She stops, looks intently at him, and sketches on the ground with the switch: “Gare.”
“Gare means station,” she says.
Izabella always pronounces new words so calmly and distinctly that they etch themselves in Yuzuf’s memory. The slightly crooked letters traced on the damp earth stay right in front of him, even after the waves wash them away. Gare is train station. Billet is ticket. Quai is platform. Chemin is road. La destination is where you’re going. Voyageur is traveler. Partir is to leave. Revenir is to return. There are lots of new words today and he’ll need to memorize them before the next lesson.
“Here’s a saying for you about this topic,” says Izabella. “Partir, c’est mourir un peu. ‘To leave is to die a little.’”
Yuzuf already knows a lot of French sayings that are spirited and apt, about love and war, kings and sailors, sheep and fried eggs. But this one seems sad, as if it’s not French at all.
“Isn’t there a happier one?”
“Sorry, yes – I meant to give you a different one. How about this: Pour atteindre son but il ne faut qu’aller. ‘To get to one’s goal, one must get going.’”
Beautiful words. Yuzuf crouches and draws a finger along letters that are already half-dissolved in the waves that have lapped at the shore: “partir,” “revenir.” He wants to draw a tired person who’s wandering stubbornly, who’s been gnawing at his own lip, and is firmly squeezing a staff in his hand. He’s going somewhere far away, maybe to his destination or maybe back home. Izabella ruffles the front of Yuzuf’s hair and walks away from the shore, unexpectedly finishing the lesson earlier than usual.
Shortly thereafter, Volf Karlovich suspects that an interest in medicine has awakened in Yuzuf. He’d previously been indifferent to what was happening in the infirmary during the day and only ran there in the evenings because he needed to help his mother clean, but Yuzuf has suddenly begun frequenting the examination room, stealing in quietly behind Leibe, perching himself in the corner, sniffling and staring with huge eyes like his mother’s.
By this time, the infirmary has already expanded to two buildings stuffed with bunks, and Leibe has finally divided the space into male and female sections, separating out a tiny isolation ward for patients with infectious diseases, too. The examination room is located in its old spot by the window not far from the entrance and partitioned from the main room, initially by a curtain made of bast matting, now by a durable wooden screen. There’s a chair, a pine trestle bed for examining patients, and homemade shelves with instruments all laid out in a strict order. A table was added not long ago, too, and it immediately became Leibe’s favorite place. Now he sits at it when he’s maintaining his patient registry log; he had previously needed to settle himself sideways on the windowsill.
The huge gray ledger’s appearance alone instills patients’ deep respect. Their respect turns to awe when Volf Karlovich leafs through the thick, stiff, brownish pages, written all over in his tiny floating hand. Semruk’s peasants deferentially call him “our doc.”
Leibe always receives patients. There are no infirmary office hours, weekends, or holidays. If something happens during the night, people knock on the window and the sleepy Leibe hurries to the examining room, pulling on the white lab coat that has recently appeared for him; Kuznets brought it in gratitude for strictly confidential treatment of a disease in his male parts. Volf Karlovich treats everything: typhus, dysentery, scurvy, venereal diseases, and horrible pellagra, which strips skin from patients’ bodies while they’re alive. He pulls teeth, cuts off feet and hands maimed at the logging site, repairs hernias, delivers babies, and performs abortions (not in secret at first, but more covertly after the resolution of 1936). There’s only one diagnosis he can’t deal with, the one most commonly encountered: severe malnutrition. It’s a diagnosis he’s forbidden to make, which he thus notes in the ledger with a vague “cardiovascular inefficiency.”
And here’s the seven-year-old Yuzuf, who’s tall but also as skinny as a pole, big-boned, and as long-legged as a compass, too. Volf Karlovich tries to feed him extra: grateful patients bring the doc a sack of berries or a handful of nuts or some fresh nettles for soup or dandelion root (which Leibe has long grown accustomed to brewing instead of coffee). But what’s the use? Yuzuf’s young body is growing and his arms and legs have remained as scrawny as before, like sticks.
