The Librarian

by Mikhail Elizarov

  “Stenographic report, day nine,” Kashmanova read out in an expressive voice. “She has forgotten what her toes are called. She calls her big toe a ‘thumb’ and the others ‘the ones that are smaller’. When she sees a syringe she says: ‘Oh, they’ve brought the crystal!’ If anyone tries to tell her that it’s a syringe she asks in amazement: ‘A syringe? Then what’s crystal?’ She claims that foreign agents have put their words in her mouth. She thinks ‘blouse’ but says ‘sun’. She complains that people read her thoughts from her eyes, especially during the daytime. She asks to be locked in a dark room. She does not control her urine and stool…”

  Several tables struck up a song to tuneless chords from a guitar.

  Chasing women, drinking vodka, beating up the wogs…

  Once there were four friends who lived a life of fun,

  “Klavka!” the old women cried excitedly. “Let’s show the young kids how it’s done! Give us ‘Evenings on the Ob’!”

  “Polya!” said Gorn’s companion, hammering her fist on the table. “You don’t understand! If the reading’s done right, you don’t need any lighting. The light appears out of the reader!”

  “Reznikova!” said Gorn, raising her voice. “There’s no proof of that!”

  Lines sung in a jaunty chorus rammed like a truck into a couplet about the adventures of the four friends.

  Please, my darling, help me out.

  On these sweet Ob evenings

  I love to dance and jig about.

  Learn to play the accordion!

  Ivan Ivanich picked them up!

  Ivan Stepanich brought them home!

  Ivan Kuzmich took off their clothes!

  …the lead singer chanted in a loud, hoarse voice and the tables picked up the next line:

  And Ivan Fomich fucked them all!

  …but the laughter that followed was drowned in ‘Evenings on the Ob’.

  I going to dance with you and kiss you!

  Learn to play the accordion!

  In the middle of this musical bacchanalia, Masha came back to the serving room.

  “Let’s go,” she said. “They’re expecting you.”

  I was suffering all the torment of a new boy at school who is exhibited for general examination by an unfamiliar and hostile class. When we walked into the canteen a swampy silence fell. The old women with their permed hair, bright make-up and festive clothes, the female bodyguards with their broad shoulders, bestial jaws, gaunt drinkers’ faces and tattooed arms—the entire dangerous gathering studied me cautiously.

  “This, colleagues,” Gorn said after a long pause, “is Alexei Mokhov… I’ve told you… about him… He really does… look like Lizaveta Makarovna… doesn’t he?”

  “Uhu,” Reznikova laughed dourly. “The way a pig looks like a horse…”

  The old women smiled. They found the manoeuvring amusing.

  “Polya,” said the frail Tsekhanskaya, stroking the hair trimmed in fashionable curls at her temples, “the resemblance to Liza is very approximate.” The “mum”’s little sparrow head was set on an equally delicate bird’s neck.

  “He looks a bit pale to me,” Kashmanova said mockingly. Her robust, greasy nose looked rather like the heel of a yellow lacquered shoe; her cheeks were covered with a sprinkling of fine moles. “He doesn’t suit us…”

  “We’ll feed him up,” Gorn snorted.

  “It’s not that simple being our grandson,” an old woman with red cheeks, vermilion lipstick, a bright flowery skirt and green knitted jumper told me. “Not everyone could handle it.”

  “He’s a talented boy,” said Gorn. “He’ll get the hang of it.”

  “We need to test him,” said a thin old woman with luxuriant purple hair hanging loose over her dress. “Set him an examination.”

  “Now you’re talking sense, Kharitonova,” said Guseva. “Let’s take him on probation…”

  It was obvious that not a single one of the fourteen took the story about a newly found grandson seriously. But on her other hand I didn’t notice any open aggression in the old women’s attitude. It was the bodyguards who worried me. They rubbed their hands together in a distinctive, masculine fashion, exchanging mocking glances, grinning with their stainless-steel crowns and scratching with coarse hands at the crotches of their padded trouser legs that were tucked into tarpaulin boots.

  Even Masha, who was standing beside me, sensed that the massive women’s fury was slowly rising and told them.

