Monumental Propaganda (8 page)

18

The first person in Dolgov to make the acquaintance of Mark Semyonovich Shubkin had been the girl behind the counter at the railroad station buffet, Antonina Uglazova, usually known by her diminutive “Tonka,” a short, plump woman of thirty-five with sad eyes who had been treated badly by life. On that calm, cobweb-tangled summer day she had been feeling bored, standing there with her fulsome breasts propped up on the counter, when a passenger who had got off a train suddenly appeared in front of her, dressed in an old army greatcoat and a cap with long earflaps made out of the same material. He took off the cap and wiped his extensive bald patch with it (even at this stage Tonka noticed that his head was unusually large), then asked how much the cabbage pies cost.

Tonka was about to reply out of force of habit, “Look for yourself, can't you, you blind or something?” and nod at the price list standing there in front of his eyes. But she took a look at him and changed her mind, snatched up the price list and said, “Four a roople,” although they cost twice that much. He was surprised: “Why so cheap?” She shrugged her shoulders: “That's what they are.”

“Give me four pies and a glass of tea.”

“With lemon?” she asked genially.

He fumbled in his pocket and said, “Lemon would be good.”

“We're out of lemons,” she sighed, spreading her hands.

He took the four pies and the tea and installed himself at a little table by the window that looked out onto the dusty station square. In the middle of a flowerbed in the square, he could see a monument to Lenin representing the days spent by the original hiding from the Razliv police in the forest near St. Petersburg on the eve of the revolution. The plaster Ilich, perched on a plaster tree stump, was writing his “April Theses” in a plaster notebook, while a drunk clutching a bottle lay slumped in a doze against the foot of the pedestal with two goats grazing beside him. The new arrival looked out of the window, Antonina looked at the new arrival, and although he was eating his pies carefully without chomping, and drinking his tea in little sips, she realized that he was from that place. How could she not realize, when she herself lived in the world that people left to go to that place and to which they returned, or failed to return, from that place? One of those who had left and not yet returned was her husband Fedya, who had first beaten Antonina half to death, then taken a mistress and beaten her as well and finally hacked her to pieces with an ax. At the time, her women friends had been delighted for her: “Ooh, Tonka, what a stroke of luck! If he hadn't had Lizka, he'd have hacked you to bits.”

This newcomer was not one of those men who resolve their relationships with the help of an ax, but Antonina had met men like him as well: they had been called “politicals,” “contras” or “fascists,” but all in all they were pretty civilized.

The newcomer ate his pies, washing them down with tea. She looked at him and for some reason felt like crying. Once she even bent down under the counter and brushed away a tear.

Encouraged by the cheap prices, the newcomer took another four pies, this time with jam, and another glass of tea and asked her if she knew anyone who could offer him temporary lodgings around here. And since she had a room in the station residential block, she said she could. Without giving it a second thought, he lugged his suitcase over to her place and they began living together.

She addressed him formally, using his first name and patronymic— Mark Semyonovich.

“You've got a big head, Mark Semyonovich,” she used to say sometimes, pressing his head against her equally big chest.

“Big and bald,” Mark Semyonovich would elaborate jokingly.

“It's good that it's bald, there's nowhere for the lice to breed. And if anything does try to live there, it'll slip off, because you're as steep around here as . . . well as I don't know what.” And she would fall silent, unable to find an appropriate comparison.

She looked after him like a little child. From the time he moved in with her, the shirts he wore were always clean, his socks were darned and his trousers ironed. In less than three months his cheeks had filled out and he was beginning to develop a belly. Mark Semyonovich, once reduced to skin and bone in the prison camp, frequently glanced at his own belly and stroked it respectfully. Everything Antonina did to take care of Shubkin, she did unselfishly, without demanding either love or a visit to the church or a wedding certificate or faithfulness in return. She just looked at him often, happy that he was there and sad because she realized he probably wouldn't be staying for long.

Antonina understood that she was no match for her roommate. What she didn't know was that this suited him very well. He had a match once. She was called Lyalya. She called Mark Semyonovich “Markel” and had no regard for his talent, but she loved glad rags, restaurants, operatic tenors and generally putting on the style. It was impossible to imagine her standing at the stove, darning or even sewing on a button. Fortunately for Shubkin, Lyalya had proved unable to withstand the test of a lengthy separation, concerning which he had been informed by the arrival in the Khanty-Mansiisk taiga of a telegram:

SORRY STOP IN LOVE SOMEONE ELSE STOP VERY BEST WISHES
STOP FIRM HAND SHAKE STOP LYALYA STOP

 

And so Antonina's position was actually far more promising than she could have imagined.

