Of course, I didn’t switch on the television. It seemed to me that someone was walking to and fro outside the door—I pressed my ear to it and heard the linoleum squeaking as regularly as a pendulum. The invisible steps affected my nerves, and I tried to make as little noise as possible.
The marble slab was piled high with post. Some envelopes had already been opened, and until it got dark I passed the time reading this correspondence—mostly boring reports on the housekeeping.
*
Gorn appeared four hours later, as she had promised. She was not alone. Masha’s jowly face peeped in round the door. Probably the orderly had been watching me in Gorn’s absence.
“How did everything go, Polina Vasilyevna?” I asked cheerfully. “Well?”
“Alles gut…” Gorn said with a nod. “Although one reading is not enough. The girls have more strength… More than enough, in fact… But they don’t have much more wits… They’ll be their old selves again in a couple of day… You’ll meet them then…” Gorn studied the desk and turned towards me. “The curious cat…”—the old woman’s voice trembled with reproach; starting with a gentle tone, it suddenly slid down to a harsh crackle, like someone stepping on spilled sugar—“… ended up dead.”
I took offence.
“I haven’t touched anything, Polina Vasilyevna. Check for yourself…”
“Too much knowledge… can be dangerous, Alyoshka… But then, who are you here? That’s right… The grandson… The future heir… Of the biggest clan of all… We’ll educate you…” She went over to the shelves and tugged on a wide cloth spine with her nail. “There—you can browse through it at your leisure. Lots of useful things…”
“What is it?” I asked, taking the loosely assembled volume out of Gorn’s hands.
“The Chronicle of the Home. And not only that… A little bit about everyone…”
I opened the cardboard cover with red corners. The close-set text had been typed on tracing paper. Blurred by carbon paper, the print was as fluffy as wool thread.
“Right, let’s go, Alyoshka, let’s go…” said Gorn, hurrying me along. “We’ll get you quarters for the night. You’re probably hungry. You can get something to eat at the same time…”
*
In the corridor we ran into fat, breathless Klava.
“Polinochka… Vasilyevna,” she babbled, stifling as she breathed. “The room for our… e-e-er… respected guest…”—the fat woman bowed to me—“…is ready… All first-rate… They put in the couch, and a really fancy desk, a chair and a lamp…”
“Thank you, Klava,” said Gorn. “Get over to the kitchen… to Ankudinova… Arrange for some supper…”
“Aye, aye,” said Klava, raising her palm to her curls in a military-style salute, and dashed off down the corridor at top speed. Near the central stairway she turned a corner and disappeared from view.
“Remember, Alyoshka,” Gorn told me, jabbing her finger at one door after another. “Administration, accounts… dental surgery and physiotherapy room… massage and dressings… after that, the linen room… the housekeeper’s room… cloakroom… utility room… The two upper floors are all wards…”
From the main stairway and the alabaster banisters a more modest stairway led downward. We walked down it into an echoing basement.
“Here are the storerooms… The kitchen.” Gorn drew air in through her nose and wrinkled up her face squeamishly. “It stinks like a cheap public canteen…”
The air in the basement was permeated with a warm onion stench. From behind the tiled wall I could hear the battlefield clatter of kitchenware and the cooks’ owlish laughter.
“It’s just that they had rassolnik for lunch,” Masha put in. “The smell hasn’t worn off yet.”
“It’s just that they boil up slops for lunch,” said Gorn, mimicking her. “What sort of people are they?… They’ve grown idle in just three weeks… What’s the point in trying? The old women are all gaga… They’ll eat it anyway… Ankudinova’s lost all sense of shame. I’ll have her sacked and out the door before she knows what’s happening!”
“Polina Vasilyevna, you shouldn’t say that,” Masha boomed in her deep voice. “The rassolnik was delicious. I tried it. And the potato cakes were tasty too.”
“And now she has an intercessor to plead for her,” Gorn carried on ranting. “The idle gossips are working hand in glove… They’re as thick as thieves… And Klava too… Where the hell has she got to?”
