The Librarian

by Mikhail Elizarov

  “Girls!” Gorn exclaimed irritably to her escort. “Don’t just watch! Catch them! Masha! Do you need a special invitation?”

  The bodyguards and the orderly ran to help the nurses. The old women who had relapsed into dotage were not particularly agile. They were quickly herded together into a knot and led towards the entrance in the left wing of the building.

  “Listen, Klava,” Gorn suddenly asked. “How’s Rudenko?”

  “Fine,” the fat woman replied. “What’s going to happen to her? She smeared the walls with shit again…”—she laughed—“If only that energy could be used for peaceful purposes!”

  “She’s a good housekeeper!” Gorn said admiringly. “And tough. It even makes me feel envious. Have they tidied up the wards?”

  “Yes, Polina Vasilyevna. Komarskaya and Pogozhina were on duty. They whitewashed the walls too, though they swore themselves blue in the face…”

  “Hey, you!” Gorn suddenly shouted to the bodyguards who were holding the aged fugitives by their astrakhan collars. “A bit more politeness there! They’re really getting out of hand, the riff-raff!” Gorn watched the old women leave with a morose air and sighed: “There, Alyoshka… Take note… If you’ve got money, it’s ‘yes sir, no sir’… If you don’t have money, it’s ‘bugger you’… That’s the gloria mundi for you… They only needed to get weak… And there’s no more respect… Not for age, not for title… It’s just that they’ve been without the Book of Strength… For more than two weeks… So their brains have given up…”

  Klava moved ahead of us, ran up the steps of the porch and pulled open the glass door.

  “Please, come in…”

  We walked through a hall that was like an aquarium and into a corridor that ran off to the left and the right. Facing us at the centre was a broad stairway of speckled stone with plaster banisters. The landing between floors was decorated with a semicircular stained-glass window with a sky of heavenly blue, two drooping ears of wheat and a crimson star. Filtered through the different-coloured glass, the sunlight spread itself on the floor in a hazy petrol rainbow.

  To the right of the stairway, a woman in a white coat was sitting behind a perspex window with the word “Administration” on it. She was holding a telephone receiver to her ear, evidently informing the upper storeys that the boss had arrived.

  “Klava,” said Gorn. “Go on… Get the equipment ready.”

  “Yes, Polina Vasilyevna,” the fat woman said with a nod and darted up the stairs. I was left alone with Gorn.

  The corridor was genuinely gloomy—poorly lit and as long as a Metro tunnel, and in both directions it ended in twilight and shadows.

  A line of matt spheres glowed on the ceiling, like an unknown planetary system of dull, identical moons, but they only lit up themselves, not the twilit expanse of the endless corridor.

  “Let’s go,” said Gorn, and led me along the corridor. The scuffed blue linoleum squeaked repulsively as if I weren’t walking, but being pushed on a hospital bed. I heard the voices of nurses and the sandpaper shuffling of numerous slow soles from a distant stairway.

  “Well, Alyoshka, are you disappointed?” Gorn suddenly asked. “Were you expecting more?”

  “It’s strange that there are so few people…”

  “In recent times… many things have changed. Out of the old guard… only fifteen are still alive… You saw them… The ones who were walking in the yard… Former generals, regional prefects, centurion-mums. Before, each one of them had… three or four hundred people… under their command… So much for your Lagudov!…” Gorn lowered her voice to a half whisper. “I’ve been trying for more than a year to persuade them to take well-deserved retirement… But I can’t do it… Be extremely cautious… They’re only dead wood for now… After the Book of Strength they’ll be themselves again. These ladies are very dangerous… and still influential… I’m afraid they won’t go for the hogwash about… a newly discovered grandson… The younger ones will believe it… But you can’t fool the old ones… God only knows what ideas they might get into their heads… Don’t go wandering round the Home… Just to be sure… I’ll give you Masha… Don’t take a step without her… She may be stupid… But she’s as strong as they come… Yes… And don’t even think about mentioning the Book of Meaning to anyone… And in general… until the initiation, try… not to let anyone see you…”

  “What initiation?”

