The Case of Comrade Tulayev

by Victor Serge

  Vaniuchkin’s small red face, which looked like a clenched fist flattened by a collision, wrinkled in circles. He looked at the agronomist with hatred, as if he wanted to cry at him: “Are you happy now?” Agronomist Kostiukin gesticulated too much: when he talked he looked as if he were catching flies; his watery eyes became too bright; his tart voice sank and sank. But just when you thought it would become quite inaudible, it revived harshly. The kolkhoze directors were rather afraid of him, because he was always making scenes and prophesying misfortunes, and his very clear-sightedness seemed to evoke the calamities it foresaw. And what was one to think of him? Released from a concentration camp, an exsaboteur who had once allowed a whole crop to rot in the fields — for lack of hands to harvest it, if you believed his story! He had been released before his time was up, on account of his admirable work on the penitentiary farms, he had been mentioned in the newspapers for an essay he had written on new methods of clearing land in cold regions, finally he had been awarded the Labor Medal of Honor for having set up an ingenious irrigation system for the Votiak kolkhozes during a dry season … In short, then: an extremely able technician, a counterrevolutionary who perhaps might have sincerely repented or who might equally well be remarkably clever and remarkably well camouflaged. You had to be on your guard with him; however, he had a right to be respected, you had to listen to him — and consequently be doubly on your guard. President Vaniuchkin, himself a former seasonal mason and former elite infantryman, whose knowledge of agriculture had been derived from one of the short courses established for the executive personnel of collective farms, really did not know which way to turn. Kostiukin continued: The peasants saw everything. “At it again, working in order to die of starvation this winter!” Who is sabotaging? They wanted to write to the regional center, denounce the township. “We must call a meeting, explain things.” Kostia was chewing his nails. He asked:

  “How far from here to the township?”

  “Thirty-four miles by the plain.”

  The agronomist and Kostia instantly understood each other: they had had the same idea. Seed, provisions, matches, the calicoes that the women had been promised — why shouldn’t the people of the kolkhoze bring them from Molchansk on their own backs? It could be done in three or four days if the able-bodied women and the sixteen-year-old boys were mobilized to relieve the bearers. Days and nights of work would count double. We’ll promise a special distribution of soap, cigarettes, and sewing thread by the Co-op. If the Co-op objects, Vaniuchkin, I’ll go to the Party Committee, I’ll say, “Either that or the Plan is sunk!” They can’t refuse — we know what they have on hand. They’d prefer to keep the things for the Party cadres, the technicians, and so on — naturally; but they’ll have to give in, we’ll all go to see them together! They might even let us have some needles; we know they’ve received some, though they’ll deny it. The agronomist and Kostia flung the firm sentences back and forth as if they had been throwing stones. Kostiukin wriggled in his gray blouse, the pockets of which were stuffed with papers. Kostia took him by the elbows, they were face to face: the young, energetic profile, the old, sharp-nosed face with the cracked lips half open, the gaps in the rows of teeth. “We’ll call a meeting. We can mobilize as many as a hundred and fifty bearers if the Iziumka people come!”

  “Shall we get the priest to speak?” President Vaniuchkin proposed.

  “If the devil himself would make us a good stirring speech, I’d ask him,” Kostia cried. “We’d see his cloven hoofs sticking out through his boots, there’d be a smell of burning, he’d dart out his flaming tongue — to accomplish the sowing plan, citizens! I’m willing — let the old devil sell us his soul!”

  Their laughter relaxed them all. The russet earth laughed too, in its own way, perceptible to them alone; the horizon swayed a little, a comical cloud drifted across the sky.

  The meeting was held in the administration farmyard at twilight, at the hour when the gnats become a torment. Many came, for the kolkhoze felt that it was in danger; the women were pleased that Father Guerassim was going to speak. Benches were set out for the women, the men listened standing. President Vaniuchkin spoke first, frightened to the depths of his soul by two hundred indistinct and murmuring faces. Someone shouted to him from the back: “Why did you have the Kibotkins arrested? Anathema!” He pretended not to have heard. Duty — Plan — the honor of the kolkhoze — the powers demand — children — hunger this winter — he rolled out the great cloudy words toward the red ball which was sinking to the dark horizon through a threatening haze. “I now give the floor to Citizen Guerassim!” Compact as a single obscure creature, the crowd stirred. Father Guerassim hoisted himself onto the table.

