The Big Green Tent

by Ludmila Ulitskaya

  But Dulin didn’t observe any alcohol-related aggression in his objects of study. The tipsy rabbits began to exhibit signs of tremors, then just fell asleep. Their appetite diminished, as well as their weight, but they remained peaceful creatures. They didn’t bite, and they didn’t attack humans. In short, there was no protest activity on their part. Moreover, the professor’s arguments notwithstanding, the primary male, head of this alcoholic harem, not only did not become more aggressive, but actually lost his renowned rabbit potency. Every three months, one of his own sons took over where he had left off.

  When Dulin worked up the courage to challenge Vinberg, saying that his research in no way confirmed the aggression of alcoholics, the professor only laughed.

  “Dmitry Stepanovich, what about the workings of the higher nervous system? A human being is not a rabbit, of course, but a highly organized, complex being! Moreover, I would draw your attention to the fact that rabbits are vegetarians, and people, for the most part, are predators. In their eating habits people are closer to bears, which are omnivorous! Keep in mind that not a single species is comparable to Homo sapiens in the variety of its diet. Northern peoples are carnivorous, while in India, for example, there are huge swathes of the population that are exclusively vegetarian. As far as can be observed without scientific study, neither group outdoes the other in displays of aggression.”

  The professor enjoyed his musings, rubbing his dry, cleanly scoured palms together in a gesture that suggested he was about to examine a patient.

  “Very curious. Very curious. One must begin with biochemistry, I believe. Der Mensch ist was er isst. And what he drinks!” And just like that he laughed, showing his mouthful of pure metal teeth, which a local dentist, originally from Vienna, had fitted him with in Vorkuta. Dulin either recalled from the German he had managed to pick up at school, or simply guessed, that what Vinberg had said was: You are what you eat.

  Vinberg knew everything there was to know in the world, or so it seemed: anthropology, Latin, and even genetics. But he hadn’t been able to take care of his teeth. He was in a hurry to live, to read, to think; he had been in a hurry to write down all the idiosyncratic and untimely ideas that had descended on him in the northern latitudes.

  He talked a great deal to whoever would listen, including Dulin. But there were some things he kept to himself, telling only those closest to him.

  “A land of children!” he would say to his wife, whom he’d acquired through the camp dispensary. “A land of children! Culture blocks the natural impulses of adults; but not of children. And where there is no culture, blocking is absent. There is a cult of the father, of obedience, and at the same time an unmanageable childish aggression.”

  Vera Samuilovna brushed this off disdainfully. She was the only one who would permit herself such a gesture.

  “Edwin, what nonsense! What about the Germans? The most cultured country in Europe? Why didn’t culture block their primitive, natural impulses?”

  Vera Samuilovna attacked her husband with youthful passion, and Edwin Yakovlevich, as usual, fiddled with his nose, as though it were precisely in that organ that his intellect was concentrated.

  “Another mechanism was set in motion, Vera, another mechanism. Das ist klar. Selbstverständlich. This can be proven. Levels of awareness—this is what we must consider.”

  And he would fall silent for a long time before offering this theoretical proof.

  They had no children. One boy had been born to them in the camps, but they had been unable to save him. All their energy, their entire store of talent that had remarkably survived and flourished, was invested in their profession. Vera Samuilovna was obsessed with her endocrinology. She synthesized artificial hormones, which she nearly believed could guarantee human immortality. Edwin Yakovlevich did not endorse his wife’s views. He was not attracted by immortality. Their scientific interests converged in this fundamental conflict: gerontology by definition flew in the face of the idea of immortality. Vinberg was certain of this. But Vera believed in hormones.

  The couple had plenty to discuss in their late-evening soirées. After the loss of their whole prewar way of life—conservatories, libraries, science and literature; after the camp barracks, the dispensaries, the necessity of curing every possible illness with no medicine at all; after all that, sitting in the nighttime stillness of their own tiny apartment, stuffed with books and records, in the warmth, with plenty of food, just the two of them, was their source of joy.