I sensed that Gorn’s grousing was contrived. She was clearly nervous, but I couldn’t tell why. I suddenly felt terribly uneasy, and an invisible, icy hand ruffled up the hair on the nape of my neck, leaving it standing on end.
“Where are we going, Polina Vasilyevna?” I asked with affected indifference.
“To the bunker.”
The basement ended in a broad ramp that ran down to a depth of several storeys.
“It used to be a bomb shelter,” Gorn explained to me as we walked. “Then the Books were kept there… Now it’s your personal study…”
We wound our way through concrete catacombs for about another minute until the path ended abruptly at an impressive metal door with a large wheel for opening and closing it, like in a submarine; it looked like the armoured entrance to a bank safe.
“Hard a-starboard,” said Gorn, spinning the wheel. The unlocking mechanism clanged and the old woman pushed against the heavy door. The slab of steel slowly drifted inward. Gorn went in first and switched on the light. “Come in, Alexei, make yourself at home.”
The bunker turned out to be a normal living room, not musty, and quite cosy to look at—an impression that was greatly assisted by the decorative windows framed with dark velvet curtains. Even the desk and couch that Klava had promised were there, and also the chair, in a white slip cover. The pipe of a ventilation shaft or rubbish chute protruded from the wall.
I immediately had the feeling that I’d seen this interior before, only I couldn’t remember where—perhaps it was in a dream.
“They’ve fitted it out well… Good for them,” said Gorn, praising the bunker. “A luxury suite. In an Intourist hotel.” She patted the wall proudly. “Three metres thick, no aerial bomb could ever penetrate it. The safest place in the Home. You’ll live here for now… Until the initiation. No one will bother you. Just look at those bolts.”
I looked round.
“And what are the windows here for?”
“To make it beautiful,” said Klava, who had come up behind me. She was holding a tray with plates on it. Leningrad rassolnik, potato cakes with meat stuffing, sliced. Stewed-pear water. Bon appétit…”
“Thank you.”
“You don’t like it here?” the fat woman asked, genuinely disappointed. “A bit gloomy, right?”
“It’s bad that there isn’t a toilet or a washbasin…”
“You can’t put in plumbing in a day,” Klava sighed. “It’s a lot of trouble. The lavatory’s close by. Just a short walk down the corridor…”
“Don’t be awkward, Alyoshka,” Gorn intervened. “I’m sure you can run to the toilet without spattering the whole place.”
“Polina Vasilyevna, you warned me yourself not to go out anywhere.”
“That’s true, I did. So don’t hang about. Once you’ve relieved yourself, it’s straight back… To the bunker.”
“You can have a bedpan for the nights,” Klava suggested. “I’ll just bring one.”
“And what about getting washed?”
“Masha will take you… to the shower unit tomorrow. She’s personally… responsible for you…” Gorn gave her orderly a severe glance. “Answerable with her head, her ovaries and all her other innards…”
Masha and Klava laughed.
“Don’t be sad, Alyosha…” Gorn said encouragingly. “The guard is only a temporary measure. Once you’re a boss… you can wander about wherever you like…”
THE VIEWING
FOR THE NEXT three days not very much happened. I spent
them locked away, only leaving the bunker in order to relieve myself. I was regularly provided with food and everything I needed by Masha, who was sometimes replaced by Klava. Gorn was busy with some business or other connected with my initiation. Perhaps she was preparing the ground with the old women who had awoken from their dementia.
I slept for long periods—that was the effect of the fatigue that had accumulated over recent weeks and, in addition, the bunker, with no natural lighting, encouraged lengthy sleep. For the rest of the time I studied the Chronicle. For the most part it was written in the dry style of minutes. Events and names were listed in a monotonous fashion: who found what Book, where and when and then set up a library or a reading room and when they were killed or, on the contrary, eliminated a rival. If the author doubted the authenticity of an event, then various sources with versions of the disputed episode were cited. In places there were tables and even maps on which arrows indicated the routes followed on foot by those long-forgotten distributors of Books, the wandering apostles. At the end of each chapter there were numerous notes, annotations, appendices and commentaries.
