My success had somewhat intoxicated me. I was thinking that genuine art is distinguished from its false counterpart by its ability to beat a path to even the most coarse and brutalized of hearts, and its ability to exalt to the heavens, to a world of total and unfettered freedom, even the most hopeless victim of the infernal global trance. However, I came to my senses soon enough as I was stung by the realization, painful though it was for my own vanity, that they had applauded me simply because my poem had seemed to them to be something in the nature of a warrant which widened by a few extra degrees the scope of their unlimited and unpunished licence: to Lenin’s maxim that we should ‘plunder what has been plundered’ had been added permission to don a bagel, however unclear the repercussions of that might yet be.
I went back to my room, stretched out on the divan and stared at the ceiling with my hands clasped behind my back. I thought of how everything that had happened to me during the past two or three hours was a magnificent illustration of the eternal, unchanging fate of the Russian intellectual. Writing odes about Red banners in secret, but earning his keep with verses in honour of the name-day of the Head of Police – or the opposite, perceiving with his inner eye the final appearance of the Emperor, while mouthing off about the hanging of a count’s bagels on the horny genitals of the proletariat.
Thus it will be always, I thought. Even if we were to allow that power in this terrifying country might not be won by one of the cliques warring for it, but could simply fall into the hands of villains and thieves of the kind to be found in all the various different ‘Musical Snuffboxes’, the Russian intelligentsia would still go running to them for business like a dog’s barber.
While thinking all of this, I had already fallen half-asleep, but I was summoned back to reality by an unexpected knock at my door.
‘Yes, yes,’ I shouted, without even bothering to get up from the bed, ‘come in!’
The door opened, but no one came in. I waited for several seconds until my patience was exhausted and I raised my head to look. Anna was standing in the doorway, wearing that same black velvet dress.
‘May I come in?’ she asked.
‘Yes, of course,’ I said, rising hurriedly, ‘please. Have a seat.’
Anna sat down in the armchair – the second when her back was turned was just long enough for me to sweep a tattered puttee lying on the floor under the bed with a movement of my foot.
Once in the armchair, Anna folded her hands on her knees and contemplated me thoughtfully for several seconds with a gaze that seemed clouded by some thought that was not yet entirely clear even to her.
‘Would you like to smoke?’ I asked.
She nodded. I took out my papyrosas and placed them in front of her on the table, then set beside them the saucer which served for an ashtray and struck a match.
‘Thank you,’ she said, releasing a thin stream of smoke in the direction of the ceiling. There seemed to be some kind of struggle taking place within her. I was about to make some banal remark in order to start the conversation, but I stopped myself just in time when I remembered how that usually ended. Then suddenly Anna herself spoke.
‘I cannot say that I really liked your poem about that princess,’ she said, ‘but in comparison with the other participants in the concert you cut rather an impressive figure.’
‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘And by the way, I spent all last night reading your poems. The garrison library turned out to have a book…’
‘Which one?’
‘That I do not know. The first few pages were missing, someone must have torn them out for rolling cigarettes.’
‘Then how could you tell that the poems were mine?’
‘I asked the librarian. Anyway, there was one poem, a reworking of Pushkin, about opening one’s eyes and seeing nothing but snow, empty space and mist, and then on further and further…It was very good. How did it go now? No, I can’t remember. Ah, yes:
But desire burns within you still,
The trains depart for it,
And the butterfly of consciousness
Flits from nowhere into nowhere.
‘Yes, I recall it now,’ I said. ‘The book is called Songs of the Kingdom of I.’
‘What a strange title. It does sound rather smug.’
‘Not really,’ I said. ‘That is not the point. It is simply that in China there once used to be a kingdom whose name consisted of a single letter – “A”. I was always amazed by that. You know, we talk about “a” forest or “a” house, but here all we have is “a”. Like an indication of something that lies beyond a point at which words come to an end, and all we can say is “a”, but “a” what exactly is impossible to say.’
‘Chapaev would immediately ask you whether you can say what you mean when you say “I”.’
‘He has already asked. But in relation to the book – it really is one of my weakest, by the way, I must give you the others some time – I can explain. I used to do a lot of travelling, and then at some moment I suddenly realized that no matter where I might go, in reality I can do no more than move within a single space, and that space is myself. At the time I called it “I”, but now I would probably call it “A”.’
‘But what about other people?’ Anna asked.
‘Other people?’ I queried.
‘Yes. You write a lot about other people. For instance,’ she knitted her brows slightly, evidently in the effort of remembering, ‘take this:
They gathered in the old bathhouse,
Put on their cufflinks and their spats,
Then banged their heads against the wall,
Counting out the days and the miles…
I hated the sight of their faces so badly
That I could not live without their company –
The sudden stench of the morgue
Refines the language of recall, and I…
‘Enough,’ I interrupted her, ‘I remember. I would not say that is really my best poem.’
