After Pasha’s and Volodya’s return, Nikita shut himself away in his workshop. Sonya came out once or twice a day to fetch food. ‘We are hard at work,’ she would only say to my queries. ‘The Capsules are nearing completion.’
Since it had emerged that Vera was pregnant, she and Volodya had ceased to make any attempt to hide that they were a couple. I avoided them as much as possible.
I took one of our last pots of jam with me when I next went to Pelyagin’s office. All the way I rehearsed my thanks. ‘I think you mentioned a drive?’ I saw myself murmuring. It was a windy, dreary day with sleet in the air, and I thought of Pelyagin’s warm office as I walked, swinging my arms to ease a persistent ache in my stomach.
But when I reached the National, Rosa Gershtein was alone. ‘He told me to say that he will not be having any more lessons,’ she murmured.
‘No? Did he say why?’
‘He said it was no longer the best use of his time.’
‘I brought him this, to thank him for helping us,’ I said, leaving the jam on her desk. ‘But did he . . . is he offended with me, do you think? Did he seem angry? Why does he suddenly not want lessons?’
‘I don’t know.’
I peered at her, trying to interpret her expression. ‘When did he start working for the Cheka?’
‘He always did. But he was only recently given this public job.’
‘I liked him . . .’
‘Yes . . .’ She looked at me. ‘I think he felt the same.’
*
In the half-dark yard back at Gagarinsky Lane stood a silent crowd. Inside, lights were moving about, muffled shouting and banging could just be heard. I found myself standing beside the metalworker from the Volga and his wife. The youngest children were hiding their heads under her skirt.
‘What is it?’ I whispered.
‘Red Guards – they say your lot have been up to something,’ he muttered out of the corner of his mouth. ‘I’d stay out of the way if I were you.’
The lights were moving about in Slavkin’s workshop; crashing metal, splintering glass. ‘Oh no . . .’
I pushed through the crowd and into the house. Prig was leaning against the doorway to the workshop and smoking a cigarette.
‘Ah, Comrade Freely,’ he said. ‘Your friends thought you had deserted them.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘A report came through that there were valuable materials in this workshop, materials that had been illegally requisitioned,’ said Prig. Behind him the Red Guards were methodically dismantling the room, throwing every book and file off the shelves onto the floor, kicking over his half-completed projects. The Socialisation Capsules were dented, wires wrenched out, batteries destroyed.
‘Where is Slavkin?’
He jerked his head towards the end of the room. ‘He’s not being very cooperative.’
I caught sight of Nikita slumped in a chair at the other end of the room. He was so still that I had not registered him at first. ‘Nikita,’ I hurried over. ‘Quick, you need to find the letter of permission from Lunacharsky.’ I began searching through the papers on the floor. ‘Where did you keep it?’
He gazed at me dully, slowly registering my presence; then a little light of venom crept into his eyes. ‘Oh, you’re back, are you? That letter’s gone, I can’t find it. They arrived just after you went out—’
‘Shh,’ said Sonya to him. She was on her hands and knees, picking up papers.
‘Where have you been? To see your special contact?’ said Slavkin and laughed mirthlessly. ‘Perfidious Albion.’
‘What can you mean?’ The breath had been knocked out of me; my voice emerged as a croak.
Sonya stood up, swaying a little with exhaustion. ‘I’ve got it,’ she said. ‘The requisition order. It was in the wrong file.’ She stalked up to Prig and handed him the paper silently.
‘Hmm, yes. Very well,’ he said, stubbing out his cigarette on the floor. ‘Rebyata! Boys! I think you can stop that now.’
‘What about the damage you have caused?’ demanded Sonya furiously. ‘You have set back our experiments by weeks.’
Prig raised his eyebrows. ‘Well, you’ll just have to work harder then, won’t you? Make up for all the time you spent lying on the divan in the old days, eh, mademoiselle?’
They left, and the other inhabitants filed back indoors to their rooms. One of the factory workers spat on the floor as he passed our door. ‘Scum,’ he said. ‘Sooner we put a full stop through you, the better.’
