The Life of an Unknown Man (10 page)

The door bangs shut and out on the landing the young man’s voice can be heard yelling the good news to his girlfriend into a cell phone.

The television opposite Vlad’s office is showing an opera (the eyes of the forty-five heads of state staring at the beads of sweat on Pavarotti’s brow). Through the half-open door to the bedroom can be seen a green blanket, a hand holding a book. From time to time the rustle of a page can be heard.

Shutov laughs, chuckling inwardly at first, then, recalling that the old man is doubtless deaf as well as unable to speak, stops holding back, his chest shaking with an attack of hilarity. The wistful beauty of the reunion he planned is toppling over into burlesque. Having come as a nostalgic pilgrim, he finds himself surrounded by modernity gone mad, a mixture of American razzle-dazzle and Russian clowning. He has sought to understand this new country and they reject him, along with the worn-out relics of Soviet times, in the company of a bedridden deaf-mute, whose chamber pot he will have to empty.

He laughs, aware that this is the only way he can avoid lapsing into emotionalism over that lost paradise. His childhood at the orphanage, a paradise? Or his impoverished youth perhaps? Or the history of this country, written between two lines of barbed wire? No, no, let’s laugh about it, for fear of weeping. Occasions for uproarious laughter are not lacking. On the screen Pavarotti’s stentorian rotundity is now abandoned by the camera as it focuses on quite a different vocalist, Berlusconi, who is singing along with half-closed eyes while Putin casts amused glances at him. Shutov changes channels. A feature on the parade of old streetcars. When the Nazis laid siege to Leningrad these vehicles were used to transport the corpses of citizens who had starved to death. Shutov surfs the channels: an Indian film, a woman in raptures, a man on a smart motorbike crushes his enemy. CNN: the stock market is rising, a general talks about restoring peace. The Russian equivalent of CNN and the wonder of these endlessly repeated news items: Madame Putin once more urging women to choose a personal dressmaker, the Greeks yet again handing over the relics of Saint Andrei, and the two female rock singers complaining about the excessive prudery of British audiences… And when, switching to another channel, Shutov hits upon the same erotic film, the position of the bodies creates the illusion that their coupling has been going on uninterrupted for many hours. The commercial for canned cat food. A biker hastens to wash his “dull and tired” hair with nourishing shampoo. A car hurtles toward the sun: “To be on time, when every second counts!” An executioner snips the Saint Petersburg mayor’s tie. An obese young black man in an American sitcom has two slightly idiotic young white men in stitches. In a Baltic state a parade of former SS men. A shaving cream commercial…

Shutov eats in front of the television (the wine is good, even for a “choosy” Frenchman) and he feels almost happy. Relaxed, at least, thanks to the absurdities flooding the screen. The secret he sought to fathom is simple: Russia has just caught up with the global game of role-playing, its antics, its codes. And the tercentenary celebrations only sharpen this impetus toward the great world spectacular: forty-five heads of state stuffed with our caviar, glutted with our vodka, bored with our Tchaikovsky. Bill Gates and his riches? Better to admire our own millionaires, who have achieved this status in just a few years!

The two presenters who were earlier commenting on the animal fads of the new rich appear on the screen again. They are talking now about the vacations these tycoons treat themselves to: a pleasure yacht three hundred feet long, with a helicopter and a pocket submarine on board and a gold-plated swimming pool, which, during parties for friends, is filled with champagne. The reporters disagree over the make and the year… Another click and an old streetcar can be seen crossing the starving city during the war.

Shutov’s laughter subsides into a relieved sigh. No point in cudgeling one’s brains, just accept the world carnival, which the Russians have now joined. All aboard! The merry-go-round revolves and only prehistoric creatures like him still care about the previous century. Nostalgists dreaming of evening mists over the Baltic Sea, while the global merry-go-round, as it gathers speed, hurls them away to bite the dust amid the nettles far from the carnival.