‘I like it. And in general, Pyotr, I liked your book terribly. But you have not answered my question: what about other people?’
‘I am not sure I quite understand what you mean.’
‘If everything that you can see, feel and understand is within you, in that kingdom of “I”, does that mean that other people are quite simply not real? Me, for instance?’
‘Believe me, Anna,’ I said passionately, ‘if there is one thing in the world that is real to me, then it is you. I have suffered so much from our…What can I call it – our falling-out – that…’
‘That is my fault,’ said Anna. ‘I do have such a bad character.’
‘What nonsense, Anna, I have nobody to blame but myself. You have shown such patience in bearing all the clumsy, absurd…’
‘Don’t let us try to outdo each other in politeness. Tell me simply – do I really mean as much to you as it might appear from the phrases you have uttered at certain times?’
‘You mean everything to me,’ I said with complete sincerity.
‘Very well then,’ said Anna. ‘I believe you suggested that we should go for a ride in the carriage? Into the country? Let us go.’
‘This very moment?’
‘Why not?’
I moved closer to her.
‘Anna, you can never…’
‘I beg you,’ she said, ‘not here.’
Driving out of the gates, I turned the carriage to the right. Anna was sitting beside me, the colour had risen in her cheeks, and she was avoiding looking at me. It began to seem to me that she already regretted what was happening. We drove to the woods in silence; as soon as the vault of green branches had closed over our heads I stopped the horses.
‘Listen, Anna,’ I said, turning towards her. ‘Believe me, I appreciate your impulse immensely, but if you have begun to regret it, then…’
She did not allow me to finish. She put her arms around my neck and set her lips against my mouth. It happened so quickly that I was still speaking at
the moment when she began kissing me. Naturally, I did not value the phrase I was pronouncing so much as to try to stop her.
I have always found kissing to be an extremely strange form of contact between human beings. As far as I am aware, it is one of the innovations introduced by civilization; it is well known that the savages who inhabit the southern isles and the peoples of Africa who have not yet crossed that boundary beyond which the paradise originally intended for man is lost for ever, never kiss at all. Their lovemaking is simple and uncomplicated; possibly the very word ‘love’ is inappropriate for what takes place between them. In essence, love arises in solitude, when its object is absent, and it is directed less at the person whom one loves than at an image constructed by the mind which has only a weak connection with that original. The appearance of true love requires the ability to create chimeras; in kissing me Anna was really kissing the man behind the poems which had affected her so strongly, a man who had never existed. How was she to know that when I wrote the book I was also engaged in a tormented search for him, growing more convinced with each new poem that he could never be found, because he existed nowhere? The words left by him were simply an imposture, like the footsteps carved in the rock by slaves, which the Babylonians used to prove the reality of the descent to earth of some ancient deity.
This last thought was already about Anna. I felt the tender touch of her trembling tongue; between their half-closed lids, her eyes were so close that I felt I could have dived into their moist gleam and dissolved in them for ever. At last we grew short of breath and our first kiss came to an end. Her face turned to the side so that now I saw it in profile; she closed her eyes and ran her tongue across her lips, as though they were dry – all of these small mimetic gestures, which in other circumstances would not have meant a thing, now moved me with a quite unbelievable power. I realized that there was no longer anything keeping us apart, that everything was possible; my hand, from lying on her shoulder, which only a minute ago it would have seemed like sacrilege merely to touch, moved down simply and naturally to her breast. She leaned away from me slightly, but only, as I realized immediately, in order that my hand should not encounter any obstacles in its way.
‘What are you thinking of now?’ she asked. ‘Only honestly.’
‘What am I thinking of?’ I said, moving my hands together behind her neck. ‘Of the fact that progress towards the zenith of happiness is in the literal sense like the ascent of a mountain…’
‘Not like that. Unfasten the hook. No, no. Leave it, let me do it. Forgive me, I interrupted you.’
‘Yes, it is like a difficult and dangerous ascent. As long as the object of desire lies ahead, all of one’s feelings are absorbed in the process of climbing. The next stone on which to set one’s foot, a tuft of grass which one can grab hold of for support. How beautiful you are, Anna…What was it I was saying…Yes, the goal gives all of this meaning, but it is completely absent at any single point in the movement; in essence, the approach to the goal is superior to the goal itself. I believe there was a certain opportunist by the name of Bernsteen who said that movement is all and the goal is nothing…’
‘Not Bernsteen, but Bernstein. How does this thing undo…Where on earth did you find such a belt?’
‘My God, Anna, do you want me to go insane…’
‘Carry on talking,’ she said, looking up for just a second, ‘but don’t be offended if I am unable to maintain the conversation for a while.’
