Monumental Propaganda (28 page)

“I've done everything,” said Andrei Eremeevich Revkin.

“Did you position the charges the way I told you?” In her right hand Aglaya was holding a half-eaten honey cake; with her left she picked up the end of the cable that was not yet connected to the battery.

“I set them all,” Revkin confirmed.

The final motorcycle drove in through the gates and stopped with the others. The three members of its crew went up to the men who had arrived earlier and all six of them, their faces black with dust and soot, set off toward the checkpoint. The tall one, walking in front, took off his goggles and his peaked cap and turned out to be a bright straw blond. Aglaya spotted some little cubes and the letters
SS
drawn in two sinister zigzag lines on the tabs of his collar.

“And did you connect up the wires?” Aglaya continued with her questions, surprised herself that she felt no fear as the conclusion approached.

“Yes, I've done everything the way you said.”

Clattering their heels, the Germans walked up onto the porch, and the tall blond man took hold of the door handle.

“The motherland will not forget you!” Aglaya shouted down the phone, and touched the end of the cable to the negative terminal.

At first everything was like a silent movie. The roof of the power station shattered and flew up into the air in pieces. On the crest of the column of flame that shot upward, above all the other objects, an empty metal barrel performed joyful somersaults as it soared up into the sky. The barrel had still not reached its highest point when an incredible force bent the trees over, tore one of the iron gates off its hinges and blasted the Germans off the porch that they had climbed onto.

Aglaya dived under the table just in time to protect herself from the shards of glass that flew into the room as if they'd been shot from a canon.

PART FOUR

SOMNAMBULISM

66

The following is an excerpt from the
Concise Medical Encyclopedia:

“
Somnambulism
(from the Latin
somnus
—“sleep” and
ambulare
— to walk); also pop.
lunacy
or
sleepwalking:
a distinctive form of disturbance of sleep, during which those who suffer from this disorder involuntarily perform a number of sequential, frequently common, everyday actions without completely waking; they rearrange items that come to hand, move objects from place to place, clean and tidy a room, get dressed, wander about, etc. When they wake up, they have no memory of the actions they have carried out. This disorder arises in connection with a number of illnesses—psychopathy, epilepsy, trauma of the brain and severe nervous shock. Stories about the exceptional feats performed by lunatics (walking along the cornices of tall buildings and so forth) are apocryphal.

Somnambulism, or something like it. That was the condition in which Aglaya Stepanovna Revkina lived for about twenty years. After the sanatorium something snapped inside her, and she stopped taking any interest in events, people, herself or her lodger. She stopped running and started drinking. She never fully went to sleep and never fully woke up; she performed mechanical actions. She got up, smoked, washed (not always), drank tea, cleaned and tidied the room (rarely), went to the shop, bought a quarter-liter bottle and a bite to eat, came back, drank (not a lot) and ate (a bit). She completely stopped taking care of her lodger and carried on without paying any attention to him, as though he was an old man she had lived a lifetime with and there was nothing left to talk about, it had all been said many times over. She abandoned all hope of dancing on her street. She stopped studying
The Foundations of Leninism
and didn't read any other books. She switched the television on every now and again, but every time only made her even more convinced that there was nothing interesting to watch: nothing but Party congresses, ice-hockey matches, figure skating, parades on the Seventh of November and First of May and Brezhnev's birthday.

Soviet life was not distinguished by any great variety. Anybody who traveled around the country saw the same thing at all the stops along the railroad track: the words GLORY TO THE CPSU laid out in red stones. Or it might be PEACE TO THE WORLD. In the cities the main buildings were adorned with portraits of members of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU and banners all bearing the same words: THE PEOPLE AND THE PARTY ARE ONE. In absolutely every movie theater in the country, Lenin's words were written in white on a red banner hung above the screen: OF ALL THE ARTS FOR US CINEMA IS THE MOST IMPORTANT. And every post office in the Soviet Union was adorned with another quotation from Vladimir Ilich: SOCIALISM WITHOUT THE POST AND THE TELEGRAPH IS A TOTALLY EMPTY PHRASE, while not a single power station or electricity substation was lacking an aphorism from the same author: COMMUNISM IS SOVIET POWER PLUS THE ELECTRIFICATION OF THE WHOLE COUNTRY.

The life lived by Soviet people was boring in any case, but in those years it stood completely still. That was the way it was for many people, but for Aglaya it was particularly bad. She remembered the things that passed in front of her eyes in isolated patches, without any connection or chronology. A short summer, a long fall, a severe winter, and in winter all sorts of ailments due to lack of vitamins, old age and alcoholism.