  Since the Great Democratic Constitution had been granted by the Chief to the federated peoples, the priest no longer camouflaged himself but had let his hair and beard grow in the old fashion, although he belonged to the new Church. He held services in an abandoned isba, which he had rebuilt with his own hands and on which he had set up a wooden cross planed, nailed, and gilded with his own hands too … A good carpenter, a tolerable gardener (crafts which he had learned at the Special Camp for Rehabilitation through Work in the White Sea Islands), he knew the Gospel thoroughly, and also the laws, regulations, and circulars promulgated by the Agricultural Commissariat and the Central Kolkhoze Bureau. His blood boiled with hatred for enemies of the people, conspirators, saboteurs, traitors, foreign agents — in short, for the Fascist-Trotskyists, whose extermination he had preached from the pulpit — that is, from the top of a ladder leaned against the isba stove. The district authorities thought well of him. All in all, he was simply a hairy muzhik, a little taller than the rest, married to a placid dairywoman. Abounding in a malicious common sense, speaking softly in a low voice, on great occasions he could utter vehement words which breathed inspiration. Then all his hearers turned to him, gripped and moved, even the Young Communists back from military service. “Christian brothers! Decent citizens! Folk of the Russian soil!” In his confused but often vivid periods he mingled our great fatherland, old Russia, our mother, the beloved Chief who considers the lowly, our infallible pilot (may the Lord bless him!), God who sees us, our Lord Jesus Christ who cursed the idle and the parasites, drove the chafferers from the temple, promised heaven to those who did their work well, St. Paul who cried to the world: “He that will not work shall not eat!” He brandished a crumpled sheet of paper: “People of the soil, the battle for wheat is our battle … A hellish brood still crawls under our feet! Our glorious people’s power has just struck down three more assassins with its sword of fire, three more of Satan’s hirelings, three more cowards who were trying to stab the Party in the back! May they burn in eternal flames while we set to work to save our harvest!”

  Kostia and Maria applauded together. They had met in one of the last rows, from where they could see only the priest’s bushy hair against a background of gloomy bluish sky. Here and there, people crossed themselves. Kostia put his supple hand around Maria’s neck and braids. Firm cheekbones, slightly snub nose. The girl warmed him. When he was near her, he seemed to feel the blood pulsing faster through his veins. Her mouth was big and so were her eyes. There were in her both a vigorous animality and a luminous happiness. “He’s a man of the Middle Ages, Maria, but he speaks well, the old devil! It’s as good as done now, he has got it started …” He felt her hard, pointed breast graze his arm, he smelled the strong odor of her armpits, her eyes made his head swim. “Some definite decision must be reached, Kostia; otherwise our people may still drift away.”

  Father Guerassim was saying:

  “Comrades! Christians! We will go ourselves! Seed, tools, supplies — we will carry them on our own backs, in the sweat of our brows, slaves of God that we are, free citizens! And the Evil One, who wants the Plan to fail, who wants us to be treated as saboteurs by the government, who wants us to go hungry — we will shove his wickedness down his putrid throat!”

  A woman’s voice, tense and hi
gh-pitched, cried: “Forward, Father!” And immediately teams were made up to collect sacks. They would start that very night, under the moon, with God, for the Plan, for the soil!

  A hundred and sixty-five bearers, capable of carrying sixty loads by relieving one another, set out through the night, walking in single file, plunging into the dark fields. The moon was rising, huge and bright on the horizon — toward it Kostia led the first team, made up of young men who sang in chorus, until they were exhausted:

  “If war comes,

  If war comes,

  O our strong land,

  — Let us be strong!

  Little girl, little girl,

  How I love your little eyes!”

  Father Guerassim and Agronomist Kostiukin brought up the rear so that they could keep the laggards moving by telling them stories. They bivouacked on the bank of the Syeroglazaya, the Gray-eyed River, more milky than gray; a soft, continuous rustling rose from the reeds. The cold dew of dawn chilled them to the bone. Kostia and Maria slept side by side for several hours, rolled in the same blanket for warmth, too tense to talk to each other, although the moon was magical, ringed with a circle of pale light as big as the world. They set off again at daybreak, slept again in the forest through the noonday heat, reached the highroad, trudged along it in a cloud of dust, and reached the township before the offices closed. The Party Committee provided a good meal for them — fish soup and groats; the truck drivers’ orchestra played as they started off, some bent under their sacks and bundles, others singing, and the red flag of the Communist Youth preceded them as far as the first turn in the road. Yet Kostiukin, Kostia, and Father Guerassim had spoken bitter words to the Committee. “Your transport section has been making fools of us — neither trucks, nor tractors, nor carts — the devil take you!” Kostiukin’s face contracted furiously, reddish and wrinkled like the head of some old bird of prey. “People are not made to be beasts of burden! We can manage it for once — but the kolkhozes that are sixty miles and more away — what are they to do?” — “Very true, comrades!” the township secretary answered with a conclusive gesture toward one of his committee: “That means you!” Father Guerassim said nothing until almost the end, then he spoke in a veiled voice, full of implications: “Are you quite sure, Citizen Secretary, that there is no sabotage at the bottom of this?”

