The Anonymous Novel

by Alessandro Barbero

  Overwhelmed by the whistling, the speaker paused for a moment. In the hall, those who weren’t whistling, were shouting, and the little fellow next to Artamonov grabbed the chance to ask a question.

  “But citizen, you didn’t say who you were. Would you like to give us your name.”

  The man was momentarily confused, but then stiffened his resolve. “My name? Zhdanov!” Then, while the whistles turned to laughter and derision, his exasperation took control: “Yes, Zhdanov Georgy Antonovich! Exactly the same name but no relation.”

  The small guy had the microphone once again. He was the only one on that side of the table who still had any fight left in him; even Artamonov was sprawled out in his chair, and had given up any hope of regaining control of that madhouse.

  “Who else would like to speak? We will shortly have to leave the auditorium, which was hired only up to eight o’clock.”

  A man elbows his way out and grabs the microphone, and barks at the little fellow: “You too, citizen, have not given us your name.”

  The other immediately obliged; he was the editor of a new newspaper, which no one had heard of.

  The new man continued, “And one other little thing, if you don’t mind. A trifling thing. Who exactly gave you permission for this meeting?”

  The little man was suddenly emboldened; he was in his element. “Permission, you ask? Well listen to this, my friend.

  There’s a Jewish joke in Kiev, where I come from: the daughter of an old Jewish man is going to get married, but it is Saturday and the Jew cannot have a shave. So he goes to the rabbi to ask advice; the rabbi is shaving himself in front of the mirror. ‘My daughter,’ says the Jew, ‘is about to get married; can I have a shave?’ ‘No, you cannot,’ comes the reply. ‘But you’re having a shave!’ ‘Yes,’ responds the rabbi, ‘but I didn’t ask anyone for permission.’”

  A few laughed, but the pandemonium in the hall was now at its height. The man seated in front of us, the guy in the pinstripe, had never stopped muttering, but without warning he was on his feet and marching towards the stage.

  A moment later he had the microphone in his hand and was speaking. His name was lost in the general melee, but then for some inexplicable reason, the audience started to quieten down and listen.

  “Here we were supposed to have been talking about the persecution of literary figures. But we never did, and that is not at all unusual. It’s what we call democracy. You think that the people are going to go in one direction, and instead they go in the opposite one… would you believe it? I was very struck by hearing so many people here this evening talking of history and demanding that historians should speak up. But if I am not mistaken, there are no historians amongst us tonight. Let the historians speak! people were shouting, and everyone, it appears, was in agreement. How weird! Because on the whole, who here in Russia cares a damn about history?” The small guy, who had been listening with an air of benevolence, suddenly looked confused.

  “No, excuse me… what do you mean?”

  “Exactly that. History is a past made up of centuries and millennia; and who amongst the people shows any interest in history? All you have to do is go out into the streets and look around. There are still plenty of palaces and noble residences: Count Rostopchin lived here, for example, and Arakcheyev over there! But no one shows any interest in these things. Faced with these magnificent building, all people can say is, ‘Pushkin lived here’ or ‘Pushkin did not live there’. That is all they are interested in. You could say that, with the exception of a few people engaged in specialist studies, that is for the majority or the ordinary reader, history has simply become a commentary on literature.”

  Tanya, as you can imagine, was beginning to get worked up.

  “Who is he?” Oleg whispered.

  “Who knows? I didn’t hear. What a crackpot!”

  Artamonov had woken from his stupor, and was standing next to the man in the pinstripe, looking for his chance to regain control of the microphone. He was looking at his watch, as though to say, They’ll be throwing us out at any moment. But the speaker had not finished.

  “It is a very different story,” he thundered, “when we talk about what we have lived through, which is not and could never be history: Stalin, Khrushchev… Then we go whimpering to the historian to find out about the era that we ourselves experienced: explain to us, batyushki, what we should think about this. We daren’t do that on our own! And here is a free people! What can one say…”

  “No, no, that’s all wrong – utterly wrong! That too is history, and historians must, must, must explain it!” screamed Tanya, leaping to her feet. The speaker froze, and tried to understand which part of the auditorium the interruption was coming from; eventually he encountered Tanya’s fiery expression, and made a suggestion of a bow.

  Perhaps he wanted to reply…

  “Very good!” Artamonov concluded and took possession of the microphone. “Comrades, the organisers of this evening’s event would like to thank you all! Please use the exit at the end of the hall!”

  X

  Chimut-Dorzhev

  Moscow, March 1988

  At the exit the last speaker came up to their group. He was a man already well on in years, imposing, with a red, fleshy face. His haircut and pinstripe suit inevitably made one think of some minor apparatchik from the provinces. His eyes were small, blue and cold, even though in that moment he was smiling and holding out his hand to Tanya, “Allow me to introduce myself: Chimut-Dorzhev Aleksandr Ivanovich.”