In the department store an old woman was crushed to death in the queue for washing powder. Either before or after that there was a solar eclipse. Once a letter came from Marat in London. But when and what it was about she couldn't remember. There were two memories connected with Shubkin. Shubkin got baptized and Shubkin went to Israel. A description of the period from the early seventies till almost the mid-nineties based only on what Aglaya noticed and remembered would have fitted into a single page with plenty of space to spare. But we have the testimony of other people who were there during that period not far away from Aglaya, and the narrator himself also witnessed a thing or two.

67

Shubkin was christened at home by Aglaya's former neighbor, Father Yegor's son, himself a priest by the name of Father Dionisii, who had been known in his childhood as Deniska. Later, people couldn't get used to any other name, and they started calling him Father Deniska, and then Father Rediska, or Radish, an alias that was reinforced by the color, acquired over time, of the priest's nose. Father Radish was also regarded as a dissident in Dolgov after he committed an act of petty hooliganism. The local Party authorities closed down the city's only church, SS. Kozma and Damian, and Radish protested their action in an indecent fashion, namely: while under the baleful influence of alcohol and wearing his cassock, in broad daylight he urinated from the bell tower onto the Party's representative for religious affairs, Comrade Shikodanov, for which the local authorities jailed him for ten days and the clerical authorities defrocked him. The elders of the church accused him of paying scant attention to the official canons and arranging the liturgy, the order of service and his sermons to suit his own ideas, introducing far too much original material in the process.

Refusing to acknowledge the legality of his defrocking, the priest continued to provide his flock with unofficial spiritual nourishment, transgressing all the canons and working either in his own home or on call: he christened people, married them, gave them communion and buried them, and he blessed water, Easter cakes, property and real estate.

I happened by chance to be present at Shubkin's christening. It must have been some time in the mid-seventies. There was some book or other I had to return—I think it was Djilas—he'd given it to me to read, as always, for a single night. That morning I stuffed the book inside my jacket and set out for Shubkin's place. To tell the truth, I was feeling a little cowardly. I knew Shubkin's house was kept under close and not even very secret observation, and note was made of every person who went in and came out. You could even be stopped. What if they stopped me and found the book? What would I say then? That I just happened to find it somewhere on the street? That someone had planted it on me? Probably, I'd say I was just on my way to bring it in to you, to the KGB. In short, I was afraid, but I went anyway. I climbed up to the second floor and gave the special knock:
tap-tap
and then
tap-tap-tap
and then
tap
once again. Antonina opened the door wearing a bright flowery pinafore and holding a large mug in her left hand. When she saw me, she put a finger to her lips and whispered: “Mark Semyonovich is getting baptized.”

“Then I'll come some other time,” I said.

“My dear fellow, what are you whispering about out there?” I heard Shubkin's cheerful voice say. “Come here! Don't be afraid.”

I went into the room.

At this point we really can't manage without at least a brief description of Shubkin's abode. During his period in residence the room had been transformed into an incredible spectacle. All four walls were covered from floor to ceiling with crudely cobbled together shelving, and the shelves were crammed with books. On top of the books standing vertically there were books lying flat. Papers, manuscripts, letters and yellowed newspapers were also dumped in the same space. But not everything fitted onto the shelves, so there were also piles, mounds and drifts of books, old newspapers and other papers heaped up on the floor under the shelves. Books and papers covered half of the room's only window. Mention should also be made of the photographs: a great number of snapshots of Shubkin himself, Antonina, their friends and acquaintances. Shubkin had so many friends and acquaintances that of course I couldn't know them all, but they included the Admiral and Raspadov and Sveta Zhurkina, and even me in several different versions. But the most interesting part of this permanent exhibition of photography was the section of idols, the contents of which had changed radically since I first got to know Shubkin. It had changed earlier too, but slowly. I remember Shubkin's portrait collection including Lenin, Marx, Dzerzhinsky, Pushkin, Tolstoy, Gorky and Mayakovsky. Then Gorky was replaced by Hemingway and Mayakovsky by Pasternak. At one time the exhibition had been graced by the presence of Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. Now all of the above had disappeared and their places on the shelves had been taken by cheap icons and portraits of Sakharov, Solzhenitsyn, Father Pavel Florensky and Father Ioann Kronstadtsky.

