Authors: Andrei Bitov
“So,” I said, taking charge of the situation. “How long were you in prison?”
“Eight years. Almost eight
…
”
“How long did it take you to write this?”
“A year. Almost a year
…
”
“How many pages in it?”
“Eight hundred. Almost. A little less.”
“And you want me to read this in a day?”
“But you won’t be able to put it down!”
It turns out you don’t even have to take charge of the situation, if it’s yours to start with. Who has read this? You’ll be the first. How did you find me? Through the address bureau. Have you, er, read me? Uh, no, I heard about you by word of mouth. And what makes you think they’ll lay a million on you? Oh, at least a million
…
His naïveté was equaled only by his experience. He had gone to prison when he wasn’t even fourteen. It cost me a mental effort to realize that this was who he
was.
That he had been sent by no one but himself.
“Why the parchment?”
“In case it gets thrown in the water. I’ve thought of every thing. I can still set a Guinness record. I can do five thousand deep knee bends. I can’t right now, without getting in shape. But I can do two thousand for sure, right in your presence. He squatted down then and there, in his socks.
I surrendered. “Spare me.”
And I couldn’t put it down
…
His eye had been shot out, back in his rural childhood, because he refused to kiss a kitten under the tail. He had learned to do deep knee bends in the punishment cell, to keep from freezing to death. He was in love for life with his grade school classmate, Vera, but had dared to declare his love only from prison, after buying a photo from a good-looking cellmate. And he received an affirmative answer to his declaration—when he opened Vera’s letter, a snapshot of her buxom older sister fell out. He decided to escape in order to get married. Having learned the regulations, he yelled to the guard, “Do not fire on a juvenile!”—and caught a bullet in the shoulder. He kept on running and felt that his arm had been completely torn off. The wounded arm was on the side without an eye, and he couldn’t see it. Then he took hold of it in the other hand and raised it to the other eye as he ran, to make sure
…
I was perishing—people kept trying to save
HIM
. She gave him a kitten, Tishka. Her mittens and fur hat were bigger than she was. And Tishka was even smaller than her mittens. I kissed her on her cold fur hat, on her mitten, on Tishka. Hurry!
Someone disturbed us. Who could this be? I wasn’t expecting him at all. A man unique on this earth, in his way. Just like me. Parents—they’re only half like you, each like his own half. But this man was just like me, like both halves. My brother, then. Although a Georgian. He was a year ahead of me.
He mustn’t see her, she mustn’t hear him. It was a one-room apartment. I hid her in the wardrobe, just as she was: in her shirt and fur hat. He was continuing to degenerate into a woman. In proof of which he had grown a beard. Women no longer interested him, as a man. For a year now he had been scouring the medical literature. This was a very rare genetic disease, which was why he felt obliged to warn me. So that from now on I could choose the right parents.
That in itself was a long story. Then he disappeared.
She emerged from the wardrobe wearing only her mittens. Her nipples smelled of naphthalene.
Tishka was the one who had it best. He slept on my jumbled manuscripts.
She was leaving. H
E
managed—scoundrel!—to kiss her hand. Otherwise she would have stuck it back in her mitten.
She forgot her book—or was it my brother’s?
The Tin Fleece of Victory.
{64}
A translation from the Georgian.
People do write!
The narrative rolled along in flowing, Nobelesque waves. It licked the shore of Colchis. A small, weary detachment, the last remnant of a mighty army. At its head Jason, wearing a “cloak with a raspberry-red lining,” no less. Behind him the man who executes every order in silence, as though his tongue had been cut out in captivity. And behind him, the man who does nothing but scratch himself—the “gallinippers” try his patience. Everyone in turn shivers with malaria. Jason alone is smooth-shaven, reflected in his own shield. Another limps at the end—his short and double-edged sword has chafed his neck, and his “loincloth is festering”. And now the mute utters his first word. “The Pontus,” he says. Short-and-Double-Edged washes his wound in sea water. They build a campfire. Gleams of firelight play in their sunken eyes. The gallinipper victim scratches his broad Ossetian chest. Sparks fly up without reaching the stars, under which inscrutable Hellas sleeps peacefully, forgetting her heroes. From the page came a whiff of the campfire, and my nostrils flared in helpless envy of this ancient-Georgian Greek.
I made haste to be saved before my time was up
…
I made haste to be baptized. That was the thing! Forty years I had waited, like a Grand Prince
{65}
—but I made haste. And did
not
die then and there. But how could I die.
