Monumental Propaganda (19 page)

45

“Now you see,” Ida Bauman said to her aged mother. “Everything's fine. The policeman came and put those hooligans in their place.”

She dripped forty drops of Valocordin into a glass, adjusted the pillow, put a hot-water bottle against the old woman's feet, tucked in the blanket on all sides and went to her place on the couch, and just then behind the partition wall they started roaring out a song about artillerymen, as loud as a cannonade.

Ida Samoilovna couldn't take any more. She threw her dressing gown back on, ran out and went tearing into her neighbor's flat without knocking, just as the four of them were singing in total abandonment:

“Gunners, Stalin's order has been given!
Gunners, our homeland calls to us . . .”

 

Ida Samoilovna froze in the doorway, staring at the singers with emphatic reproach.

“A hundred thousand batteries
For all our mothers' tears,
For our motherland—
Fire! Fire!”

 

“You ought to be ashamed of yourselves!” Ida Samoilovna said, but she couldn't hear her own voice. The singers took absolutely no notice of her, unless you count the fact that when they reached the refrain again, especially for Ida Samoilovna, Captain Saraev replaced the canonical words with ones more appropriate to the occasion:

“. . . A hundred thousand batteries
The Jew called on the radio—
For our motherland:
Fire! Fire!”

 

It is only possible to reconstruct a partial picture of what happened next, based entirely on the contradictory testimonies of the actual participants in the event, since there were no other witnesses. It seems that Ida Samoilovna, incensed by the behavior of the nocturnal hooligans, began shouting at them and stamping her feet. Then Captain Saraev got up and started stamping his feet at her, simply mimicking her, as he explained later, as a joke. She didn't understand his joke and spat in his face. He couldn't tolerate an insult like that, especially since he was in uniform and armed, with his holster hanging on his chair. He grabbed the revolver out of the holster and pointed it at the long-suffering Ida Bauman.

“I'll shoot you, you bitch!” he shouted, but immediately remembering his hostess, he turned to her and said: “Pardon my language.”

With a cry that cannot be conveyed in words, the victim rushed away. Saraev, obeying (as he subsequently testified) the hunting instinct that had been aroused in him, dashed after her, and the two of them together burst into the room where a crazy-looking old woman with skinny, naked legs was sitting on a bed in a linen nightshirt with her feet lowered onto the floor. Seeing a man burst into her home with a gun, the old woman collapsed onto the floor with a cry of “Cossacks!” and tried to crawl under the bed. A maneuver that she failed to complete, her heart giving out as she kneeled there on all fours with her head stuck under the bed. The neighbors who had come running at the noise were in time to see it happen. They said that, realizing what had happened, Captain Saraev sobered up completely, put his revolver away, felt the old woman's pulse and, getting up from his knees, said to no one in particular: “What kind of Cossack am I? We don't have any Cossacks here, but we do have legitimate Soviet power.” And with that he left the room.

Of course, the celebrations were spoiled. Whatever our heroes might have been like, they hadn't wanted to kill the old woman. But having a joke and giving someone a fright—now that was a different matter altogether.

The affair didn't blow up into any great scandal. Although Ida Bauman tried to get all four of them brought to trial, it was eventually explained to her that citizens Revkina, Kashlyaev and Zhukov were only guilty of a minor infringement of public order and they had been cautioned. And as for the policeman Saraev, although he had exceeded his authority, he had not fired and citizeness Rebecca Bauman had had no business trying to climb under the bed and perform such complicated movements at her age, especially in the middle of a heart attack. And anyway, many people reasoned that the old woman's time was up and she would have died anyway, one way or another. In short, Captain Saraev was given a reprimand and his next promotion to the rank of major was put back a year. Everything else carried on as normal.

PART THREE

VAIN EXPECTATIONS

46

With the accession to power of a new leadership, many rumors that were to Aglaya's liking appeared. Either Brezhnev or Kosygin had called Baldie's period of rule a shameful decade. One of these two, or perhaps it was some third person, had said that in the near future the rotten liberalism of the last decade would be done away with. And all the signs were that these words had been spoken in earnest. At Party meetings, plenums and conferences, Stalin's name was mentioned, at first timidly and then more confidently, with positive connotations. These allusions were invariably greeted with applause. In the local cinema, Victory, the old familiar image began to appear, at first in old documentaries and then in feature movies. At first there was just his portrait, glimpsed for a second somewhere in some office. That same one with the pipe that Aglaya had above her desk. Then they showed the man himself at the meeting of the Big Three in Teheran. Then for the anniversary of the Battle of Moscow, he was where he ought to be, on the platform on top of Lenin's Mausoleum. Divanich regularly informed Aglaya of Stalin's latest appearance in the cinema, and she immediately went hurrying off to the matinee show, eager to catch at least a fleeting glimpse of the face she loved. And what's more, she noticed she was not the only one waiting eagerly. Every time the face appeared on the screen, there was timid applause, sometimes quite solitary, from somewhere in the back rows. Aglaya applauded too, feeling that she was making a heroic gesture, although hers was a heroism thoroughly approved by the newly installed authorities. But anyway, she clapped her hands and turned her head this way and that as she tried to guess where he or they—her invisible fellow thinkers—might be. Only she couldn't make them out in the darkness, and people's faces as they left the cinema afterward were inscrutable. As though they hadn't been applauding themselves and hadn't heard anyone else doing so. Then one day she noticed a man wearing a gray rabbit-fur cap. He was sitting three rows away from Aglaya, directly behind her. Hearing the sound of applause, she quickly swung around and caught him in the act: he hadn't lowered his hands yet. When the movie was over, she ran after him. He turned a corner, she followed and, finding she couldn't keep up, called out: “Young man!”