  “You have to be… consecrated as the grandson… Urgently… Without any precise status… you’re an empty space… No one will stand up for you… And the elders… will be against any ‘grandsons’ in any case…”

  “Perhaps you shouldn’t read them the Book of Power yet?”

  Gorn frowned jokingly.

  “Are you suggesting I should kill them? With Alzheimer’s and Pick’s? My battle comrades?”

  “You misunderstand me, Polina Vasilyevna,” I said hastily.

  “Don’t make excuses… I understood perfectly well… We’re here.” Gorn stopped in front of a door with a plaque that said “Director” on it and fiddled with her keys. “Basically, you’re thinking… along the right lines. In my time… I suggested an idea to Liza… I had serious doubts… that one of the elders… as my Masha would put it… was playing the rat… That is… hiding Books that had been found. Each of them effectively had… her own network of agents, with spies and scouts… fighters, theoreticians, couriers, suicide operatives… How could we find out? You can’t climb inside someone else’s head… And, after all, they’re experienced and cunning… There’s no way to get them to talk openly…”

  The ponderous luxury of Gorn’s office was impressive. The walls were faced with a honey-coloured, semitransparent material that resembled amber. The gleaming parquet floor was decorated with patterned inserts. Most of the furniture matched the ornate decor. An old writing desk crowned with a slab of marble, an armchair as sumptuous as a throne, a carved baroque secretaire, a grandfather clock that looked like an expensive coffin, a branching chandelier with garlands of crystal, velvet curtains, a palm in a tub. Discordant notes among all this lordly magnificence were struck by the office cupboards crammed from top to bottom with papers, the black leather sofa, the glass coffee table, the television, the two-chamber safe, the typewriter and the telephone.

  Gorn flung the papers that Klava had given her onto the table.

  “Come on in and make yourself at home,” she said, pointing to the sofa. “Being secretive is an intellectual effort… When the personality deteriorates… control is lost. It’s like wine… it loosens the tongue… And drunk or gaga… fundamentally it’s all the same. We needed our colleagues suddenly to become more stupid… How could we do it? Why, elementary. Under some pretext or other… deprive them of the Book of Strength… After a week the lack of constant input… already affects the brain… It all happens confidentially… A stenographer is attached to the suspect, and she documents every word… Naturally, there were some innocent victims. To make an omelette, you’ve got to break some eggs… A few veterans pegged out. A stroke, or kidney failure, or a heart attack… But the important thing, Alexei, was that we caught the ‘rat’. Or rather, she gave herself away. And you know who it was? Valka Rudenko, your Selivanova’s mother. A long time ago—five years now—she hid… a couple of extremely valuable Books. Valka didn’t live with us—she said her health was good enough… That’s the way we do things here… Those who can live independently, without the Book of Strength, live outside in the district. I can see now that Valka wanted to… stay in the shadows… But two months ago she moved into the Home… With a diagnosis of ‘cerebral atherosclerosis’. She wanted to use the Book as treatment… Valka was above suspicion… No one was checking her especially… But since the opportunity arose…” Gorn laughed. “Thank God, all the stenographic reports… came straight to my desk. Absolutely appalling facts surfaced. Valka had a Book of Meaning, and she gave it it to someone… Who exactly, we couldn’t find out… Valka was completely off h
er trolley… She couldn’t string two words together… I didn’t report everything to Liza… Why upset her?… Liza was absolutely raging anyway… Bearing in mind her previous services… Valka was banned from the readings… Let her die on her own… Then Ritka Selivanova showed up… with a Book of Meaning… And that set the cat among the pigeons… The insert was missing… Ritka was killed… At least we found out… that the Book of Meaning had been sent to you… I won’t try to hide my curiosity, Alyoshka… I was intrigued why Valka sent the Book to you… What is it that makes you so special? And you had the insert too… Our agents got busy… They found your village… Organized people for the attack… And that’s the whole story… It’s a month now since Lizka died… Valka paints the walls… with her own shit… It’s horrible… But on the other hand… she would have resented what happened to Ritka. And taken revenge… But when’s she’s crazy… she can’t even remember… her own name… Later, if you like, you can pay her a visit…” Gorn looked through the sheets of paper as she spoke. “No sedition… As pure as turtle doves…”

  “What are those?”

