by Jocelyn Parr
He was still talking, saying, Don’t pretend you don’t understand what I mean, when I know you do. You don’t work as hard as you do because of some damn timekeeper, you do it because of you. You used to do it for Bekhterev, maybe you still do.
I took the last drag of my cigarette and then leaned out the door to throw it off the balcony. Sometimes Sasha’s attachment to the past was beautiful, and sometimes he would get so caught up in how things used to be, or could have been, that he seemed to be drowning, and pulling me down with him.
I’m sure the Osorgins are fine, and I’m glad you have a new job, I said, coming fully back inside.
At the institute, the silence persisted for the first few months of 1928, so that work sounded like the shuffling of papers, the pouring of tea, the clinking of glass jars meeting each other in the sink. Drawers, cabinets, and catalogue trays slid open and closed. The typewriter cartridge shunted back to the beginning with a familiar ding.
The word about Bekhterev’s death seemed to have spread, though I don’t know what would have been said, exactly; only that in the fall we’d been poised to be a central public institution, and by winter, we seemed to have been completely forgotten. For those first months, no one came to visit, not even Luria, whose company I had come to look forward to more than I liked to admit. He was the one person who I could have talked to about missing Bekhterev, so without him I felt like I lacked even the words that would have helped me understand how I felt.
The isolation and silence that fell over us were the first signs that the mood had changed, but something else had, too. Before, we’d been in pursuit of something — an idea, a vision — and now there was the faintest feeling that we were being pursued. I started to see what Sasha meant by the tyranny of the timekeepers, because that was what Zhanna seemed to have become, an observer of our work, even if she was also meant to be part of our team. I realized that Sarkisov must have had personal conversations with each of us, tasking everyone with slightly altered responsibilities that put us on edge, at odds with each other in a way we hadn’t been before. He was our quiet puppet master. I tried to believe what I’d said to Sasha — that I appreciated the idea of someone keeping us on task, that all incitements to productivity were the same, no matter where they came from — but then Zhanna would glance my way, and I’d hate her a little for whatever murky accusation she was communicating with that glance. The atmosphere of appraisal infected us all like a disease. Just as I imagined Zhanna was evaluating my use of time, I started appraising the others, wondering what motivated them, what special role Sarkisov might have given them. It was a lonely way to be.
Instead of sharing how daunted I was by my new responsibilities surrounding the Bekhterev exhibit, I sought sympathy for how much remained to do from the cataloguing I’d begun in the fall. That work had the command of Bekhterev behind it, which meant it was an acceptable reason for delay.
So, I spent January and February absorbed with the specimens we would never display publicly. In the fall I had finished the human specimens — the baker’s wrist, the hand of the thief — but now I was cataloguing the creatures. I emptied the top shelves of their dry specimens — their weightlessness was all that united them — and began to marshal them into factions, uniting the winged creatures, the whole skeletons of rodents, the partial skeletons of larger mammals.
When I finished with the dry specimens, I moved on to the wet specimens, which were, I am not shy to admit, of a grosser, less ephemeral nature. I took Bekhterev’s specimen of the mortified hand from his desk and added it to the human collection, and for more than a moment and on more than one occasion, I found myself drift off into a reverie in which I found myself atop the mountain, standing with Sasha, screaming at the moon. There were tapeworms and leeches.
The process continued for weeks, until I came to the final set of specimens, from the ocean, which represented for me a mythical world of non-beings because they didn’t breathe or smell, and — for those that came from the deepest depths — did not see.
Eventually, I could stand back and look at the cabinets full of exquisite, strange specimens and feel satisfied with their display. The preparations lined the glass shelves, casting their shadows on the specimens beneath them, which cast their own shadows on those beneath them, so that the bottom row was all darkness and dust. Some specimens prefer the dark. They degrade in the light.
There was only one moment that interrupted this ordering process, and that was when I came across a perfectly prepared dry specimen of a human heart. I’d missed it, somehow, in the fall. I held it up and marvelled at the perfectly shaped ventricles and veins and folds of tissue, all intact, nothing torn. Everything about it was so wonderful, except that the label was not in my hand, nor in my red ink, and all it said was no data attached, which meant that the specimen had no scientific value at all. Whose heart had it been, I asked. But no one knew. If Bekhterev had been alive, I thought, he would have admired the perfection of the specimen in the same way I did. But he was gone.
Please, said Sasha on one of the nights before he’d started work again, tell me about order. I don’t understand, he said, why one thing comes after the other. Did you choose Mendeleev over Rubinstein?
I protested: Why all these questions to answers you already know?
Between Sasha and me, a cool distance persisted. I wasn’t ready yet to let him in.
But I don’t know, Tatiana.
But you do, I said. I’ve told you before.
No, he said, I thought I knew, but sometimes these things get turned around and I want to hear it all again. I don’t think the way you do, but I want to.
He leaned back into the couch then, his legs crossed at the ankle, his arms crossed over his chest, waiting. Then he reached out to me, saying, Come back, and he pulled me towards him. Tell me what makes one specimen go on a top shelf and one on the bottom.