Having spent many years of his life building socialism in particularly difficult conditions, Mark Semyonovich Shubkin now attempted to make up for lost time. He bought himself a secondhand German typewriter, a Triumph-Adler with a large carriage and several missing letters (the Russian letters had been welded over the German ones, like on like, but the Russian alphabet had more of them). With his own hands, which he admitted were incapable of drawing a straight line, he put together a shaky table without a single straight line in it from badly planed planks and plywood, on which he stood a table lamp constructed to his own design from aluminum wire, with a shade made from the newspaper
Izvestiya,
and under this lamp he spent the greater part of his free time. But he didn't have very much free time. He worked from morning till late in the children's home, where he also held rehearsals with the Meyerhold Drama Club (he had chosen that name for the club himself) and classes with the Brigantine Literary Club and edited the wall newspaper “Happy Childhood,” and when he came home, he dashed straight over to his Record valve radio and listened to “the voice of the enemy” as he lit up a High Tide cigarette and immediately, wasting no time, loaded four sheets of paper with carbon paper into his typewriter and beginning to hammer out the lines or columns of his next text with furious speed. He was working simultaneously on his lyrical verse and the allegorical poem “Dawn in Norilsk” (about the sun rising after the long winter), and the novel
The
Timber Camp
(about the work of convicts in the Khanty-Mansiisk taiga), and his memoirs under the title “Years of My Life Remembered,” and articles on questions of morality and pedagogy, which he submitted in large numbers to the central newspapers, and letters to the Central Committee of the CPSU and to Khrushchev in person, which always began with the words “Dear and Respected Nikita Sergeevich!” Antonina sat on the divan beside the table, knitting her cohabitant a cap, since not a single piece of headgear available in the shops would fit on his head. Our Soviet industry was oriented toward the head size of the average Soviet man and gross output figures, and mass production could not cater to Mark Semyonovich's size ten.

Antonina worked away with her needles, from time to time glancing curiously at Shubkin. Sometimes, when he fell into deep thought about something, his eyes would glaze over and his mouth would fall open and he would stay like that for many minutes, so that Tonka, frightened that Shubkin had departed for a place from which there is no return, would call out to him: “Mark Semyonovich!”

But there were times when his trance was so deep that he was deaf to all her calls. She would repeat his name again and again, go over and shake him, shout right in his ear: “Mark Semyonovich!”

He would shudder violently, stare at her with crazy eyes and call out: “Ah? What?” Then as he came around, he would ask: “What is it, Antonina?”

“Nothing,” she would reply in embarrassment and explain with a blissful smile, “it's just that I'd like to know, Mark Semyonovich, what it is you keep thinking about all the time, racking your brains so hard.”

“Ah, my dear Tonka,” Mark Semyonovich would reply with a sigh. “It seems to me that our Party is overshadowed by the threat of a new Thermidor and petit-bourgeois degeneration.”

Since she didn't know the word “Thermidor,” he would begin to enlighten her, telling her about the Great French Revolution, and then about something else, so that everything became jumbled up together: literature, history and philosophy. He recited by heart to her Pushkin's
Poltava
and
Eugene Onegin
and Mayakovsky's poem
Vladimir Ilich Lenin,
related the contents of Chernyshevsky's novel
What Is to Be Done?
or Tommaso Campanella's
City of the Sun.
At one time he had attempted to expose Lyalya to enlightenment in a similar fashion, but while he was telling her something, she would be putting on her lipstick or trying on a new dress in front of the mirror, or she would interrupt him with remarks about some new show or snatch up the phone when it rang and generally give the impression that she knew all this stuff herself anyway. Antonina was a far more grateful listener. She gazed unblinkingly at Mark Semyonovich with her mouth wide open as he strode about the room gesturing wildly and introducing her to the myths of Ancient Greece, telling her about distant countries, about journeys and travelers, revolutionaries, dreamers and fighters for the people's cause, about seas, stars and future flights into outer space. Unfortunately, as she said herself, she had a head like a sieve, and everything flew straight out through its holes and on out into space—not a thing was retained. Thanks to those holes, he could tell Antonina one and the same story an infinite number of times, and she always listened just as attentively.

But educational activity wasn't the only way Shubkin and his Antonina passed the time. In the morning she would arrive at work weary and exhausted, with dark rings under her eyes. The station cashier Zina Trushina would ask her enviously: “Well, how was it?”

