“You!” he said. “Didn’t they teach you all in school that children have no business by the swings and the sandpits?”
The boy thought about it.
“Yes,” he said.
“Then what d’you think you’re doing? How’d you like it if the grownups moved in on your dumps?”
“In actual fact,” said the boy, “it wouldn’t really make any difference.”
“How come you’re so cocky?” Valera asked with a hostile curiosity. “D’you know, my son’s just the same.”
Valera was exaggerating slightly—his son, Marat, had three legs and was retarded: the third leg was because of the radiation, but the backwardness was due to his father’s drinking. And he was younger, too.
“Haven’t you got any matches, then?” asked the boy. “I’m wasting time here talking to you.”
“If I had, I wouldn’t give them to you,” answered Valera.
“Okay, then, successful labor to you,” said the boy, and then turned and wandered back towards the dump, where the others were waving to him.
“I’ll come after you,” yelled Valera, even forgetting his bottle for a second, “and I’ll teach you what words you can say and what words you can’t. You little bastard, I’ll labor your mother!”
“Oh, forget it,” said Ivan, “weren’t you just the same yourself? Let’s you and me have a talk instead. You know, something strange is happening to me. Like I’m going crazy. Seems like I can remember everything about myself—only it doesn’t seem to be about me at all, but about someone else—know what I mean?”
“What’s so complicated about that?” Valera asked. “How long is it since you had a drink?”
“Two weeks,” answered Ivan, “to the day.”
“Then what d’you expect? You’ve got the black shakes coming on.”
“No,” said Ivan, “that can’t be it. The chief quack told me that takes at least six months.”
“You know how far you can trust them. Maybe they just figure that in a week’s time you’ll be celebrating the big May Day upstairs and they’re trying to comfort you, so you don’t suffer too much.”
“Anyway,” said Ivan, “that’s not the real problem. I can’t remember my childhood, all right? That is, I remember things: I can fill in the forms with where I was born, who my parents were, what school I went to, but somehow none of it’s real. I can’t remember anything for myself, not so that I really feel it. I close my eyes and there’s nothing there but blackness, or maybe a yellow pear shape left over from the image of a light bulb...”
The children from the dump ran hurriedly through the yard and out of sight around the corner. The last to leave was the one who had been looking for matches.
“You’re really laying it on thick, pal,” said Valera, who had taken out the third bottle. “Who remembers their childhood, anyway? I don’t remember anything but words either. There’s nothing wrong with you. When you start remembering all sorts of images, you’ll know you’ve got the black shakes. Anyway, what do you need to remember your childhood for, for May’s sake? What’s so good about it? It’s exactly...”
In the corner of the yard, among the scrap metal, there was a crimson flash and then a deafening bang, as though someone had smacked gigantic palms against both of their ears. Shrapnel whistled through the air above their heads and a piece of yellow aluminum siding lodged itself in the side of the sandpit just a few inches away from Ivan’s leg.
“That’s childhood for you,” said Valera, recovering from the sudden shock. “Let’s go. I can’t keep on drinking here with this stink they’ve made.”
Ivan stood up and followed Valera. He hadn’t managed to express everything he had wanted to say—everything he’d actually spoken out loud had come out confused and stupid, and Valera had been quite right to feel irritated. “I could do with a drink,” thought Ivan, scratching the back of his head. Something told him that if he had a drink—not much, just a couple of bottles of dry wine—it would all be over. “But then, what will be over?” thought Ivan—it really wasn’t clear just what would be over. What Ivan felt was more like a realization that something was over already, but that he was missing that something. “Okay, so what is it that’s missing?”
This was not clear at all, and no matter how hard Ivan tried, the only thing he could tell himself was that he had lost touch with the state in which such questions didn’t arise. Worst of all, he couldn’t even remember whether before the accident he had possessed any other memory of the past, different from his present one, or whether even then there had been nothing but the colorless formulae of official forms. They came out onto Spinal Cord Street and Valera glanced around at the crimson brick walls and the red cog wheels that had been hung up on the façades in honor of the holiday.