He turned around in mute inquiry, unsure whether it was him that was meant.

“Wait,” she said, “wait.” She ran up, puffing and panting, and started gasping out the words: “Thank you so much. Thank you, thank you.”

“Thank you for what?” he asked, peering sideways at her suspiciously.

“For your courage,” she replied hastily. “For your loyalty. I saw you clapping.”

“Who was clapping? Where?” he asked abruptly, nervously.

“You were clapping in the cinema, I saw you,” said Aglaya, letting him know she was on his side and shared his feelings completely.

But he didn't understand; he suspected she was an agent provocateur, and he began twitching as he yelled at her: “What did you see? What?”

“Young man!” she exclaimed, perplexed. “I mean no harm . . . I was just saying that I saw—”

“You didn't see anything! You fool! You old fool!” the young man shouted and took to his heels.

Aglaya watched him as he ran off, uncertain which insult was the more offensive—“fool” or “old fool.”

He, by the way, was Mitya Lyamikhov, an individual well known to the staff of our capital city's Serbsky Institute of Forensic Psychiatry. When Stalin was alive, Mitya had been subjected to treatment for criticizing Stalin, to whom he had written in person that he was a tyrant, a bandit and an enemy of the people. If he had written in gentler terms, he would have found himself in a camp or facing a firing squad. But what he wrote was so unbridled and extreme, so clearly lacking in the slightest concern for the preservation of his own life, that all the doctors genuinely concurred in declaring him insane. His insanity manifested itself, among other things, in always being opposed to all decisions and actions taken by the current regime. If for some historical reasons the authorities began to agree with his opinion, he immediately changed that opinion to its opposite. When Stalin was in charge, he was against Stalin; under Khrushchev he was for Stalin; now he remained for Stalin by inertia, but if Stalin had been fully rehabilitated, he would have been against him again.

47

Aglaya also greeted with hope other signs of change following the 1964 Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU. Khrushchev was condemned. The national economic councils were disbanded. The division of regional committees into rural and urban was abolished. The expression “personality cult” disappeared from the pages of the press. Hardly anybody anywhere mentioned cases of illegal repression, and incidental references were qualified by claims that they had not been so very numerous and the matter should not be exaggerated. They stopped calling maize “the queen of the fields.” And they stopped planting it. Instead, they put writers in jail. Only two of them at first, it was true. But there was hope that they would put away the rest of them as well. They shut one mathematician away in a madhouse. Then they put a historian in there with him. The Czechoslovakian revisionists declared that their goal was socialism with a human face. Soviet tanks arrived and put the revisionists right. Aglaya was delighted by all these events, although it still seemed to her that the leadership of the CPSU was behaving indecisively. They showed Stalin in films, but only occasionally and tentatively. Her own situation remained the same as it had been. No one was in any hurry to apologize to her and reinstate her in the Party.

48

But while Aglaya was dissatisfied with the slow pace of events, her neighbor Mark Semyonovich Shubkin was dissatisfied by the direction in which they were moving. And as a Leninist communist, he couldn't simply overlook it. He wrote the Central Committee a letter demanding freedom for the writers, the withdrawal of troops from Czechoslovakia, a return to the Leninist norms of Party life, the erection of a monument to the victims of Stalinism, the abolition of censorship and the printing of his novel
The
Timber Camp
in one of the leading Soviet literary journals. The reply to this latest letter of his came very quickly, and from its tone Mark Semyonovich realized that times had changed more radically than it had seemed at first. He was informed that his suggestions were overtly provocative in nature, that they reeked of political immaturity and perhaps, even, of something worse. He was notified that if he did not desist from disseminating his absurd fabrications, he would be obliged to quit the ranks of the CPSU and further consequences could not be ruled out. With his rich experience of life and highly developed artistic imagination, Shubkin immediately pictured further consequences in the form of the dense forest of the Khanty-Mansiisk taiga with chest-high snowdrifts, frost at fifty degrees Celsius below zero, the whining of the Friendship chain saw and a frostbitten nose. For a short while he stopped writing letters and lay low, and he might well have gone on lying low for a long time if one day when he switched on the radio he had not learned from a program on the BBC that his novel
The Timber Camp
had been published in Munich by the famous émigré publishing house Globus. How this had come about, Shubkin had no idea. Evidently, the manuscript had been passed from hand to hand until eventually it had passed into hands that had carried it off to the West.

