Monumental Propaganda (42 page)

The song went on, explosions thundered, glass jangled and broke, the floor beams were warping, breaking and rattling against each other and there was a crunching sound inside Aglaya. She didn't realize it was her own bones shattering.

“A-agh!” she howled as she experienced that incomparable, tempestuous feeling more acutely than anyone had ever experienced it before.

And a flame shot out of her chest.

106

They say the locals had never seen a storm like it during the winter. They'd never seen one like it in any other season either. The lightning strikes, gusts of wind and the tornado smashed, burned, demolished, crushed and tore to shreds everything in their path. The power station, oil-depot and motor depot were destroyed by fire. The flour-milling combine simply fell to pieces. But witnesses who saw the house where Aglaya lived burn and explode could find no words to describe the spectacle. Some of them who tried began like this: “Well, it was, you know, it was, you know . . .” and then lapsed into a silence expressing wonderment and awe. Of course, it was clear to everyone that this was not just a fire, and not just an explosion, and not just several explosions, but something much bigger.

After the explosion all sorts of experts came to Dolgov from the regional center and from Moscow; they collected fragments and scraps in polyethylene bags and took them away. All sorts of explanations were put forward. Some of them really wild. Even including the idea that there had been an earthquake. In our part of the world, which is so seismically stable! Then they started looking for clues to a Chechen connection. It was only after they'd run through all the most unlikely conjectures that they remembered about Fireworks Inc. and finally decided that the most plausible explanation of the initial explosion was a lightning discharge. The strike had been interpreted by one of Vanka's devices as a remote control radio signal. The first device had exploded, triggering a chain reaction: bombs, mines, grenades, slabs of TNT, sacks of nitrate, boxes of dynamite, the gas-collector cylinders. The semibasement had been aptly named Little Hiroshima.

To give them their due, the firemen arrived in good time. And they unrolled their hoses just like they're supposed to. But at the last second it was discovered that the water in the tank had frozen (water in fireengine tanks has a habit of freezing in temperatures above the freezing point), that in some places the hoses were frayed and punctured and the pump wasn't working anyway. And so the firemen simply ran around the flames, which were reflected in their shiny helmets, and used gaffs to drag out charred chunks of anything that tumbled out of the fire. Beams, rafters, parts of doors, tables and chairs. Along with all these objects another charred, elongated item came flying out, looking something like a log. The firemen pulled it clear with their gaffs and only then discovered that it wasn't a log but a body, still alive, with the vestiges of arms and legs. And then of course, the entire emergency ambulance team went dashing to this living cinder, which was gurgling as though it was still saying something even as it burned. Doctor Sinelnikov put his ear to the hole that was once a mouth and through the gurgling he made out the words: “He was right: he said there'd be dancing on our street ag——”

And with a final shudder the charred body fell silent.

Everything else organic that had been in the house was burned away, and the iron melted. The statue, melted on every side, was transformed into a fused, shapeless ingot. There was nothing at all left of any living beings, including Shurochka the Idiot, apart from the smell of burning flesh and fur. Many people, of course, recalled Shurochka the Idiot and her various predictions, including the one that iron birds would fly and a dead person would fall on a living one. In hindsight many even endowed Shurochka with exceptional prophetic powers, but she didn't possess any powers; she simply spoke whatever nonsense entered her fevered mind, like the celebrated Nostradamus. And naturally, there were some individuals inclined toward mysticism who reinterpreted Shurochka's ravings, threw out what they couldn't use and then embellished what they could and adapted it to real events as if they were the very ones that their prophetess had been thinking of.

Of course, nothing was left of Vanka Zhukov or his guests, apart from the charred remains of a plastic leg with leather fastenings that was discovered two blocks away from the scene. The surface of this remnant was covered all over with letters of the Western alphabet, chemical formulas, e-mail addresses, numerals and the phrase, written in large Russian letters: “Revenge for Afghanistan!”