Tonka didn't reply by reciting poems or retelling the story of Campanella's utopia, or even by talking about potential flights through space to other worlds. She shook her head, screwed up her eyes and reported in a low voice: “Never took it out once all night.”

“Does he beat you?” Zina once asked her.

“What do you mean!” Tonka was outraged. Then she glanced around before explaining in a whisper, with a certain degree of pride, “He's a Jew-boy!”

19

In the summer of 1957, Aglaya's unassuming neighbor Savelii Artyomovich Telushkin passed away. The room of the deceased proved to contain no furniture and no valuables apart from a simple iron bed, a pine kitchen table with a single set of drawers and a stool. But when they opened up the mattress, they discovered an entire hoard of treasure: watches, bracelets, earrings, wedding rings, rings with stones, a silver cigarette case, a pouch crammed full of gold crowns from teeth and a Gold Star medal which was real gold, but a false medal, without a number. Not even the agents of the Ministry of State Security knew where the dead man had come by these valuables. When the supreme measure was implemented, the belongings of the people who were shot were confiscated, and if they were stolen, then naturally it was not by the executioners but by somewhat higher-placed individuals. They did say that after Telushkin's death the secret services made an attempt to investigate the source of the dead man's riches. For this purpose an employee of the investigative agencies, who introduced himself by the fictional name of Vasilii Vasilievich, would turn up from time to time in the house on Komsomol Cul-de-Sac and go around to the neighbors asking what they remembered about the deceased's way of life, but they didn't remember anything, apart from the fact that Telushkin was quiet and inoffensive and used to say “Good health to you” or “Keep well” whenever he met anyone. We have already mentioned that the scene he left behind him was squalid. But in addition, the walls were covered all over with various words of wisdom from world-famous great people and the thoughts of the author himself, who employed nonstandard grammar and orthography in his writings, either omitting vowels completely or using the wrong ones. For instance, he had written: “In Strovskys stry ‘Hw the stil was tmpred' the lif lin is corrct.” “The Rusn will alwys achive hs gol,” “Childrn are our fture.” “18 Agust is the day of our brav pilts.” “Mn trnsfrms nautre.” “The lov of a man for a wman is an illnss and suffring of the orgnsm.” “Ther is no lif on Mars” and “The dearst thng for mn is lif.”

Many people joined in the contest for Telushkin's room, but as a victim of unjustified political repression, Mark Semyonovich Shubkin was awarded it ahead of the line.

20

Of course, Aglaya was not pleased by Shubkin's prospective move to become one of her neighbors. But this was partly eclipsed by another, even more unpleasant event—the June 1957 Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the hastily convened district Party conference, to which Aglaya was one of the invited delegates. The regional Party representative, Shurygin, who came down for the occasion, brought the comrades alarming news. In Moscow they had discovered an anti-Party faction including not just anybody, but members of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU—Coms. Malenkov, Molotov and Kaganovich. And in addition, according to the formulation of the official announcement, their close collaborator Shepilov. In the bureaucratic Party grammar of that time the abbreviation “coms.” signified “comrades”—but not simply comrades: it meant “bad comrades.” If it was necessary to say that good comrades had spoken, for instance Comrade Khrushchev or Mikoyan or someone like that, then they wrote the full word—“comrades”— but if they were bad comrades, then they weren't “comrades” but “coms.” As for their collaborator Shepilov, he immediately became the butt of numerous jokes and anecdotes and a legendary figure of fun to the alcoholics of the Soviet Union, in particular in the town of Dolgov, where individuals of that particular category magnanimously identified this character as one of their own, and when two of them were standing in line for vodka, they would address a presumptive third drinking partner as follows: “Fancy being Shepilov?” Meaning: Fancy a bit of collaboration? No doubt in time this joke reached Shepilov's own ears, and he must surely have been offended that every alcoholic who had a ruble to spare could become Shepilov, if only for a short while.

The essence of the conflict that took place in the leadership of the CPSU (no one remembers it nowadays) was that the bad coms. had disagreed with the ideas of the good “comrades” and the decisions of the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU. They had not accepted the Party's policy directed at overcoming the consequences of the cult of personality and had even entered into a conspiracy to seize power.

After this announcement the floor had been taken by district Party committee secretary Nechaev, a flabby man with cheeks that were round and pink from premature arteriosclerosis and thick ears that looked as though they were molded out of dough.