One particular day, the boy is sitting quietly by the wooden screen, not stirring, as usual. He’s looking, unblinking, at the patient, a stooped old man with wrinkled, large-pored skin like dried orange peel. The man has disrobed to his underpants, displaying for Leibe knobbly joints like large lumps and fingers deformed by arthritis that look as if they’ve been broken. Leibe prescribes bilberries, stone bramble, and rowan berries to the old man, in any form and at maximum quantities, plus a glass of home brew for serious pain. What other options were there? Home brew, a time-tested painkiller, has to be used in many cases.
Then Leibe turns to Yuzuf:
“So, are you interested? This is arthritis, a disease of the bones and joints. Did you know, young man, that there are more than two hundred bones in the human body and each of them can become inflamed, change its contour or size, get infected …”
Yuzuf begins touching his own knees, ankles, and ribs; his entranced gaze doesn’t budge from the doctor.
“Right here,” says the doctor, taking Yuzuf by a skinny wrist, “is the ulna, which goes up to the elbow. And the one above, the humerus, going up to the shoulder. Then there’s the clavicula, costae …”
A sudden warmth rises to Leibe’s cheeks: for a moment he felt he was back at the university rostrum, in the crosshairs of hundreds of young, attentive eyes. Recovering from his self-consciousness, he continues his story. That evening he hurries off to the commandant to ask for several agitational posters “for the ideological decoration of places offering medical service to the population.” He returns to the infirmary after his request has been fulfilled and nervously spreads out on the table pictures of hale and hearty muscular athletes of both genders who proudly carry scarlet banners greeting the country’s leadership. Volf Karlovich toils over them all night, muttering in both Latin and German, and tracing his pencil along well-fed, tanned bodies unthreatened by either malnutrition or pellagra. The anatomical diagrams are ready in the morning. The athletes are still parading with flags but they’re also displaying for the world exactly four hundred and six bones – long, short, flat, and irregular – two hundred and three each.
Yuzuf appreciates the doctor’s work. His lips move diligently as he memorizes the tricky names in a week, searching on his own body along the way, which seems destined for this type of study, since he can touch many of the bones through his skin – from the sharp little os nasale to the barely perceptible os coccygis.
Volf Karlovich prepares a second set of educational materials in which the athletes’ trained bodies obediently demonstrate the musculoskeletal system: the sculpted vastus lateralis and gastrocnemius, the threateningly bulging pectoralis major. And Yuzuf memorizes all those quickly, too.
Inspired by his pedagogical success, Leibe proposes moving on to the structure of the internal organs, but Yuzuf unexpectedly refuses and asks permission to put the leftover posters to use as drawing paper. The disheartened Leibe agrees and Yuzuf relocates from the examination room to the wards to draw patients lying on bunks. To Volf Karlovich’s bitter disappointment, Yuzuf’s sudden fervent interest in medicine has ebbed and soon he’s disappearing again for days at a time at the clubhouse with Ikonnikov. The athletes, finely chopped into muscles and bones, and written on with Latin terms, remain hanging up in the infirmary, immeasurably strengthening the Semruk doc’s status, which is already colossal.
*
Ikonnikov has been painting his agitational art for exactly half a year. He has invited both Sumlinskys to the clubhouse for a “private view” before turning it over to the chiefs, who are out of patience. “Finally!” rejoices Izabella. “I hav
en’t been out in society for ages.”
The private view is imminent: tonight, under cover of darkness. Ikonnikov, who has become extremely emaciated of late and whose bloodshot eyes are surrounded by dark circles, has spent all day taking apart the scaffolding himself, leaving only one ladder by the wall. He locks the door, lies on his back on the floor, and begins waiting for his guests.
He lies and looks at the mural in dusky half-darkness. An orange square of light from the window creeps first along the floor, then along the wall, and later disappears entirely. Darkness comes. The lines on the ceiling disperse and dissolve in the dense night air but Ikonnikov sees them just as distinctly as during the afternoon, so he doesn’t light the lamp.