EPILOGUE

It was early summer by the time I arrived in Dolgov. And I could see immediately how much here had changed for the better and how much had remained the same as it was before. The old women on the platform were still offering their goods to the passengers, but now they had a wider range. Not only were there boiled potatoes and pickled cucumbers, but also meat pasties, beer and Coca-Cola. And in addition to the edible products there were printed goods, mostly of one particular orientation, such as the magazines
Playboy
and
Penthouse
and a brochure—
Sex Technique
for the Middle-Aged—
with various recommendations, tables and diagrams.

On the platform, which was very clean, there were several kiosks trading in ice cream, chewing gum, hamburgers, cheeseburgers, hot dogs, Snickers and sneakers, matryoshka dolls with the faces of eminent politicians, army-uniform peaked caps, belts, badges and military insignia, house slippers, spectacles, mohair wool and every sort of trifle imaginable. During my absence the town had clearly been integrated into global civilization, as testified, for instance, by the notice in English for foreigners passing through: THE PAY TOILET IS BEHIND A CORNER. THE PRICE IS UPON AN AGREEMENT—meaning it had to be defined by contract. And across the other side, in the little square in front of the monument to Lenin (Vladimir Ilich is still sitting there, covered in thick mold, to this very day), I also came upon the following warning notice: DO NOT TEAR FLOWERS OUT! DO NOT WALK ON THE GRASS!

Although I had been a close witness and a participant in everything that had taken place over the previous fifteen years in Russia, Dolgov seemed a rather strange town even to me. An unnatural mixture of features from the old life and the new. The same old twisting streets with the same names: Lenin Street, Soviet Street, Marxist Street, Alexei Stakhanov Street, 22nd CPSU Congress Street, and in among them Crooked Street, Transversal Post Office Street, Monastery Street, Cathedral Street. I found Komsomol Cul-de-Sac easily, and the spot where Aglaya's house had stood. The neighboring houses had clearly also been demolished, and several buildings that were too grand for a simple district-level town had sprung up in their place. Six-story blocks faced with granite, with big windows and blue spruces at the central entrance to what had to be the main building, with its four columns. The entire lot was fenced off by tall metal railings with gold tips, gates that closed automatically and guards. A sign hanging on the gates read DOLGOV MINERAL WATERS BALNEOLOGICAL COMPLEX. There was a whole collection of expensive foreign cars standing in the parking lot inside. I asked the gatekeeper what kind of complex it was. He told me it was a private hydropathic clinic for very rich people.

“For New Russians?” I asked.

“For foreigners too,” he said. “Turns out the chemical composition of our water's no worse than at Karlsbad, and the treatment may be expensive, but it's still cheaper than it is there. And we sell water for drinking. Right across Russia. Even in Moscow.”

And who does all this belong to?” I asked.

“Who else?” he said. “Felix Filippovich Bulkin.

“Bulkin?” I asked. “You mean he built all this?”

“And not only this. He founded a new church too. He bought the nightclub and the casino, opened two restaurants and two supermarkets. He's a rich man. See that children's playground over there? He gave that to the city. He supports the home for the aged with his own money.”

“So he's the local oligarch then?” I said.

“Something of the sort,” the guard agreed.

The children's playground was no different from millions of others, except perhaps for the poster with a black witch who looked like she was from the Caucasus stuffing a fair-haired child into a sack and the appeal: PARENTS! BEWARE OF KIDNAPPING! Beyond it began a long, high concrete wall, and beyond that I glimpsed an architectural miracle—a red-brick palace with four towers. A bit like the Petrovsky Castle in Moscow.

I asked a middle-aged woman walking by with a cat whose castle it was.

“Plague's,” she said.

“What, does he live here?”

“No, but he comes here. He lives in Moscow.”

After that I saw the cement works and the gas station and a few other things, and, according to the local residents, all of it belonged to Plague. Some of them spoke about him with indifference, others with respect and still others with great dislike.

The Avenue of Glory reminded me of Moscow's New Maiden Convent Cemetery in miniature. Among the graves of former times, overgrown with tall weeds, and the luxurious monuments to the new criminal bosses, it took me a while to spot the modest grave with the granite slab which had evidently replaced the stone that had previously lain there. Traced out on it in gold were the dates and the names of Andrei Eremeevich Revkin, perished heroically, and his widow Aglaya Stepanovna, perished tragically. A little lower were the words: TO MY PARENTS, NEVER TO BE FORGOTTEN, FROM THEIR SON MARAT.

