Somewhere East of Life

by Brian W Aldiss

  “I respect—I really respect a strong man. Help yourself to more vodka. Please forget the expense.”

  As he began to weep, there came a banging at the door. “The knocking at the door in Macbeth,” he said, and started to shout for help.

  It was Murray-Roberts, of dishevelled appearance. Burnell let him in, passing over the vodka bottle without speaking.

  Announcing that the students had gone, Murray-Roberts, whose hair and clothes were more than usually distraught, took a deep swig from the bottle. Surveying the scene, he said, “Christ Almighty, Burnell, man, you’ve beaten up the Professor of Psychology!”

  “Is that what the little fucker is? But yes—what else could he be? I’ll give him another punch if he provokes me again. As for you. You got me into this madhouse, you Scots git!”

  “Stay your Sassenach hand.”

  “I think you should give me another punch,” said Nastiklof, between sobs. “Not only would it serve me right, it would probably made you feel less insecure.”

  Passed the bottle, Burnell also took an immense swig and suddenly began to snivel. “He’s probably right. I probably do feel insecure. You’d feel insecure if you’d lost ten years’ worth of memory.” He pulled his tie off. “It’s hotter than a witch’s twat in this office.”

  He sniffed, swigged more vodka, blew his nose on his tie.

  “Och, man, for fuck’s sake… I bloody wish I couldna’ remember a thing of my mankey past.” Under the benign influence of the Stolichnaya, a Glasgow accent was emerging.

  “We none of us wish to remember,” Nastiklof said. “Oblivion! Pass the bottle! In particular, I’d like to forget my nationality, which has caused me nothing but trouble since the days of that scum Gorbachev. I do forget it, but in this racist hole people keep reminding me I’m just an old Red.

  “I know you hate and despise me, but underneath my nationality is quite a decent person. Hardly a man—I accept that, yes—a wimp, perhaps, but nevertheless a decent God-fearing man. Of course I fear God.” He crossed himself. “Of course I fear God. The stinker has it in for me.” He shed more tears.

  Burnell put his arm around the Russian’s shoulders. “Shh, don’t cry, Ivan. There’s no God. It’s just that religious archetype I was trying to tell you about. It’s all a hangover from old times. The Spanish mountains. Sierra de la Demanda—they were nuts about religion even then. There’s no God. Honest. No God—only us. Take my word.”

  “Who then am I to blame? Who’s to take the blame?” Through his tears he said, “Roy, there’s another bottle in that cupboard.”

  “What I can’t understand—what I can’t understand is why someone like you should want to come to scruffy places like Turkmenistan.”

  “Ivan, you see it’s like this. It’s like this, I just happen to like scruffy places…”

  It was such a funny answer they both roared with laughter. The current scruffy place Burnell and Nastiklof were in was a small upstairs room in a private Russian bar-cafe. Robert Murray-Roberts was also present. He had collected his bony wife, Madge, who was urging sobriety on him and pointedly ignoring Burnell. Burnell and the Professor of Psychology were unrestrained.

  A balalaika group played while they ate. A young woman occasionally sang a song in a minor key. A couple danced smoochily in one corner, locked close together, gazing into each other’s eyes. Ivan Nastiklof had been as good as his word, and was standing them a meal after their escape from the university. The four of them sat at one end of a table covered with a floral tablecloth.

  It was just past five o’clock and Burnell was beginning to forgive the Russian for being a worm.

  After a raft of zakuski, there followed a meat-peppers-and-potato grill, plus salad, something called porosyonok, which turned out to be sucking pig, with herb sausages, followed by ruinous chocolate cakes. Burnell and Nastiklof washed this lot down with beer, while Murray-Roberts and wife stuck to mineral water.

  “You like scruffy places, yet you live decently in Europe, a civilized place to which Ashkhabad is like a minnow to a… a wash basin. You must know so much, Roy—in your head, know much.” Nastiklof tapped his own head to confirm the point, perhaps checking for a hollow ring.

  “Now that’s where you’re wrong, Ivan, that’s exactly where you’re wrong. I’m ignorant, an ignorant man. What do I know about—well, Goethe, super-conductors, Scandinavia, Singapore, where Whirling Dervishes live, economics, Sibelius, Mrs. Sibelius, nuclear physics, lantern fish, how you cook ratatouille, Fibonacci sequences—no, I do know a bit about them—croquet, Walter Crane, change-ringing, Rigel, Goethe… Hang on, I said Goethe. The Black Sea. I don’t even know how deep the Black Sea is at its deepest point. And I bet you don’t either.”