From the old man’s bedroom comes a dull coughing, then the rustle of a page. Shutov glances in through the half-open door, remembers about the chamber pot, is it time already? Go and say good night to him? Spend a moment beside him? This human presence, at once mute and filled with grave sense, makes him ill at ease.

“It’s because we’re from the same era…” An unattractive notion, Shutov tries to qualify it. No, it’s more than that, this old man is a whole era on his own. According to Yana’s account, the life whose shadow lies huddled beneath the green blanket can easily be imagined. In his youth this man sang in one of the choirs that often went to the front to support the soldiers. Trenches on a plain swept by snow, a stage put together from ammunition boxes, singers, concealing their shivering, who would laugh, perform a medley of classics. After that… What could have become of him? The same as everyone else: with Leningrad under siege, able-bodied men found themselves out on those icy plains. Then the years of a slow advance on Berlin, which, if Yana is to be believed, was where he ended his war. And then what? Rebuilding the country, marriage, children, work, routine, old age… A banal life. But also an extraordinary one. This same man, as a youth, in a city that Hitler planned to turn into a vast desert. Two and a half years of siege, more than a million victims, which is to say a small township wiped out every day. Bitterly harsh winters, death lying in wait in the dark labyrinths of the streets, an ice megalopolis without bread, without heat, without transport. Apartments populated by corpses. Incessant bombing. And theaters continuing to put on performances, people going to them after working fourteen hours in arms factories… In the old days at school they used to learn the history of that city bled white, which stood its ground.

The old man coughs in his bedroom, then the scrape of a cup can be heard as he sets it down on his bedside table. What is one to think of his life? Shutov fails to silence conflicting voices within himself. A heroic life? Yes, but also one quite stupidly sacrificed. Fine, doubtless, in its self-denial. And absurd because the country for which he fought no longer exists. Tomorrow this old man will find himself in some humdrum provincial poorhouse in the company of forsaken invalids, surrounded by nurses who steal everything there is in the home to be stolen. What a glorious end!

Another rustle of a page. Shutov feels a prickle of anger. In his youth he saw too much of this fatalistic Russian resignation. Yes, tomorrow the old man will be thrown out, but this does not stop him clinging to his cup of cold tea, his book with its yellowed pages. They promised him paradise on earth, they ruined the best years of his life, they made him live in this dump as crowded as a commuter train. He did not flinch. He simply lost the use of his legs and his tongue. So as not to be tempted to protest, no doubt. They pay him a monthly pension equal to the tip Yana’s friends leave the waiter in a nightclub. He does not even grumble. He reads. Makes no demands, uncomplaining, uncritical of the new life that will spring up out of his remains. Yes, this life Shutov can see on television: gold-painted performers prancing about in front of the forty-five heads of state when they go off to dine in the Throne Room… But is he aware of this life? Perhaps, if he could see it, might he not emit one of those protracted cries mute people are capable of, a mixture of indignation and pain? Yes, he must see it!

Shutov acts without leaving himself time to think. Unplugs the television, pushes it toward the old man’s bedroom, nudges open the door with his shoulder, places the set at the foot of the bed, plugs it in again. And settles down a little way off, so as to observe the reactions of this strange viewer.

The man does not seem to be particularly surprised. He removes his glasses and focuses a severely tranquil gaze on Shutov, which mellows into indifference. His big hand covers the book he has just closed. His eyes stare at the screen without hostility but also without curiosity.

Shutov begins channel hopping. The old man’s face appears just as neutral as at the start. Nicholas II’s English great-nephew arrives in Saint Petersburg, the Greek priests process with their relics, two lesbian rock singers complain of the English being too prudish, Berlusconi sings his duet with Pavarotti, a Russian oligarch buys himself six chalets in the Alps… No particular expression appears on that old face, with its sunken eye sockets, its massive straight nose. “He must be deaf…,” Shutov says to himself, but the eyes staring at the screen are those of someone who hears and understands.