I stood for a moment immersed in thoughts of the impermanence of life and then walked on. A lot had changed in Dolgov, but the pedestal in the middle of Victory Square was still in the same place, as if they were keeping it in case it might be needed. Not just as if, in fact. They really hadn't destroyed it because, as I discovered later, local minds were constantly generating ever-new projects for installing on the pedestal, if not actually Stalin, then someone whom they wished to bring closer to the people, or rather, someone to whom they wished to bring the people closer. In various years the individuals envisaged for this role included Marshal Zhukov, the academician Sakharov, the writer Solzhenitsyn, Pyotr Stolypin and Nicholas II. And Felix Bulkin even had the brass balls to hope that for really big money he could see himself immortalized here as a symbol of the new age, when the world was not ruled by political leaders and military commanders, but by businessmen. The district legislators had enough wit and courage to summon up a majority (of one vote) and reject Bulkin's proposal, but nonetheless the people had no doubt that pretty soon somebody was bound to be hoisted up there. But who? No answer was forthcoming to that question, but the plot of ground around the pedestal was tended and planted with marguerites and the low openwork fence was freshly painted.

After standing there for a while thinking senseless thoughts about nothing much in particular, I looked at my watch, decided it was time for lunch and set out for the hotel restaurant. But along the way I was destined to meet someone I thought I would never see alive again. As I was walking past a two-story building behind a green wooden fence, first I noticed the sign that said OLD FOLK SCARE HOME in which the shifting of the “s” to transform “care” into “scare” seemed to me somehow symbolic. And then I spotted this old man—fleshy, a big head with the fluffy remnants of gray hair protruding in all directions, sitting in a wheelchair wrapped up in a woolen rug and holding his glasses in his left hand as he read a book. I recognized him immediately and went running over.

“Admiral!” I exclaimed in joy. “Is that really you?”

“Ah, it's you!” he quavered affirmatively, not interrogatively. “Surprised I'm still alive? Don't be. Sickly organisms live a long time. Because they don't burn up, they just smolder.”

Not only, it seemed, was he alive, he was perfectly lucid and he remembered everything. He asked me not to be surprised at that either.

“I've been a thinking reed all my life. People fall into dotage because their brains stagnate. But I've been thinking about something, and that's kept the blood flowing to the brain cells.

We recalled old times, spoke about Aglaya, about Shubkin . . .

“Yes, by the way,” I asked, “do you happen to know where he's living? I got a letter from him last year, saying he'd arrived at the true faith—the faith of his ancestors—and he was intending to rework
The Timber Camp
to correspond with his new convictions.

“Unfortunately,” the Admiral said with a sigh, “he won't be able to do that now.” In response to my look of inquiry he said: “He died of blood poisoning after his circumcision.”

We both sighed and felt sad, but what was there to be done? We agreed that Shubkin had lived a long and complicated life and been happier than many, because he had always believed fervently in something.

“What about you?” I asked the Admiral. “Have you taken up religion, or are you still an atheist?”

“I haven't taken anything up and I haven't dropped anything. I don't believe that God exists and I don't believe that he doesn't.”

“How's that?” I asked in surprise. “If you don't believe in one then you have to believe in the other.”

“I don't have to do anything,” he said stubbornly. “I simply don't see any proofs of the existence of God and I don't see any proofs of his nonexistence. But I do believe in something. I believe in the ineffability of our existence.”

“You don't mean that!” I protested. “The way science is developing now, it's inevitable that we'll be able to understand—”

“The more science reveals to us,” said the Admiral, interrupting me, “the clearer it becomes that it will never grasp the most important thing of all.”

I agreed with a few of the things he said, but I suggested coming back down to earth and asked what he thought of the way people lived in Dolgov nowadays.

“They live the same way they always did,” said the Admiral. “If there's something someone can steal, he steals. If there's nothing for someone to steal, then he works. He who works does not eat.”

“What about you?” I asked.

“Well, I don't work. Which means someone feeds me. In my case it's our benefactor Mr. Bulkin. He feeds me and he feeds others and he feeds the whole town, and the people joke that if it weren't for the Plague we'd all have died out ages ago.”