On entering Shubkin's room I discovered Shubkin himself looking very strange. The only clothes he had on were a pair of long drawers with the legs rolled up, held in place by a soldier's belt with a brass buckle-badge. He was standing barefoot in a large enameled basin of water and bustling about beside him was Father Radish, still quite young at the time, but already slovenly and unwashed, his matted beard containing a cockroach that had dried into it forever. The cockroach might possibly be a trick of the memory; it's hard to imagine that, even if the cockroach were not combed out, it would not have simply fallen off at some time. But the way I remember things, it was an ever-present feature of Father Radish's beard.

As I describe Father Radish, I can just anticipate the accusations of hostility, even blasphemy. I know people will say that I hold nothing sacred, that I am ridiculing faith and the church and portraying all clergymen in the image of Father Radish. Let me say immediately that this is not so. I am not in the habit of mocking faith and the church; in general, I regard clergymen with respect and in the image of Father Radish I am portraying no one but Father Radish—him personally, alone and unique of his kind. I have met many other priests, and they were all distinguished by their exceptional cleanliness. They washed, brushed their teeth and combed their beards every day, and they changed their clothes, washed them and had them dry-cleaned. But Father Radish was precisely as he is here, so what can I do about it?

And so I entered the room at the very beginning of the ceremony. Shubkin was standing in the basin of water facing the door. Radish was there beside him. I said hello to both of them and loitered in the doorway, slightly embarrassed and feeling that perhaps I was intruding on a private secret.

“Come in, dear fellow,” said Shubkin in a loud, cheerful voice. “Don't be embarrassed. I'm not embarrassed. I'm ashamed of the way I used to be, but now I believe that I'm on the right road. Isn't that right, Father?”

“God only knows,” the priest said absentmindedly. Then he surveyed me dubiously and asked: “Do you want to be the godfather?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Then stand at the right hand of the baptizee.”

“Only I'm not baptized,” I warned him.

“Not baptized?” the priest echoed. “Then why are you so keen to be the godfather?”

“I'm not that keen. You asked if I wanted to and I said I did. But if it's not possible, then . . .”

“But of course it's not possible. I'm a Reformed Church man myself, I don't stick blindly to the canons, but having a godfather who hasn't been baptized, that's just . . . Perhaps we could do it like this: first we'll baptize you, and then you . . . But then—” He cut himself off short. “Okay. Do you have a compass?”

“A compass?” I asked in surprise. “On me? Here? What for? I'm in a town, not in the forest or out at sea.”

“Yes, yes, I understand,” the priest sighed. “The problem is that we have to stand the baptizee facing to the east, and we can't work out which way it is.”

“Just a moment, Father,” said the baptizee, “what do you mean ‘we can't work out which way it is'? At nights here the Great Bear is visible in that corner of the window. The polestar's over there, so east is here . . .”

And with those words he turned to face the right-hand corner, from which precise spot the red spines of a multivolume edition of Lenin's works gazed out at him.

“All right,” said the priest. “Now lower your hands and bow your head, you must appear meek.”

He went up to Shubkin, removed his belt and flung it into the corner. Then he puckered up his lips and began blowing into his face. I don't know how Shubkin managed to stay on his feet, I was standing behind him and the smell of raw vodka made me feel queasy.

“Let us pray to the Lord!” the priest proclaimed, first crossing himself and then making the sign of the cross three times over the baptizee and beginning to sing in a thin, high-pitched voice: “In Thy name, O God of Truth and the name of Thine only begotten Son and Thy Holy Spirit, I lay my hand on Thy servant Mark, who has turned to Thy holy name and seeks refuge beneath the shelter of Thy wings. Antonina,” said the priest, interrupting himself again, “why are you just standing there?”

“What should I do?” she asked.

“Pour water on his head.”

“Just a moment,” she said, and went dashing toward the door.

“Where are you going?” the priest shouted.

“For the water.”

“Stupid woman!” the priest said angrily. “You have to take the water from the basin. Take it from his feet and pour it on his head. Everything returns to the place from whence it came. We come from dust and to dust we return. Water comes from water and returns to water. In this lies the secret meaning of our existence. Take some water, take it. Pour it in a thin stream.”

And he began singing again: “Rid Mark of his former delusions, fill him with hope, faith and love, and let him comprehend that Thou art the only True God and with Thee Thine only begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ and Thy Holy Spirit.”

Shubkin stood there in the water, quiet and submissive, with his hair and beard wet, in wet long drawers, shivering rapidly from the cold. Antonina took another mugful.