I sat next to him, allowing our sides to touch, signalling that I might allow him back in after all.
As for the question, I didn’t quite know, except that the order imposed on the specimens, our private collection, and the order imposed on the brains, the public collection, was different. The first listened to science. The second listened to the politburo’s ideas of science. I thought he wanted a more precise answer, but the only thing that came to mind was the red pen and the red typewriter ribbon. No, now that wasn’t true either. There was a logic to how the private collection was ordered: by species, by habitat, and additional considerations such as the specimen’s susceptibility to light. I started with those. Sasha wanted more detail, more. Not only about what governed the display cases, but also about which ones touched me.
Touched me? I said.
I mean, he said, do you love any of them more than others?
There was the heart, but also the sea urchin with its thousands of spikes and its wine-red colour that had faded over the years, the dust that had gathered on it having been so hard to remove and, in places, impossible without risking breaking off another of its spindly reaches. But these things were private to me and not scientific.
I thought that what Sasha wanted was a scientific perspective as opposed to my own perspective, and so I said, No, it’s not like that; we don’t get moved by things.
Nothing at all? he asked.
No. Nothing.
Not even the brains?
Well, yes, I said, there is something thrilling about the blacked-out section of Lenin’s brain, the way the blackness registers on the slides and the way the black seems to become substantial when the slides lay atop one another. He nodded then, and I could practically see him creating a mental image of the slides laid atop each other, black upon black upon black, until the empty, watered-out, collapsed, melancholic part of Lenin’s brain became as wondrous to him as it was for me. I understood his questions differently then, saw that what he was after wasn’t so much the logic of our collections as it was the logic of me. Then I wished that I’d told him about the heart, but I
couldn’t go back so said nothing more. While I spoke, he looked at me with such attention that a certain heat accumulated in me, making my nose and upper lip sweat. I felt nervous and electric to be listened to in such a way, and had to laugh because I was reacting as though I hardly knew Sasha, as though I were exposing myself to him for the first time all over again. What an extraordinary curiosity he had. Even after all those years together, even after we had disappointed and hurt each other, he could turn a page, make me feel unique and new all over again. And this even though there was no other person on the face of the planet who knew me better than he did.
Every last detail, he said, more.
It took months for it to happen, but finally, just as we’d started to get truly tired of winter, Luria came round. Maybe it was late February, or maybe we’d made it into March. That was him, the man I saw through the window, the one wearing the dark overcoat and hat, the man picking his way through the knee-deep snow from the gate to the door, trying to make his steps fit into ours. I hadn’t seen him since Congress, and realized as I watched him approach that I’d missed him. Once inside, he collapsed into the chair closest to the door. He kept his hat and coat on, pulled his pipe from his coat, asked for matches. I wanted to hug him, to kiss his cheeks, but he was too stiff for that, and maybe I was too.
Where have you been? I asked.
He sat down and lit his pipe saying, Can I have some tea? and then, after a moment, I’ve been thinking.
Once I’d made tea, he put down his pipe and stood to remove his layers. He wore a rumpled grey suit, a red silk scarf, and the same wire-rimmed glasses he’d been wearing for over ten years. He could have been dapper, but everything about him that day seemed damp and worn. Exhaustion pooled under his eyes, his hair seemed to have suddenly greyed, and whereas months ago his wiry body had seemed taut and athletic, now it just seemed frail.
About what? I asked.
He looked up at me and said, You look exhausted.
Oh? I said.
Horrid season.
His coat and boots were dripping onto the floor.
Take your boots off, I said.
I’m not staying.
You’re staying for tea.
For warmth, we settled in the kitchen. I sat across the table from him with my knees pulled up to my chest, the tea too hot to drink. I waited while Luria stirred jam into his tea, losing himself in the small whirlpool he created in his cup. Then he looked up at me.
Did you ever hear about the Beilis trial? he asked.
No, I don’t think so, I said.
He held the spoon’s handle lightly between thumb and forefinger, so that the bowl of the spoon wavered up and down.
About that Kiev boy who was murdered? he prodded, watching the spoon. Murdered, I thought. The word seemed out of place. I knew the way Luria thought; I knew this was preliminary work he was doing, laying a trail for me to follow so that we could arrive at the same conclusions by way of the evidence, but I felt impatient and wished he’d take the straight path, just come out with it.
The blood libel case, I said.
I remembered it as the newspapers my father took away from me, as conversations that quieted whenever my mother took me into a café on a late afternoon, as the gossip we shared in the coatroom at school when I was still a child.
I remember the basics, I guess. I was only twelve or thirteen.
Same age as the boy then, said Luria.
Yes, I said, recalling our childhood speculations about what had happened. Not everyone’s parents were as protective as mine.
So you don’t remember anything, said Luria.
Sure I do, I said. I remember that the boy’s body was discovered in a cave, that there was something strange about the wounds, and that the Black Hundreds were involved. I don’t remember just how. I remember a gang of thieves, but maybe that was just kids talking.
It sounds like they got it right, said Luria.
You’re bringing this up for a reason, I said.
Bekhterev testified at the trial, said Luria.