In this way the local district acquired its own dissident. Which initially delighted the local organs greatly. In the absence of dissidents the central leadership could have got the idea that there was no need for any organs in this area. But if there were dissidents, then they had work to do. They could enlarge their permanent staff and demand a larger budget, the volume of work would increase and so would their chances of distinguishing themselves in their heroic field of professional activity without the slightest risk to their own lives because a dissident is dangerous ideologically but not physically; he is unarmed and inept; he doesn't know how to hide and avoid being shadowed. And so if there had been no Shubkin in Dolgov, it would have been worth inventing him. They knew how to invent as well, but in this case there was no need. They had the real Shubkin and they had the entire circle of his pupils and admirers, who also had to be shadowed, and this all required personnel, salaries, cars and so on.

And so once Shubkin popped up and was identified, the organs set to work and sent him a subpoena. Just in case, Shubkin collected together the most essential items for prison life in a sack: warm socks and long drawers, a mug, a spoon and a volume of poetry by Edward Bagritsky.

And he took this sack with him to that place. Antonina, naturally, went to see him off. On the threshold they said goodbye in earnest.

Shubkin had come prepared for long, exhausting hours of interrogation with shouting, abuse and a blinding light in his eyes, but was delighted to discover that reality failed to live up to his expectations. The investigating officer, Korotyshkin, was a man of medium height, middle age and nondescript appearance, with rounded shoulders, soft, pudgy hands and soft, pudgy cheeks. His hair was lightish, his eyebrows sun-bleached, his eyes colorless and his teeth uneven—but without fangs. He did not resemble a vampire; he was not even much like an old-time Cheka agent with eyes inflamed by devotion to the workers' and peasants' cause, hatred of enemies of the revolution, vodka, tobacco smoke and lack of sleep. Dressed in a cheap suit the color of dust, he met Shubkin at the entrance and was greatly surprised by the sack: “Well really, what are you thinking of? What's that for? Do you really have such a low opinion of the organs? Do you really believe all we ever do is stick people straight in jail? Is this lady with you? Leave that with her. If necessary—of course things could turn out that way—she can bring it later.”

Shubkin left the sack with Antonina, and that was a good sign. Another hopeful indication that things would turn out well was that the pass they wrote out for Shubkin was temporary. After that Korotyshkin led Mark Semyonovich down a long corridor, along the way discussing the paradoxes of the current weather conditions and the possible influence on them of human advances in the areas of chemistry and atomic energy. Eventually, Shubkin found himself in a spacious office where the desk on the right, beneath a portrait of Dzerzhinsky, was occupied by a man with the name of Mukhodav, a sullen, skinny, peevish individual who looked very much indeed like a Cheka agent from the twenties. The desk on the left, under a second portrait of Dzerzhinsky, belonged to Korotyshkin. He offered his visitor a chair, an ordinary one with a thin leatherette-covered cushion and a leatherette-covered back, seated himself at the desk and linked the fingers of both hands together, leaving his thumbs free so that he could twirl them as though he was pondering deep thoughts.

“Well then,” he said, twirling his thumbs and smiling at Mark Semyonovich, “before we start our little talk, please tell me your forename, patronymic and surname.”

“Is this an interrogation?” Shubkin asked.

“Why, of course not!” Korotyshkin protested. “It's just a conversation.”

“So far!” Mukhodav muttered from his corner, but Korotyshkin appeared not to hear this muttering and explained in a perfectly friendly manner that the requirement to state one's forename, patronymic and surname was purely a formality, and one that was probably superfluous and could be ignored, but essentially what he would like to talk about was the following: “I read your little story
The Timber Plantation.
”

“It's not a story, it's a novel,” Shubkin corrected him.

“A libelous anti-Soviet lampoon,” said the voice in the other corner.

Mukhodav was apparently not taking any direct part in the conversation. He sat there at his desk, studying some papers or other—read something, wrote something, underlined something—and his remarks were not directed at anyone, as if he were talking to himself.

“I don't know about anyone else,” Korotyshkin continued, casting a glance at his colleague, “but there was a lot in it I liked. Of course, I'm not a specialist, my professional area's architecture. Apartment houses and public buildings, palaces of culture—so . . . But they called me in to the regional Party committee . . . You're a communist too, aren't you?”

“Communists like that ought to be shot,” Mukhodav said loudly to himself.

