Monumental Propaganda (9 page)

21

As far as the author has been able to observe in the course of his life, most people, even the most educated, have neither any awareness nor any understanding of the fact that they exist in history. The majority think that everything will always be the way it is today. And if a historical event happens to have taken place before their very eyes, they see the reason for its occurrence in a temporal coincidence of misunderstandings. And it seems to them that everything can be put back the way it was. Some of them hope for this and others fear it. Aglaya hoped and Shubkin feared, but neither of them understood that history does not make any reverse moves. For better or for worse, a process was under way, and the further it proceeded, the more illusory Aglaya's hopes appeared and the more pointless Shubkin's fears became. Of course, things did not actually go so far that Aglaya was punished for ruining the peasantry and Shubkin was glorified for the injuries he had suffered, but by and large there was a definite movement in a certain direction, and one of the more petty outcomes of these great changes was that Mark Semyonovich was offered a room of his own in a two-room flat in house no. 1 on Komsomol Cul-de-Sac. This room was twice as big as the barracks-block room that Mark Semyonovich and Antonina had occupied previously. It had a kitchen, a bathroom and a water closet, and all with only one other person sharing— Shurochka the Idiot.

Mark Semyonovich had received his certificate of entitlement on Saturday, and on Sunday, after packing his own things and Tonka's into bundles and tying together with string a bundle of books from his still-small library, he went out onto Poperechno-Pochtamtskaya Street hoping to catch some means of transport. He hadn't figured on it being a Sunday, when most of the state's trucks would be standing idle. And ordinary automobiles were no good to him. He stood there waving his hand for a long time. Two trucks went by without stopping. The third, a dump truck, did stop, but it had just been carrying coal and was so dirty that after glancing into the back Shubkin said no thank you. He had already given up hope when a black raven pulled to a sharp halt beside him.

You can easily imagine what feelings Mark Semyonovich experienced at the sight of such a familiar form of transport. He shuddered, expecting a squad of Ministry of the Interior agents to come tumbling out of the vehicle and grab him by his lily-white arms. But there was no squad in the van; there was only the driver, Senior Sergeant Opryzhkin, with a cheerful expression on his face.

“In you get, Pops, I'll take you,” he said, swinging open the right-side door.

“Where will you take me?” Shubkin asked cautiously.

“Where you need to go, that's where.”

As anyone who has read
Chonkin
will remember—and anyone who has not will know anyway—in popular speech the phrase “where you need to go” was used to refer to places where no one really wanted to go. In other words, the public prosecutor's office, the police and other agencies of violent coercion. So it is quite easy to appreciate how Shubkin felt and to understand why he began assuring Opryzhkin that he didn't need to go anywhere.

“If you don't need to go anywhere,” said Opryzhkin, getting angry, “then why are you standing here waving your hand about?”

Recovering his wits and realizing the driver was alone and the situation in general didn't really look much like an arrest, Mark Semyonovich told the senior sergeant that he did need a vehicle, only not this kind, but one in which he could move furniture.

“So what's wrong with this one?” Opryzhkin asked, almost offended. “It's no different from a bus, it's just got bars on the windows.”

He proved to be quite talkative, and on the way he explained that his job was very hard work, his family was big and his paycheck was small, and the boss of the prison, Major Bugrov, was a good guy and allowed him to earn a bit on the side when he wasn't busy transporting prisoners.

“Naturally, I split the proceeds with him, how else? If you want to live, give the other guy a break. Isn't that right, Pops?”

“Perhaps,” Shubkin answered evasively.

Opryzhkin began pondering some thought and then he asked: “Generally speaking, Pops, what d'you reckon, is life better now than under Stalin, or worse?”

Of course, if Shubkin had been more cautious, he might have suspected that this question was a deliberate provocation, but Mark Semyonovich had never been cautious and even the camp had failed to teach him much in this regard. He believed there was some good in every man, and so he answered Opryzhkin ingenuously that in his view life was much better without Stalin than with him.

“That's what I think too,” Opryzhkin agreed readily. “Although, of course, under him there was order. But then again people were scared all the time. For instance, under Stalin, would I have been earning a bit on the side? Not on your life.”

