Red Star Tales

by Yvonne Howell

  “I am also happy, Anya. Sleep well… if that’s possible.”

  He ran out of the room, feeling that at this moment, he absolutely needed to be alone.

  First published in Russian: 1939/1958

  Translation by Yvonne Howell

  * * *

  1. The Russian biologist Porfirii Bakhmetyev (1860-1913) experimented extensively with methods to induce anabiosis, a state of suspended animation at extremely low temperatures, in insects, fish, and bats. Research on anabiosis continued, although with less public fanfare, well into the Soviet period. Nikolai Krementsov discusses Bakhmetyev’s notable career in Revolutionary Dreams: The Quest for Immortality in Russian Science and Fiction (Oxford, 2011). Matthias Schwartz provides the fullest account of Dolgushin’s novel and its contemporary contexts in Expeditionen in Andere Welten (Berlin 2014).

  2. We know from previous chapters that an apolitical, Jules Verne-like German inventor named Gross has invented a machine quite similar to Ridan and Nikolai’s machine, a “generator of miracles” that uses electromagnetic waves to stimulate processes in the brain and body. Whereas the Soviets want to use this machine to create “rays of life” (e.g., healing cancers, bringing moribund bodies back from the threshold of death), the Germans want to create “rays of death.” Vikling’s job as a spy was to track Soviet progress on perfecting this technology. The “Munich explosion” was a sabotage act perpetrated by communist workers in Munich to halt the death rays’ production.

  IVAN YEFREMOV

  1944

  THE NUR-I-DESHT OBSERVATORY

  Air hissed loudly through the brakes, and the even clanking of the wheels faded into a steady hum. Outside the train car window, a snow cloud of dust was swirling.

  The conversation stopped abruptly, and a lieutenant colonel glanced out the window, now pink in the rays of the setting sun. But the train built up speed and barreled relentlessly forward, taking its passengers toward the new wartime fates that the new year, 1943, held in store for them.

  A naval officer who had taken part in the conversation went out into the corridor and sat down on a folding bench, pondering the indelible cruelty of war, which leaves nothing unmarked. Ramshackle villages flashed by outside the window of the battered train car.

  One of his compartment mates, a tall, young artillery major, stopped nearby. From their very first meeting, the naval officer had been struck by the controlled energy emanating from the major’s entire dexterous and trim figure. His eyes, which seemed exceptionally bright against his darkly tanned face, were amazingly calm, but some force radiated from inside them that the naval officer had determined from the start to be a sign of unyielding joy in life that was well masked through a habit of self-restraint.

  The major extended his hand.

  “Lebedev,” he introduced himself. “I overheard the conversation you were having with our neighbors and the hard time they were giving you. I liked your claim that people have a right to joy. I think the people who took the other side are right. But you, of course, are also right. Such is the dialectic of life. These days, people experience a sense of joy less frequently than other feelings… And then there’s the fact that human joy can stem from causes that appear to be utterly inexplicable at first glance.”

  After a moment’s hesitation he added:

  “I’ll tell you about a curious episode in which I myself wound up playing a role quite recently.”

  It grew dark. They entered the compartment and settled into their places on the top bunks. The tightly drawn window shade made the compartment, lit by a single small lamp, especially intimate. The naval officer lay on the top bunk across from the major and listened to his story. It had so little in common with the scene around them that at times a part of his consciousness seemed to fly off to a distant sun-drenched and vast land…

  I was called up three months into the war. I went through the relentless battle of retreat. For seven months the enemy’s bullets and shrapnel spared me. There’s no point telling you everything I experienced… Before the war I was a geologist, a worshipper of our indomitable nature, and a dreamer. The drudgery of war and the devastation and atrocities inflicted on my native land by the invading hordes, hard on a peace-loving soul like mine, almost broke me. But I got through it and soon was hardened, like the hundreds of comrades who fought beside me. My dreams vanished without a trace. I grew thick-skinned and morose. All that was left of my soul was an excruciating void – a void that was filled only when I fought the enemy, only when my batteries hit the mark.

