Self-discovery

by Vladimir Savchenko

  “But now it’s the same thing. You’ll go off to Vladivostok to lick your sea spray, and I’ll remain behind with my dissatisfaction.”

  “But… we can trade. Once every six months. No one would notice. no, that’s nonsense. We’d be distinguished by six months of practical work experience.”

  “That’s just it! By heading down one of life’s paths, a person becomes different from the person he would have been had he taken another path.”

  But he headed for Vladivostok anyway. He didn’t leave to still his longings — he ran away from the horrors of memory. He would have gone even farther, but farther there was only ocean. Of course, the job opening as a fitter in the ports had been filled, but he found work excavating underwater cliffs, to clear space for ship berths — that wasn’t bad work either. There was enough romance: he dove into the blue green depths with his scuba gear, saw his quivering shadow on the bottom rocks, dug out holes in the cliffs, set the dynamite, lit the fuse, and scattering the fish that would be floating belly up in a minute, swam at breakneck speeds for the power boat. And then, missing engineering work, he introduced an electrohydraulic charge, which was safer than dynamite and more effective. He left behind all memories of himself.

  “Are you coming from far?” the woman insisted, interrupting his reverie.

  “From the Far East.”

  “Were you recruited to work there or did you just go?”

  The man stared at her and laughed curtly.

  “I went for a cure.”

  His traveling companion nodded warily. She had lost all desire for conversation. She pulled out a book and buried herself in it.

  Yes, the healing began there. The guys on the team were amazed by his fearlessness. He really had no fear: strength, agility, exact calculation — and no deep wave could touch him. He literally held his own life in his hands — what was there to be afraid of? The most terrifying times he had lived through had been here, in Dneprovsk, when Krivoshein played God with his life and death. With many deaths. You see, Krivoshein did not understand that what he was doing was much worse than torturing a helpless person.

  The man’s body tensed automatically. A chill of anger puckered his skin into goose bumps. The monsoons had blown a lot out of his system in a year: depression, panicky fear, even his tender feelings for Lena. But this remained.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have come back? I had the ocean that made me feel small and simple, good pals, and hard and interesting work. Everyone respected me. I became myself out there. But here… who knows how things will go for him?”

  But he could no more not return than forget the past. At first, it would creep up on him, after work, on days off, when the whole team took a speedboat into Vladivostok. The thought would pound through his head: “Krivoshein is working. He’s alone there.” Then the idea came to him.

  Once when they were clearing the bottom in a nameless cove near Khabarovsk, where there were warm mineral springs along the shore, he jumped from the boat and fell into a stream. He almost screamed from the horrible memories in his body! The water tasted just like that liquid, and the sensationless, warm gentleness seemed to conceal that ancient threat to dissolve, destroy, and extinguish consciousness. He moved ahead, and the cold ocean water sobered and calmed him. But the impression remained. By evening it had turned into a thought: “The experiment could be run in reverse.”

  And, while healing from his former memories, he “caught” this one. His researcher’s imagination was aflame. How enticing it would be to plan an experiment, to try to predict the enormous results that would bring great benefit! The underwater explosions seemed like a dull, gray waste. Now without fear, he played back everything that had happened to him, projected the variations of the experiment. And he could not remain there with the idea that Krivoshein had probably not thought of it yet. You couldn’t come up with it by pure reason alone. You had to have lived through everything that he had.

  But — the implacable logic of their work brought another idea forward in his mind: all right, so they would find a new way of processing a man with information. What would it give them? This thought was harder than the first. On the way from Vladivostok to Dneprovsk he turned to it often, and he still had not thought it all the way through.

  Outside the window, the girders of a bridge reflected the clattering wheels of the train: they were crossing the Dnieper River. The man was distracted for a moment, watching a powerboat skim the water’s surface down the river’s current, and looking at the green slope of the right bank. The bridge ended and little houses, gardens, and hedges flashed by the window.

  “It all boils down to the problem of how and with what information can man be perfected. All the other problems rest on this one. The system is a given: the human brain and the mechanisms for introducing information — the eyes, ears, nose, etc. Three streams of information feed the brain: daily life, science, and art. We must distinguish the most effective one in its action on man — and the most directed one. So that it would perfect him, ennoble him. The most effective is naturally the daily information: it is concrete and real, forming man’s life experience. It’s life itself; nothing else to it. I suppose that in reality it has a mutual relationship with man according to the laws of feedback: life affects man, but by his actions he affects life. But the action of daily life can be most varied: it can change man for the better or the worse. So, that can’t be it.

  “Let’s look at scientific information. It is also real, and objective — but it’s abstract. In essence, it’s the universalized experience of the activity of humanity. That’s why it’s applicable in many life situations, and that’s also why its effect on life is so great. And a reverse connection exists here with life, too, even though it is not an individual one for each and every person, but a general one: science solves life’s problems, thus changing life — and a changed life sets new problems for science. But still, the action of science on life in general and on man in particular can be either positive or negative. There are many examples to support this. And there is another problem: science is hard for the average man to comprehend. Yes, it’s hard. All right, if you think about the same thing all the time, sooner or later, you’ll come up with the answer. The important thing is to think systematically.”