  Who would have thought they would meet the likes of him? All three exchanged glances and all three had heard mention of him. He had once been a brilliant philosopher, a specialist in matters of logic, and the editor of the magazine Philosophical Questions. His essays had been published abroad, and on one occasion they sent him to do a series of lectures in Princeton, which left the Americans speechless.

  The word was that he was working for some of the Organs of State, not of course as some mediocrity or cheap informer, but as an adviser: he applied his professional skills to the problems that they presented to him, and studied the relationship between speculative intelligence and practical behaviour… Then one day he had this little novel published abroad – a ridiculous bagatelle in which he took the piss out of Soviet power in the most disrespectful manner. Of course he used a pseudonym, but you know how these things turn out. “To whom it may concern” was not very happy and did not take very long to ascertain that the author was none other than Chimut-Dorzhev. He was sacked from the magazine and lost his professorship at the university; from then on he had to earn his living by translating for provincial publishing houses and giving private lessons in mathematics. Actually he charged a fortune for them, and only party leaders could afford them. But his misfortune did not last for too long: for some time he had been back in circulation, and it was rumoured that they were going to publish one of his articles. Now there he was and shaking their hands with a heavy, peasant-like grasp. The last person he turned to was Tanya, and he made another bow.

  “I wonder, mademoiselle, if you and your friends would agree to drinking a beer in the company of an old bachelor? My apartment, by a happy coincidence, is just around the corner.”

  Tanya looked at Oleg and then Sergey, and it was clear that both of them wanted to accept and follow the new acquaintance up the stairs to his flat and probably spend the whole night drinking and talking; they were both quite capable of it. But I, she thought, have to get up early tomorrow morning. Of course, it had been different when she had been preparing for her exams: then her friends would come to see her after supper and find her with her books open on the kitchen table; they would promise to leave her in peace to study but then one word followed another and led to a great planet-changing discussion of the kind that takes more than a night to sort out. That evening she would no longer be able to study. Mum would put her head round the door to say good night, and after that everyone would lower their voice. Cigarettes, like the words, wo
uld gallop after each other, and by morning the ashtray would be full of butt ends. She couldn’t sleep with the smell of smoke, and so she would get up at dawn, turn on the small light, reopen the books on the table and return to her studies… Chimut-Dorzhev was still waiting and looking at her with an expression full of curiosity, like an old bear; if she took much longer he would probably start dancing up and down on his hind legs and sniffing her.

  “Most certainly, Aleksandr Ivanovich, we accept with great pleasure.”

  The man – you could not yet call him an old man, a large man yes, and certainly no longer young with that white hair – the philosopher, let’s say, greeted this news with a wide smile.

  “Well, if you will, just follow me. It’s just here and we’ll go on foot.”

  They crossed the lane, and turned into another one; Sergey lit a cigarette, and Oleg and Tanya took each other’s hands. Icy water dripped from the roofs. Chimut-Dorzhev stopped and turned towards them to point out with a dramatic sweep of his arm the piles of melting snow.

  “The thaw! Huh? It means so much to us Russians!”

  Tanya felt embarrassed for him and thought that Sergey and Oleg were about to make fun of such a banal comment.

  But the man had turned back and resumed his walk through the slush of muddy snow. Tanya and Oleg had taken off a glove, and each could feel the other’s warmth in their own palm. Sergey followed with a cigarette in his mouth. Finally they turned into a wretched and twisted lane dominated by an enormous block of flats. Tanya read the street name; it was Bolshoi Gnezdnikovsky; her eyes were shining and she advanced towards Chimut-Dorzhev, who had stopped in front of a doorway.

  “Listen, Aleksandr Ivanych! But here …”

  The man looked at her in expectation.

  “I mean,” Tanya grew confused, “here … the Master …”

  “Exactly, Tatyana Borisovna,” said Chimut-Dorzhev solemnly. “Pity you didn’t bring some yellow flowers!”

  “They’ll come in a month,” Tanya laughed. “They are always the first to come up in Moscow!”

  Oleg and Sergey had drawn up and were observing them without understanding. They exchanged a look of shared incomprehension.

  “It’s nothing,” Tanya shrugged her shoulders. “Just a joke.”

  She followed their host, who had disappeared through the doorway. On entering the flat, they took off their scarves and boots, and chose a pair of slippers from a line of them arranged at the door. Chimut-Dorzhev had switched on all the lights and was already in the kitchen. Tanya was the first to appear at the kitchen door, and saw that he was putting a pan of water on the cooker and then peeling potatoes.

  “I have some herring, but it is a sin to eat it without potatoes,” he declared. “No, leave it, my dear girl,” he added, rejecting Tanya’s help. “Much better to get the beer from the fridge, if we want to start with that, don’t you think? The glasses are in the cupboard.”

  Tanya opened the cupboard, and took out four beer tankards decorated with a Bavarian coat of arms, but the beer in the fridge was Russian. She filled the tankards and gave them to the other two who had come in after her. Now there was no room to move in the tiny kitchen.