  * * *

  Dulin continued to study alcoholism, now not only from a scientific perspective, as theory, but in an applied, practical context as well. His department started a treatment program, which, unfortunately, didn’t meet with any particular success. The salary was good, though—he received 170 rubles a month, plus a bonus.

  Three years went by. Again, he got lucky, this time without Nina’s influence. A position for a senior research fellow opened up when an elderly colleague retired. At the same time, quite unexpectedly, Dr. Ruzaev, the most promising doctor in their institute and one who had already defended his dissertation, was lured away by the Kazan Medical Institute.

  A search was begun to fill these two positions. Dulin would never have considered applying on his own initiative, but the head of the department urged him on, telling him to get all the necessary papers in order. And in the autumn of 1972, Dulin was promoted to the position of senior research fellow! This was a stunning coup in the unfolding of his career. It took all winter for Dulin to get used to it. In the mornings, while he was shaving in the bathroom, as he scraped the foamy hillock covering his dark brown whiskers from his cheeks with a safety razor, he would look at himself in the mirror and say: “Dmitry Stepanovich Dulin, Senior Research Fellow.” He had expected it to take ten or fifteen years to reach this position, but suddenly—there it was!

  And he felt pride, and uncertainty, all at once …

  Things were going very well in the department. Now he had a new subject—alcohol-related paranoia—and two wards of patients whom he studied and treated. Gripped by fits of jealousy, inflamed with hallucinations, tormented by persecution manias, overwrought and excitable, or, on the contrary, listless and depressed, devoid of any sense of self-worth, pumped up or deflated by neuroleptic drugs, they bore very little resemblance to his soft, warm-eared rabbits. Aggression was always hovering just below the surface.

  Some of them were tied to the bed, others were sedated with drugs. On occasion, a particularly ungovernable patient would break the windowpane and fling himself out, trying to escape his illness straight into the arms of the Lord God. All told, there were only two windows without bars in the entire department: one in the department head’s office, as well as a tiny one in the examining room. At the beginning of spring one such patient took the leap from that very window. Luckily, the ward was only on the second floor; still, he broke his arm. It was very unfortunate for all concerned. The patient was a celebrated actor, beloved by the whole nation. And his form of delirium was also deeply rooted in the people: he believed that tiny men were after him, and he had to keep picking them off, shaking himself free in squeamish terror.

  Dulin chased off the tiny men with the help of Amytal and haloperidol.

  Then the artist recovered, and his beautiful wife, also an actor, came to fetch him. She gave the nurses six boxes of chocolate, and the department head a portrait of the patient. Now it hung in his office, adorned with the artist’s autograph. For the teetotaler Dulin, they brought a bottle of cognac. Dulin was very happy—not about the cognac, of course, but that no scandal had ensued. The actor had arrived all in one piece, and he had left with a broken arm in a cast. They should have been more careful.

  Dulin didn’t like his paranoiacs. In fact, he felt a deep contempt for them. He considered them all to be lost causes, and deep inside he viewed alcoholism itself not as a true illness, but as an ordinary human failing. His wife, Nina, from morning till night, made her rounds of the district, listening with h
er stethoscope, palpating stomachs, writing out prescriptions and sick-leave certificates, and carrying out what he considered to be true medical work. What went on here, Dulin suspected, was just academic rigamarole. But, on the whole, he was satisfied with the job. It was a good one.

  One day, in the middle of summer, when vacation season was in full swing, Dulin was summoned to the administrative office. Eleonora Viktorovna, the secretary, a mature black-haired beauty with luxuriant, immobile eyebrows and unbridled power at the institute, nodded to him and smiled sourly:

  “Dmitry Stepanovich, you are being asked to give a consultation in the Special Division, in your area of expertise.”

  Dulin was alarmed. This request was, in fact, an order. It was common knowledge that the Special Division was where “politicals” were kept, and the people who worked there had “clearance”—they were special people, secretive people who kept quiet. No one else wanted to have access to it. Ordinarily, if they needed to consult someone, they invited Karpov, the department head; but he happened to be away on vacation. Kulchenko, another distinguished senior research fellow, had gone to a conference in Leningrad. Dulin tried to wriggle out of it.