The Chronicle of the Home did not fit into this general style, betraying the author’s emotional partiality. The text was thick with graphic metaphors, often breaking into frank adulation of Gorn. At times it gave the impression that it wasn’t the pharmacist Yelizaveta Makarovna Mokhova who was the real leader, but Gorn. And in all likelihood that is the way it was. At the very dawn of the Mokhova clan’s expansion, Gorn sidelined her young boss, giving her the outwardly striking role of a sacred leader. The true power was focused in the hands of Gorn and several dozen old women. I had already realized that under the very best scenario the role prepared for me was the similarly formal role of “grandson”. I didn’t know what Gorn needed this for. At that time I wasn’t concerned with such global questions. I read the description of the ritual of adoption with intense revulsion—I didn’t want Gorn to think up some disgusting, unhygienic procedure of anointment that I would have to go through. Knowing Gorn, she could easily extract Mokhova’s body from the grave for theatrical effect and stage the mystery of my birth for several hundred women. I told myself that I would have a word with Gorn and ask her to keep the ritual of initiation as simple as possible.
Thanks to the Chronicle, by the end of the third day I was fairly well versed in the history of the Gromov world. Recalling the sycophantic recommendations of Dale Carnegie, I learned off the names of all the “mums” who were still alive: Aksak, Nazarova, Sushko, Reznikova, Voloshina, Suprun, Fertishina, Kashmanova, Kharitonova, Guseva, Kolycheva, Temtseva, Tsekhanskaya, Sinelnik.
In the evening Masha came for me. She usually behaved in a relaxed—I would even say flirtatious—manner, as far as that was possible for a tough old woman with huge tattooed, mannish hands that she shyly hid in her sleeves, like in a muff. But this time Masha was extremely serious, with no clowning about.
“The elders want to see you,” Masha informed me quietly and significantly.
“What did Polina Vasilyevna say it was?” I asked keenly. “The initiation?”
“Nah… The viewing. They’re going to get to know you. They’re celebrating the return in the canteen. Polina Vasilyevna said for you to get you dressed up for the occasion. So that you look presentable…”
Masha took me to a storeroom full of things left over from when the male half of the Home was exterminated. There were hundreds of suits hanging on crossbeams, looking like emaciated hanged men. Most of them were old-fashioned and decrepit.
“What size are you?” Masha asked, arming herself with a long stick with a hook on the end.
“Fifty-six…”
“Not an old man’s size…” Masha scurried about between the rows of clothes, hooking everything that caught her eye and then laying it out in front of me. “Don’t you worry. These aren’t cast-offs. They were saving these for when they died, for the coffin. It’s all clean, never even worn.”
I rejected the shirts out of hand because of their proverbial closeness to the body and limited myself to a dark-blue sweater. Masha hunted out two good quality suits for me: the jacket from the black suit fitted me, and so did the trousers from the grey one. Then we set off for the viewing.
I remember how agitated I was as I walked up the broad stairway, leaning with my hand on the cool white convex surface of the banister. While still on the steps I heard a piano accordion playing—the runs were too shrill for a button accordion. A guitar jangled and I heard indistinct choral singing, mingling with trills of laughter in the background.
“They’re cutting loose,” Masha said approvingly. Nonetheless we walked straight past the canteen, which was ringing with voices and music. Masha opened the next door.
“This is the serving room,” she explained. “Polina Vasilyevna’s instructions. She wants to give the others a surprise. I’ll go and tell her in secret that I’ve brought you.”
The din of the celebrations was on my left, beyond a thin, impalpable partition with a broad square window loosely covered by a zinc shutter. Something started jangling in a cupboard built onto the wall.
“Oh, Ankudinova’s sent the dessert,” Masha said. She opened the doors, took out four oven trays and put them on the table. The room was filled with the pleasant smell of something baked with apples.