  “Well, to our felicitous meeting!” our host raised his beer for the toast and downed it in a oner. Oleg also drank and Sergey put down his tankard half full; Tanya hardly sipped hers as she didn’t like beer. Chimut-Dorzkev was looking ebullient. “You know, there’s a scene in Solzhenitsyn – well, not even a scene, just two lines near the beginning of August 1914: one of the characters goes into a bar and there’s a university professor drinking with his students. For me that is the symbol of everything we have lost; when would you ever see such a scene here in Russia? When I was teaching, I never had any students that I would have liked to go drinking with. And besides, where could you go? And now I almost feel that I have realised that secret desire.”

  None of them was still a student; they understood that Chimut-Dorzhev thought them younger than they actually were. At their age, three or four years make a difference.

  They can cause offence.

  “Do you have Solzhenitsyn in your home?” Oleg asked.

  “Of course,” replied the other. “Come with me!”

  He led them into the other room, where there were a writing desk, two small and low armchairs, cushions spread across the carpet and all the walls lined with books. Their host went to a bookshelf and took down a book, which he held out to Oleg. It was a German edition of August 1914.

  “I’m sorry, but I only have that edition. Can you read German?”

  “Ye-es, we can read it…” Oleg replied listlessly. Sergey nodded that he could, and only Tanya shook her head.

  Chimut-Dorzhev winked happily.

  “What nonsense, huh? A Russian masterpiece and we are obliged to read it in German! Tatyana Borisovna is quite right to not know that language; it makes Russians lose their own souls. Young man,” he continued addressing Oleg, who was turning over the pages, “you will ruin your eyes. It is too dark here to read, particularly in German! Mehr Licht!” he exclaimed while switching on another light.

  “No need,” said Oleg quickly and shutting the book.

  “Perhaps one day we’ll be able to read it in Russian.”

  “Unquestionably we will, but in the meantime, could I ask what you three are involved in?” Chimut-Dorzhev continued, as he placed the book back on the shelf. “Oh, I was forgetting my potatoes! Would you like to follow me to the kitchen.”

  All three explained their various activities while they were waiting for the potatoes to finish cooking. Chimut-Dorzhev was absolutely delighted. “How could one put it? Chance appears to have brought together the very best of the intelligentsia: historians, linguists, journalists and philosophers. The physicists and mathematicians are missing, but we can do without them. I have met quite a few, and can I say that in general there is more spirituality in a concierge than in the director of a physics institute.”

  While he spoke, the host lifted the steaming potatoes out of the pan and placed them in a tureen. Wiping tears from her eyes with her forearm, Tanya was chopping onions for the herring. Sergey, for reasons not altogether clear, wanted to make an argument of it.

  “Begging your pardon, but here in Russia the physicists and mathematicians, at least, are not required to tell lies.”

  Chimut-Dorzhev raised his eyebrows.

  “Oh right! Because they speak with numbers, they cannot express falsehoods… I am afraid I’m must disagree, for numbers can lie and do so very effectively. Some of the liars with the greatest imaginations hereabouts would only speak through numbers. Let’s take the example of the late Lysenko; tables and lists of numbers were circulating at his research institute in quantities that would make your head spin… but just think about it, they were all invented.”

  “Did you ever meet him?”

  “Naturally! I went to his funeral – in ’76, I think. There was a line of buses outside the funeral hall, because many mourners were expected. But no one came: there were six of us. They took the coffin and put it on a bus. A police car led the way and the line of buses came along behind it. They were all empty.”

  Sergey shook his head. “Yes of course, but that is not what I meant. At least our physicists and mathematicians have achieved something. Of course, there will be decent people and scoundrels amongst them… But see if you can tell me of any historians or philosophers? Earlier, Aleksandr Ivanovich was saying that no one is interested in history.

  May be! But look at what they work on, these historians.

  They publish a lot of interesting books on pre-revolutionary Russia, and you can learn everything there is to know on the serfs of the great monasteries in the age of the False Dimitry. Aleksandr Ivanovich, you ask, who wants to study it? People are only interested in where Pushkin lived. That may well be true, but try to come up with one book – just one book – on the history of the Soviet period that is worth reading! For example, the books produced
by the professors in your institute, Tanya, use methods that come straight from the Short Course!”

  “Excuse me, Sergey… Mikhailovich, if I am not mistaken,” Chimut-Dorzhev butted in. “What you say is absolutely true, but it does not have anything to do with historians; it is an integral feature of our society. Within my limited resources, I try to keep up with what you linguists are up to, and who do I bash my head against? Marr!

  Language develops in qualitative leaps, just like Lysenko’s cereals, and as for the rest, working-class speech has the same characteristics even in completely different languages!

  Yet Trubetskoy was already writing back in 1924 that Marr was a compete madman.”