Ice Trilogy

by Vladimir Sorokin

  Astronomy was studied only in the third year at university. Nevertheless, I began to race from my physics and mathematics classes to attend the lectures of Professor Karlov, a well-known astronomer and specialist on the spectral analysis of planets. Listening to his rather muffled voice talking about the stellar parallax, the satellites of Mars, sunspots, the orbits of comets, and meteorite showers, I closed my eyes and forgot about everything. I collapsed inward and hung in starry space. And this feeling turned out to be stronger than all others. It was incredibly pleasurable. I even stopped hearing Karlov himself. And I forgot about astronomy. I simply hung amid the planets and stars. It continued this way from month to month. I went to other lectures less and less frequently. I barely passed the first term and just managed to begin the second semester. During the summer all the students worked to make money. I also decided to help Auntie with money. At first I was set up at the Krasny Putilovets factory as a maintenance worker, but on the second day I experienced an extraordinary irritability and feeling of oppression from the machines and mechanisms. The people working with these huge machines irritated me even more: there was something menacing and doomed about them. The plant itself I found unbearably ugly. I left Krasny Putilovets and got a job washing dishes in a restaurant at a gambling house on Vladimirsky Prospect. The place was maintained by a typical nepman who looked like he’d come straight out of a Mayakovsky poster — fat and constantly smoking a cigar. I thought about the planets and stars while I washed the dishes. They were always with me: I followed their orbits, delighted in the fluid rotation of the heavenly bodies.

  In September I again headed for Karlov’s lectures. The astronomy course lasted one school year. Karlov always began his course with a new stream of third-year students. I again plunged into the introductory lectures with pleasure. I closed my eyes. And I hung there imagining the huge star Betelgeuse. Auditorium No. 8 became my second home. I stopped going to other lectures entirely.

  And once, when I was hanging, someone touched me on the shoulder.

  “Are you all right?” a woman’s voice asked me.

  I opened my eyes. The auditorium was already empty. A girl sat next to me. She had short black hair and slightly slanted eyes that looked at me with amusement.

  “Do you work at night or something? Don’t get enough sleep?”

  “No...” I parted with my stupor with displeasure.

  “I always watch you, how you doze during the lectures,” she grinned.

  “I’m not dozing,” I answered, looking into her eyes.

  She stopped grinning.

  “Which...class are you in?”

  “I’m a second year,” I answered.

  “Then why do you come to our lectures?”

  “I truly love the Universe,” I admitted openly.

  She looked at me with interest. We got to talking. Her name was Masha Dormidontova. She had been observing me for a whole month. The student who always sat in lectures with closed eyes and an aloof expression interested her. Leaving the physics and mathematics building, we walked along the embankment. Masha asked me questions. I answered absentmindedly. She was animated, with quick reactions and a lively mind. Her father served in the navy. She was studying physics and was enthralled by a fashionable science — meteoritics. Walking around the city with her and listening to her rapid, emotional speech, at first I believed that her only passion was indeed meteorites. Her slanted eyes shining, she spoke enthusiastically about meteorite showers, zodiacal light, iron meteorites with Widmanstätten patterns and stone figures — chondrites and achondrites. But fairly soon it became clear that behind meteoritics there was a specific person, “bold, smart, and decisive,” who was presently searching for the largest meteorite in Siberia. She talked about this person with obvious excitement. His name was Leonid Kulik. He was a senior scientific worker at the Mining Institute. Clearly, Masha was far from indifferent to him. I asked about the meteorite that Kulik was searching for. She said that it was an enormous fireball, which had fallen twenty years ago and had caused a sensation throughout Siberia. Still talking, we eventually came to her home on Ligovka Street, near the Moscow station. Masha said goodbye to me affably, adding: “See you tomorrow!”

  And I made my way back home to the Moika. The meeting with Masha changed nothing in me. I continued attending Karlov’s lectures, collapsing inwardly and hanging. This intrigued Masha. She always sat next to me. At first she tried to ask me funny questions in a whisper. But I didn’t answer. And she stopped. But after Karlov’s last words, she would poke me in the shoulder and say, “Finita!” And I would open my eyes.