“They called me in to the regional Party committee, and they said to me, ‘It has to be done, Sergei Sergeyich,' the international situation requires it. Well, if the Party asks, who am I to refuse? There's no way I could, Mark Semyonovich, because first and foremost I'm a soldier of the Party and a patriot. So here I am sitting here. Although my heart”—he sighed wearily and pensively—“is yearning for my drawing board. But that's just me waxing lyrical . . . Well then, you could say I actually liked this
Forest Steppe
of yours. Parts of it. The style's very good, the descriptions of nature work well, especially the Khanty-Mansiisk taiga . . . You've been there, haven't you?”

“Yes, I have,” said Shubkin with a nod.

“Another trip could be arranged,” said Mukhodav without lifting his head from his papers.

“But generally speaking,” Korotyshkin continued, “the impression created by the scenes you describe is rather oppressive. It seems to me that you—how can I put it?—you pile the colors on a bit too thick . . .”

“I write about phenomena which the Party condemned at its Twentieth Congress,” Shubkin reminded him.

“That's just the point, that the Party has condemned them. It has condemned them, and that's enough. Enough,” Korotyshkin repeated, looking imploringly at Shubkin. “Why should we keep on remembering the bad things all the time, reopening old wounds, wallowing in the past? We have to move forward, Mark Semyonovich. Look at the events taking place all around you. The construction of the Bratsk Hydroelectric Station goes on, a new blast furnace has been blown in in Sterlitamak, our cows produce up to three hundred liters of milk a year, our Party is waging a titanic struggle for peace all around the world, and you just harp on about your forest belt. It would be all right if you'd written your
Logging
Zone
just for yourself or your friends, but you sent it to the West.”

“I didn't send it,” Shubkin said quickly.

“It just flew across on its own,” Mukhodav mused.

“I don't know whether it got there on its own or not,” said Shubkin, turning toward him, “but as you know, I don't travel abroad. Or perhaps I did go and you didn't notice?” he asked sarcastically.

Mukhodav went on leafing through his papers, paying no attention to Shubkin, but Korotyshkin agreed with him: “Well of course, of course you didn't go. No one's saying you did. But to forward a manuscript, you don't have to travel yourself. Foreign diplomats and correspondents travel back and forth, don't they? And not always with the purest of motives.”

“CIA agents, every one of them,” Mukhodav remarked.

“Exactly,” Korotyshkin agreed. “We have information that the CIA has stepped up its activity, and it's gambling on the politically immature section of our intelligentsia. Trying to find the weak link in our chain. It's no accident that your satirical article was published by an anti-Soviet publishing house where the employees are all White Guards, Vlasovites and former
Polizei,
who used to hang Soviet citizens and send people of Jewish nationality to the gas chambers. And of course, it's no accident that they happened to seize on your so-called work. They must have liked it.”

“If they liked my work, that means it's good,” Shubkin said smugly.

“It's anti-Soviet,” Mukhodav pronounced.

“If only it was simply anti-Soviet,” Korotyshkin sighed. “Unfortunately, Mark Semyonovich, the book is also antipopular, directed against the people. But no,” he said, although clearly in doubt, “we won't take any punitive measures against you at this stage . . .”

“We ought to though,” sighed Mukhodav.

“This isn't 'thirty-seven and we're not those people. We're not at all those people, Mark Semyonovich,” he assured Shubkin earnestly. “The most important thing for us is to save the man, to protect him from acting incorrectly. There's an uncompromising ideological war going on nowadays. Only one side can win. And in these conditions . . . It would be a good thing if you sent a statement to our press, and we'll help you do it, yes, we'll help . . .” He rolled his eyes up and began muttering a strange sequence of words as if he'd fallen into a trance: “We prompt you, you help us, you write, we print, a public declaration of your attitude . . .”

“Or things will go badly,” said Mukhodav, as if to himself.

“Is that a threat?” asked Shubkin.

“By no means,” Korotyshkin hastened to assure him. “No threats. But you do understand that if you don't draw the correct conclusions, then we . . . well, what can we do? Mark Semyonovich, you understand, don't you, that we're humanists, but . . .”

“If the enemy doesn't surrender, he's exterminated,” Mukhodav concluded.

“And I have one important request. Very, very important. Not a word to anyone about our conversation.”

And that was all. Korotyshkin didn't even take a written agreement of confidentiality from Shubkin.

Some people in Dolgov, such as Aglaya or even Divanich, couldn't understand the humane approach taken by the organs. This Shubkin had written an appalling anti-Soviet work and published it in an émigré journal—how could he not be put in jail for that? But there were many things they didn't understand. For instance, that Shubkin, as we have already noted, was the only one of his kind in the district. If there'd been ten of them, one or two could have been put away. But if you put away the only one, then who would you wage a struggle against?