“Then tell me this, Admiral. Until just recently we lived under a terrible totalitarian regime. We had no freedom. We couldn't read the books we wanted to read, they prevented us from believing in God, they forbade us to criticize the government, tell jokes, listen to foreign radio stations, talk about death, about sex, engage in trade or travel abroad. We voted for candidates from a list of one and everybody dreamed of freedom. And now it's arrived, but we don't like it. And there are many people who want to go back to the old ways and even dream of Stalin. What's the real problem here?”

“I can answer you this way,” said the Admiral. “Until recently we were living in a zoo. We all had our own cages. The predators had theirs and the herbivores had theirs. Naturally, all the inmates of the zoo dreamed of freedom and were desperate to escape from their cages. Now they've opened up our cages. We've got our freedom and we've seen that you can pay with your life for the pleasure of running around on the grass. The only ones who are unconditionally better off are the predators, who are now free to eat the rest of us in absolutely unlimited quantities. And now that we've seen this freedom and experienced this fear, we're wondering if it might be better to go back to our cages and put the predators back in theirs as well. They'll still feed them on us, but in regulated amounts. And so we're looking around for . . .”

“For whom?” I asked.

“Well, let's say, a director for the zoo, who'll restore order and put everyone back in their cages, but give us hay and cabbage and, sometimes if we behave ourselves, give us a treat of a carrot or two.”

“By the ‘director' you mean Stalin?”

“Someone of the kind.”

“Will he be a communist?”

“I expect he'll use some other name. But the Scuswu he'll invent for us won't be very much different from the previous one, because there really aren't that many variations. Its basis will be the dream of equal happiness for all. The recipe for how to achieve it is well known: confiscate from the rich, distribute to the poor, chastize the bureaucrats, exterminate your enemies.”

“But everybody already knows that's an impossible dream, because—”

“Yes, we all know why. Every individual human being knows it. But individual human beings, when gathered together, are transformed into the people. And the people is a naïve creature, willing to be deceived a thousand times over and then believe again for the thousand and first time.”

“But you have to believe not just in something but in someone.”

“Good thinking,” laughed the Admiral. “But that someone is already on the way. He's already rehearsing his gestures in front of the mirror.”

“You even know what he looks like?”

“But of course I do,” said the Admiral. “He's modestly dressed. In something semimilitary. Unpretentious in his daily life. Indifferent to objects of material value. Even more so to items of luxury. Not very tall, but stocky, about the same build as you.”

“Then perhaps we've already found our man,” I said, inspired.

“No,” said the Admiral, “you can't play this role. You doubt yourself too much, you speak fast and wave your arms around too much. This man behaves enigmatically, he speaks slowly and softly, but always confidently. His gestures are sparse, but expressive. With a single glance he reduces men to terror and women to a different state, but he's impotent.”

“He has to be impotent?”

“Yes, he has to. The man who becomes a genuine idol of the people cannot suffer from any passions and temptations, except for unlimited power over people's bodies and hearts.”

“That's some character portrait you draw!”

“The standard portrait,” said the Admiral. “The standard portrait of a tyrant. There's not a lot of variety among people of that type.”

I hardly slept at all during my last night at the hotel. Or rather, I fell asleep right away. But then I immediately started dreaming about the individual the Admiral had described. He was standing on a pedestal, waving to me and grinning. Grinning to greet me, but his grin filled me with horror and I woke up. After that I was afraid to go to sleep. I tossed and turned, switched the light on. Tried to read something. As I read, I lapsed into a reverie and again he appeared, grinning at me from his pedestal. And when morning was already near, he appeared to me in a form so real that the materialization of this apparition seemed perfectly possible. As I was leaving Dolgov in the morning, my taxi cut straight across Victory Square. There was a thick, swirling fog, and the houses, trees, telephone poles and other large objects concealed within it hove into sight as if they were surfacing from some abyss. The pedestal surfaced in the same way. It was empty, of course. It had to be empty, if only because the time had not yet come for whoever it might be to appear on it. The pedestal was empty, and I, as a realist devoid of the slightest inclination whatever toward any kind of mysticism, was not the one to doubt that it was empty.