22

We parted company with Aglaya Stepanovna Revkina at that dramatic moment when, after spotting the black raven, she had prepared herself for the worst. She was expecting the people who had come up to the second floor landing to start hammering on her door with their fists and demanding that she open it in the name of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. And then, without waiting for a reply, they would start breaking the door in or shooting through it with all sorts of firearms. But none of this happened. The people stomped about a bit on the landing, then began quietly walking back downstairs. Aglaya waited a little longer before peeping around the edge of the net curtain and only then realized the banal purpose for which the black vehicle was being used.

This picture was perhaps more effective than the Twentieth Party Congress, the current Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU and any other events in convincing Aglaya that the era of Stalin had retreated irretrievably into the past.

Aglaya was actually rather disappointed to discover that no one was planning to arrest her. Her willingness to die a heroic death had been wasted, and now she would have to live an ordinary, everyday, boring life once again. As soon as she realized this, she immediately felt hungry. She stuck her Walther back in the felt boot and stuck her head into the refrigerator—it was empty.

The grocery store was closed since it was Sunday, so Aglaya decided to visit the tearoom and take breakfast there, settle her nerves a bit and listen to what the people were saying.

In the yard the unloading of the black raven was proceeding under the gaze of the inhabitants of house no. 1-a, who had nothing better to do. They all had nothing better to do because it wasn't a working day and it wasn't raining. The grannies had lined themselves up on the bench to observe the proceedings and pass comment.

“All them books, look at them all!” Greta the Greek said in amazement. “What does he need all those for? They collect heaps of dust!”

“And bedbugs!” put in Old Nadya.

“Nah, bedbugs don't live in books,” Greta the Greek said doubtfully.

“Why can't they live in books? They live everywhere else, so why not in books?”

“Well they don't live in books,” Greta the Greek insisted. “They live in the wall, in the bed, close to your body. But why would they live in books, what would they feed on? Eat the letters, would they?” She even laughed at the very idea.

“The point is, what's the good of so many of them?” said Old Nadya, giving way. “Just to show people how smart you are, reading all those books. But no one's going to believe it anyway.”

“Why wouldn't they believe it?” Greta the Greek objected. “My grandson Iliukha's always reading too, all the time. Even in bed and at the table. And sometimes he gets so carried away reading it's like he's blind and deaf. He laughs and he cries. I tell him: ‘Iliukha! What is it? What do you want with these books, if they only make you suffer like that? Why don't you run outside and play with the boys, kick a ball about and get a breath of fresh air?' But oh no! He just goes on reading and reading . . .”

Old Nadya was about to express some opinion of her own on this matter, but the grannies were suddenly distracted by the appearance in the yard of Aglaya, who, as the grannies observed, was not in a good mood following the previous day.

The process of unloading the black raven was approaching its completion. Antonina and the driver were placing bundles of books and belongings on the nickel-plated bedstead with four knobs on its corner posts that had been taken out beforehand. Shubkin was walking toward Aglaya, carrying his Record radio in front of him. He seemed to be embarrassed, or perhaps even scared, at the sight of his future neighbor and stepped aside so she couldn't bite him, but he said hello. Aglaya surprised even herself by mumbling “Morning” and walked on, accompanied on her way by the glances of the neighbors sitting on the bench.

The tearoom was located in a single-story wooden building with a high porch and a planking veranda. Sitting on the veranda was a bearded beggar with a pack of dirty little dogs huddling close against each other and a piece of cardboard lying in front of him with the words WE WANT TO EAT TOO. Beside it lay a cap for donations. Aglaya had encountered this beggar in many different parts of town. She had never given him anything and never seen anyone else give him anything, but this time in some mysterious fit of generosity she tipped out all the change in her purse into the cap. The tearoom was dim and smoky, damp and stuffy. The floor was not covered with carpet but with a thick layer of sawdust that couldn't possibly have been changed since the First World War, and walking on it was like walking on powdery snow. There were sticky flypapers dangling in yellow spirals above the tables, and hanging along the wall that divided the kitchen from the dining area, there were two lengths of canvas bearing aphorisms. The first (which they hadn't got around to taking down yet) said:

NUTRITION IS ONE OF THE FUNDAMENTAL CONDITIONS OF HUMAN EXISTENCE AND ONE OF THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS OF HUMAN CULTURE.