I went upstairs to the empty dormitory and lay down. My stomach was twisted up with cramp and I was shivering. I lay on my own as darkness fell and let the tears slide into my hair. After a while Pasha came to find me. ‘What times,’ he said softly, sitting by my bed. ‘Now Nikita is accusing Fyodor of betraying him to the Cheka.’
‘Really?’
Pasha nodded. ‘Yes, and Fyodor produced his time card and started proving how it would have been impossible for him to denounce Nikita and preserve his productivity level of 84 per cent.’
Despite myself, I laughed. ‘Pasha, you don’t think I would have done such a thing, do you?’
‘I think it would be constitutionally impossible for Miss Gerty to do anything of the sort. Now come on, come downstairs. Slavkin and Sonya are in the workshop. You must eat, and it’s too cold in this room.’
I sat up. ‘Was it just spite on Prig’s part?’
‘Maybe.’
Fyodor, Marina, Pasha and I ate potato soup and drank tea; slowly my stomach relaxed a little. After a while Volodya and Vera joined us. I marvelled at Vera, her prettiness, the delicate flush on her cheeks. Volodya puffed up his chest beside her and told tedious stories of the army.
‘I’ve been talking to the people at Narkompros about an event for Slavkin,’ mentioned Pasha after a while. ‘A bigger hall, we’re thinking of the Polytechnic. Mayakovsky has said he will introduce him. Nikita needs to put across his views more clearly, to get public opinion on his side.’
‘The Camel’s lost it, you know,’ Volodya said.
I was shocked. ‘Volodya, no . . . don’t lose faith in him.’
‘Shut up, Volodya,’ interrupted Pasha coldly. ‘Don’t dismiss what you don’t understand.’
‘I’ll speak if I want! Can you understand how that piece of trash is going to work? No! No one can! It’s madness . . .’
Vera was tugging on his arm. ‘Leave it, darling.’
‘We’re going, anyway,’ he said, standing up. ‘We’ve got ourselves registered to a place on Taganka. It’ll be a bloody sight more harmonious than this place, I can tell you. Commune? It’s a joke. You can’t even bear to all be in one room together. Fyodor mincing around with his timetables, Pasha flopping about like a degenerate, Gerty giving the lovebirds in there the evil eye . . .’
‘You’ve got yourselves re-registered?’ I repeated. ‘That doesn’t happen overnight.’
‘Yes, well, you are not the only one with special contacts, Gerty,’ said Vera with a triumphant look.
Volodya reappeared, carrying their bags. ‘Well, thanks for everything, lads.’
Insomnia was my companion yet again that night, as it has been so many nights since. Sometimes it feels as if I have lived a whole second life lying awake in the darkness, wondering if things could have turned out differently. Remembering, too, how just a few months before, Volodya had adored Nikita.
‘The Camel – well, he uses a lot of complicated language, but underneath all of that, he’s just like one of those calculating machines at the fairground. You feed in the question, whatever it might be, and out comes the answer . . .’ Volodya used to laugh, full of pride. ‘Come here!’ He’d grab Nikita and put his head in an armlock, wrestle with him until Nikita was pink and tousled as a little boy, laughing helplessly. ‘Ekh, Camel, you’re a freak, you are, but I love you.’
*
Slavkin woke the IRT, and most of the rest of the house, at half past four the next morning by banging the gong.
I ran, my heart pounding. ‘What is it, Nikita? What’s the matter?’
‘Come on, come on, get up, up, up!’ His face was flushed, his eyes glittering with excitement. ‘We need to print posters, you know what a business that is. If we want to get them around town today we’ll have to be at the printer’s before nine!’
One of the factory workers came crashing out in the hall, threatening to punch Slavkin. Pasha laughed and embraced him. ‘This is about the talk at the Polytechnic, is it, you lunatic? Well, I’m glad you’re enthusiastic about my idea—’
‘Of course it’s about the talk!’ exclaimed Slavkin. ‘What else would it be about? Forget breakfast, we’ve no time to eat. Gerty, dear, you’ve got such an eye for proof-reading, come with me to the printer’s today, and we’ll need Vova to borrow that handcart he got hold of before – where is he?’
‘Er . . . he and Vera have gone away for a few days,’ put in Pasha hastily.
‘Oh?’ Slavkin was disconcerted. ‘Gone away? They didn’t tell me.’