  “Stenographic reports…”

  “But who have you recorded? Rudenko again?”

  “No… the other lovely ladies…”

  “The ones you abandoned to their fate?”

  “Don’t be sarcastic,” said Gorn, suddenly angry. “I had no choice…” She hastily stacked the sheets into a pile and got up from the desk. “I had to go away… They’ll only turn senile… I’ll die without the Book…” Gorn opened the upper chamber of the safe and hid the papers away. The phone trilled. Gorn answered it and replied curtly: “We’re starting in fifteen minutes… Damn… That interrupted my train of thought… I forgot what I wanted to tell you…”

  “Polina Vasilyevna, may I phone home?”

  “Where?” Gorn asked in amazement.

  “You know, home. To my family. My parents or my sister. They haven’t heard a word from me for a month now… They’ll be worried…”

  A wooden mask of cruelty suddenly seemed to cover Gorn’s face.

  “Your mother… Yelizaveta Makarovna Mokhova… is dead,” the old woman said with pitiless, slow emphasis. “And the librarian Vyazintsev is dead… There is only Alexei Mokhov… He doesn’t have a sister… And if Mokhov thinks that he is still… a little bit Vyazintsev… Alexei Mokhov will be dead too… Any more questions?”

  “Yes…” I said in a depressed voice. Gorn’s crude rebuke had reminded me yet again what a dangerous escapade I had got involved in. “When’s the initiation?”

  “I think it will be the seventh of November. We’ll combine two celebrations… In the meantime, you’ll get used to things, settle in…” Gorn looked at the clock. “I’ll be back… in about four hours… Lock yourself in securely… Don’t open the door to anyone. How can I keep you amused? By the way, have you ever seen the one-hander?”

  “Who?”

  “Well, Gromov.”

  “Why the one-hander?”

  “What, you mean you didn’t know? For crying out loud! Ritka didn’t tell you? No? That’s strange… Gromov lost his right hand… at the front. He wrote with his left hand… We’ve got… his photograph. Shall I show you it? In By Labour’s Roads there’s only a pencil portrait. Ah, yes… You’ve only… read two Books…”

  Gorn walked over to some shelves crammed full with many years of archive material. The lacquered spines of notebooks, folders and thick journals protruded from them.

  “I think it’s here…” Gorn pulled apart the plastic covers that had glued themselves together and dragged out a thick envelope. “Who have we got here?… E-e-er… Hello there!…” She turned round. “Have you seen Lagudov? No?” She handed me a dogeared, faded photo that was once coloured, with a long white crack across its glossy surface. The snapshot showed a small group of people huddled together in friendly style, like a set of pan pipes.

  “Lagudov and his inner circle?” I asked at random.

  “No. This is 1981. A birthday at the publishing house…”

  “Where did you get this from?”

  “A company secret…” Gorn said with a smile and a wave of her hand. “There isn’t any secret… Just normal intelligence work… We cadged it from Lagudov’s wife… We gleaned… a lot of useful things from her.…”

  “And which one here is Lagudov?”

  “The third from the right… There’s a woman in a blue dress… with ruffles… and he’s perched beside her… A real opera-singer type…”

  Lagudov turned out to be a portly, well-fed gentleman with a dense thatch of greying hair. His dramatic appearance was spoiled by flabby cheeks and a chin the size of a small dumpling.

  “And this is Gromov,” said Gorn. “In this snapshot… he’s already almost seventy… We appropriated it from his daughter. At first we wanted to initiate her into the cause… but then we changed our minds… Lizka was afraid of the competition…”

  Staring out at me from the black-and-white photo was a distinctive old man with a thin face, who looked more like a physicist than a lyric writer, wearing glasses. His forehead was bony, as if it were faceted, and emphasized by a receding hairline on both sides. The horn-rimmed spectacles had slipped down his nose and the slim legs had lifted up above his ears, so that Gromov seemed to be looking through the lenses and over the top of them at the same time—with two glances. This produced a strange impression.

  “A good portrait,” I said, giving the photo back to Gorn.

  “I like it too… The one on his grave… is the same.”

  “Where is he buried?”