He’ll present the agitational art tomorrow. Kuznets will come, grope it with his predatory little eyes, estimate if there’s enough of an ideological message – meaning he’ll consider whether to leave it at the club or tear it the hell off to be burned and send the artist out of peaceable Semruk life, to the camps, or far beyond. Gorelov will tag along. He’ll sniff around hungrily, looking for anything he might find fault in, and he’ll surely find something. They’ll part tomorrow. He’ll leave behind this mural, a couple dozen city scenes (he’s grown bolder, hanging them on the club’s walls after the memorable night visit from the chiefs), a heap of leftover plywood scraps with pictures for Yuzuf, homemade brushes, palettes, painting knives made from the blades of one-handed saws, half-empty tubes of paints, and rags. He’ll leave behind nocturnal vigils, the smell of linseed oil and turpentine, conversations with little Yuzuf, spots of paint on his fingers, all his thoughts, and his very own self. And welcome back to the logging site: We’d grown tired waiting for you, citizen Ikonnikov.
There’s a heavy bottle hidden beyond a pile of junk in the corner. Open it? No, not now. It would be too bad to miss this moment.
Someone cautiously scratches at the door; it’s the Sumlinskys. Ikonnikov lights the kerosene lamp and goes to greet his guests. Konstantin Arnoldovich is wearing a new jacket (the clothing problem in Semruk has been resolved in a simple way because the dying leave their wardrobes to the living as an inheritance) and Izabella, whose hair is carefully styled, is leaning on her husband’s arm.
“Bonsoir,” she says sedately.
Then she cries out because Gare Saint-Lazare is looking at her from a rough, poorly planed pine wall. Next to it is Sacré-Cœur. The Tuileries. La Conciergerie. Izabella walks slowly along the wall, her long shadow floating beside her.
“Bella.” Konstantin Arnoldovich is standing by the opposite wall, arms down at his sides, and not moving. “Look, it’s Vasilevsky Island, the Sixth Line.”
Izabella slowly turns her face and walks right up to the small, rectangular canvas.
“That’s the Eighth Line,” Ikonnikov says, bringing the lamp closer.
“The Sixth, Ilya Petrovich, my dear fellow, the Sixth.” Izabella stretches her hand toward yellow and gray buildings with intricate little balconies, but she’s not touching them, she’s stroking the air. “We lived here, a little further, right in this building.” Her finger goes outside the border of the canvas, creeps along the log and pokes at the wiry oakum.
Leningrad takes up two walls of the clubhouse; Paris, Provence, and seascapes have two others; and the rest of the world takes shelter in the corners, meagerly represented by a couple of small panoramas and everyday sketches. The Sumlinskys move from Vasilevsky Island to Île de la Cité, from Quai Branly to Petersburg’s English Embankment, from Alexander the Third Bridge to Troitsky Bridge, from Bank Bridge to Pont au Change, along Canal Saint-Martin to the Lebyazhy Canal and then, further, past the Mikhailovsky Theater to the Neva …
“I’m never leaving here,” Izabella finally says. “Ilya Petrovich, I’ll live here as an apprentice, I’ll mix paints for you or wash the floors.”
“We haven’t been mixing paints for a long time. They’re sold prepared, in tubes. And this is my last day here. I’ll turn in the agitational art tomorrow and it will be finita la commedia.”
The Sumlinskys suddenly remember the mural – they still haven’t taken a look at it! “Where is it, maestro? Show us.”
Ikonnikov turns the wick in the kerosene lamp as far as possible – the flame flies up under the glass bell in a long, bright strip, flooding the space with yellow light – and he lifts it toward the ceiling.
There’s a firmament of transparent dark blue where clouds float as lightly as feathers. Four people are growing out of the ceiling’s four corners, stretching their arms upward, as if they’re trying to reach something in the center. Under their feet, somewhere far below, there are fields undulating with dark golden rye and strewn with tractors like little black boxes, forests that look like grass and have kernel-like dirigibles soaring over them, cities bristling with factory smokestacks like matchsticks, and crowded demonstrations with banners like little red snakes. That entire tempestuous and densely populated world spreads in a narrow ribbon around the edges of the ceiling, like an intricate, florid frame inside which the four main characters soar after having pushed themselves away.
A golden-haired doctor in a starched white lab coat, an athletic warrior with a rifle on his back, an agronomist with a bundle of wheat and a surveying instrument on his shoulder, and a mother with a baby in her arms – they’re young and strong, and their faces are open, brave, and extraordinarily tense, showing one single aspiration: to reach a goal. But what goal? The center of the ceiling is empty.