The surrealist folly of the spectacle ought to bring grimaces to this old mask focused on the television. First comes a beautiful greyhound, with all the curvature of its pedigree, which its master, to amuse his guests, regales with a dish of caviar. No, the features of the mask are impassive. To keep the clouds away during the celebrations the town hall spent a million dollars… The mask remains rigid. Chancellor Schröder, arm in arm with Putin, inaugurates the Amber Room at the Peterhof Palace, in the township once razed to the ground by the Nazis. Shutov peers to see if the mask will show any bitterness, any trace of rancor. Nothing. “Women,” says Madame Putin, “should go to a personal dressmaker for their wardrobe.” An ancient streetcar that carried the dead during the blockade of Leningrad… The old man’s gaze sharpens, as if he can see beyond what is visible to today’s viewers.

Shots of the carnival. An erotic film. CNN: Bush landing by helicopter. A program devoted to the tercentenary, a survivor of the blockade recalls the daily ration: a hundred and twenty-five grams of bread. An Orthodox priest relates how, in the darkest days of the siege, a procession passed around the city three times, carrying the icon of Our Lady of Kazan, and Leningrad did not fall…

The mask acquires a faint line of severity. Shutov seems to be entering into communication with the silent man.

A football match. The cruise ship
Silver Whisper,
with its nine presidential suites. Two female rock singers perched on top of one another. At the Mariinsky Theatre the soprano Renée Fleming is singing Tatyana in
Eugene Onegin…

The mask wavers and at once closes up again, retreats into its solitude. The show goes on. The ladies in crinolines pass through the galleries at the Hermitage. Fireworks at the Peterhof. Putin shakes Paul McCartney’s hand after a performance in Moscow on Red Square. “Your songs, Paul, have always been a breath of freedom for us…”

Absurdity has reached its limits, thinks Shutov. He again hits upon the program about the lives of the new rich and no longer takes the trouble to switch channels. The two presenters are visiting a model house on an estate under construction close to Saint Petersburg. “High security,” “luxury homes,” “top-quality materials”… Language evocative of this grotesque social climbing, higher, ever higher, toward the best place in the sun.

Shutov begins to doze off. This paradise from which simple mortals are excluded is less outrageous than dogs lapping up caviar. Villas crammed with electronics, but, after all, the rich have to live somewhere. Each dwelling will have a name, there will be an “Excelsior,” a “Capitol”… The two presenters emerge from “Buckingham” and set about describing the beauties of gardens in the English style… “And in the greenhouses, you’ll be harvesting pineapples and guavas…”

“That’s exactly the place where we were fighting to the death. For the motherland, as we used to say in those days…”

Shutov gives a start, the remark is too unusual to have come from the mouth of one of the presenters. Besides, they are still singing the praises of the gardens. He looks at the old man. The same mask, the same calm eyes. Suddenly his lips move: “Yes, there. That river, the Lukhta. They had to cross it under heavy fire…”

Shutov is speechless, turning over in his mind what he has just heard: “We were fighting… for the motherland.” The words came out with no rhetorical flourish, there was even an ironic hesitation, acknowledging the naïveté of the time-honored expression. But that last remark, which he saw forming on the old man’s lips, was neutral, the name of a river, a topographical fact. Shutov clears his throat and speaks as if he were the one recovering the power of speech: “Forgive me… I… I thought… Well, in fact, they told me you couldn’t…” The old man turns his head, changes his position to look at Shutov. “Yes, they told me that you were… That you had lost… er… the power of speech.”

The old man smiles.

“You can see that’s not so.”

“But, then, why… have you never spoken to anyone?”

“Spoken about what?”

“I don’t know… Life… Yes, this new life.”

And this, too!

On the screen a kennel can be seen adjoining the model house, the presenter is explaining about the air-conditioning system, as a large white greyhound rubs against his leg.

“Well, what’s to be said about it? Everything’s clear these days.”

He falls silent and Shutov is gripped by an irrational fear: what if the old man should relapse into terminal mutism! The program shows workmen felling a tree: the shrill whine of the trunk being sawn, the crash of the branches.

“Yes. That’s where we were fighting. And with no help from any icons either… Let me introduce myself. The name’s Volsky, Georgy Lvovich.”