The Librarian

by Mikhail Elizarov

  Unfortunately there was no one for me to influence with my Power. No one saw the majestic expressions of my face; no one heeded the imperious modulations of my voice. I hurled my lightning-bolt glances at the walls, the door and the dumb waiter in vain.

  The third Book they sent was one I was already familiar with—the Book of Meaning, with its neat insert. The fourth was the Book of Joy (Narva), a military novel about anti-aircraft gunners. Leaving aside the short lyrical passages with descriptions of the lives of the main characters and several pastoral sections at the beginning of the novella, the plot unfolds in the space of a few heroic days. February 1943. An anti-aircraft and machine-gun platoon from a ski battalion has dug in on the western bank of the Narva River. Supported by tanks, Hitler’s forces attack the positions of the Soviet warriors. The defence is headed by Lieutenant Golubnichy. The main forces of the battalion wage stubborn battle against the enemy’s tanks and infantry along a small bridgehead on the other side of the river. It is impossible to get the heavy gun across from the eastern bank to the western one—the ice on the Narva is broken. By the end of the day there are only three members of the machine-gun formation remaining—Golubnichy and two privates, Martynenko and Tishin. In the evening Lance-Corporal Sklyarov manages to get through to them and deliver ammunition. After a powerful mortar attack the German forces advance again. Martynenko is killed. Golubnichy and Sklyarov, both wounded, load the ammunition belts and Tishin runs from one machine gun to another so that the enemy won’t guess that there is only one warrior left unwounded at the position. When the Fascists break in, Golubnichy sends a signal rocket to call down the fire of our artillery on himself. The flames of explosions rage above the position and the Hitlerites flee in panic. Units from a Guards’ rifle division arrive and make a forced crossing of the Narva…

  Joy in its pure form had no admixture of merriment and jocularity. There was only exultation and jubilation of the spirit. All the bitterer was the shift of mood when the feeling of rapture was replaced by a withdrawal full of hopeless despair.

  I had no doubt that the pragmatic Gorn had the role of a sacrificial “reader” in mind for me right from the beginning. How bitterly I regretted that I had not been killed at the village soviet together with the other Shironinites. Someone who is destined to be hanged should pray to his rope and make confession to his piece of soap, because if he decides to drown instead, it will be torment. I would gladly have exchanged the job of running round in closed circles for a glorious and rapid death from a hook or an axe.

  For many days I used the Book of Joy like vodka, to numb my fear, immersing myself twice a day in an iridescent state of ecstasy. I tried to time the reading so the final pages would coincide with the retro music programme. That way the effect of the Book lasted for almost twice as long.

  As a result of this binge reading I even had hallucinations a few times. I heard footsteps outside the door, heard the bolt opening with a rusty screech, or I heard the late Margarita Tikhonovna’s voice in the shaft of the dumb waiter, discussing my lunch menu with someone. She was trying to persuade them that “Alyosha has hated chicken since he was little”.

  I realized that I was being hoodwinked by auditory hallucinations, but even so I shouted to her and asked her to get me out of the bunker. For lunch I was given macaroni and a pimply chicken leg…

  This went on until they sent the Book of Endurance. The anaesthetized indifference to everything that this Book induced suited me far better: unlike Joy, Endurance left almost no fleshly hangover.

  I deliberately read the Book of Fury (By Labour’s Roads) without observing the Conditions. I didn’t want to reduce myself to the state of a berserk. I had no one to fight and, in addition, I was afraid of damaging myself in my blind fury.

  I can say in brief that the Book told the story of a working-class dynasty, the Shapovalovs, and how a small factory for repairing agricultural equipment grew into a metallurgical combine with automated production lines, and the village of Vysoky grew into a city.

  I waited for the seventh and final Book, the Book of Memory. I had no doubt that it would appear. The dumb waiter had turned from a provider of food into an instrument of exquisite torture. My heart was in my mouth every time I opened the cover. After all this exhausting agitation I couldn’t eat a bite; I even suffered from nervous vomiting. Only the artificial endurance saved me.

  I didn’t need to wonder exactly how the old women would force me to start reading the Books. The mechanism of compulsion was obvious. When the dumb waiter fell silent, Alexei Vyazintsev would be faced with a fairly simple choice: starve to death or become the talisman of the country. I feverishly stuffed the drawers of the desk with bread.

  Of course I was aware that no matter how much I stored up, the rusks would run out. There was no escaping the fate of the reader and curator; I could only drag out the time, hoping that something unimaginable might happen “on the off chance”. What if there really were only one copy of the Book of Strength after all? What if Gorn and the fourteen elders had been weakened and died long ago? That meant that sooner or later the leadership would change up above. The new female ataman would want to recover the invaluable Book from the basement. They would have to reach an agreement with me, and I would haggle…

  This state of suspense was worse than having my conviction put into effect. But they left me alone for three months as if on purpose. My storage bins were bursting. Like a miser, I arranged the slices of bread I had saved into loaves like bricks—I had fourteen and a half of them. These reserves would last me until summer, and even longer if eaten like Leningrad siege rations.