  In March, I was seriously wounded and taken out of commission for several months. After treatment in the hospital I was granted leave and sent to recuperate at a resort in Central Asia. I tried to argue and gave them all the reasons why I should be sent to the front immediately; I said that I was completely alone in the world – nothing did any good.

  In short, in late July 1942 I found myself on a train speeding me across the vast Kazakh steppe toward the hot sun.

  At night, I often stood by an open window. The wind, which smelled of wormwood, dry and fresh, wafted around me welcomingly. The weightless dark of the steppe accentuated the plain’s primeval lack of habitation. But my mind was somewhere else – far to the west.

  In the end, nature’s pristine serenity worked its magic, and after a week of travel I somehow softened a bit inside. Most importantly, I became more attentive to the world around me.

  After Arysa, the sweltering daytime heat in the scorching train became agonizing, and I was happy to get off at a small station late one night. The bus from the sanatorium wasn’t coming until morning. I had no desire to trade the soft cool of the southern night for a place to lay my head inside the station. I sat down on my suitcase near a lamppost and, breathing in the nocturnal freshness, examined my surroundings. The train was still standing there. Its passengers were strolling along the crunching gravel by the glow of lamplight. After lighting a papirosa, I began to look them over.

  A young woman who was walking back and forth along the platform caught my eye with the attractive combination of a green dress, reddish bronze suntan, and ash blond hair.

  Something set her apart from the crowd. Even now I remember my first impression; I suppose it was the joyful freshness that emanated from her entire being.

  Clearly looking for someone, she now stopped, shook her short hair, and, after raising her round face to the light, protruded her lips in a funny pout. Sensing my stare, the young woman looked me straight in the eye, turned her back on me, and walked away.

  The train pulled out of the station. The red light of the last car was lost amid dark hillocks; all but two of the lamps went dark. For a while, I continued to sit on my suitcase in the dusk of the now quiet station. For the first time in a long while my soul was at peace, perhaps because of the cool darkness around me, perhaps because I could sense the vastness of the nighttime steppe.

  I began to feel cold and reluctantly made my way toward the station. The tiny waiting room had little lighting. Behind a low wooden partition was a section for wounded soldiers with nobody in it. The wind was rushing in unhindered through an open window. I lay down on a bench, although I had no desire to sleep. Light footsteps sounded in the dimly lit room. I turned and recognized the young woman I had encountered on the platform. She looked at the benches occupied by sleeping Uzbeks and hesitantly approached the partition separating my section. I rose to greet her and invited her to settle on a free bench. She thanked me and sat down on the bench, throwing back her head and squeezing her knees tightly together. As soon as she appeared, this station, adrift in the steppe, suddenly seemed less desolate. Apparently, the young woman had no intention of sleeping. I decided to ask her a few of the sorts of questions travelers ordinarily ask one another, and she responded curtly and without enthusiasm. Nevertheless, we gradually struck up a conversation. Tatyana Nikolayevna, or simply Tanya, was a graduate student at the Institute of Asian Languages in Tashkent and was accompanying a famous archeology pr
ofessor on an expedition. The professor was studying the ruins of an ancient astronomical observatory built approximately a thousand years ago in the foothills of a mountain range two hundred kilometers from the station. Tanya’s duties included restoring and translating Arabic inscriptions found on the ruin’s walls and stones.

  “Doesn’t it seem silly to you, after the front, after this,” she lightly touched my arm, which was in a sling, “that people are working on this sort of thing?” She glanced at me, looking somewhat embarrassed.

  “No, Tanya,” I responded. “I’m a former geologist and believe in the importance of science. Also, it means that my comrades and I are defending our country well if you’re able to do your job far from the war…”

  “So that’s how you see it!” Tanya smiled and grew silent, sinking into thoughtfulness.

  “You said that the observatory is in the remote steppe. How did you get here?” I asked, to get the conversation going again.