‘No, it’s her condition, you know,’ improvised Marina. ‘I advised her to stay overnight at the hospital.’
‘Oh.’ He looked at us dubiously for a moment, then, with an effort, put the subject aside.
‘So! We must busy ourselves! This is a great opportunity, Pasha, I am much indebted to you. It’ll give me a chance to set all those fools at the Centre right. I want you to go to Narkompros today and settle a date – next week would be best, Thursday or Friday.’
‘It will be done, mein lieber Kommandant,’ replied Pasha, grinning and patting his arm, and Sonya laughed and sang, ‘Ach, du lieber Augustin, Augustin, Augustin . . .’ A favourite of Tatyana’s Day, the students’ drinking festival; the others immediately joined in, even Marina and Fyodor: ‘Ach, du lieber Augustin, alles ist hin! – Oh, my dear Augustine, all is lost!’
Slavkin jumped up. ‘I must get back to the workshop. Sonya, come with me, I need you.’
Pasha, Marina and Fyodor hurried out to work together and I, after tidying up the breakfast, returned to my bed. Rather without my admitting it, the number of private pupils I taught had been dwindling, week by week. Pelyagin had been the most regular and much the most lucrative. Now I found myself at a loose end and, without my usual occupations to distract me, tiredness overwhelmed me. I had been feeling nauseous for a couple of months; now my stomach was tender and bloated. Nothing surprising, when one considered our diet; this week we had been reduced to eating linseed cakes – cattle feed – that burnt the throat as one swallowed; yet now I promised myself that I would go to the doctor. However that day, and the next, I felt too weak and lethargic to do anything but rest. No one seemed to notice, for which I was glad: I did not want time to be wasted on my weaknesses.
Slavkin whirled through the week in a frenzy of preparations. I wanted to talk to him privately, but he was always busy. The lecture was arranged for the following Saturday at the Polytechnic, a huge hall where Mayakovsky had recently given several popular lectures. Posters were printed (without my attendance at the printer’s) and Sonya and Pasha stayed out late night after night, supervising a mob of street urchins whom they had employed to paste them up all over town. Marina lost her temper with Sonya. ‘You are underweight and anaemic. Yet you haven’t eaten for the past three nights! Don’t you understand, you’ll fall ill?’
‘Well, I’ve only got to keep going for another month or so. After that it doesn’t matter.’
‘What are you talking about?’ demanded Marina. ‘What does that mean?’
But Sonya did not reply, only grinning mischievously.
‘She’s talking about their experiment,’ said Pasha drily from a corner. ‘Apparently they’re going to disappear together – poof! – like a magic trick. Whisked away to a better place. Or something.’
‘Pasha . . .’ Sonya warned.
‘They’ll hear about it all at the talk, anyway, won’t they? What’s the secret?’
‘Leave it until then.’
Fyodor cleared his throat. ‘Incidentally, I’m moving out,’ he said suddenly in a thin voice.
We swivelled to look at him. He was scarlet in the face, always a sign of high emotion. ‘I’ve had enough of your childish secrets. Cliques and whispers.’
‘OK, spare us the speech,’ said Pasha. ‘We’re sick of you too, Fedya. Go on, get out now, before I knock you down the stairs!’ and Pasha leapt menacingly to his feet, fists ready, so Fedya jumped out of his way.
‘I didn’t think it of you, Pasha,’ he spat as he left.
‘Well, good riddance to you, you bureaucrat,’ shouted Pasha out of the door after him. ‘You bloody pencil sharpener! You . . . you tube of foot cream! You pallid mushroom, go and cover your nose with mud!’
We couldn’t help it, we started laughing, as Pasha still stood by the door yelling more and more ridiculous insults. ‘You rotten cucumber! You bulkhead! You plug!’
And at that, Sonya started to cry, and then we all did, half sobbing, half laughing at ourselves.
‘It’s pathetic,’ sniffed Sonya. ‘One by one, they disappeared . . .’
‘Who’s next? Gerty, is it you?’ asked Marina.
‘Gerty would never leave. She’s loyalty personified,’ said Pasha, with a certain dry tone that I couldn’t interpret.