“Well, where to now?” he asked.
Ivan shrugged. It was all the same to him.
“Let’s go to the Sovcom,” said Valera. “We can drink right there on the square. Maybe some of our buddies will be there.”
To reach Sandel Square, where the Sovcom was located, they had to go down Spinal Cord Street. Ivan began thinking and his thoughtfulness led smoothly into a calm state of numbness, so that he found himself on the square before he was aware of it. The gray façade of the Sovcom had already been decorated with the three massive profiles of Sandel, Mundindel, and Babayasin, and opposite them, above the squat building of the Sovcom bathhouse, a red cloth banner bearing the words “LONG LIVE THE CAUSE OF MUNDINDEL AND BABAYASIN!” had been unfurled.
“Here, Val,” said Ivan, “why’s Mundindel got hair here? He was bald. And they’ve left out Sandel—what’s wrong with him all of a sudden? Seems to me they used to write about him too.”
“How should I know?” Valera answered. “Might as well ask why grass is green.”
Paved with ribbed concrete slabs, the open expanse in front of the Sovcom would have looked more like a military airport than anything else, if not for the huge monument directly opposite the building—a ten-foot-tall mustachioed Babayasin with his legendary saber raised high above his head, between the tiny figures of Sandel and Mundindel which seemed to prop him up from both sides, were almost beautiful in their romantic passion. The sun was shining from the direction of the monument, which in silhouette looked like an immense fork with thick prongs that someone had thrust into the concrete of the square. Several men were sitting in the shade of the monument on white stools brought out of the Sovcom; a newspaper was spread out on the concrete in front of them with gleaming green bottles and red tomatoes.
“Maybe we’ll join them, then?” said Valera.
From their suppurating, inflamed eyes it was easy to recognize the men sitting by the monument as workers from the Loomworker chemical weapons plant on the edge of the city. Two of them nodded to Valera—the entire city knew him as a virtuoso master of obscene language (his nickname was “Valera the dialectician”)—and the boys from the “Loomworker” were very proud of their tradition of rhetorical eloquence.
“Who’s drinking, boys?” Valera asked.
“Nah,” one of the chemical workers answered after a short pause, “we’re waiting for the secretary. We’ve already had a gargle, that’ll do for now.”
“Ah, well, what kind of May Day is this? I can hardly believe it, they’re turning down free drinks now.”
Valera sat down on the concrete and leaned back against the low barrier around the monument. The plastic wheel of a bottle stopper skeetered across the surface of the concrete. Ivan sat down beside him, tucking the hem of his padded work jacket under his backside, and screwed up his eyes. He still felt sad and weary at heart for no obvious reason, but at least he was calm, and for a second he even thought he caught a brief glimpse of a memory through some crack—a strange looking red cap and a plastic tabletop.
“Valera!” one of the chemical workers called quietly. “Valera!”
“What?” Valera stopped glugging to ask.
“How’s things down at the
samovar and matryoshka plant? Will your collective fulfill the plan?”
Ivan started. This was an open challenge and an insult. But then he realized that the chemists were not really looking for an all-out fight, they simply wanted to try their skill against a master of language without having to worry about losing, and he calmed down. Valera had also realized what was going on—he was used to these games.
“We’re working our way through it bit by bit,” he replied lazily. “And how’s the labor discipline around your place? What innovations have you got lined up for the May holidays?”
“We’re still thinking about it,” answered the chemist. “We’d like to spend a bit of time in your collective and get some advice from top rank workers. The main thing is to keep a peaceful sky over your head—that’s right, isn’t it?”
“That’s right,” answered Valera. “Come over and discuss things if you like, but you’ve plenty of veterans of your own, just look at that honor board of yours—five Stakhanovs up your exchange of experience in a single country.”
Someone snorted quietly.
“That’s true, we do have our own veterans,” the chemist persisted, “but the tradition of competition has put down deeper roots at your place, just look at all those pennants you May Day front liners have collected, shove the weak link up your Rot-Front and a superstructure in behind!”
“Not bad,” Ivan observed, “but he’s nervous, so he’s started off sounding too much like a newspaper...”