  He was distracted by sobbing from below. He looked down: his companion, never taking her eyes from the book, was dabbing her wet eyes with a handkerchief. “What are you reading?”

  She looked up angrily and showed him the cover: Remarque’s Three Comrades.

  “The hell with them,” she said and lost herself in the book again. “Hm… a tubercular girl, loving and sensitive, is dying. And my well — fed, healthy neighbor feels for her, empathizes. I guess there’s no point beating around the bush. The information of art is it! Anyway, its general direction is intended for the best that is in man. Over the millennia, art has developed the highest quality information about people: thoughts, descriptions of refined spiritual actions, strong and noble feelings, colorful personalities, beautiful and wise actions…. All this has been working from the beginning of time to develop in people an understanding of each other and of life, to correct their morals, to awaken thoughts and feelings, and to eradicate the animal baseness of the spirit. And this information gets through — to be precise, it is marvelously encoded, couldn’t be better, to function in the computer called Man. In this sense, neither daily information nor scientific information can come close to artistic information.”

  The train, passing through Dneprovsk’s suburbs, slowed down. His companion set aside her book and started pulling out her suitcases from under the seats. The man still lay on his berth, lost in thought:

  “Yes, but how about effectiveness? People have been trying for millennia — of course, until the middle of the last century, art was only accessible to the few. But then technology took over: mass printing, lithography, expositions, records, movies, radio, television — art information is available to everyone. For a contemporary
man the volume of information that he obtains from books, movies, radio, magazines, and TV is comparable to life information and certainly much greater than science information. And so? Hm… the effect of art is not measured technically and is not determined through experiments. All that we have to do is compare the actions, say, of science and the arts during the last fifty years. God, there can be no comparison!”

  The train pulled into the station, into the crowd of waiting friends and relatives, porters and ice cream vendors. The man jumped down from the berth, pulled down his backpack, and folded his blue raincoat over his arm. His companion was still struggling with her heavy suitcases.

  “My, how much luggage you have! Let me help,” he offered, picking up the largest one.

  “No, thanks.” The woman quickly sat on one suitcase, flinging a plump leg over another, and clutched a third with both hands. “Oh, no, thank you! No, thanks!”

  She looked up at him with a face that no longer had any pleasantness about it. Her cheeks were not plump but blowsy, and her eyes, now watery instead of blue, were hostile. There were no eyebrows, just two thin stripes of pencil marks. He could tell that one move from him and she would start screaming.

  “Excuse me!” He let go and left. He was disgusted.

  “There you go: an illustration of the comparative effects of daily information and art information!” he thought, angrily striding through the station square. “Lots of people could have come from distant parts: salesman, Party worker, athlete, fisherman… but no, she thought the worst, suspected me of vile intentions! It’s the principle of getting by: better not trust them than be mistaken. And don’t we make a much greater mistake by adhering to this principle?” In the train he had been thinking because there was nothing else to do. Now he was thinking to calm down, and still about the same thing. “Of course, if you tell about a man in a book or on screen — people will understand him, believe in him, forgive his drawbacks and love him for his good points. But it’s much more complicated and prosaic in real life. Why blame the little lady — I’m just as bad myself. For a time, I didn’t believe my own father. I loved him, but I didn’t believe him. I didn’t believe that he had fought in revolutions, in the Civil War, that he served under Chapayev, that he had met Lenin. It all began with the movie Chapayev: my father wasn’t in it! There was Chapayev and all the other certified heroes — they declaimed colorful, curt slogans with powerful voices — and Dad wasn’t there! And anyway, how could my Dad be a Chapayev man? He didn’t get along with mother. He spoke in a wavering voice, caused by his ill — fitting dentures, which he kept in a glass overnight. He mispronounced words (not like in the movies). And he had been arrested in 1937. He used to tell the neighbor women over the back fence how during Kerensky’s time he was forced, because of Bolshevik agitation, to stand two hours at attention in full battle gear on the breastwork of a trench. He said that he brought silver coins from the soldiers at the front to Lenin in the Smolny Institute for the revolution’s coffers. He talked about how, condemned to death by the cossacks, he sat in a cellar… and the local women oohed and aahed, clasping their hands: ‘Our Karpych is a hero — ah! ah! And I would laugh at him and not believe him. I knew exactly what heroes were like — because I watched movies and listened to the radio.”

  He frowned at these memories.

  “It wasn’t really me. But the important point is that it was — but it looks like there is a hitch in the great method of transferring information via art. People watch a movie or a play, read a book and say: ‘I like it… and go on living just as before. Some live well, some not badly, and the rest awfully. Art historians and critics often find a flaw in the consumers of the information: the public is foolish, the readers aren’t ready, and so on. To accept that I would have to admit that I’m a fool and that I’m not ready either. No, I don’t agree! And anyway, blaming things on the people’s dullness and ignorance — that’s not a constructive approach. People are capable of understanding and realization. Most of them are not dullards or ignoramuses. So it would be better to seek the flaw in the method — especially since I need that method for my experimental work.”