  Tanya gave me a rather detailed account of the expedition to the ancient observatory. Its members were few: the professor, Tanya, and her fifteen-year-old brother, who was helping to map the site. Laborers were hard to come by, of course. Although it wanted to assist the expedition, the nearest collective farm could only spare two old men, who left after working just two weeks. Nobody else would come, so the job of clearing the ruins ground to a halt. The professor sent a letter to his institute requesting that a graduate student who had stayed behind in Tashkent to work on his dissertation be sent to do some simple clearing and help complete the job. Tanya was there to meet this new comrade, but he was not on either of the two trains that had come and gone. She had sent a telegram to Tashkent asking what was going on and was expecting a reply in the morning.

  “That’s the whole story,” she said, suppressing an annoyed sigh. “It’s a shame! You can’t imagine how interesting the work is and what an amazing place Nur-i-Desht is! Nur-i-Desht – that’s the name of the observatory ruins. It means ‘Light of the Desert.’”

  “If the place is as wonderful as you say it is, why did your old men take off?”

  “There are underground tremors, quite strong and frequent. Everything shakes, a loud rumbling comes from deep underground, and stones and earth spill down from the ruins’ walls. Our laborers thought the tremors were a sign that a major earthquake was coming that would kill us all…”

  I thought about everything Tanya had told me, and when I was ready to ask her a question I saw that she was sleeping peacefully with her head lolled to one side.

  After carefully positioning my rolled up greatcoat to give her a little support, I moved to the neighboring bench, lay down, and fell asleep.

  When I awoke, the young woman was gone. There were more people in the waiting area, filling the small space with their colorful robes and the sounds of an unfamiliar language.

  After washing up, I went to find out about the bus. The news was not reassuring: the bus was late and could be expected only after lunch. I walked around the station, hoping to find Tanya. After circling the entire building, I went out into the steppe, but the sun, which was already scorching, drove me into the shade of the station garden. In the distance I caught sight of Tanya’s green dress by the entrance to the telegraph office. She was sitting, lost in thought, on the stone stoop under an acacia.

  “Good morning. Did you get your telegram?” I asked.

  “I got it… Semyonov joined the army, so nobody’s going to be coming. What will I tell Matvei Andreyevich? He’ll be so disappointed!”

  “Who is Matvei Andreyevich?”

  “My boss, the professor. I told you about him yesterday,” she said with a hint of annoyance.

  At this point I had an idea that immediately cheered me up.

  “Listen, Tanya. Take me along to help!” I said. “I certainly won’t be any worse than your old men.”

  Tanya looked at me with surprise.

  “You? But you’re supposed to be undergoing treatment. And besides…” She stopped short, glancing at the sling holding my arm.

  I noticed this glance, took my arm out of the sling, and made a few rapid movements with it.

  “Don’t worry, Tanya. My arm works, and the only reason it’s in a sling is to prevent swelling. I can’t keep it lowered for long,” I explained. “And after all, I’m going there to recuperate, not to undergo treatment. What difference does it make where I do that? You yourself were singing the praises of this Nur-i-Desht of yours.”

  The young woman wavered. Her gray eyes grew cheerful.

  “Everything will be fine,” I continued facetiously, “so long as that professor of yours doesn’t keep me on soldier’s rations…”

  “Of course not! We have plenty of food! But what about your sanatorium? And it’s a difficult trip to our place…”

  “Difficult how? You’re getting ready to make it for the fourth time.”

  “I may not be tall, but I’m strong,” Tanya replied. “You know how we get there? There are trucks that go from here to a state farm – that’s 120 kilometers. From the state farm they usually give us a horse to the village of Tuz-Kul, a small collective farm, and the road to it is awful: sand and stone. From Tuz-Kul we have to get a camel and make it through about thirty kilometers of arid sand. I can’t stand riding camels: you sit there as if you’re on a huge barrel, rocking back and forth, like a pendulum. And the camel, you know, goes exactly four kilometers an hour, no more, no less.”