  I was bored now; my writing task was basically completed. I had begun with a brief overview of the Gromovian universe, on the basis of materials found in Gorn’s archives, and also described my own brief time as a librarian, the glorious death of the Shironin reading room and even my first months in the bunker. Now the narrative had taken itself by the tail. There was nothing left to reveal, except by supplementing what had already been written…

  One morning in April or May I opened the cover. The Book of Memory was lying in the top and the bedpan in the bottom. There wasn’t any food or water.

  CURATOR OF THE MOTHERLAND

  “WE OWE AN IRREDEEMABLE DEBT to our Motherland. Her gifts to us are priceless. The ruby-red stars of the Kremlin shine for all of us, warming us with the rays of freedom, equality and brotherhood. What else is needed for happiness? Our Motherland is kind and generous; she does not count our debts. But there are moments when she reminds us of them. That means the Motherland is in danger. And our debt must be repaid to her in courage, steadfastness, valour and heroism.”

  I learned this excerpt off by heart in the third year at school. Our school, which was named after Lenin, was preparing for the May festivities. The bosses of the district party committee were expected. Under the supervision of a department head from the local school board our frightened headmistress personally knocked the stuffing out of the juvenile orators who were privileged to tread the boards of the school-hall stage, which stank of polish. For the final few days the chosen ones were excused from classes and drilled from morning to evening. Even now if I am woken up in the middle of the night I can still rattle off without a hitch: “We owe an irredeemable debt…” This excerpt has remained branded into the skin of my memory.

  I had already been a Young Pioneer since 22 April, but for the sake of the holiday they took away my necktie and those of several other third-year pupils, so that our visitors from empyrean realms could participate in the ritual and welcome us into the ranks of the pioneers for a second time.

  “If we compare countries with ships, then the Soviet Union is the flagship of the world fleet. It leads the way for the other ships. If we compare countries with people, then the Soviet Union is a mighty knight who conquers his enemies and helps his friends in need. If we compare countries with stars, then our country is the Pole Star. The Soviet Union shows all the peoples of the world t
he way to Communism.”

  This is the extract that I was given at first, and then it was replaced with “We owe an irredeemable…” At the time I was very upset. I liked the solemn words about the flagship, the knight and the star better. Not even the words themselves, but myself proclaiming them, as sonorous as a ship’s bell.

  Changes were made to the script, the head of department placed the “Union” right at the very end of the programme, and the excerpt was given to some older girl whose father was the chairman of the district soviet executive committee. And the sensuous paragraph about Lenin—“For ever shall the human river flow to the Mausoleum”—was read by the proud son of the first secretary of the district Party committee

  The stupefying smell of polish fogged my reason, which was already wrought up to the absolute limit. I declaimed my section after: “Our country’s shores are washed by twelve seas, and two more seas lie set upon its land” and shouted my text out into the hall without hearing my own voice, deafened by the beating of my heart. We were applauded. The secretary of the Young Communist League district committee knotted my necktie and pinned the Young Pioneer badge onto my white shirt…

  And now, from out of oblivion, the country that has disappeared has presented the grubby promissory notes that I rashly signed so many years ago, demanding payment in steadfastness, valour and heroism.

  It was all quite fair. Although there was indeed some delay, I have received the incredible happiness promised by my Soviet Motherland. Granted, it was a false happiness, instilled in me by the Book of Memory. But what difference does that make? After all, in my genuine childhood I believed absolutely that the state which was eulogized in all the books, films and plays was the reality in which I lived. The earthly USSR was a coarse and imperfect body, but dwelling apart in the hearts of romantic old men and the children of prosperous urban families was its artistic ideal— the Heavenly Union. When the mental dimension withered, the insensate geographical body also died.

  Even when society regarded hatred of one’s own country and its past as a badge of good form, I intuitively steered clear of the debunking novels that screamed with the gluttonous voices of seagulls about various Gulag children of the Arbat walking about in white clothes. I was embarrassed by literary half-truth, and especially by its morosely frowning authors, hammering on the table with the reverberating skulls of victims of the bygone Socialist era. This skeletal rat-a-tat-tat changed nothing in the way that I felt about the Union. When I grew up a bit, I loved the Union, not for what it was, but for what it could have become if things had turned out differently. And is a potentially good man really so very much to blame if the difficulties in his life prevent his splendid qualities from blossoming?

  And there was another key moment, the significance and paradoxical character of which only became clear to me years later. The Union knew how to make Ukraine a Motherland. But without the Union, Ukraine has not managed to remain one…

  The country in which both of my childhoods—the genuine and the fictitious—were simultaneously located was my genuine, unique Motherland, which I could never deny. And the Book of Memory lying on the tray was my call-up papers from it.

  Of course, I didn’t reason in this philosophical manner from the very beginning. At first, the moment I saw the Book, my legs went from under me, as they say, and fear drove the blood into my solar plexus so fiercely that for a few minutes I couldn’t take a proper breath, but only open my mouth. It’s strange: I had spent three months preparing, but the fateful day still caught me by surprise. I reached out for the Book of Endurance, but put it down—I wouldn’t have got through a single page. With my teeth clattering against the glass, I drank the water I had already gathered, filled the glass up to the brim with medical spirit and downed it in one. My throat and oesophagus were charred. A pillar of fire struck me in the head…

  It helped. I realized that when the suffocating heat receded, as if the part responsible for fear had burned out for ever. I have nothing left to be afraid of. I have calmed down for ever.