I. Stalin

And the second said:

GOOD, WHOLESOME FOOD MUST BE EATEN WITH APPETITE AND EXPERIENCED AS A PLEASURE.

Acad. I. Pavlov

There was a wide variety of people gathered in the tearoom. Chairmen of local collective farms, engineers on working visits, land surveyors, agricultural machinery operators, drivers, public prosecutors and other folk either more or less important, some wearing jackets, others in shirts with short sleeves and some simply in their undershirts.

The place was never empty on Sundays, but today the number of visitors had been sharply increased by the arrival of the Harvest soccer team from the nearby town of Zatyopinsk. The final of the district cup was being played at the Dolgov stadium, and the visiting team had turned up complete with two trainers, six reserves and the medical assistant Tamara, who was holding a large traveling bag near her feet containing bandages and lotions for dealing with the various kinds of trouble that might occur during the forthcoming game and especially after it. The point being that the Harvest team and Dolgov's own Avant-Garde were constant rivals. Both teams had their own supporters who beat up visiting sportsmen after the game if the visitors won, and very severely too, regarding it as their patriotic duty. Harvest had defeated the Dolgov team for several years in a row in every game, both at home and away, and so their players had been beaten up regularly. There had been times when they were willing to cut a deal with their rivals to draw or even lose a game, but the next time they played, they were carried away by their sporting enthusiasm, forgot all about the inevitable punishment in prospect and, unfortunately for them, won yet again. The footballers had moved several tables together by a window and were drinking compote made from dried fruits with macaroni and ground beef and keeping quiet, trying not to attract any special attention.

The tearoom smelled of sour cabbage soup, damp sawdust, machine oil and sweat.

Aglaya's feet sank into the sawdust as she advanced into the hall, screwing up her eyes and trying to spot a free place through the thick tobacco smoke. She spotted Stepan Kharitonovich Shaleiko by the window, red-faced and jolly in a Ukrainian shirt and suspenders, gabardine riding breeches and white canvas boots cleaned with tooth powder. His canvas jacket was hanging on the back of the chair beside him, his canvas briefcase was lying on the chair and his wide-brimmed straw hat was lying on the briefcase. Aglaya thought Shaleiko would turn away and pretend he hadn't noticed her, but in fact, when he caught sight of her in the distance, he began smiling broadly and waving his arms around, inviting her to join him at his table.

“Siddown,” he said when she got closer. He moved the jacket to the back of his own chair, stood the briefcase by his feet and, since he could find no other place for it, placed the hat on his head. There was a plate in front of him, smeared with the remains of macaroni and ground beef, with an aluminum fork, an empty spirits glass and a half-drunk glass of beer. The combined beverage with which Shaleiko was regaling himself on this day off work went by the name of “one fifty with a chaser,” since it consisted of 150 cubic centimeters of vodka and a glass of beer. How many “chasers” Shaleiko had consumed remained uncertain, and his tongue managed the conversation clumsily.

Shaleiko sat Aglaya down beside him and clapped his hands, and immediately the waitress, Anyuta, appeared—fat and square with short legs and extremely popular with heavy truck drivers who happened to be passing through.

“Right,” Shaleiko said to her, “for the lady a hundred grams of Moldavian cognac and as for the food—everything that Aglaya Stepanovna desires.”

The number of dishes in the tearoom that could be defined as desirable and appropriate in terms of Academician Pavlov's definition was restricted to two: macaroni and ground beef, and goulash with stewed cabbage. Aglaya ordered the goulash and in the meantime sipped at her cognac without any food.

Shaleiko watched her closely and good-naturedly with his small eyes under ginger eyelashes.