  Karlov’s lecture was always last. If Masha didn’t stay in the department on Komsomol business or didn’t go off to see Kulik at the Mining Institute, I would walk her home. We went on foot or took the tram. I always accompanied her home. She accepted this as a matter of course. She stopped expecting masculine attention from me, deciding, most likely, that I was “a bit touched.” Having assigned me the role of confidant of the male sex, she would pour out her soul to me on our walks, telling me her innermost secrets. She enjoyed this. She spoke about Kulik very cautiously, though always with excitement. When Kulik set off for a three-month expedition looking for the mysterious meteorite, Masha begged “desperately” to go with him, but there was an iron rule on expeditions: no women allowed. The expedition didn’t find the meteorite. But it did determine the exact time and place of its descent. When Masha showed me a clipping from a newspaper with Kulik’s article “The Tungus Meteorite,” I immediately saw when it fell to earth: June 30, 1908. I suddenly remembered the unusual thunder that Mama had heard during my birth. I closed my eyes. And laughed unexpectedly.

  “What is it?” asked Masha.

  “I was born that very day. June 30, 1908,” I replied.

  She was struck by this coincidence. And she promised to tell Kulik about it. But I forgot about the Tungus meteorite (after all, it had already fallen) and once again plunged into the dear world of the Universe.

  I passed the winter term with two incompletes. But, miraculously, I wasn’t expelled; they just made me retake physics and logic during the summer terms. I vaguely followed what was happening not just in the university but in the country as well. Students were discussing Trotsky’s exile to Alma-Ata, the struggle in the Party leadership, the peasants’ sabotage of state grain procurements. I would pass them by or sit with a remote look. I felt good. I had a fulcrum — the planets and the stars. They were always with me. I didn’t think about the future at all. I aspired to nothing. What should one strive for when everything was there already? I pressed my forehead to the marble lion. And floated in Ganymede’s orbit, between Io and Callisto.

  But reality soon reminded me of its existence.

  In May, returning home from the university, I found Chekists there. They were searching of our closet. Auntie wasn’t there. It turned out that in the church where she served, they had conducted a confiscation of church valuables, during which Auntie grabbed a heavy baptismal cross from a Chekist and hit him over the head. She was arrested. I was taken to the GPU on Gorokhovaya Street and interrogated. But they let me go. I tried to find out what happened to Auntie, but only learned that she was imprisoned in Kresty and awaiting trial. A month passed. Auntie was sentenced to five years and sent to Solovki. I never saw her again.

  And a few weeks after the trial I was dismissed from the university. There were more than enough reasons: a non-proletarian background, an anti-Soviet aunt, my poor progress. Nor was I a member of the Komsomol. The secretary of our department’s Komsomol had long ago christened me an “alien element.”

  I took my dismissal calmly. I could attend Karlov’s lectures without a student card. And I managed to steal two books on astronomy from the library. But Masha was very upset. She went to the dean twice and to the Komsomol committee on my behalf, but without any results. We continued to meet at the lectures and to walk around the city.

  Soon I realized that I had nothing t
o eat: Aunt Flora’s stores of barley and flax oil had dried up. I sold her sewing machine. Buying grain, crackers, lard, sunflower oil, carrots, and garlic, I ate my fill and hid the remainder in the chest of drawers. In the morning I set off for the university. But there I found something I had neglected to consider: the lecture course in astronomy was over. Exams were beginning. Disappointed, I headed home. News awaited me there as well: the building manager was sitting in my room. He told me that if I didn’t stop my anti-Soviet propaganda, the tenants would petition for my eviction. I listened to him silently. He left, slamming the door. I realized that, taking advantage of my helpless situation, the building manager simply wanted to take my room away from me. I picked up my two books on astronomy and went outside. It was a warm, sunny June day. I wandered aimlessly around the city and felt that it was pushing me out. There was no place left for me in it. And nothing tied me to it. I walked as far as Nevsky Prospect, turned, and ambled in the direction of St. Isaac’s. I wanted to put my hands on its columns. And press my face to the cold, smooth stone. I took a few steps and ran into Masha. We bumped into each other so hard that my books fell on the pavement. Her portfolio fell open, and her papers tumbled out.