  “Easy now, easy. No nonsense…”

  “You’re not being very welcoming, girls,” Gorn said with a brief sigh. “We’ll leave you…”

  “Take him to the bunker, Polya,” Reznikova agreed. “Out of harm’s way…”

  I confess that I felt tremendously relieved when Gorn and Masha finally accompanied me out of the canteen.

  “Congratulations, Alyoshka,” said Gorn, in what I took to be a hypocritical tone of voice. “You made a good impression.”

  “I don’t think so…” I glanced round at Masha walking a little distance behind us and whispered furtively to Gorn: “They didn’t believe you. About me being the grandson.”

  “Of course they didn’t believe me. They’re not… complete idiots…” Gorn pulled me closer by my sleeve. “Alyoshka, you blockhead, they’re not concerned… about family connections… Lizka was a unique factor… of stability… She died… and the Home needs a new… focus for the balance of power… A kind of amulet… At weddings you often see a replacement father sitting beside the bride. You’ll be the same kind of ritual relative… with formal responsibilities. Not difficult, but very important. I’ll explain what it’s all about… in more detail… later… So don’t worry… It’s all been agreed…”

  Instead of going downstairs, for some reason they took me to the side staircase that led up to the second floor.

  “I want to introduce you to another individual,” said Gorn, turning back towards me on the final steps. “Of course, she doesn’t deserve it… But we’ll be magnanimous… Right, Alyoshka?”

  “Polina Vasilyevna,” I balked. “I’m tired of meetings. Perhaps tomorrow?”

  “Don’t be stubborn… What’s so hard about meeting an old lady? We’re here.” Gorn stopped in front of a door and fished out a bunch of keys. “Tomorrow, Alexei, will be too late. We read her the Book especially… so that she could… talk to you. In a few hours she’ll go out of her mind again, and we won’t reanimate her any more. Seize the moment… Masha will wait in the corridor… Then she’ll show you to the bunker.”

  Dense blue light spread symmetrical rhomboids from the window frame across the floor. The only thing in the ward was a bed with a high barred metal footboard and headboard. An old woman was lying on the sheets with her nightshirt pulled up. Her arms were spread and her hands were secured to the metal bars of the bed with broad straps. Her legs were immobilized at the ankles in exactly the same way.

  “Necessary measures of restraint,” Gorn said with a sigh. “Who knows what wild ideas she might get into her head?…”

  She walked up to the bed.

  “How are you feeling?”

  The old woman stirred.

  “Better than the lot of you.”

  “Sorry about the straps. When the Strength stops working… we’ll untie you…”

  “Thanks in advance. I won’t be able to thank you later; I’ll forget all the words.” The old woman swayed the mesh base of the bed, setting the woven metal rustling.

  “Can you guess why I’ve come?”

  “To show me Vyazintsev,” the old woman said simply.

  “I thought… you’d find it interesting… to meet him in person. Come here, Alyoshka,” said Gorn, beckoning to me with her finger. “She doesn’t bite. Not yet…”

  I took a few steps towards the bed, trying not to look at the swollen legs covered in blobs of varicose veins and the taboo curly shadow in the depths of the nightshirt. I had already realized that the old woman tied to the bed was Margarita Tikhonovna
’s mother.

  “How long do you need, Valya? Will ten minutes be enough?”

  “Yes.”

  “Only don’t frighten him…”

  “Go, Polya, go. Celebrate the resurrection of your comrades in arms. Let them enjoy their extreme amusement—deliberately going without the Book of Strength for a while and then reading out to each other what they all got up to.”

  “A game’s not a game without some risk…” said Gorn, then she nodded to us and walked out.

  “Hello, Alexei.” The old woman’s imperious face was covered with deep wrinkles that looked as if they had been incised with threads. The mottled hair, combed up and back, had fused into a growth that resembled a shelf-fungus on a tree. The flaccid ears ended in large lobes as doughy as wet white breadcrumb.

  “Hello, Valentina Grigoryevna.”

  When she heard her name the old woman raised her beetling grey eyebrows.

  “Was it Polina who told you?”

  “She said it was you who hid the Book of Meaning.”