  “In the town of Gorlovka… in the municipal cemetery… Right, now, Alyoshka… Recognize this?”

  The next photograph was of me. Slightly out of focus, because I had been caught in movement—my waving hand looked like ethereal pigeon fluff. Kruchina and Sukharev had also been caught in the frame, but they were completely blurred and cloudy, like ghosts.

  “Our photocorps’s work,” Gorn explained. “Taken back in June… For the archive… Who would ever have thought it?…” She shook her head. “The new Shironin librarian… A pawn… A nothing… A tiny little screw…” Gorn held up her hand with the tips of her fingers bunched together, as if she was straining to make out something microscopic. “And the Book of Meaning… Even now… I can hardly believe it… All right then,” she said with a start, “I’ll go… You remember, right? Lock yourself in… Don’t put a foot out in the corridor… Don’t get bored… Take a rest… Watch the television… Only quietly… Don’t attract attention…”

  The moment the door closed behind Gorn I turned the key twice, but I still didn’t feel any calmer. On the contrary, I now found myself face to face with a feeling of dangerous uncertainty, as acrid as heartburn. Pounding away in my head was the thought that I had to use this pause I had been given to analyse things. I strode round the office witlessly, repeating to myself, like an incantation: “I have to think everything through carefully.” But there wasn’t anything to think through. That is, I had plenty of thoughts, but they didn’t require analysis. Everything was absolutely clear as it was: I didn’t have the slightest degree of control over the situation and by acting independently I could only make my position worse.

  I suddenly realized that I had been wanting to go to the toilet for ages, and now it was too late; Gorn had gone. I didn’t torment myself, but simply took a leak into the palm tree’s pot. Then I sat down at the desk. For a few minutes I was tempted by the phone, but after a moment’s thought I decided not to violate Gorn’s prohibitions. Maybe the line was monitored, and I didn’t want to get on the wrong side of Gorn.

  I spotted a print-out that Gorn had forgotten on the desk:

  NATALIA ALEXANDROVNA SUPRUN. BORN 1915. SEVENTEEN-DAY CASE HISTORY.

  Week 1. S is anxious about the lack of readings. Irritable. Spends most of her time in bed, tries not to move or speak. Believes that in this way she reduces the use of her body’s energy to the minimum and so
prolongs her life.

  Start of week 2. Sunday–Thursday. Emotionally heightened mood. Agitated. Gluttonous. Immediately after eating, she forgets about it and demands a new portion of food. Obsessed by the idea that the woman next to her in the ward, T.A. Kashmanova, is wearing her slippers. Becomes abusive and aggressive. Takes the slippers and reads out to Kashmanova the supposedly special inscription on the sole: “This is Suprun’s slipper. Kashmanova is strictly forbidden to wear it.”

  End of week 2. Friday–Monday. Has lost the ability to keep herself clean and tidy. Finds it hard to get her bearings in the ward. Fussy and rude. Often becomes quarrelsome. Walks with a short, mincing stride, grabs everything that comes within reach, grates her teeth and laughs unnaturally. Happily sits by the television and makes conversation with the presenters. Her sense of taste is distorted. She picks up rubbish and earth outside and puts it in her mouth. Forgets the names of things. Instead of “alarm clock”, she says “temporal”, instead of “pencil she says “written”, instead of “glass” she says “drinkable”.

  Start of week 3. Does not understand what people say to her. Her facial expression is frozen. Active. Broad, sweeping movements. Afraid to change her clothes, starts shouting and protesting. Keeps asking the same question all the time: “How much?”—then runs away without waiting for an answer. Wanders aimlessly around the corridors. Fingers the folds of her dress one by one. Takes matches out of a matchbox and puts them on the floor, then puts them back again. Sings the same set of words over and over to a definite melody and rhythm.

  My attention was caught by the clamour of a vast nesting ground of birds of prey coming from the yard. I walked across to the window and my eyes were dazzled by a welter of orange waistcoats and padded work jackets. There were so many of them, perhaps a hundred and fifty or two hundred clamouring women. A truck slowly crept into the yard, pulling a compressor behind it. Another truck disgorged more female workers from its canvas belly. In only half an hour the almost extinct home was engorged with fresh strength.