*
In the streets of Moscow was a wind, a sharp, cold, whirling wind that whipped around the piles of rubble and through the parks liberated of their railings. It tore the posters off the walls and rushed their messages through the streets:
We strike them once
and then again.
Again we hit,
And then they are broken!
It shredded, too, the smudgy posters that Sonya’s band of street urchins had pasted up the week before: ‘The Physicist–Inventor, Nikita Slavkin, will speak about his Ultimate Communist Futurist Technology at the Polytechnic University on 12 January 1919 at 6 p.m. Entrance free. All Hail to the October Revolution!’
I hurried, alone, towards Novaya square, and the exclamation marks flew past me like arrows in the darkness.
Half an hour early, there was already a crush. I waited, looking out for Slavkin and the others, while the auditorium filled with jostling, eager spectators. Seven o’clock came and went and the audience grew impatient. Catcalls and bellowing filled the hall and three sailors sat on the edge of the stage and began to sing Red Navy ditties.
Shambling, dazzled by the light and the noise, Slavkin appeared from the wings. Raising his long, pale hands as though in blessing, he arrived at the centre of the stage and waited. His skin was bluish-white, his cheeks tinged with the delicate flush of porcelain. At last the hall fell quiet and he began to speak, his voice shaking his whole body – an engine too powerful for its fragile chassis.
‘What this Revolution really means is that we have made a promise to ourselves – that we will do everything we can to build Communism. We will not shirk, however hard the task may be. But there is one great obstacle that we have been ignoring. Who is it who grabs the best food for his own family? Who is it who shows pettiness and jealousy towards his fellow workers, who demands individual reward, who denounces others on the slightest evidence? Who, even under the dictatorship of the proletariat, deceives others, exploits others, demands his own needs be met before anyone else’s?’
‘The bourgeoisie!’ yelled a woman near the front.
‘No, it is not. We can no longer blame the bourgeoisie – they have left the country. Nor the aristocracy – they are sweeping our streets.’ He spread his arms wide as he answered his own question. ‘It is you. It is me. It is our own selves. We are now the obstruction. Before we achieve Communism, we must be wiped out – rewritten – changed.
‘I can see that you feel apprehensive about this task. You are right, it’s ambitious – by comparison everything that we have achieved so far for the Revolution is minimal. But let me reassure you. Its strength lies in the great evolutionary strengt
h of mankind – our imagination. In your imagination – in the imagination of everyone in this room – lies the blueprint for our future. Think about it! You have the key, here, in your own mind. Here.’ He turned to the blackboard behind him where there was a drawing of the long, pod-shaped Capsules. ‘I will explain the process. This problem is in one sense merely the problem of time . . .’
The audience listened strangely quietly, as if stunned, to Slavkin’s lecture. They applauded, politely, his historical analysis (‘The battle is already won. It is only a matter of the slow march of time before the age of Communism dawns’); they were a little fidgety during his discourse on particle physics. As he developed the idea of multiple Universes, however, the heckling began.
‘Among this infinity of Universes, there will be one in which Communism already exists. Even if . . . well, even if it is not possible in this universe, I suppose.’
An incredulous murmur arose.
‘In my researches,’ he continued, raising his voice, ‘I have been forced to consider the possibility that a brain fully attuned to Communism cannot physically exist in this dimension. Planck’s Law has shown us that there are some energy states that are impossible for particles in our reality. It may well be that Communism is one of those impossible states . . .’
The murmur swelled to a rumble. ‘What the hell does that mean?’ yelled someone.
‘Therefore a brain attuned to Communism would instantly cease to exist in this dimension and begin to exist in the compatible dimension. The Socialised subject may just . . . vanish,’ said Slavkin.
‘Did he just say Communism is impossible?’ said a girl near me.
‘He’s gone off his head, that’s what,’ said someone else. He turned and pushed through the crowd. ‘Move, could you? I’m not sticking around to hear this.’
‘Give him a chance,’ a voice remonstrated. ‘He’s a scientist, they talk like this.’
But all around me, others were turning to leave, shoving each other out of the way. ‘This is all wrong. Saying we’re obstructing Communism – he’s mad.’
The Vanishing Futurist Page 16