrowness of the world in which he moved had been grating on Ch’an’s nerves. Of course there were other streets and even, it seemed, other cities and provinces, but Ch’an, as an old member of the upper ruling echelons, knew perfectly well that they existed for the most part in the empty spaces between the streets onto which he constantly emerged during his walks, simply as a blind. And although Ch’an had ruled the country for eleven years, he was an honest man, and he felt very strange making speeches about meadows and wide open spaces, when he remembered that even most of the streets in Moscow might as well not exist.
One day, however, he gathered the leadership together and said:
“Comrades! We all know that here in Moscow there are only a few real streets, and the rest hardly exist at all. And there’s no knowing what lies further out, beyond the ring road. Then why...?”
He had not even finished speaking before everyone there began shouting, leapt to their feet, and immediately voted to remove Ch’an from all of his posts. As soon as they had done that, the new Son of Bread climbed up on the table and shouted:
“Right, gag him and...”
“At least let me say goodbye to my wife and children!” Ch’an implored. But no one heard what he said. They bound him hand and foot, gagged him, and threw him into a car. After that things went as usual—they drove him to the Chinese Passage, stopped right there in the middle of the road, opened a manhole in the asphalt, and threw him in headfirst. The back of Ch’an’s head struck against something and he lost consciousness.
When he opened his eyes, he saw that he was lying on the floor of his barn. He heard a gong strike twice outside and a woman’s voice say:
“Beijing time, nine o’clock.”
Ch’an rubbed his forehead, leapt to his feet, and staggered out onto the street, and at this very moment the Bronze Engels rode out from behind the corner. Like a fool, Ch’an panicked and ran, and the Bronze Engels rode after him with a loud clatter of hooves, past the silent houses with the lowered blinds and the locked gates. He overtook Ch’an on the village square, accused him of Ch’ungophobia, and banished him to sort magic mushrooms.
When he came back three years later, the first thing Ch’an did was to take a look around his barn. The wall on one side ran into a fence behind which there was a huge pile of garbage that had been accumulating there for as long as Ch’an could remember. There were large red ants crawling over it. Ch’an took a spade and began digging. He stuck the spade into the heap several times, and eventually it struck iron. It turned out that buried under the garbage was a Japanese tank that had been there since the war. It was standing so that the barn and the fence concealed it from view, and Ch’an could dig it out without worrying about anybody seeing it—especially as everybody was lying around drunk at home.
When Ch’an opened the hatch, his face was struck by a wave of sourness. There was a big anthill inside, and the remains of one of the tank’s crew were still in the turret. When he took a closer look, Ch’an began recognizing the shapes of things. Beside the breech of the gun there was a small bronze figure dangling on a green-tarnished chain. Beside it, under the observation slit, there was a puddle where rain water collected. Ch’an recognized Pushkin Square with its monument and fountain; an empty, crumpled American can of Spam was the McDonald’s restaurant, and a Coca Cola bottle cap was the same billboard Ch’an had stared at for so long with his fists clenched tight from the window of his limousine. It had all been dumped just recently by American spies on their way through the village.
For some reason the dead driver was not wearing a helmet but a forage cap that had slipped down over his ear—its cockade looked very much like the dome on the World Peace cinema. The remnants of the driver’s cheeks bore long sideburns, through which numerous ants were crawling, carrying grubs. When he looked closer, Ch’an could see the two boulevards that came together at Corpse Square. He recognized many streets: Great Armory Street was the front section of armor, and Little Armory Street was the side section. There was a rusting antenna protruding from the tank, and Ch’an realized this was the Ostankino television transmitter. Ostankino itself was the corpse of the gunner and radio operator. The driver had obviously managed to escape.
Ch’an took a long stick and rummaged in the anthill to find the dam, the spot in Moscow where Mantulinskaya Street was located and nobody was ever allowed to enter. He sought out Zhukovka, where the most important dachas were—this was a big burrow, where the fat ants each three tsuns long wriggled along. And the ring road was the ring on which the turret turned.