‘Yes,’ I continued, leaning my head back and closing my eyes, ‘but the most important thing here is that as soon as one has ascended the summit, as soon as the goal has been attained, at that very moment it disappears. In its essence, like all objects created by the mind, it is ultimately elusive. Imagine it yourself, Anna, when one dreams of the most beautiful of women, she is present in one’s imagination in all the perfection of her beauty, but when she is actually there in one’s arms, all of that disappears. What one is dealing with then is reduced to a set of the most simple and often rather crude sensations, which, moreover, one normally experiences in the dark…O-o-oh…But no matter how they may rouse the blood, the beauty which was calling to you only a minute before disappears, to be replaced by something, to strive for which was ridiculous. It means that beauty is unattainable. Or rather, it is attainable, but only in itself, while that goal which reason intoxicated by passion seeks behind it, simply does not exist. From the very beginning beauty is actually…No, I cannot go on. Come here…yes, like that. Yes. Yes. Is that comfortable? Oh, my God…What did you say was the name of the man who said that about the movement and the goal?’
‘Bernstein,’ Anna whispered in my ear.
‘Does it not seem to you that his words apply very well to love?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered, gently biting the lobe of my ear. ‘The goal is nothing, but the movement is everything.’
‘Then move, move, I implore you.’
‘And you talk, talk…’
‘Of what exactly?’
‘Of anything at all, just talk. I want to hear your voice when it happens.’
‘By all means. To continue that idea…Imagine that everything which a beautiful woman can give one adds up to one hundred per cent.’
‘You bookkeeper…’
‘Yes, one hundred. In that case, she gives ninety per cent of that when one simply sees her, and everything else, the object of a thousand years of haggling, is no more than an insignificant remainder. Nor can that first ninety per cent be subdivided into any component fractions, because beauty is indefinable and indivisible, no matter what lies Schopenhauer may try to tell us. As for the other ten per cent, it is no more than an aggregate sum of nerve signals which would be totally without value if they were not lent support by imagination and memory. Anna, I beg you, open your eyes for a second…Yes, like that…yes, precisely imagination and memory. You know, if I had to write a genuinely powerful erotic scene, I would merely provide a few hints and fill in the rest with an incomprehensible conversation like the…Oh, my God, Anna…Like the one which you and I are having now. Because there is nothing to depict, everything has to be filled in by the mind. The deception, and perhaps the very greatest of a woman’s secrets…Oh, my little girl from the old estate…consists in the fact that beauty seems to be a label, behind which there lies concealed something immeasurably greater, something inexpressibly more desired than itself, to which it merely points the way, whereas in actual fact, there is nothing in particular standing behind it…A golden label on an empty bottle…A shop where everything is displayed in a magnificently arranged window-setting, but that tiny, tender, narrow little room behind it…Please, please, my darling, not so fast…Yes, that room is empty. Remember the poem I recited to those unfortunates. About the princess and the bagel…A-a-ah, Anna…No matter how temptingly it might lure one, the moment comes when one realizes that at the centre of that black bage…bagel…bagel…there is nothing but a void, voi-oid, voi-oi-oooid!’
‘Voyd!’ someone yelled once again behind the door. ‘Are you in there?’
‘Merde,’ I muttered, getting up from the bed and casting a crazed glance around my room. Outside the window the twilight was thickening. ‘Damn you to hell! What do you want?’
‘Can I come in?’
‘Come in.’
The door swung open, revealing a blond-haired, bow-legged hulk of an individual standing in the doorway. In theory he was my orderly, but after several weeks of the demoralizing influence of the Reds, it was no longer quite clear just exactly what he had on his mind, and so now every evening, just to be on the safe side, I pulled off my own boots.
‘What, sleeping, was you?’ he asked, looking round the room. ‘Woke you up, did I? Sorry. You give us a real surprise today. Here’s a present as the men wants you to have.’
Some object wrapped in newspaper flopped down on to the bed in front of me; it had a strangely familiar smell. I unwrapped the bundle. Inside there was a bagel, one of those that were sold
in the bakery on the main square, except that it was black, and it smelt of the coal-tar dubbin which the soldiers used for blacking their boots.
‘Don’t you like it, then?’ he asked.
I looked up at him, and he immediately took a step backwards; before I could find the butt of my Browning in my pocket, he had disappeared from the doorway, and the three bullets which I fired into the empty rectangle ricocheted off the stone wall of the corridor like the song of angels.
‘All. Women. Suck.’ I said in a loud voice, and collapsed back on to the bed.
For a long time no one disturbed me. Outside the window I could hear constant drunken laughter; several shots were fired and then apparently a long, feebly fought fight broke out. To judge from the sounds that reached my ears, the concert had developed into an evening of total outrage, and it was very doubtful whether anybody at all was capable of controlling this tempest of the people’s rage, as the St Petersburg liberals had liked to call it. Then I heard quiet steps in the corridor. I felt a brief, fleeting hope – after all, I thought, there are such things as prophetic dreams – but it was so weak, that when I saw the broad-shouldered figure of Kotovsky in the doorway, I was not really disappointed. It even seemed rather funny to me that he should have come back to continue haggling over the trotters and the cocaine.
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