  “Eleonora Viktorovna, I would be honored, of course, but I’m afraid it’s impossible; I don’t have clearance.”

  Eleonora Viktorovna adjusted her hair—a fashionable bun that added volume to her head on top and in back—and smiled:

  “We have already arranged for clearance. Just sign here.”

  And she held out to him a malachite pen sticking out of a malachite stand. Dulin took the pen, still protesting:

  “But I’ve never taken part in this kind of consultation. Karpov will be back in two weeks, and Kulchenko will already be back at work on Monday.”

  Eleonora Viktorovna’s mouth expressed dissatisfaction.

  “Are you not aware that any specialist with a diploma can be called in to offer expertise? It’s your duty! Those are our laws. And this is just such a consultation.” Eleonora paused; the pause lasted just long enough to give Dulin to understand that resistance was futile. He signed the document.

  “Please report to the Special Division at eleven o’clock on Thursday. They’ll provide you with a pass. Professor Dymshitz, head of the Special Division, would like to have a little talk with you now. Wait for him here. He’s in the director’s office.”

  “Yes, of course,” Dulin said, with a sense of foreboding.

  He sat on a chair, taking note of its alarming crimson upholstery. He had already heard unpleasant rumors about this Dymshitz, but he couldn’t recall precisely what they were.

  He waited for quite a while. Finally, the door opened, and a fat, stumpy fellow with a few thin gray hairs combed over his bald pate, from the right side to the left, emerged from the director’s office.

  “Efim Semenovich, Doctor Dulin is waiting for you. You wished to see him,” Eleonora said, rising to greet him.

  A head taller than he, the older beauty had to bend down to communicate with this gnomish creature; still, she exuded fear, and he menace. Dulin’s agitation grew more and more pronounced. He couldn’t quite grasp what was happening, as though he were witnessing a play performed in a foreign language.

  No one explained to Dulin that Eleonora had been married to Dymshitz before the war, and that she had left him for a younger man who went missing in action during the war. In 1946 she returned to Dymshitz again, and after living with him for a short while, abandoned him again. Thus, Dulin was a chance witness of their strange and convoluted relationship.

  Dymshitz turned his gaze toward Dulin.

  “Yes, yes. Very good. Have you ever taken part in a psychiatric expert review?”

  Dulin had done this hundreds of times for cases of alcoholism, naturally. But he suddenly grew confused, and something so frightened him that his underarms, as well as his back and chest, broke into a sweat.

  “Yes, of course,” he said.

  The gnome was sizing him up. And not very highly.

  “I would like to talk with you beforehand, but I’m in a hurry at the moment. Come to the Special Division at eleven, and before you see the patient, look in on me.”

  And Dymshitz went up the stairs to the third floor, his little ankle boots clattering noisily on the steps.

  He probably buys his shoes in Children’s World, Dulin thought irritably. And he wasn’t wrong. The professor wore a size 4.

  * * *

  Leaving the institute at eight o’clock in the evening, a vapor of dried, malodorous sweat trailing behind him, Dulin ran into Vinberg. Erect, lanky, and thin, in a worn-out gray suit with a striped silk tie, and smelling of eau de cologne, he was elegant, as always.

  It’s not just the tie, of course, Dulin thought to himself. It’s his nature, his character. He’s dry as a biscuit.

  Dulin himself had put on weight in the last two or three years. He ate a lot: for his mother, for his grandmother, for all the years he had gone hungry in childhood, which had settled into depths known only to psychiatrists.

  They walked to the metro together.

  “They called me to give a consultation at the Special Division,” Dulin reported without any hesitation.

  Vinberg raised a neatly trimmed eyebrow.

  “Really? They must trust you. Are you a member of the Party, Dmitry Stepanovich?”

  “Of course I am. I served in the army after college. They took everyone back then.”

  “Ah, yes. Party discipline. You have a duty to take part, then,” Vinberg said drily, clearing his throat.