  Nastiklof laughed. “I want to tell you something. Come here.” He beckoned, though they had drawn their chairs close and were almost leaning on each other. “I can tell you this. I know how shallow it is at its shallowest point. One centimeter. One centimeter!” They almost collapsed with laughter. Still chuckling, Nastiklof said, “You perhaps knew these things—I bet you knew these things—before your memory was stolen. Before that, I bet you knew all these things.”

  “How do you know my memory was stolen?”

  “Because I’m psychic. I can read the mind. Read any mind… You’re famous, that’s how. I’ve had to deal with a man who sold a part of his memory, yes, went to Istanbul, went to Istanbul and sold his particularly emotic remory—” he struck the table so that all the glasses jingled “—erotic memory of his first love.”

  Burnell tried to interrupt, but Nastiklof forged on gesturing dramatically if randomly.

  “He was paid a lot of money from the EMV studio. Came back here, built himself a big house, couldn’t bear not to have that precious memory, memory of his first love. Couldn’t bear to be parted from it. Mentally ill, became mentally ill, like a shadow. Shadow on the wall. Needed treatment, in the end, had to buy a copy back, have it reinserted. Then it wasn’t how he remembered the memory had been. Deep depression followed as night follows summer. Had to be locked up in a mental institution.

  “Of course, we Russians, we have a melancholy streak. You know that, Roy? A melancholy streak. It’s heretidy. Heretidy. Heredity. In the genes, you know? Slav melancholy. All that space, the long winters, the long spaces, the balalaikas, the peasants, the Cyrillic alphabet. That contributes to melancholy, you know, the Cyrillic alphabet. Those shapes, implanted as children… I’m Ukrainian really, but it’s easier…”

  He started to draw some characters on the cloth.

  “For heaven’s sake, do behave,” Madge Murray-Roberts said. “Rob, make them behave. I’m bored out of my gourd with this company. Let’s go.”

  “Why should I behave, lady?” Nastiklof asked, shooting her a look of hatred. “I it is who pays to be here, behaving as customary, and arch-friend of the poropitor. Owner.”

  Leaning across the table, Nastiklof beckoned Murray-Roberts to bring his ear closer, and then closer still. When due proximity had been, achieved, the Russian fixed his cold eye on Madge Murray-Roberts and described how unpopular people used to be given tarantula schnapps. It was a drink in old Turkestan, to be given to those you wanted to get rid of. This remark was accompanied by a knowing wink.

  The desert just outside Ashkhabad, he said, was full of deadly scorpions and tarantulas. You caught a number of tarantulas and put them in a pot. After them, you threw in slices of dried apple and apricot. The horrible brutes flung themselves in a fury at the fruit, biting it and injecting their poison into it. This fruit was then mixed with newly fermented wine, one small glass of which was enough to drive a man insane: he became first paralysed then raving mad, and died crying for more of the liquor.

  While delivering details of this recipe, Nastiklof kept his gaze fixed wickedly on Mrs. Murray-Roberts.

  “What if you use scorpions instead of tarantulas?” asked Murray-Roberts. “What like is scorpion schnapps?”

  “Phuh, not even a Sc
otsman would drink that much,” Nastiklof said.

  Burnell’s attention had been caught by a slender woman who was singing to the balalaika accompaniment. She wore a long green gown which emphasized her sinuous figure. Her gestures were minimal and a lock of dark hair had fallen over her brow. The song, whatever it was, signified something tragic. He saw it in her lovely eyes, the delicious downcast look she gave, so languorous, so seductive.

  The song ended. Murray-Roberts clapped, as did some of the other diners. Burnell rose. Moving smartly forward, he caught the singer’s hand before she disappeared behind the curtain. The band struck up “Days of Wine and Roses” with tremolo effect. He put his arm about the singer and danced with her. She made no protest, possibly being accustomed to drunken male behavior, which might account for her languor.