“Yesterday at the conference,” he said, swigging from his beer mug, “I was listening to you, Stepanovna, and I was delighted that we still have communists like you. Honest, principled, courageous. Especially among the female sex. To tell the truth, our menfolk are a bit short on gumption. But you gave it to them—smack between the horns!” He even swung his fist through the air in imitation of the blow struck by Aglaya against some horned creature. “That was really something. So here's to you. Well done!” He took another swig. “But you know, yesterday I was so upset, really upset I was! After I heard the way you spoke and the way they all shouted at you, I was so upset I just wanted to drive straight back home. And I was going to, but on the way out of town—bang, the clutch went. We've just pulled out on the highway and my driver's fiddling with something. I ask him what's up; he says, ‘The clutch.' So, of course, we turn back again.” Shaleiko took a pack of Northern Palmyra papyrosas out of his side pocket, offered Aglaya one and lit up himself. “Went all over the place, begging around the motor depots, the Agricultural Technical Station—not a clutch to be had anywhere. Spent the night in the Collective Farm Workers' House. They promised me one in the district Party committee garage, only not till Monday morning, they said. No sooner, just no way. Spent the night in the Collective Farm Workers' House. Lying there alone, smoking, thinking. What's happening to us, I'm thinking, why are we all like, you know what. I'm a Cossack. I went into attack at the front without any helmet—and I wasn't afraid. And now at this conference I sit there with my head pulled into my shoulders, sit there without breathing, thinking, Lord let it pass me by, don't let them call me up. My whatsit . . . my clutch has gone, and there I am lying in the hotel thinking what's going on here—you know? Only yesterday everyone was for Comrade Stalin, every single one, but today every single one's against? They've already made up this ditty about it. You haven't heard it, I suppose?”

“No, I haven't.”

“I'll tell it to you.” He leaned down toward her ear and recited: “Europe thinks we're really crass, thinks our gray cells must have gone. Thirty years licking one . . . backside—begging your pardon—turns out it was the wrong one.”

“Rotten filth,” was Aglaya's reaction.

“That's right, it's filth,” Shaleiko agreed readily. “My driver told me. You know, he's not politically aware, just comes out with anything he hears. But if the people are putting that kind of thing around, it's significant. So here's what I think. Yesterday everyone was in favor of being in favor, and today everyone's in favor of being against, and hands up, everyone! Some communists—just a bunch of backsides. I was so upset I would have gone back home, but my clutch went, and I put it in that garage there. And I'm lying in the hotel, thinking. If they touch Aglaya Revkina, I think, I'm going too. Myself, voluntarily. Party card down on the table. And that's it. I'm Shaleiko, I'm a Cossack. Anyuta,” he managed to grab hold of the edge of the waitress's apron as she went running by. “Why do you just keep running past us all the time, ignoring your customers like that? Bring me the same again.”

“With a chaser?” Anyuta asked.

“With a chaser. A hundred fifty. And another hundred grams of cognac for Aglaya Stepanovna. You know yesterday my clutch went . . .”

Anyuta left without waiting to hear what came next.

“Backsides, that's all they are,” Shaleiko went on. “But you gave it to them smack between the eyes. And when you left, that ugly pig Porosyaninov said we had to address the question of your continued membership immediately. But Nechaev stood up for you. He's a straight guy. Said we're not going to ruin anyone for no reason. Comrade Revkina, he says, is basically a good comrade, and we can work on this misunderstanding of hers with her. That's what he said: we'll work on it. So it's not all been decided for certain yet. No need for you to be bothered, Stepanovna, so let's drink to you. And I . . . I got stuck here, my clutch bust . . .”

They drank and ate and drank some more. Shaleiko mellowed, unfastened another button, gave Aglaya an attentive glance. He'd liked the look of her before anyway, and now he'd seen more than just a Party comrade in her, and under the influence of the cognac and gratifying words, she began feeling better disposed to Shaleiko herself.

“You know what, Stepanovna, I could tell you, in general, you're a pretty likable kind of woman. Attractive. Meaning good-looking. And what I was thinking was . . .” He looked around and began whispering. “After all, you and me, we're sort of . . . kind of . . . So, maybe you could invite me around?” he asked, emphasizing the first syllable of “invite.”

“When?” asked Aglaya.