  Nettled, the secretary answered:

  “I guarantee it, Citizen Administering the Cult! Gasoline deliveries are behind, that is all.”

  “In your place, I would not guarantee it, Citizen Secretary, for God alone probes men’s consciences and hearts.”

  His repartee roused a hearty laugh. “Isn’t he getting to be a little too influential?” the representative of Security whispered, uncomfortably caught between two directives, one of which prescribed that the clergy should be permitted to acquire no political influence, the other ordering the cessation of religious persecution. “Judge for yourself,” answered the Party secretary, also in a whisper. Kostia increased their embarrassment by emphatically stating: “The Comrade Administering the Cult is our real organizer today.”

  Every hour counted, since they had lost at least seven days on the work schedule after having lost many more waiting for transportation, and since the rains were now to be feared. The one hundred and sixty-five trudged on to the point of exhaustion, bent under their loads, sweating, groaning, swearing, praying. The roads were abominable — there were soft clods that melted underfoot, or stones that made you stumble. Now they were staggering along a sunken road, through mud and pebbles. The moon rose, huge and russet and cynical. Kostia and Maria were taking turns on the same seventy-pound sack, Kostia carrying it as much as possible, yet husbanding his strength so that he should hold out longer than Maria. Dripping with sweat, the young woman trudged on in a steamy odor of flesh. The burden-bearers emerged into a silvery plain. The moon, risen to the zenith and now white, hung over them; their shadows moved beneath them over the phosphorescent ground. The groups straggled out. Maria was carrying the sack on her head, steadying it with both hands; her armpits were bare; her shoulders, her breasts, the tense line of her throat, resisting the force of gravity, caught the light. Her lips were open, baring her teeth to the night. Kostia had stopped joking many hours ago, had almost stopped speaking. “We are nothing now but muscles operating … muscles and will … That’s what men are … That’s what the masses are …” Suddenly it was as if the mauve and milky sky, the moonlit night, had begun singing in him: “I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you …” unwearyingly, endlessly, with stubborn enthusiasm. “Give me the sack, Maria!” — “Not yet; when we get to those trees there. Don’t talk to me, Kostia.” She was panting softly. He went on in silence: “I love you, I love you …” and his tiredness vanished, the moonlight marvelously unburdened him.

  When the hundred and sixty-five bivouacked by the Gray-eyed River, the Syeroglazaya, to sleep a few hours before dawn, Kostia and Maria lay down beside their sack, facing the sky. The grass was soft and cold and damp. “All right, Marussia?” Kostia asked, in a tone which was indifferent at the beginning of the short sentence but which suddenly became caressing upon the diminutive which closed it. “Falling asleep?” — “Not yet,” she said. “I’m fine. How simple everything is — the sky, the earth, and us …”

  Lying on their backs side by side, their shoulders touching, infinitely close to each other, infinitely detached from each other, they gazed up into space.

  Without moving, smiling up into the faintly luminous sky, Kostia said:

  “Maria, listen to me, Maria, it’s really true. Maria, I love you.”

  She did not move, her hands were crossed under her head. He heard her regular breathing. She said nothing for a time, then answered calmly:

  “That’s fine, Kostia. We can make a good solid couple.”

  A sort of anguish seized him, he overcame it and swallowed his saliva. He did not know what to say or to do. A moment passed. The sky was magnificently bright. Kostia said:

  “I knew a Maria in Moscow; she worked underground, building the subway. She came to a sad end, which she didn’t deserve. Her nerves weren’t strong enough. When I remember her, I think of her as Maria the Unhappy. I want you to be Maria the Happy. You shall be.”

  “I don’t believe in happiness during transition periods,” said Maria. “We will work together. We will see life. We will fight. That is enough.”

  He thought: “Strange, here we are husband and wife, and we talk like two old friends; I was longing to take her in my arms, and now I only want to make this moment last …”

  There was a silence, then Maria said:

  “I knew another Kostia. He belonged to the Communist Youth, like you, he was almost as good-looking as you are, but he was a fool and a skunk …”

  “What did he do to you?”

  “He made me pregnant, and left me because I am a believer.”

  “You are a believer, Maria?”

  Kostia put his arm around her shoulders, he sought her eyes and found them, with their look that was as dark and as luminous as the night.