  I soon had Tanya convinced, and long before sunrise an empty three-tonner was bouncing along the potholes like a rubber ball, carrying us southeastward, away from the bluish line of snowy peaks and in the opposite direction from the sanatorium. We sat on the floor of the driver’s compartment exchanging cheerful glances. Conversation was impossible – you’d bite your tongue off. A dense, rust-colored dust cloud whirled behind the truck and gradually widened, obscuring the hills beyond which stood the train station we had left behind. After about three hours on the road, a dark line of poplars that had been looming on the horizon parted before us, revealing two rows of little white houses separated by a straight street as wide as a city square. The regular rows of pyramidal poplars extended their green towers skyward, and to the left and right, gentle slopes bristling with light yellow clusters of needlegrass ran down to the village.

  The truck stopped by a babbling irrigation ditch not far from the state farm’s office. I still have fond memories of the simple, heartfelt hospitality shown us by this remote state farm. We decided to set out as late as possible: the cool of night is the best time for traveling. Catching sight of a spacious tarantass, Tanya chuckled softly.

  “You’re a handy fellow to have around, Ivan Timofeyevich: they’re taking us in a tarantass in your honor.”

  An agronomist who was also traveling to the collective farm took on the duty of coachman; Tanya and I settled down in the basket and we began moving into a weak breeze. The dark steppe enveloped us under low, warm stars.

  Soon I could feel that Tanya’s shoulder was often touching mine. And then her curly head came to rest peacefully on my shoulder. Time passed. The velvet breeze brought out its cold claws. The predawn chill kept us in a state of semi-wakefulness.

  Tuz-Kul did not strike me as a pleasant place. A bare hillock with a few recently planted poplars was dotted with low huts plastered with reddish-brown clay. At six in the evening we set out into the sands accompanied by a guide and a camel loaded with provisions. I decided to follow Tanya’s example and proceeded on foot, walking by her side. Low sandy mounds were overgrown with bluish brambles. Walking was not at all easy, and I was surprised by my companion’s endurance. Our legs became mired in the shifting sands, which emanated a suffocating heat – it was easy to imagine what it must be like to walk here during the hot daytime hours. After a brief halt under the glow of sunset, we entered a saxaul thicket. The luminous face of my watch showed quarter past twelve when the sand came to an end and we were relieved to feel the firm ground of the rocky wo
rmwood steppe beneath our feet.

  Off in the distance and rather high up there was a red glow surrounded by a cloud of golden haze.

  “That’s our campfire,” Tanya explained. “They’re up late – must be waiting for me.”

  The resonant voice of a boy rang out in the darkness:

  “Matvei Andreyevich, Tanya’s here!”

  My first encounter with the professor took place by firelight. He was a small, round man with a square face. His intelligent eyes were covered by large, thick glasses. I had been lagging behind a bit, trying to coax the stubborn camel closer to the fire. After greeting Tanya, the professor called out toward me:

  “Show yourself, Semyonov! Where are you hiding there? Tell us what’s going on in Tashkent.”

  I stepped into the circle of light around the campfire. The professor started, adjusted his glasses, and looked at Tanya.

  “Who is this? And where’s Semyonov?”

  “Semyonov didn’t come, Matvei Andreyevich,” Tanya replied guiltily, in a barely audible voice.

  “I don’t understand anything! What kind of a joke is this?” The professor grew angry.

  I walked up to him, reached out my hand, introduced myself, and then briefly explained why I was there.

  “What are you saying! How can that be? You’re a wounded major, a decorated warrior. It’s not right, my friend, it’s not right!” the professor grumbled, casting angry glances at Tanya.

  She kept silent.

  “And, on top of that, your arm… My, my!...Will you really be able to work?... I didn’t expect this sort of silliness from you, Tanya.”

  I burst out laughing. With my good arm I grabbed a heavy bundle that had been unloaded from the camel and easily raised it over my head. Tanya applauded. The professor seemed somewhat appeased.

  “Well, well… What am I to do with you?”

  “Try me out on the job. If I’m not a fit, you can kick me out,” I said humbly.