  He closed his eyes, inhaling her perfume, all perspiration and Persian violets. “God, you’re so lovely, you sing so beautifully. That song went to my heart. I know I’m a bit pissed but I’m really smitten. Come with me to my hotel, stay with me all night. Please, I need you, I want you. We’re surely made for each other, you foreign beauty.”

  She didn’t understand. Perhaps she was Turkish. They drifted in the tiny space. He savored the warmth of her body against his. The balalaikas twangled like a bamboo grove in autumn breezes, with an exoticism that called to mind a thousand vague desirable sensations—all of them associated with the female anatomy moving within the circle of his arms.

  “I want to lead a better life, darling. With you.”

  The music stopped. The leader of the balalaika group was a heavy man, gaudily decked out in long moustache and short waistcoat. He came forward with an unpleasant look on his face, intent to part or maim them.

  He said in German to Burnell, “Get back to your seat, you drunken scheiss, or else sing a song. Or else I throw you downstairs.”

  “ ’S a good idea. I don’t mean the stair. The song.” Burnell raised a lordly hand. “I sing for her. Stand back, man. Preferably return to your banjo.” He raised a hand to attract Nastiklof s attention at the other end of the room. “Ivan, Ivan, I’m going to sing a song.”

  He had a good tenor voice. He sang “I Now Where I’m Going,” dripping with Russian melancholy, to which drink as well as the Cyrillic alphabet contributed. Softly, a balalaika joined in, picking like a small bird at the tune. The whole group entered the melody, soft as snowfall. Burnell was carried away with pleasure. The audience clapped. Someone threw a congratulatory bread roll. He sang the song again. “…shoes of bright green leather…” The singer in the green dress, who was kind, kissed his cheek.

  Smiling modestly, he returned to his seat at the table, amid a scattering of applause.

  “That was disgusting,” said Madge. “Rob, skates on. Let’s go.” Burnell gravely presented her with the congratulatory bread roll, which he had caught.

  Nastiklof threw his arms about Burnell and hugged him. “Bravo, my friend. You show much true spirit. Let me tell you this, I’ll tell you this. What I believe in my professional percacity. Percacity. Pocacional professity. See, I don’t agree with Sigmund Freud, don’t agree with him at all. Or Adler. Neither Freud nor Adler. They’re responsible for those doctrines which unlashed—unleashed a wave of hedonism right across the twenieth century, right across it. Mistake. Cause of much misery. Hedonism. Worse than Stalinism. Other side of the same coin, see? These empty doctrines made the century a living hell for everyone.

  “See, the quest for pleasure, the quest for power—that’s what they believed in. As vatimotion. As motimotion, motivation—ha, I have that word by its tool! Stalin and Freud were wrong about basic human motivation. All wrong. You know what the real need is for human life?”

  “A pee. I need a pee,” said Burnell.

  “No, no, no. I mean something spiritual. The human need is really deeply to find a meaning to life. A true meaning. Only then can a life be said to be fulfilling, to find a true meaning. You see what I mean? The light at the end of the tunnel. It’s awful to die and not to know, like a—like a calf in a pigsty…”

  Burnell agreed, sipping a little mineral water. One had to go in search of significance. “When I lost my memory—”

  “There you are,” said Nastiklof excitedly. Sweat poured from his striped side-whiskers. He thumped his little fists on the table. “Your memory. What stole it? New technology. The culminating technology of the twenieth century. Holy Jesus! First nuclear power bombs threatened life in general. Then EMV process—the refinement of power—homes right in, destroys the human mind, the very center of…”

  “Look, forget the twenieth century, Ivan. It’s the twenty-first that is killing me.”

  Swaying, Nastiklof rose and loomed over Burnell, as far as that was possible. Flattening his whiskers against his face with his left hand in an attempt at seriousness, he said, “I’ll give you some advice, my son. Real good advice. You’re a celebrity, aren’t you? A celebrity of the first rank. You murdered a head of state—Laser What’s-his-name. Tell me if I’m wrong, but you murdered him. The world wants news, the world wants drama. It wants to look deep into the human psyche, it wants the drama of the… Anyhow, you have a saleable coddomity. You could sell that memory of that Georgian drama to a good EMV studio. It would be bought all around the world. You could make a fortune of money.”

  “Forget it! That’s a horrible suggestion. Makes me sick.” In fact, Burnell was beginning to feel so inclined.