  “I do not believe in ecclesiastical mumble-jumble, Kostia, try to understand me. I believe in everything that is. Look around us, look!”

  Her face, her clear-cut lips turned impulsively toward him to show him the universe: that simple sky, the plains, the invisible river among the reeds, space.

  “I can’t say what I believe in, Kostia, but I believe. Perhaps it’s just in reality. You must understand me.”

  Ideas flooded through Kostia: he perceived them in his heart and his loins as he did in his mind. Reality, embraced by a single motion of the whole universe. We are inseparable from the stars; from the authentic magic of this night in which there is no miracle; from the waiting earth; from all the confused power that lies within us … Joy filled him. “You are right, Maria, I believe as you do, I see …” The earth, the sky, the very night, in which there were no shadows, brought them inexpressibly together, f
orehead against forehead, their hair mingling, eyes to eyes, mouth to mouth, their teeth meeting with a little shock. “Maria, I love you …” The words were only tiny gilded crystals which he dropped into deep, dark, sluggish, turbulent, enrapturing waters … Maria answered with restrained violence: “But I’ve already told you I love you, Kostia.” Maria said: “I feel as if I were throwing little white pebbles at the sky and they turn into meteors, I see them disappear but I know they will never fall, that’s how I love you …” Then, “What is rocking us,” she murmured, “I think I’m going to sleep …” She fell asleep with her cheek on the sack, smelling the odor of wheat. Kostia watched her for a moment. His joy was so great that it became like grief. Then the same rocking put him to sleep too.

  The last stretch, which had to be covered first through the morning fog, then under the sun, was the hardest. The line of staggering bearers reached from horizon to horizon. The president of the kolkhoze, Vaniuchkin, came to meet them with carts. Kostia dropped his sack over Vaniuchkin’s head and shoulders. “Your turn, President!” The whole landscape was calm and bright.

  “The sowing is safe, brother. You are going to sign me two two-week leaves right away, for Maria and myself. We’re getting married.”

  “Congratulations,” said the president.

  He clicked his tongue to hurry on the horses.

  Romachkin’s life had recently become more dignified. Though he was still in the same office, on the sixth floor of the Moscow Clothing Trust, and though he was not yet a member of the Party, he felt that he had increased in stature. An official announcement, posted in the hall one evening, had said that “the assistant clerk in the salaries bureau, Romachkin, a punctual and zealous worker, has been promoted to first assistant with an increase in salary of 50 rubles per month and citation on the Board of Honor.” From his ink-stained and glue-smeared desk in insignificance, Romachkin moved to the varnished desk which stood opposite to the similar but larger desk of the Trust’s Director of Tariffs and Salaries. Romachkin was provided with an interoffice telephone, which was rather a nuisance than otherwise, because the calls interrupted him in his calculations, but which was a symbol of unhoped-for authority. The president of the Trust himself sometimes called him on this telephone to ask for information. Those were solemn moments. Romachkin found it somewhat difficult to answer sitting down, and without bowing and smiling amiably. If he had been alone, he would certainly have stood up, the better to assume an air of deference as he promised: “At once, Comrade Nikolkin; you shall have the exact figures in fifteen minutes …” Having promised, Romachkin straightened up until his back touched the back of his swivel chair, looked importantly around at the five desks in the office, and beckoned to the sad-faced Antochkin, whose liver was always giving him trouble and who had replaced him at the desk in insignificance. “Comrade Antochkin, I am looking up some information for the President of the Trust. I need the file on the last conference on prices and wages and also the message from the Textile Syndicate concerning the application of the C.C. directives. You have seven minutes.” Spoken with simple firmness from which there was no appeal. Assistant Clerk Antochkin looked at the clock as a donkey looks at his driver’s whip; his fingers flew through the files; he seemed to be chewing on something … Before the end of the seventh minute, Romachkin received the papers from him and thanked him amiably. From the other side of the room the old typist and the office boy looked at Romachkin with evident respect. (That they were both thinking: “Oh, that worn-out rat, who does he think he is! I hope you get your bellyful of it, Citizen Bootlicker!” Romachkin, who was always well disposed toward everyone, could not suspect.) The head of the office, though he went on signing letters, rounded his shoulders approvingly. Romachkin was discovering authority, which enlarges the individual, cements organization, fecundates work, saves time, reduces overhead … “I thought I was nobody and only knew how to obey, and here I am, able to give orders. What is this principle which bestows a value on a man who had no value before? The principle of hierarchy.” But is hierarchy just? Romachkin thought about it for several days before he answered himself in the affirmative. What better government than a hierarchy of just men?