  * * *

  It was the second week at my post. There were heaps of rusks and I was not suffering from hunger. There was a suspicious noise in the radiator and the yields had fallen slightly. During the last twenty-four hours only a glass and a half had accumulated. The heating season was clearly coming to an end, and soon they could turn the water off completely.

  In the morning my personal clothing was in the lift and also— an unexpected surprise—the late Grisha Vyrin’s jacket. Someone in Gorn’s female brigade must have taken a fancy to this unusual trophy on that occasion at the village soviet and appropriated the anonymous dead man’s cuirass.

  I didn’t feel the slightest shudder. I simply pulled on the jacket that smelled slightly of smoke over my sweater and felt perfectly protected.

  They sent me a Solingen straight razor. I took this as a joking reference to my “slashed wrists” and felt offended. I stuck the razor in my pocket and drank my rusty “tea” through pieces of rusk.

  Those were probably the most serene days since I had been incarcerated. I could even have killed myself, if only I had wanted to—I was not by nature inherently afraid of death. In fact, almost until the third year in school I was sure that I would grow up to be a soldier and one day I would be killed, and a solemn salute would ring out over my grave. Most often I imagined death with a grenade. I’m fighting off my advancing enemies’ fire. My sub-machine-gun falls silent—the clip in my pistol is empty. I conceal my last grenade under my tunic so that I can easily reach the safety pin. I raise my arms, emerge from cover and say I have an important message for their commanding officer. He comes over to me—the complacent enemy—his soldiers surround me. And then I pull out the safety pin with my teeth and depart into eternity, into the granite forms of a monument and the gold letters on the commemorative plaque: “Senior Lieutenant Alexei Vyazintsev died a hero’s death…” For the minutes that my fantasies lasted, my eyes blazed with tears and my cheeks burned with the heat from the martyr’s flame of that unexploded grenade…

  Now that I had grown up, my task had been simplified for me—I had been offered a simplified version of heroism. I don’t even have to die. On the contrary, to live for ever for the good of the Motherland—what is there to be afraid of in that?

  I was not particularly worried about what would happen if I suddenly broke off reading after, let’s say, a year. Whether I would emerge from hibernation like a bear or crumble into dust, whether the much-vaunted mechanism of immortality supposedly embedded in the Books would even work…

  * * *

  I suddenly started dreaming of people I had killed. I didn’t have nightmares at all, but calm, epic dreams. In one I was transported into the dismal landscape that adorned my wall. I wandered through birch trees, breathed the damp coolness, chewed on melting snow, glanced across the river. On the opposite bank a little Pavlik, as white as if he were woven out of cobwebs, was scurrying about, shouting something and waving his plaster arms around, but the wind carried away his weightless words.

  In another dream the Gorelov librarian Marchenko came to me. He brought a rejigged song for the Institute’s Club of the Jolly and Ingenious team: “Though grieving and alarmed, do not stand in the doorway, I’ll show up when the snow melts.” I objected that this was gruesome humour about corpses. But the Shironinites sitting around me said that I was wrong and the parody was very funny…

  I tried to remember my family as little as possible. It was too painful to think of what they had endured in recent times. The first squall of grief had probably already blown itself out. Six months is a long time. They’ll come to terms with their loss. Our fecund Vovka will have a third boy and they’ll name him after me—Alexei.

  * * *

  Lulled by the Book of Memory, in the darkness I fell into a doze with my ear pressed against the radio and slept through the first part of the musical broadcast.

  “…from the film Moscow-Cassiopeia…” the female prese
nter announced in a joyful, breathy voice, merging her words into the surging bell-chime violins of the orchestral introduction.

  The night has passed as if a pain has passed,

  The earth is sleeping, let it rest.

  The earth, just like the two of us

  Still has ahead of it

  A journey as long as life.

  In the pitch-black abyss of the ceiling a planetarium of the universe suddenly lit up, a cosmically infinite mantle of stars, a magical, tilted swirl of minute heavenly bodies, like a distant reflection of sleeping cities, observed from the fast-moving window of a train that is hurtling past nameless lunar way stations, mysterious nonhuman dwellings that entice with orange shards of electricity, past a purple sky with the blinking scarlet bead of a nocturnal plane, past cast-iron railings above anthracite rivers, past the smell of industrial iron warmed by the sun, the black plumes of poplars with the peacock flashes of semaphores.

  I shall take the chirping of the birds of earth,

  I shall take the gentle splash of tinkling streams,

  I shall take the light of storms’ sheet lightning,

  The whisper of the winds, the empty winter forest.

  With agonizing, sobbing tenderness, I listened to the simple conversational melody, devoid of all pretentious affectation. The words about parting and the long road ahead moved me to the depths of my soul. The voice was a solicitous mentor, deftly stuffing my kitbag with everything essential, everything that might be needed on an expedition from which one is not fated to return…