Ch’an thought for minute and recalled how he had been bound and thrown head first into a sewer shaft, and he felt a mixture of fury and resentment. He made up a solution of chlorine in two buckets and poured it into the hatch. Then he closed the hatch and threw earth and rubbish over the tank the way it had been before. And soon he had forgotten all about the entire story. What is the life of a peasant? This is something that we all know. In order to avoid being accused of bearing arms in support of Japanese militarism, Ch’an never told anyone that he had a Japanese tank beside his house. He told me this story many years later when we met by chance in a train. It seemed to me to have the ring of truth, and I decided to write it down.
May all of this serve as a lesson to those who would aspire to power. If our entire Universe is located in the teapot of Lui Dunbin, then what can be said of the country which Ch’an visited? He spent no more than a moment there, and yet it seemed as though his entire life had passed. He rose all the way from prisoner to ruler, and it turned out that he had merely crawled from one burrow into another. Miracles, no more and no less. How apt are the words spoken by comrade Li Chiao of the Huachous regional committee: “A noble name, wealth, high rank, and power capable of crushing a state are, in the eyes of a wise man, little different from an anthill.” In my opinion this is just as true as the fact that in the north China extends to the shore of the Arctic Ocean and in the west to the boundaries of Franco-Britain.
So Lu-Tan
The Tarzan Swing
I
The wide boulevard and the houses standing along both its sides were like the lower jaw of an old Bolshevik who, late in life, has arrived at democratic views. The oldest houses were from the Stalinist period—they towered up like wisdom teeth coated with the brown tarnish produced by many years of exposure to coarse shag tobacco. For all their monumental quality they seemed dead and brittle, as though the nerves in them had long ago been killed off by arsenic fillings. The sites where the buildings of former years had been destroyed now bore the crudely protruding prostheses of eight-story apartment blocks. In short, it was a gloomy spectacle. The only bright spot against this background of gloom was a business center built by the Turks, its pyramidal form and neon glitter transforming it into the likeness of some immense gold fang covered in drops of fresh blood. Up in the sky the full moon blazed brightly like a dentist’s lamp poised on its extending arm to throw all of its light into the patient’s mouth.
“Who can you believe, who can you believe?” asked Pyotr Petrovich, turning to his taciturn companion. “Myself, now, I’m a simple man, perhaps even a fool. Credulous and naïve. You know, sometimes I look in the newspaper and I just believe it.”
“The newspaper?” his company inquired in a low voice, adjusting the dark hood that covered his head.
“Yes, the newspaper,” said Pyotr Petrovich. “Any newspaper, it doesn’t matter which. I might he riding in the metr
o, and somebody’s sitting beside me and reading, so I lean over a little bit, peer into it, and already I believe it.”
“Believe it?”
“Yes. Whatever it is. Except, perhaps, for God. It’s too late for believing in God. If I suddenly start believing now it’ll be dishonest somehow. All my life I haven’t believed, and then when I get near fifty I suddenly start believing? What have I been living for, then? So instead of that I believe in Herbalife or the separation of powers.”
“What for?” asked his companion.
“What a misery!” thought Pyotr Petrovich. “He doesn’t talk, he caws. Why am I being so frank and open with him? I don’t even really know him.” They walked on in silence for a while, one behind the other, stepping lightly and trailing one hand gently against the wall.
“I’ll tell you what for,” Pyotr Petrovich said at last. “It’s like having something to hold onto in the bus. It doesn’t matter what it is as long as you don’t fall. It’s like the poet said: ‘to hurtle on into the night and obscurity, gazing with hope out of the black porthole of the window.’ There you are, probably looking at me and thinking, so you’re a romantic at heart, are you my lad, even if you don’t look like one on the outside—Well, you are, aren’t you?”
His companion turned round a corner and disappeared from view. Pyotr Petrovich felt he had been interrupted in the middle of an important phrase, and he hurried to catch up. When the hunched black back was in his sights once again, he felt relieved and thought for no particular reason that the sharp-pointed hood made his companion look like a burnt out church.
“What a fine romantic you are, my lad,” the back muttered quietly.
“I’m not a romantic,” Pyotr Petrovich objected heatedly. “In fact you could call me the exact opposite. An extremely practical man. Nothing but work. Hardly even any time to remember what I’m living for. Certainly not for this work, damn it all—no—not for that, but so that...”
A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia and Other Stories Page 10