  “Make a fortune, seize the opportunity when it’s there. Then you can afford to buy a really good ten-year memory to fill in your own vacuum. See? A rich wealthy memory of some happy guy living I don’t know where. Not Turkmenistan, certainly. Not Russia. Bavaria, maybe. Sarawak, let’s say. Have ten years of bliss inserted, be happy every after. I’d do it! I’d do it—my life’s been nothing but a long misfortune… Wouldn’t you?”

  He addressed this question to Murray-Roberts across the table but, before the latter could respond, Nastiklof grabbed himself by his genitals. “Holy Jesus, I need a pee too.”

  As he fled from the table, Murray-Roberts leaned over to Burnell. “Let’s go. Madge is bored. So am I.”

  “I must see that lovely singer again,” Burnell said, standing up. “She fancies me. You know that, Rob Roy? Fancies me. And I fancy her.”

  Murray-Roberts jumped up and grabbed him. “She just happens to be married to the sodding bandleader, laddie, so forget it, versteh? You’ve had enough booze to last a week. We’re getting out of here.”

  “But my friend Ivan. Telling about the quest for the meaning of an indiffiz—an individual life.”

  “Don’t be silly, Mr. Burnell,” said Madge. “He’s a perfectly horrid little man as you’d realize if you were sober. Even other Russians avoid him.” She evidently spoke through a mouthful of ice cubes.

  “That’s a racist remark if ever I heard one.”

  “Then you never heard one. So let’s go, or we leave you to make your own way home and get yourself robbed in some smelly alley.”

  Subdued, Burnell followed them across the room and downstairs, singing as he went, “…the de’il knows who I’ll marry…”

  At the bottom of the stairs, he swerved adroitly away from the Murray-Roberts and burst into the men’s room.

  Ivan Nastiklof was there, hanging over a basin, vying with its pallor, muttering to himself and disliking what he heard.

  “Can’t stop. Got to pee,” said Burnell, pushing past him. And proceeded to do so.

  Nastiklof had gone from his manic into his depressive phase. The change had altered him physically, so that he seemed to have shrunk inside his clothes. He pointed with trembling finger to a cupboard which stood beside the solitary wash basin, almost blocking the entrance. “There’s the devil himself, Roy. See him squatting up there? He’s after me. He’s coming to get me.”

  Burnell was groaning with pleasure and relief. “Nonsense.” He did not even bother to look around.

  “You must be able to see hi
m. Holy Jesus, stop pissing for a minute, will you? He’s up there—fat little bloater in a funny yellow check jacket and tight trousers.”

  “Nonsense. You’re drunk. Besides, the devil doesn’t pee. What would he be doing in here?”

  “It’s no joke, you insensitive English bun. He’s not after a piss, he’s after me. Just my rotten Russian luck. To think I’m going to die in a lousy Turkmeni urinal… Oh God, pray for me, Roy. You’re a civilized man, the devil may listen to you.”

  “Ahhhhh… Sorry, I’m not the praying sort. You won’t die. Forget it. Go upstairs and have another drink. Give my love to the singer.”

  “What a miserable life I’ve had. I should have left here when most of the other Russians left. Look, look, it’s true, he has got goat feet… Why is life dominates by death?”

  “That’s nonsense, Ivan. Cheer up. The fact is, life dominates death, at least while we’re alive—which after all is all we know. Life wins hands down all the time. I speak as one with my cock in my hand. Death’s nothing. It plays no part in our actual lives. The rest’s imagination. There must be a Russian proverb about that.”

  “Oh, there is, there is. ‘When things are Blackest, try arsenic.’ ”

  Burnell was finished, and tired of this conversation now that he was feeling more sober. He dashed cold water over his face to improve matters further. His intention was to be a little sympathetic toward the sad Professor of Psychology but, catching a glimpse of that bizarrely haggard face, its whiskers drooping, he said as he left the room, “Shit, you’re right, Ivan, he is up on the cupboard. Nice jacket, though.”

  The slamming door cut off Nastiklof s scream.

  17

  Glimpse of Airing Cupboard

  The air was sweet with a scent of tear gas. A helicopter clattered just above roof level, trawling the streets with its searchlight. General Makhkamov had let the sun go down on his wrath.

  Murray-Roberts drove to his modest bungalow in the foreign quarter of Ashkhabad and waited while his wife got out.