“You’d do better to think about material incentives—five symptoms of your mother—than go counting other people’s pennants—ten neckties down your open hearth and quantity up your quality,” Valera rattled off like a drum beat, “and then you could boast about your counterplan, may each of you receive a plaster Pavlik Morozov from his people’s militia according to his labor standards.”
Ivan suddenly thought that today’s conversation with the boy by the swings must have had an effect on Valera, although he hadn’t said anything about it—there was an edge of bitterness in his words. The chemist said nothing for a few seconds while he gathered his thoughts, and then spoke in a reconciliatory tone.
“I wish you’d shut up, Maypole your mother under a wagon shaft in the garden city.”
“Then slag off back to May up Ludwig Feuerbach and down Klara Zetkin,” Valera answered indifferently.
Ivan could tell that the victory had not brought him any particular satisfaction. This wasn’t up to his level.
“Let’s have a drink, then,” said the embarrassed chemist.
Ivan opened his eyes and saw the chemist accept the bottle held out by Valera. He turned out to be quite a young guy, but to judge from the color of his face and the purple boils on his neck, he’d already worked with “Bird Cherry” and “Collective-Farm Lily” and maybe even with “Summer Breeze.” Nobody spoke. Ivan thought about saying something to warm the atmosphere a little, but he changed his mind and fixed his gaze on the black tip of the shadow from Babayasin’s saber as it crept imperceptibly across the concrete.
“You’re not bad at scattering the May buds,” Valera said after a little while, “but you’ve got to relax. And not feel any hatred.” The boy turned blue in pleasure.
“What are you hanging around here for?” asked one of the chemists. “You waiting for someone?”
“We’re just looking for the thread of life,” answered Ivan.
“Well, have you found it?” a strong voice boomed behind him. Ivan turned around to see the Secretary of the Sovcom, Parmahamov, who must have crept up on them from the direction of the monument in order to hear the living conversation of the people. Ivan had seen Parmahamov a couple of times at the plant—he was a short, stout man of absolutely undistinguished appearance, who usually wore a cheap blue suit with wide lapels, a yellow shirt, and a purple tie. He used to work in some bank, where he stole a pile of money, for which he was frequently abused in the press.
“I’ve been listening to you boys,” said Parmahamov, rubbing his hands together, “and I was thinking how remarkably talented our people are; the way you, Valery, managed to link dialectics with daily life—we could print that straight off in the newspaper. Next year we’ll promote you to the ranks of the people’s nightingales... And what was it you boys wanted?”
“We made an appointment,” one of the chemists answered.
“Then I’ll listen to what you have to say,” said Parmahamov. “And don’t you go away yet, Ivan, I’ve got to present you with something. Right then, let’s go.”
The first thing to strike them inside the Sovcom was the huge number of children. They were everywhere: crawling up and down the broad marble staircase with its red carpet-runner, hanging on the velvet curtains, clowning about in front of the mirror that covered half the wall, burning something that gave off a stink in the far corner of the hallway, torturing a cat under the stairs—and everywhere screeching intolerably, repulsively. While they were climbing the stairs Ivan twice had to step over bluish, swollen-looking, tightly swaddled infants who moved by wriggling their entire bodies, like worms. Inside the Sovcom there was a smell of urine and boiled buckwheat.
“There, you see,” said Parmahamov, turning around, “we’ve handed it over to the children.”
They went up to the fifth floor. Five or six young men were sitting motionless in the deep armchairs at the blind end of the corridor, wearing round flying helmets with condensation misting the transparent visors.
“Who are they?” inquired Valera.
“Those? Young cosmonauts. A subsection of the Palace of Pioneers. Where we are now is the Palace of Pioneers, and downstairs is the nursery and kindergarten.”
“But why are they wearing helmets?”
“Stops the acetone evaporating too rapidly. We have to fight for every bottle.”
Eventually they reached Parmahamov’s office, which proved to be small and sparsely furnished. Almost all of the space was taken up by a long conference table, from beneath which Parmahamov dragged out a dribbling infant by the ear and booted him out into the corridor. Ivan noticed that the curtain at the window was stirring in a suspicious manner—there must be children hiding there too—but he decided not to interfere.