“The communists of the district,” he said, “wholeheartedly and absolutely approve the principled line of our Leninist Central Committee and pour scorn on the pitiful band of turncoats and factionalists.”

The resolution to be voted on was written and presented in the same spirit.

“Who is in favor?” Nechaev asked.

Everyone immediately threw their hands up in the air and Stepan Kharitonovich Shaleiko, sitting in the front row, threw up both hands and cried out: “We approve! We approve! We wholeheartedly and absolutely approve!”

“Whosagainstabstained?” Nechaev asked quickly, running the words together without waiting for any answer. He had already opened his mouth to utter the customary “Carried unanimously” when suddenly Porosyaninov nudged him in the side with an elbow, and in any case he had already noticed a slim arm raised in the back row like a solitary blade of grass swaying in the breeze. “Comrade Revkina?” Nechaev couldn't believe his eyes. “You?” He glanced around at Shurygin and shrugged, indicating that he was not to blame, that for him this was a very great and unpleasant surprise. “You? Aglaya Stepanovna? How is this possible? Are you abst—are . . . you abstaining?”

He was bewildered, but Aglaya was not entirely in control of herself either. She recalled afterward that it had been easier to advance into the attack against a withering barrage of fire than publicly oppose a Party decision. But even so . . .

“Yes,” she confirmed in a quiet voice. “I mean, that is . . .” And she fell silent, unable to pronounce another single word.

The hall froze, and the silence that fell was so complete you could hear the drops of sweat rustling as they dripped from Nechaev's soft ears. Aglaya's action had taken everyone by surprise. These questions about who was in favor, who was opposed and who abstained had never been more than mere ritual, and in every single case, important or unimportant, according to the ritual, people voted only in favor. Always in favor and never against. And they never abstained. There was no difference between “abstained” and “opposed” because, as Mark Semyonovich Shubkin's favorite poet had put it: “Whoever does not sing with us today, he is against us.”

Everyone sitting in the hall was overwhelmed by contradictory feelings. On the one hand, they were terribly curious to see where all this would lead. None of them would have minded a scandal that would introduce a little excitement into their uneventful, boring, stagnant provincial life. But on the other hand, they were afraid. If it could have been simply a scandal and no more: somebody stole something from somebody, or took a bribe from somebody, or gave somebody a poke in the face or even was unfaithful to his wife, or something of the sort. Such things did happen in the district Party organization and they were condemned, but they were regarded with sympathetic understanding. In such cases the culprit was reproached, shamed and threatened with exclusion from the Party. The culprit repented, wept, pounded his fist against his chest, and that was the end of the matter. But this time the scandal that had erupted was so serious it was bound to extend beyond the district and on up to some higher level, where they would consider it and take note that in the district concerned something was amiss with the communist consciousness of the masses, propaganda and agitation, that there was ideological vacillation and deviation afoot, and in general the whole business smacked of nothing less (how terrible even to utter the words!) than ideological sabotage. And all sorts of checks and purges would begin in the district. Involving the elucidation of who had stolen how much from where. Or taken a bribe from somebody. Or given somebody a poke in the face. Or taken and given. And although the delegates at the Dolgov conference were all to a man absolutely devoted to SCOSWO and the latest instructions from the highest levels of the Party, to claim that none of them had ever stolen anything, or given anybody a bribe, or taken a bribe from anybody or entered a fake item in the accounts, or written off an item and pocketed the money, would have been excessive. But the more a man stole, the more intransigent he was in the area of ideology. The reaction of the assembly to what had happened was therefore sincere and decisive, although it only followed after a slight delay. At first the silence was absolute. Not a single voice. Then it began—flowing, sweeping, rolling forward from the back rows to the front. Rustling, rippling, rumbling, roaring like the pounding of ocean waves on the shore, and the closer to the presidium, the more powerful it became. The rumbling and coughing and clattering of chairs and individual cries fused into a single sound, and suddenly there came a piercing squeal from someone—“Shame! Shame!”—and everyone there was caught up in the mounting wave of passion—yelling, howling, whistling, clapping their hands and stamping their feet. Like dogs loosed from the leash, they were excited by the chance to bite and tear the victim who had been thrown to them without fear of punishment. The director of the meat combine, Botviniev, suddenly leapt up onto the stage in front of the presidium, waving his fist in the air as though he were twirling a rope above his head, and began shouting: “Glory to the Communist Party! Glory to the Communist Party! Glory to the Communist Party!” with an expression that suggested he was passionately eager to give his life for the Party without delay, right there and then. Only a few days earlier, in fact, criminal proceedings had been instigated against him for the theft of meat products on an exceptionally large scale, but his response had been to demonstrate his devotion to the Party and rely confidently on the indulgence of the forces of law and order. The audience in the hall seemed so wild that it could no longer restrain itself, but Nechaev raised his hand and the delegates who only the moment before were out of control suddenly became calm and docile, and only a few of them went on squealing for a while, but even they gradually grew quieter.