…
The Eye had not died when they beat him, as a child, on the “plywood” (his chest) with a “bunk” (a rod from the head of an iron bed)
…
How could I die, when I was barely forty, in this most beautiful place on earth
…
except perhaps from happiness. The Motsameta Monastery, whose name, I learned, means “the believers,” stood on a kilometer-high precipice above the Kura,
{66}
and from the precipice one celebrated that kind of world, and a landscape also arrayed by autumn. The farther away, the clearer the air: at the bottom of it, on the bank of the floodplain, people had indeed gathered to celebrate Sunday, they were starting the shish kebab and laying out lavash and greens, and a happy cow who had sneaked up and stolen a lavash was running circles around the meadow like a dog, fleeing her pursuers, and the victims of the theft were even happier than the thief
…
“I know thy sins,” Father Tornike said, not letting me open my mouth at this first confession in my life. “I can imagine
…
And I remit them for thee
…
But do not forget, from this day hence it will be more painful for thee to sin.” And he sighed knowingly. I was wrong not to believe him! Gaily I spat on Satan in the form of a scraper and broom, for which space had been found in a corner of the church. “Pah on Satan!” Father Tornike proclaimed, and all of us, marching in single file with candles in our hands, joyously complied. It was easy then for me to spit on him! Dear Gagi, precious Father Tornike
…
It was easy for you to get your first prison term, by baptizing the Pioneer camp during swimming! The children climbed up on shore, no longer in their red neckerchiefs
…
“One glass,” Gagi used to say, “will do me for a company of soldiers.” He had to use a little more on me, at the expense of the Pioneer camp and the potential company. Dear Gagi! Remember me in your prayers
…
A certain editor, in particular, was saving me. She was attempting to arrange a trip to Tbilisi for me to participate in a roundtable on “the phenomenon of the Georgian novel.” For a start, I was given a newspaper assignment. To unmask a false hero. He had become a hero for Afghanistan, but that wasn’t enough for him: now he had saved a drowning man. As a psychological writer, I was supposed to prove that he hadn’t saved anyone; he had simply, out of inertia, been seeking “the heroic feat for which we always have room in our lives.”
{67}
For the liberal lady editor, this would be a permissible way of criticizing the war in Afghanistan.
I disliked her zeal. And I went.
The man sitting before me was very calm. As an experienced investigator, I had taken a seat with the light behind me so that I could see all the nuances of his facial expression, and so that he, accordingly, could not see mine. From the way he grinned, I imagined he had caught on. A glance sufficed him to complete his reconnaissance and concentrate on a chosen target. This, for some reason, was a loudspeaker. He oriented himself to it. Well, so I was a psychiatrist and he had a mania. I felt sure the office wasn’t bugged. I followed his glance. For some reason my patient was disturbed by a cord. It had been pulled from the outlet and was dangling somewhat short of the floor. Besides, it was tied in a knot. The knot had not been tightened. Well, but it was quite impossible to eavesdrop through that cord! The mere fact that the major had been summoned to talk to me and I was receiving him in an office—even though not my own (but how could he know it wasn’t mine?)—made me (a private, untrained, unfit for front-line service) his
…
how do they put it?