“You wait a few minutes. I’ll soon be back,” Masha promised, and ran off.
I pressed my eye to the crack between the shutter and the serving window.
The canteen was long and narrow, like a railway carriage. It had been illuminated with strings of little lights—the tiny glow-worms were scattered thickly across the ceiling and the walls, glittering like deep-ocean plankton. Black silhouettes moved about in front of my eyes, clinking bottles and erupting into explosive peals of jackal-like laughter. Somewhere very close to me a knife scraped lingeringly across a plate, and this porcelain screech set my teeth on edge. The merry-making was taking place between tables that were set out in a horseshoe. I saw fat Klava holding an accordion on her knees. She was playing ‘The Blue Scarf’, and half a dozen old women were weaving a cautious reel round some chairs. Polina Vasilyevna Gorn was sitting at the head of the horseshoe table, surrounded by her broad-shouldered retinue. She had her chin propped on her hand and was frowning slightly at the insistent noise as she listened carefully to Reznikova.
Before I could guess what the fun was all about, Klava suddenly broke off the tune, squeezing the bellows of the accordion shut. The old women squealed and made a dash for the chairs. One of them didn’t get a seat and she jostled helplessly for a while and then retreated with a shrug.
“Guseva’s out! Let’s hear about Guseva!” the more agile old women trilled gleefully, stamping their feet. Their resemblance to little girls frolicking about during the break at school was comical, and they even called each other by their surnames.
“What shall I read about this victim?” Klava asked the group in a loud voice.
Guseva threatened her companions.
“If you take it out of week three, I’ll never forgive you…”
The victorious women consulted and announced: “Day eight!”
Klava picked up a tall stack of papers, found the sheet she needed, cleared her throat and read out:
“A letter from Guseva to the elder Maksakova… ‘Zhenechka send me a comb please please I really need a comb because Tsekhanskaya took my comb and lost it and now I haven’t got a comb and they didn’t give me a new comb so I really need a comb now what else can I write to you I’m fine Polya has gone away don’t send any reports but please please send a comb now what else can I write to you come and visit don’t forget and there’s nothing else to write greetings to Vera Yuryevna and do please send me a comb…’”
Guseva dragged the superfluous chair off to one side. Klava started playing ‘On the Hills of Manchuria’ and the reel round the remaining chairs started up again. Klava deliberately played for a long time, teasing them, so that the old wom
en and the spectators were soon exhausted by the tension. Someone even shouted out: “Stop mocking us, Klavka!” Then the accordion suddenly fell silent and the old women dashed for the chairs. Kashmanova was out and she was sentenced to a stenographic report of her fifteenth day of dementia.
Kashmanova gasped resentfully and threw her hands up in the air.
Guseva, who was out just before her, started reading with a gloating note in her voice.
“Uses too much lipstick, mascara, rouge and powder. She has plucked her eyebrows. Always carries a bottle of nail varnish around and constantly paints her nails. Wears beads, brooches and clip-on earrings. Flirts with an imaginary admirer and takes her clothes off. Takes the stenographer and nurses for her rivals and at such moments becomes aggressive. Sexually uninhibited. Constantly talks about sexual relations and masturbates openly. Wants to go to the Caucasus ‘to enjoy the grapes and other pleasures’. Believes she is twenty years old and ought to get married. In the same tone of voice she says: ‘And then I went down on my knees and gave him a French job…’”
The canteen shook with laughter.
“You great fools!” Kashmanova exclaimed, putting on an imperturbable air. “What’s so unusual about that? Normal female behaviour! And you’re all stupid fools! Especially Aksak and Yemtseva!”
Two old women on the chairs giggled contentedly.
Klava struck up ‘The Autumn Waltz’. I saw Masha. She walked round the tables that had been moved together and went straight to Gorn. Masha leaned down to her leader’s ear and told her something.
Klava switched tactics and the accordion growled to a halt after only a brief moment. The one caught was an old woman by the name of Tsekhanskaya.
The Librarian Page 36