“Aglaya Stepanovna,” said Nechaev, speaking quietly in the silence that had fallen, “if I understand you correctly, you disagree with the Party line. Perhaps you would approach the podium and explain your position.”

“Yes, let her tell us,” Porosyaninov said loudly.

“Let her tell us.” The head of the district hospital, Muravyova, leapt to her feet and began shouting, to make sure that the presidium would note her zeal: “Who are you working for, Revkina?”

“Not for you,” said Aglaya, setting out for the podium. But the closer she got to it, the less determined she felt. And when she reached the podium, her courage had deserted her completely. Her knees were so weak she wanted to sit or even lie down. She leaned against the top of the lectern and began mumbling something about Russian Ivans who had forgotten their origins, and something else equally unintelligible.

In the hall the tension mounted again and shouts rang out: “Stop that!” “That's enough.” “No more!” “Get her off!”

Botviniev, back up on the stage again, shouted: “Long live our dear beloved Nikita Sergeevich!” Then he pointed at Aglaya and began asking questions. “Comrades, can anyone tell me what's going on here? Why is this woman here? What makes her think she can oppose our Party, the people, the state, you and me and our children . . .”

“Shame on her!” a bass voice boomed from the back.

“Shame!” another voice squeaked.

And it started again, rolling around the hall: “Shame! Shame! Shame!”

Aglaya had not expected this kind of reaction. Partisan and war hero that she was, she was genuinely frightened, and she covered her face with her hands and ran out of the hall in tears. Nechaev and Porosyaninov tried to stop her: “Aglaya Stepanovna! Comrade Revkina!”

She didn't stop.

Yes, Aglaya had never believed in what came to be called errors of the cult of personality, deviations from the Leninist norms or transgressions of socialist legality. She had been irritated by discussions of illegal repression and innocent victims. She had always said that in our country (after all, it was ours!) no one would ever be imprisoned unjustly. But on that day her sense of justice underwent a sudden and drastic transformation. When she got home, she locked all the bolts on her door, then stood the table against it, and she wanted to put the wardrobe there as well, but she wasn't strong enough. She moved the bed across and lay down on it fully dressed, only taking off her boots.

Since her partisan days she had kept a captured eight-shot Walther pistol hidden in an old felt boot in the closet. Now she took it out and put it on a chair beside her, promising herself she would never be taken alive.

She didn't sleep at all until four in the morning, and even then her sleep was troubled. She dreamed of tall boots squeaking as they walked up the stairs on their own, holding big revolvers in their hands. Afterward, she herself was astonished: how could boots have hands? But the difference between a dream and reality is that in a dream anything is possible. The boots with the revolvers climbed up the stairs, something hairy tried to climb in through the window and the steely voice of Chief Prosecutor Vyshinsky echoed down an iron pipe, pronouncing sentence: “In the name of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics . . . ” In her dream Aglaya tried to call out, but although her mouth opened, it produced no sound. Twice in her dream she grabbed hold of her pistol, but it wasn't her pistol, it was only a rubber toy.

As morning approached, she finally fell into a sound sleep and slept for what seemed like a long time, but she was woken by the sun in her eyes and the sound of an automobile driving into the yard. The automobile drove in, the engine was switched off, she heard several voices and a man's voice asked: “Where is it then?”

Greta the Greek's voice answered: “On the second floor, dearie. When you get up there, it's the first door.”

And straightaway there was the squeaking of footsteps on the stairs— several people were walking up in step. She leapt up, looked out of the window and froze at the sight of the black raven standing in the yard and the driver with the shoulder straps of a sergeant in the forces of the Ministry of the Interior who was lighting up a cigarette as he leaned back against the radiator.

The people walking up the stairs had reached the second floor, and now they were shuffling about on the landing in apparent indecision.

Aglaya dashed back to the bed, grabbed the pistol and unlocked the safety catch. She began thinking quickly: Should she shoot herself immediately or . . . after all, her Walther had eight shots, and she only needed one cartridge—the last.