…
“junior in rank, but senior in position.” This cheered the outcast in me. My junior-in-position had accordingly remained silent and standing. I invited him to sit down and tell me the whole story. “But I didn’t plan on saving him!” the major began, not so much with irritation as with genial annoyance. “The thing of it is, it just so happened, the night before, I was reading this book by, sorry, mental lapse here, can’t think of the author. Book about one of us. Assistant company commander, he’s a hero, and his young lady is this nurse. Well, so what she does is, she saves this drowned man. Mouth-to-mouth. I remembered. I never meant to tell anyone. But Monday morning at the Academy they’re talking, how was everyone’s weekend, and they knew I’d planned to go on a fishing trip. So I said, Some fucking—pardon me—trip, when I had to dream his horsy teeth all last night. I mean, you know—mouth-to-mouth on somebody. So this fellow in my class, he writes it up in the wall newspaper. I mean, he wrote it up, but the garrison newspaper reprinted it. If I hadn’t’ve read it in that book, about the nurse, the mouth-to-mouth, I wouldn’t’ve dreamed his horsy teeth. I never planned on being a soldier. Thought about it a lot, of course. I was working at the factory, already had my five rating. So I get the notice, I’m called up: Go to training school. Well, so I went. Stopped by the plant recently—well, they all remember me, haven’t forgotten, and we had a drink, of course, I brought it with me specially. I even felt homesick for the plant. Well, can’t go back now, my qualification’s wrong, and anyhow I’m close to retirement. Soon as I finished training I got this urgent call and they put me on a plane. Where to or why, nobody knew. Then the helicopter, and an assault landing. So from my very first day, my first night. Back home they wrote that it started the twenty-first. Actually it was the twentieth. But that’s just you I’m telling, in secret. Don’t go and print it. We were the first to break into the palace. I can still see it, this blue room, all done in silk. But already empty. Just the one photo album lying on the floor. I looked at it for a minute. All these pictures of his family. Beautiful woman! You know. I’ll tell you honestly, in the beginning I wasn’t scared at all, it was even interesting. But then after I got hit the first time, I climbed into my armor and wouldn’t come out. Our Deputy Political Officer—nothing but praise for him, outstanding fellow—he says to me, Come on out of your armor (my tank, that is) or you’ll sit there forever. Well, I got hold of myself, and then I didn’t mind. You go on reconnaissance and you can’t shoot. You’ve got one combat knife for the whole squad, can you believe—the master sergeant issued them under receipt. And a forty-kilo walkie-talkie on your back. Your back’s all black and blue, sore as hell. But it’s necessary, so that they don’t notice you. You meet up with some Afghan, you have to finish him on the spot, so that he doesn’t report. Well, but since you can’t shoot, you place the knife to his ear and pound it, so that it goes ear to ear. Main thing is, keep it quiet. Well, there was this one fellow they didn’t kill, they loaded the walkie-talkie on him, like a donkey. He carried it the whole way. Then of course they liquidated him, what can you do. No great satisfaction in it. That Deputy Political Officer, he got promoted, and they sent a new one. Complete fool, still green. We crawled to their lookout—quietly, we had our feet wrapped. I stuck my head up: two men with rifles, by the campfire. I chose which to rush first, and I waved for him to go around the other side and take out the other fellow himself, and he says, ‘What?’ But I’d already rushed mine, and the other one heard and comes at me with his rifle butt. Took off half my ear. But I finished mine anyway, and the DPO, good man after all, croaked that one from behind. Was I hungry! And they’d just been eating a big flat bread. I broke it in half. It was spattered with brains, but this was a dark night, so I gave the spattered half to the DPO and kept the dry half myself. Didn’t matter, he never noticed. Then we both crawled around till morning: I’d lost my bolt when I swung my rifle butt. Never did find it. Later I substituted a Chinese bolt, it fitted, the fellows fixed the serial number for me.”
“So they gave you a Hero Star for this?” I asked.
“Nah, not for this, and besides they didn’t give it to me, just recommended me. You needed 160 killed, and I only had 129. My DPO, the one I told you about before, filled out the recommendation for the Hero, and he rounded the numbers up. He laughed. Doesn’t matter, he says, the Motherland will forgive. But there was two of us, and one star. They gave me the Red Banner of Combat. Now, your editor, she didn’t believe it that I resuscitated a drowned man. I noticed that, by the way—he was already totally drowned. The thing of it is, I’m casting my line, I look and there’s a sort of a pink bubble on the water. Turns out to be his back. He’d surfaced with his hump up, like a fishing float. Well, so I pull him out—his back’s dry, warm from the sun, but the rest of him is cold. I called, Who knows how to pump him out? And at first they’d all crowded round, but soon as I called they all scattered: Get an ambulance. Sure, an ambulance! I tried artificial respiration, didn’t properly know how. No luck! Now I remembered about the nurse, in the book. But the fellow must have been good and drunk. So I’m doing all this mouth-to-mouth with the puke. Two hours I struggled over him. Couldn’t believe it myself when he came to. At that point the ambulance pulls up. They start trying to find out who and what, but I’d had it up to here, I lit out the back way. Reeled in my lines. Some fishing trip! Our correspondent, now, the only thing I blabbed to him was how I had the fellow’s horsy teeth haunting me all night. No big deal. But he wrote it up. You ought to write about our orphanages instead. Such poverty, why, it’s terrible! I gave a talk at one of them, free, and later, can you believe it, after my talk, they stood in line to
…
just to
…
touch my hand—they’d walk away and there’s the next one
…
” The major turned aside.