  “Lord,” Masha muttered, recoiling and pressing her palm to her forehead: her forehead had hit my chin.

  I looked at her, crazed. Collecting herself, she started laughing. I helped her put her papers together and picked up my books.

  “This is insane!” she said, shaking her head and laughing. “You know, I was talking about you just half an hour ago.”

  “With whom?” I asked.

  “With Kulik. Do you want to go on an expedition? Two of their people have come down with dysentery. And they’re leaving the day after tomorrow.”

  I looked at her silently, rubbing my chin. And suddenly, in one second, just as it happened after the blast, after my head spinning, after Kiev and counting all the corners, I felt that I was setting out. I had to move. Farther on.

  And I answered, “I want to.”

  The Expedition

  The next day at 9:00 a.m. Masha and I entered the building housing the Mining Institute. We walked down a dim hallway and soon stopped near a door with a new copper plate that read METEORITE DEPARTMENT. The plate looked unusual. Masha knocked on the door. No one answered. She put her ear to the door.

  “Lord, don’t tell me he’s already in a meeting!”

  “Not yet, but he’ll definitely be heading there soon,” came a slightly haughty, high-pitched voice behind our backs.

  We turned around. Before us stood a thin man with glasses and thick, light-brown mustaches à la Nietzsche. He was dressed in an emphatically casual manner.

  “Leonid Andreich!” Masha prattled, and I realized that she was deeply in love with Kulik.

  “This is your protégé?” asked Kulik, glancing at me with his intelligent, piercing, and somewhat mocking eyes. “He’s the one who was born June 30, 1908?”

  “Yes...this is Snegirev. He’s been dismissed from the university, but he’s — ” Masha muttered, but Kulik interrupted her.

  “I don’t care about that. Have you been on an expedition before?”

  “No.”

  “All right,” Kulik’s eyes drilled right through me. “Do you know how to dig?”

  “Well...” I faltered.

  “Haul heavy loads?”

  “In principle...yes.”

  “In principle! Well, I’ll tell you the way it goes.” Kulik took out a worn, gilded watch, looked at it, and put it back. “In principle, I’ll get rid of you halfway there. And now — follow me.”

  He turned sharply on his thin legs and took off in a sweeping stride, almost running along the hallway. Masha and I hurried after him. Kulik turned once, twice, ran up a staircase, and disappeared into the open doors of an auditorium. We ran in after him.

  “Close the door!” he shouted from the rostrum.

  With a habitual movement Masha fastened the hook. I sat at the edge of the room, half turned, and surveyed the place: there were sixteen people sitting in the spacious lecture hall.

  Kulik took out a crumpled handkerchief and wiped his glasses. He put them on, immediately took complete control of the rostrum with his long, wiry fingers, and began speaking.

  “Hello, comrades. Now then, today we will get acquainted with our greenhorn meteorologists, that is, the newcomers, and we’ll correct the vector of our route to the place where the Tungus meteorite fell. Considering that only three of you remain from last year’s expedition, since the rest I had to throw out to the dogs, I’ll begin by introducing each of you.”

  He opened a thick, well-thumbed notebook and introduced everyone, naming each person’s surname and profession. He didn’t mention me. Closing the notebook with a bang, Kulik continued.