“That's enough for now,” Radish said to Antonina, and turning toward Shubkin, he began speaking in a voice that was almost a bass: “Baptizee Servant of God Mark, do you acknowledge the erroneous nature of all your former faiths?”

“I do so acknowledge, Father,” the baptizee confessed meekly.

“Do you renounce your illusions?”

“I do so renounce them.”

“Then,” said the priest, and suddenly his right hand was extended toward the shelves with the volumes of Lenin, and his voice rang out: “Behold the teaching of the devil which you did worship. Do you curse it?”

“I do curse it!” the baptizee replied resolutely.

“Blow on it and spit on it thrice.”

Shubkin promptly jumped out of the basin and ran across to the collected works, leaving a wet trail on the floor, and began spitting at the books in the red binding, pulling them out and throwing them onto the floor, growling like a dog as he did so. The priest ran over to Shubkin and also began throwing books on the floor, intoning: “O thou Satan, O devil, enemy of our Lord Jesus Christ, our true God, I adjure thee, brazen spirit, foul, unclean, loathsome and alien evil one, by the power of Jesus Christ I adjure thee: come out of this man, now, immediately and forever, and enter into him no more.”

At this point a portrait of Lenin that Shubkin had obviously hidden away earlier flew out from somewhere behind the books and fell on the floor faceup. It was in a wooden frame and covered with glass but, strangely enough, the glass didn't break. Vladimir Ilich Lenin with a red ribbon in his buttonhole squinted out from under a hand raised to the peak of his cap, peering with a benign smile at Shubkin and all the rest of us involved in such strange goings-on.

At the first sight of that face Father Radish was dumbfounded and bewildered, but he immediately recovered his wits, reached out a hand with the index finger extended toward the portrait and began shouting hysterically: “Behold the Antichrist, repulsive, most loathsome and most putrid!” He stepped on the portrait and began stamping on it in a frenzy, spitting and intoning: “Be gone, spawn of darkness, cunning fisher for erring souls!” The priest was wearing tarpaulin boots that evidently had metal tips. The glass crunched and shattered under his soles. “Why are you just standing there?” he snarled at Shubkin. “Spit on him, trample him!”

“I'm afraid, Father. I'm barefoot.”

“Fear not!” shouted the priest. “Since you have believed, remember: not a hair shall fall from your head but by the will of God. Spit on him, trample him—and you shall come to no harm. Well?”

Shubkin, not as yet firmly established in his faith, stepped gingerly onto the portrait with his bare feet and, bending up his toes, began walking carefully across the glass, but seeing that it really didn't cut his feet and that his safety was guaranteed by Divine Power, he went wild and began jumping up and down and trampling the image that only recently had been so dear to him and spitting with even greater fury than Radish.

Meanwhile the priest ran in circles around the baptizee and shouted at the vanquished devil: “Get thee hence, paltry, squint-eyed demon, know the vanity of thy strength, that has no power even over swine. Remember the One Who set thy abode in a herd of swine and cast thee in the abyss together with them. I adjure thee by the saving agony of Jesus Christ, our Lord, and His terrible coming, for He shall come without delay to judge all the earth, and shall punish you and your attendant hosts in the fires of hell, and cast you out into the outer darkness, for the power and the glory are with Christ, our God, with the Father and the Holy Ghost, now and for ever, world without end. Amen.”

After these words the priest sighed and calmed down for a moment. Shubkin stood beside him, tired after all the work he had done, but unharmed. Lenin's face, distorted under the shards of glass, now really did look like a satanic mask.

“Stand in the water again!” the priest said wearily.

Shubkin obeyed.

“Get out!”

Shubkin got out.

“Get in again. Repeat after me: ‘I believe in the one God, the Almighty Father, Creator of heaven and earth and all things visible and invisible, and in Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, born of the true God, of one essence with the Father and by Him was all created. He it was Who for the sake of mankind, in saving us, did come down from heaven as a man—born of the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary, He was made flesh and for us He was crucified. He suffered, was buried and rose again and now, ascended to heaven, He does sit at the right hand of the Father and shall come again in glory to judge the quick and the dead and His kingdom is for ever. And in the Holy Ghost, the Life-giving Lord emanating from the Father—together with the Father and the Son we bow down also before Him and glorify Him, Who did speak through the mouths of the prophets.' Say after me: ‘I believe in the catholic apostolic Church, holy and unique, I acknowledge only one baptism for the forgiveness of sins and the resurrection of the dead, and I do long and hope for life in the hereafter. Amen.'”