“Sit down,” said Parmahamov, pointing to a chair. Ivan and Valera sat down under a portrait of Sandel’s mother, who gazed piercingly into the room from beneath a white cotton cap, and the others sat at the table.
“Right, then,” said the chemist who had tried to compete with Valera, “right, we want to go over to balanced bookkeeping. And self-supporting finances. The collective sent us.”
“Balanced bookkeeping,” said Parmahamov, “is a fine thing. How do you want to do it; which model are you going to choose?”
“May bloody knows,” said the chemist after a moment’s thought. “You tell us about it. You think we understand it all? If you ask me how much phosgene to add to cyanogen chloride to make Collective-Farm Lily, then I can tell you, but how could I know anything about these models? I’ve spent my entire life on the shop floor.”
“That’s right,” said Parmahamov. “That’s exactly right. And you did the right thing, boys, by coming here. Where else would you go, if not here?”
He got up from the table and began walking to and fro in the narrow space beside it, one hand clutching his belt under his jacket behind his back and the other held in front of him with the thumb extended and palm open, as though in anticipation of some invisible handshake. Ivan recalled a restricted circulation brochure he had once seen, called “Partai-chi,” which described an entire complex of movements allowing even an individual of the very sharpest mental acuity to tune his mind for the faultless exposition of the party line. The exercise that Parmahamov was performing was one of them.
“Yes.” he said, suddenly coming to a halt.
Ivan looked at him and was amazed at what he saw—Parmahamov’s eyes had changed, transforming themselves from cunningly squinting slits into two circles of tin. He was bre
athing somehow differently now, and his voice was an octave lower.
“What can I say to you,” he intoned slowly, and gave a sudden shake of his head as though in bitter comprehension. “I can see it. I can see everything you’re thinking after you’ve read all those newspaper reports! It’s true. They lied to us for a long time. But that time is now over. Now we know everything—about how the prowdled sabort sprattled our souperus and the dork lyubyanik condited our rid. Why do we know? Because they told us the truth. Now let me ask you—ought we to think about our children and our grandchildren? You, Valera, our nightingale, you tell me.”
“I should think we ought,” said Valera. “Of course.”
“Right then. Then just work it out: they’ll grow up, our children, and by that time there’ll be a new truth ready for the telling. Do we want them to be told that new truth, like we’re being told now?”
“Of course we do,” everyone at the table answered loudly. “Get to the point!”
“The point’s very simple. Right now the leadership is watching to see how the people are working. If we’re working badly, then what’s the point of telling us the truth? And we should work anyway out of simple gratitude, and not go counting other people’s caviar and dachas. That’s real balanced bookkeeping.”
Parmahamov thought about something for a second and his features softened.
“And in general,” he said, “to put it in simple human terms, how wonderful it is to be alive!”
He must have pressed a button of some kind—immediately after he finished speaking a crowd of Young Pioneers came tumbling into the room and stood tightly packed around Valera, Ivan, and the chemists. The Pioneers were in smoothly ironed white shirts with ties, they smelled of fruit drops and starch, and in Ivan’s smoke-polluted breast a wave of nostalgia rose and fell at the thought of his own childhood—or rather, at the thought of his vanished memories.
“Take them to the Museum of Glory,” said Parmahamov.
“Let’s go,” commanded one of the Pioneers, and in two seconds the flood of red ties had swept Ivan and Valera and the chemists from the floor of Parmahamov’s office. Ivan could only vaguely recall what happened next. He retained nothing but scraps of memories from the Museum of Glory—first they were all led up to a small glass display case which housed the first documents of the people’s power in Uran-Bator (which had some other name then)—“The Decree on Land,” “The Decree on Sky,” and the historical “Order No. 1”: From the first day of the month of May of this year entry to the city and exit therefrom are forbidden under pain of capital punishment. Commissars: Sandel, Mundindel, Babayasin.
A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia and Other Stories Page 15