  “That’s right, I hid it,” the old woman confirmed in delight. “What else?”

  “Your daughter in my reading room was…” I began and immediately regretted it. The old woman might not know that Selivanova had been killed, and the bitter news could be a blow for her.

  “They told me Margo was no longer alive. I’m not suffering. I’ll go completely out of my mind soon and lose the ability to grieve. I wouldn’t want you to hold a grudge against her. I was the one who advised Margo to keep you on as the Shironinites’ librarian…” The old woman flinched as if from cold. “It’s drifting over my thoughts,” she complained. “White and suffocating, like cotton wool. Soon it will smother them altogether. The illness is taking its toll… Would you mind not squinting at my body like that! I find it offensive.”

  I hastily turned away to look towards the wall and asked:

  “Valentina Grigoryevna, it was you who sent me the Book of Meaning, wasn’t it?”

  Knots of muscle tensed, swelled up and disappeared under the gelatinous, trembling skin on the crucified arms.

  “The Book was found in ninety-four. I had quite a large team of uninitiated agents working for me. The usual mercenaries. We didn’t explain anything to them. It was easier and safer that way. Katerina Cheremis, who worked in the Moscow archives, phoned me: ‘Valentina Grigoryevna, I’ve got a Gromov for you. A Meditation on Stalin Chinaware. A lucky find: the entire edition was pulped, but this copy was miraculously preserved in the publishing house’s museum.’ I was sure it was the wrong Gromov. There wasn’t any book with that title in the bibliographies. But even so I went to Moscow. And what a surprise…” The old woman shifted restlessly. A baleful, damp flame blazed in the almost lashless eyes, the thin, bloodless lips filled with veinous sludge and swelled up like overtaut tendons. “You’ve read the Book and you know that it’s a temptation. I couldn’t resist either and I read it. And instead of a revelation I was given just one single word…” The old woman started breathing more rapidly. The wrists restrained by straps swelled up under the subcutaneous impulses of demonic energy. “Can you imagine how many people have died and how much blood has been spilled for the sake of three syllables that sound like a Russian merchant’s surname—‘Vyazintsev’? Not very much, is it? Not at all what I and fifteen hundred ‘mums’ were expecting. No, I decided not to destroy the Book. I eliminated the dangerous witness Cheremis. And then I set about transforming the clan. It had run to seed. We managed to dump almost all the superfluous ‘mums’ at Neverbino. After the battle Margo sent me a list of the new reading rooms, including the one that she had joined. I came across the librarian Vyazintsev…” The captive body strained at its bonds and the parchment cleavage of breasts that had mummified long ago appeared in the dangling neck of the nightshirt. “I didn’t tell Margo about the Book of Meaning; she was only supposed to keep an eye on developments in the region. For many years I was consumed by frustration. Why some Vyazintsev or other? What if I defied the Book of Meaning and killed its incarnation? What then? How would the Books wriggle out of that?” The dry, desiccated nostrils fluttered as if the old woman had caught the scent of a quarry, the fine membrane of skin on the hollow of her throat trembled sensitively. “Vyazintsev was eliminated. But the Book kept on speaking his name. Margo reported to me that a nephew had shown up… I told her that she had to keep a close eye on you…” The old woman suddenly thrust her rump hard down into the metal mesh and jerked forward abruptly, and only the straps held her back. “It’s nothing to do with you, you little bastard! Even the fact that you received the Book—that’s a pure coincidence! My reason was clouded! I was obviously starting to lose my mind! You’re not special! You’re just one of a set of circumstances!” If she hadn’t been speaking, I would have said that she was simply clacking her jaws, trying to take me by the throat with her gums, as pink as an Alsatian’s. “The Book is free to choose its nominees! To point to anyone drawn into its range of influence! If you’re not here, it will name someone else!” The old woman suddenly ran out of strength, fell back onto the pillow and half-closed her eyes. “But Margo didn’t understand that. She was afraid that Lizka would kill you…” The old woman yawned benignly. “That’s all now. I’m tired. I’m finished. Go away.”