  “Usually, Karpov … he’s on vacation,” Dulin said, trying to justify himself, and was taken aback by his own behavior. “They obviously have an alcoholic there, or there’s at least an episode involving alcohol in the case. But in our country, Edwin Yakovlevich, everyone drinks: actors, academics, and cosmonauts. Recently we had…” And Dulin told him about the celebrated actor.

  “Back in the camps, there was a certain talented writer, an exceptionally erudite man. He translated Rilke in prison so as not to be degraded by the circumstances. Well, it’s unlikely that you’ve ever heard of Rilke. Right here, in the Serbsky Institute, that very writer underwent a psychiatric expert review at the beginning of the 1930s; he hoped to be diagnosed as an alcoholic (which he was not). And for the time being he wasn’t sent to prison, but for treatment. He spent three years in treatment. He praised God and read books. But they sent him to prison in the end anyway. Yes, Rilke, Rilke … That’s the paradox of our time: before the war, people evaded persecution in psychiatric wards, and now it’s precisely psychiatric wards where—”

  “Dymshitz asked me to drop by for a talk with him,” Dulin said plaintively, his voice lowered. But Vinberg seemed not to hear. He suddenly turned away.

  “Excuse me, I completely forgot. I have to run into the bookstore. Good-bye!”

  And he strode off in the direction of Metrostroevskaya Street. Vinberg had been taken off guard. This decisive young man who had single-handedly managed to quell a fire, unsophisticated and somewhat limited, but conscientious and decent, in his own way, seemed to be asking for his advice.

  What could he say to a simple-hearted and conscientious fool? Even a wise man wouldn’t be able to extricate himself from this one. Vinberg walked right past the bookstore. He hadn’t really needed to go there.

  When Hitler came to power, Jacob Vinberg, his father, a well-known Berlin lawyer, had said: “As a lawyer, I always find a way out. I know that in every situation there is at least one exit. Usually several. Under Hitler’s regime, there are none.” Jacob Vinberg died without realizing how right he was. This regime doesn’t allow a man any way out, either. Not one. They always get the better of those who have a conscience, Vinberg thought.

  The Special Division was located in a separate building, three trolleybus stops away. At half past ten on Thursday, Dulin rang the stern bell, which seemed to be calling him to account. A female porter in a white robe opened the door.

  “
Whom do you wish to see?”

  Dulin showed her his pass. “I’m here for a consultation. I need to see Professor Dymshitz.”

  “One moment,” the woman said, and, with a brisk nod, shut the door in his face. A few minutes later another woman, taller, with a fancy hairdo, opened the door. Instead of a robe she was wearing a pink dress.

  Jersey knit, Dulin noted. Nina is dying for one. I feel awkward asking her where she got it.

  “Good morning, good morning! We’ve been expecting you.” She extended her hand. “Margarita Glebovna. I’m the doctor in charge of the case. Efim Semenovich is waiting for you. Then I’ll show you to the patient.”

  A corridor, doors—it looked just like an ordinary hospital ward. Only the corridors were absolutely empty.

  Then they came to some heavy double doors adorned with a brass plaque. He was surprised by the spaciousness and the complete sterility of the office. There was not a single piece of paper or a single mote of dust on the sleek tabletop. The gnome, who was sitting behind the desk, was almost affable this time.

  “Please, come in, Dmitry Stepanovich.”

  Dulin sat on an uncomfortable chair in the middle of the room. A sea of gleaming parquet separated him from the professor. About ten feet of it.

  Like an investigator, Dulin thought. He had once found himself sitting in just such a lone chair in the district KGB office. One of his classmates had gotten up to no good, and Dulin was called in for questioning. But the fairly canny functionaries realized very quickly how remote Dulin was from all that business, and let him go.

  At various points in his life, Dymshitz had also had to occupy a faraway chair like that one. He didn’t like it; but it had made a deep impression on him.

  “So,” Dymshitz said, barely parting his lips. “We have a very interesting patient on our hands.”

  Seemingly out of nowhere, a cardboard file appeared. From afar, Dymshitz waved it around invitingly.