I remembered. This was what it was like getting older, suddenly all these disparate pieces of life — the forbidden newspapers, the hushed conversations, the darkened cave, and the fear that marked those few months when all I really wanted was to have my parents leave me alone — all those pieces now suddenly became a part of today, part of my adult life, which is to say part of my real life and not the netherworld of childhood.
Luria paused and then asked, Doesn’t it seem strange to you that there was no funeral?
For the boy? I asked.
Tatiana, he said, his tone both condescending and exasperated. For Bekhterev.
He’d finally come to the point of his visit. He didn’t care about the boy in the cave. The boy in the cave was a tool for Luria, a bridge of sorts.
What kind of strange? I asked.
What kind of strange? The only kind, suspicious strange, he said. He leaned forward ever so slightly.
What I’m trying to figure out, Tatiana, is what exactly happened to Bekhterev. Ever remember him missing a class, missing a lab, missing anything in all the years you worked with him? No. Of course you don’t. Because he didn’t. Dr. Bekhterev never got sick. Never missed anything. He was like a tank or something; he could eat anything, drink anything, never sleep, not eat, and still he’d be seeing patients at eight in the morning and working into the night and we’d only complain because we couldn’t keep up. How does a man like that die of stomach flu?
I thought of the strange illness from which Bekhterev had cured himself at such a young age, and then about the night we’d walked along the river, and how he’d seemed so weary and nostalgic, as old men sometimes are when they know that death is nigh. I’d been telling myself that Bekhterev was vulnerable in a way that few understood, and that I’d understood his vulnerability better than most because we’d worked together for so long, because I’d seen his moods, seen the weariness in his eyes as he’d looked back on himself as a younger man, exploring Berlin by night. Geniuses had particular vulnerabilities. I’d come to see that.
Luria was still talking: I could die of stomach flu. Sasha could die of stomach flu. You’re a woman, so you couldn’t. And Bekhterev was the kind who couldn’t either. But he did. So what happened?
It seemed as if Luria was doing the work that Sarkisov had asked of me.
He went on: So, the trial. The murdered boy was named Andrei and his murder wasn’t even the worst part of the story. His playmates found him dead in a cave near a brick factory in 1911. His body had been mutilated.
How? I asked, waiting with my arms looped around my knees. I could see that he hadn’t talked this through with anyone yet.
Luria repositioned himself as though he were giving an academic lecture: his chair pushed back from the table, his knees apart, his hands moving like birds caught in a too-small cage, though perhaps that wasn’t quite right. Maybe birds, when they feel caught, just stay still. Maybe I was the caught bird. When he set his pipe down on the table, it fell to one side and some burned tobacco spilled out. He didn’t notice.
The murdered boy had been found in a cave near a brick factory in 1911. His body had been mutilated and abandoned.
Now the circumstances of the murder and subsequent trial started coming back to me. The trial had involved secret Jewish rituals, but my memory of it was that of a child’s: grotesque and overburdened with a moral weight I had never thoroughly examined. It was a kind of fairy tale for me where evil was pure, where blood was black and congealed and hidden away in the secret chamber to which one ought never have a key.
Luria described the wounds to the head: it had been perforated as a result of a rhomboid-shaped metal tool. Thirteen holes exactly. Made by a probe, perhaps, something one might find at a shoe-maker’s or in a factory, something meant for cutting leather, the investigators thought. No one knew why thirteen holes. The body was nearly bloodless, but he hadn’t bled out there, in the cave, so that was one
of the questions at the trial. What had happened to all that blood? Some said that a total of five cups of blood could have been taken from it. Taken was the word they used at first, but later they used the word harvested. The blood had been harvested, they said. Initially, the police accused some local thieves, a woman named Vera and her associates. The boy knew about their undertakings, so, in order to protect themselves, the thieves killed him.
So, it was Vera’s trial? I asked.
No. No, it wasn’t. It should have been her trial, but it wasn’t, and that’s why the whole affair was so fucked up. And that’s why Bekhterev was a kind of hero, but maybe not the Soviet kind.
On second thought, I realized then that Luria was doing the work Sarkisov hoped I wouldn’t do. Luria wasn’t investigating whether Bekhterev had contributed to the revolutionary effort, but rather whether the revolutionary state had contributed to Bekhterev’s death.
Luria took his pipe up again, and nervously tapped some new tobacco into it, and I understood that the length of time he took to complete this mundane activity was equal to the degree to which what would follow had upset him and might upset me.
No, no, definitely not the Soviet kind, he said, as if to himself.
It was just then that a sound from the laboratory startled us. I tried to stand up, but my legs had been curled up against me for so long by then that millions of pins pricked into them and forced me to sit back down.
Luria’s dark, tired eyes flashed up at me.
It was Sarkisov who appeared in the doorway, standing so erect his head almost touched the frame. Why do you have to be so tall? I thought. He smiled in a way that seemed to damage his face, as though it were poorly suited for the expression.
Luria shuffled his legs under the table.
Morning, said Sarkisov.
And to you, I said, all of us nodding at one another in a polite way, the formality of it suggesting something was wrong.