  He saw a telephone booth and he stared at it dully: was he supposed to do something in that object? He remembered. He sighed, entered the booth, dialed the number of the New Systems Laboratory — Waiting for an answer, his heart began beating harder and his throat went dry. “I’m nervous and that’s bad.” There was nothing but long ringing. Then, with second thoughts, he called the evening duty phone at the institute.

  “Could you help me reach Krivoshein? Is he on vacation?” “Krivoshein? He’s… no, he’s not on vacation. Who’s calling?” “If he should show up at the institute today, please tell him that… Adam is here.” “Adam? No last name?” “He knows. Please don’t forget.” “All right. I won’t.”

  The man left the phone booth with a sense of relief: he had suddenly realized that he was not prepared to see him. “Well, I’m here. I might as well try. Maybe he’s at home?”

  He got on a bus. He was not interested in the city streets swathed in blue twilight: he had left in summer and he came back in summer. Everything was green, and it seemed that nothing had changed.

  “Now, really, how can we use art information in our work? And can it be used? The whole problem is that this information doesn’t become part of a man’s life experience, or his exact knowledge, and it is on experience and knowledge that people base their actions. It really should go something like this: a man reads a book, begins to understand himself and his friends; a louse sees a play, becomes horrified and turns into a decent man; a coward goes down to the movies and comes out a hero. And it should last a lifetime, not just five minutes. That’s probably what writers and painters hope for when they create. Why doesn’t it happen? Let’s think. Art information is constructed along the lines of everyday information. It is concrete, contains subtle and flexible generalizations, but it is not real. It’s only realistic, probable. That must be its weakness. It cannot be applied like scientific information: a man cannot plan out his life based on it. It is not universal and objective enough for that. And you can’t use it for a guideline the way daily information can be used because its concreteness never coincides with the concrete life of the given reader. “And even if it did coincide, who wants to lead a copycat life? You can copy a hairdo, that’s all right, but to copy a life recommended by a large printing. Apparently, the idea of ‘rearing along literary examples’ springs from the idea that man comes from the apes and that imitation comes naturally to him. But man has been man for a long time, millions of years. Now he is characterized by self — determination and original behavior which he knows to be the better course.” “Academic Town!” the driver announced.

  The man got off the trolley and saw immediately that his trip had been in vain. Two rows of standardized five — story houses, joining at the horizon, gazed upon one another with lighted windows. But there were no lights in the corner apartment on the fifth floor of house No. 33.

  A feeling of relief that the unpleasant meeting with Krivoshein was put off, once again mingled with regret: he had no place to sleep. He took a trolley back downtown and started checking out the hotels. Naturally, they were all full.

  And he started thinking again, his thoughts coloring his glum attempts to find a place for the night.

  “The longer we live, the more we see that there are many life situations in which the decisions described in books or shown in movies are inapplicable. And we begin to see the information from art as a quasi — life, in which things are not really like that. It’s a good place to live through a dangerous adventure (even with a fatal ending) or to test one’s principles without jeopardizing one’s job — in a word, to feel, if only for a brief moment, that you are someone else: smarter, handsomer, braver than you really are. It’s no secret that people who live humdrum lives adore adventure and mystery novels….” He was on Marx Prospect, with its neon signs and bright lights. “And we use thi
s marvelous information for trifles, for amusement to pass some time. Or to charm a girl with the right poem. That information does not belong to us. We didn’t reach the conclusions and truths about ourselves. We can just sit back, watch or read, as an invented life goes beyond a glass screen — we are merely ‘information receptors! Of course, there have been instances when the ‘receptors’ couldn’t stand it and tried to influence it: Dad used to tell about the Red Army soldier in Samara who once shot at an actor who played Admiral Kolchak in a play for the troops, and earlier in Nizhny Novgorod, the audience beat up the actor who was portraying lago — for his good acting. The idea of breaking down the glass barrier and acting on art is a good one. There’s something to it….”

  A thought, still unverbalized, unclear, more a hunch, ripened in his mind. But someone tapped him on the shoulder just then. He looked around: there were three men in civilian clothes. One of them casually waved a red book under his nose.

  “Show your documents, citizen.”

  The man shrugged, put down his backpack, and took his passport from his pocket. The operative read the first page, looked at the photograph and his face and the photograph again, and returned the passport.

  “Everything is in order. Excuse us, please.”

  “Ooofff!” The man picked up his pack, and trying not to walk any faster, moved on toward the Theater Hotel. His mood was worse. “I don’t think I should have come.”

  The three men walked over to a tobacco kiosk. Officer Gayevoy, also dressed as a plainclothesman, was waiting for them.