  UNDER LOCK AND KEY

  IN THE MORNING I got up, but the door of the bunker wouldn’t open any more. I couldn’t believe that this had happened and I kept calling: “Hey, is anyone there? Masha! The bolt’s got jammed!” No one came. I tried shaking the door, but soon gave up—I was the only one that got a shaking.

  A wave of intestinal panic swept over me. I grabbed the bedpan out from under the couch and squatted down. Then I turned out the drawers of the desk in a desperate search for paper. Several exercise books came showering out. I plucked a few pages out of the closest one and wiped myself.

  After that I felt a bit better and set about trying to free myself with renewed energy. I took a run up and flung my body at the unyielding door. I shouted hysterically, straining my vocal cords to the limit: “Polina Vasilyevna!” At first threateningly: “I demand!” And then pitifully: “I implore you!” And then threateningly again: “I order you to open up. I am Alexei Mokhov!”

  All in vain. I lost my voice and bruised both my shoulders. Exhausted, I lay down on the floor and hammered at the door with my feet. I stopped when my battered feet were a cramped block of pain.

  It suddenly dawned on me that this had all been set up. They were observing me in secret! But of course! This was the examination for the position of “grandson”, and I had done absolutely everything possible to fail it. Demonic howling, lowered trousers, intestinal cramps, convulsions on the floor. Appalling. Only a stout-hearted prisoner could count on freedom and power; a coward and nonentity didn’t deserve any leniency—that was what the old women had decided. I almost groaned aloud in the realization that all was lost.

  I had to correct the shameful impression that I had made on my secret observers as quickly as possible. And I had to do it so that they wouldn’t realize I had seen through their game.

  I called on my old acting skills to help. I laughed wearily, drew myself erect, spat on the floor and declared: “Why, the bastards…” I thought it sounded rather good. Firm, with a derisively hoarse note. A courageous, cheerful man had amused himself by acting the fool in front of the door for a while and then stopped. So what if he had relieved himself—that was only normal. He wasn’t the kind of fellow you could frighten with a solitary cell. Now he’d just perform a few push-ups on the floor, then sit down at the desk and browse through the exercise books…

  There were six of them… a black one, a light-blue one, a grey one and three brown ones. Ancient exercise books from immemorial Soviet times, in oilcloth bindings. I hadn’t seen any like them for a long time—they had disappeared from the shelves many years ago.

  The black one had been started. On the cover someone had written: “For Recipes”. Inside, the exercis
e book had been divided up into chapters. “First Courses”, “Fish Dishes”, “Desserts”, “Salads”, “Drinks”. There weren’t any recipes: the headings were followed immediately by blank pages.

  The brown exercise books were untouched, but I looked carefully through them all the way to the stanza of typographical free verse on the end flysheet.

  POLINKOVSK CARDBOARD AND PAPER PLANT

  GENERAL EXERCISE BOOK

  Item 6377-U 96 pages

  Price: 84 cop.

  State Standard 13 309–79

  In the grey exercise book the price had been crossed out and a new one written in, in ink—1.65 copecks. Below it was the signature of the person who had crossed out the old price.

  Inside the light-blue exercise book there was a page from a tear-off calendar for Thursday, 14 October 1999. There was some kind of astrological nonsense on the front of it.

  The sun is in Libra, ruled by Jupiter. Dawn: 07.57. Sunset: 18.33. Take care with you words and feelings; it is advisable to pray and express positive moods and attitudes. Do not overdo sweet foods. You should avoid influencing the liver, gall bladder, blood and skin. Illness of the lungs and bronchi may be treated. The Sun’s stone is labradorite. The Moon’s stone is jacinth.

  Out of curiosity I turned the scrap of paper over and my heart fell like a stone, tearing its way through my insides. Printed there in tiny little ant-letters was this:

  Feast of the Veil.

  This feast has roots that go back deep into the pagan past, when our ancestors celebrated the meeting of autumn and winter. Folk beliefs linked the name of the Veil with the first hoar frost, which “veiled” the earth. After Christianity came to Russia, the festival was celebrated in honour of the Holy Virgin and her miraculous wimple—the Veil or omophorion that she extended above the people praying in a church, protecting them against “enemies both visible and invisible”.