  “Now I will permit myself to make a short announcement about the so-called Tungus meteorite, because of which so many spades have been broken and so many kilometers traversed. Thus, on June 30, 1908, a huge fireball fell to earth in eastern Siberia. Siberians saw and heard its fall; it created quite a hullabaloo and left incredible traces: a powerful wave of sound carried across all Siberia, forests were felled over hundreds of square kilometers, and there was a huge flash of light and an earthquake, recorded by an impartial seismograph in the basement of the Irkutsk observatory. The meteorite was seen not only by thousands of illiterate and superstitious inhabitants of eastern Siberia but by completely civilized people looking out the window of a train near Kansk — with whom I have had lengthy discussions. To summarize the accounts of eyewitnesses, it can be confidently stated that a huge meteorite fell in Siberia, probably one of the largest that has ever plummeted to earth. But twenty years ago meteorite studies had not yet won irrefutable rights to citizenship as an independent science. Meteorites were studied not only by scientists but by blatant charlatans, who introduced many lies and much confusion into the story of the Tungus meteorite. To the shame of our native science, no one even tried to organize an expedition in the hot traces, literally speaking, of the meteorite: the whole thing ended with a dozen newspaper articles and pseudoscientific publications. And it was only under Soviet power that your humble servant was able to organize the first meteorite expedition, in the difficult year of 1921, thanks to the personal support of People’s Commissar Lunacharsky. Comrade Lunacharsky got the necessary sums of money through Narkompros, and NKPS — the Commissariat of Communications — sent a train car for the expedition and provided the necessary equipment. Nikolai Savelevich Trifonov, who is here with us, is the next-to-the-last of the Mohicans of that legendary expedition — en route he will tell you in more detail about the first campaign for the Tungus marvel. The first expedition didn’t find the meteorite, but was able to precisely define the area of its fall: the basin of the Stony Tunguska River, or Katanga as the Evenki people call it. Having systematically analyzed the eyewitness evidence of the fall, I came to the conclusion presented in my article for the journal Earth Science: a meteorite of colossal size fell in eastern Siberia in 1908. Unfortunately, for a number of objective and subjective reasons, one of which was NEP, the next expedition was able to leave Leningrad for Siberia only last year. This time we were aided by the academician Vernadsky and by Comrade Bukharin personally. Expedition No. 2 almost made it to the place where the meteorite fell. But ‘almost’ doesn’t count in science, comrade meteorologists. The mistake of the second expedition was in its choice of time. In order to get through the swamps of the taiga, we decided to leave for Katanga in February, when the ice would establish a natural means of access across the bogs. On the one hand, this helped; on the other, it hindered us. The horses couldn’t make it from Vanavara along the deer trails to the place where the forest had been felled: there was too much snow. Making an agreement with the Evenki, Trifonov and I traveled on reindeer, sending the whiners and panic-mongers back to Taishet. Alas, not every scientist is prepared to suffer in the name of science! After three days of the most difficult route a
cross the snow-covered taiga, our indefatigable Evenki guide, Vasily Okhchen, brought us to the edge of the collapsed forest. When Nikolai Savelevich and I climbed a hill and saw the felled, broken trees stretching to the very horizon, we felt genuine terror and joy: such a phenomenal destruction of the taiga could have happened only by the volition of an enormous meteorite! What an incredible spectacle! Centuries-old trees had been snapped like pencils! That was the power of a messenger from space that fell to earth! No wonder that the Evenki refused to go farther — the shamans forbade them to enter the ‘accursed place.’ When the meteorite fell, some of them had deer that perished there and tents that burned. Okhchen will forever remember the terrible rumble and the fire from the sky. Yes! Not only was the forest felled, it burned, was scorched by the fierce fire from the explosion. And so, comrades, the second expedition turned back. Expedition No. 3 is now in this auditorium. And I would verrrry much like to hope that it will not be overtaken by the sad fate of the second expedition! Henceforth, I will be merciless toward whiners and panic-mongers. I am certain that there are none among you. And so! There are more of us this time. There are people here of different professions: astronomers, geophysicists, meteorologists, drillers, and even a cameraman. The student enthusiasts desiring to come with us will, I hope, satisfy their longing for discoveries and adventures. We are taking serious gear with us: equipment for meteorological, hydrological, geological, and photographic work, sets of drills, a water pump, and various other instruments. Now, about the route...”

  Kulik stepped down from the podium, unrolled a map lying on the table, hung it on a blackboard, and picked up a wooden pointer.