“They’re reaching for what doesn’t exist, right?”
“No, Bella.” Konstantin Arnoldovich places a thin hand at his lower lip and tugs at his sparse little beard. “They’re reaching for one another.”
“But, Ilya Petrovich,” Izabella suddenly remembers, “where’s the actual agitational part?”
“It will come,” he grins. “I still have one detail left to paint. As it happens, I’ll have time to do that during the night.”
After the Sumlinskys leave, he pulls the scaffolding ladder out to the center of the room, sits on the lower step, and squeezes a thick squiggle of blood-red cadmium on the palette with a pensive smile.
Creeaaak! The door swings wide open, letting Gorelov’s stocky figure over the threshold. He was spying, the dog.
“Breaking rules, are we?” he hisses. “Leading a nocturnal life? Hosting guests?”
He’s in no rush as he swaggers into the clubhouse. Sniffling loudly, his eyes roam the ceiling, the ladder, and Ikonnikov’s motionless figure sitting on it. Gorelov stops in front of him, pressing his hands to his hips and pensively moving his heavy lower jaw.
“Come on, report to the minder, son-of-a-bitch citizen Ikonnikov. Tell me what you and the Sumlinskys were whispering about.”
“We were discussing the agitational art,” says Ikonnikov, raising his eyes to the ceiling. “The sum total of ideas placed in it, its sufficiency for concrete agitational and educational goals, and the potential subjective particularities of how certain individuals at our inhabited locality will perceive it.”
“You’re lying …” Gorelov brings his face closer; his eyes are like wide-open slots. “Fine, you puffed-up dauber, just wait till you end up at the logging site with me, then we’ll have a chat. Or are you thinking you might talk your way into staying here? Go on paintering away instead of doing honest labor?”
By all indications, Gorelov has somehow found out that Ikonnikov recently wrote a petition to the commandant, proposing to organize an artel of art producers in Semruk. That dispatch contained a detailed description of the type of production this artel could create (“high quality oil paintings with patriotic and agitational content, all possible topics, including historical”), who could be the consumers of their production (“cultural and community centers, village reading rooms, libraries, cinemas, and other places for the cultural entertainment and enlightenment of the working masses”), as well as an approximate calculation of income from the activity. The sum turned out to be impressive. I
gnatov has chosen to resolve the matter after receipt of the agitational art at the clubhouse.
Ikonnikov keeps silent, rustling at his palette. Gorelov abruptly grabs the brush from him and pokes it under his ribs with a stealthy motion, as if it were a knife. For a moment it seems as if the sharp handle has speared his skin. Ikonnikov rasps hoarsely, seizes the brush, and attempts to deflect it from himself, but Gorelov has a firm grasp, as if he’s caught the edge of a rib with a steel hook.
“Well, you might get to loaf around in an artel for a while.” Gorelov’s hot, sour breath is in Ikonnikov’s ear. “But it’s proven artists, not rebels like you, who paint pictures for the Soviet people in this country.”
“Stalin … Twenty-four busts …” Ikonnikov is wriggling on the ladder like a pinned moth.
“You want to be an artist, then you need to prove you’re worthy! Choose, you bastard. You’re either with us or you’re at the logging site tomorrow.”
“What … do you want?” The brush has been driven into either his lung or his diaphragm and is ready to pierce; it’s impossible to breathe.
“I repeat: what were you whispering about with the Sumlinskys?”
“About Leningrad!”
Gorelov takes a step back. Ikonnikov collapses to the floor, wheezing as he draws in air, and coughing incessantly.
“There you go!” Gorelov looks at the brush in his hands with disgust, breaks it on his knee, and tosses it into the darkness; the pieces bounce along the floorboards, rolling into various corners. “You’ll write down everything, who said what, what you were all laughing about, any bad-mouthing …” He straightens his belt, which has slipped to the side, and pulls down his uniform jacket. “And you’ll bring it to me tomorrow. If you do it before the chiefs come to inspect your agitational art, you’ll have your artel. If you don’t, then sharpen your saw. I’ll see to it you’re assigned to my shift. That’s all, you son of a bitch, dismissed.”
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