The Vanishing Futurist (12 page)

‘I already know about the workshop. Finished, boys?’ Prig called to his men. ‘Come on—’

‘I myself also have special status as a key worker for the Revolution that permits extra living space, and—’

‘I know about your status too. However, we have inspected the premises and ascertained that there is at least 500 square metres of unused space.’ Prig and his boys clattered across the yard. As they rounded the corner he said, ‘I would have thought you would welcome the genuine
narod
, the people, into your experiment.’

I saw Pelyagin the next day for his lesson and told him of our troubles. We had long ago smoothed over the incident at the Café Pittoresk. He had a tendency to see things in black and white, but there was something touching about him, the way his feet barely touched the floor when he sat in his chair, the little, faintly pleading look he gave me as he peeped over the
Illustrated London News
– I couldn’t help liking him.

‘I will see what I can do,’ he promised, nodding seriously at me. He seemed flattered to be asked, which rather reduced my faith in his ability to help.

Within days a total of forty-two people had arrived at the doors of Gagarinsky Lane dragging cartloads of belongings and pouncing on every inch of space. Our little Kolenka pounced with them, securing for himself the official papers to a small storeroom off the kitchen. Volodya, Vera and I stayed at home for the whole day in order to fight our corner, but nonetheless we ended up with only three rooms between the thirteen of us – the study, Slavkin’s workshop and the old ladies’ bedroom. This caused some friction, as Nikita was adamant that his workshop must not be used for any purpose other than the Socialisation Capsule, while the rest of us resisted the idea that we should make do with just two rooms for all the other activities of the commune.

‘Nikita,’ Marina snapped, ‘where are we to do the Model T, now it is almost winter? Where are we to eat communally? Have you gone mad? We are abolishing the private, and you are trying to keep to your ivory tower? I simply don’t understand.’

‘I know this work of yours is important,’ said Fyodor, ‘but surely even you can agree that the commune needs more than two rooms.’

‘The advance of Science must take precedence,’ Slavkin dismissed us.

A metalworker and his family moved into the dining room, seven of them. They told terrifying stories of life in the Volga region under the boots of one, then another army occupation, while they lay in a dugout with the trapdoor closed over their heads and ate beechnuts. At last the Whites were driven out and the local Bolshevik commander gave him a travel pass to Moscow as a worker with a skill useful to the Revolution. His children looked like five tiny old people, eyes shrunken in their yellow faces. Without consulting the others, Vera and I gave them dried apples and pickles from our stores.

Upstairs seven families of factory workers moved in. Servile and monosyllabic to our faces, they were aggressive filchers of any morsel of firewood, any utensil, any scrap of clothing behind our backs. The sign saying ‘Institute for Revolutionary Transformation’ was taken down by the cadres, and our decorations in the hall – ‘Come On, Live Communally!’, and the portraits of Marx and Engels in red paint – were covered over with decrees from the Soviet. We fixed locks and chains to our doors, but that didn’t stop someone from forcing open the window and stealing our cooking pots and soap. Volodya, Fyodor and I marched into the bedrooms and took back everything of ours that we could identify, although one woman – a dark, mustachioed termagant with arms like Christmas hams – had the gall to cling on to one of our mixing bowls, howling so loudly that she was being robbed, that we left her to it.

The main bedrooms at the front of the house were taken over by a group of ex-soldiers who made all our lives a misery with their constant drinking, fighting and ripping up pieces of the house to burn in their fireplace.

‘These people may look like the proletariat, but they were born in Russian villages; you know that really means they are of the Paleolithic era,’ said Fyodor. He looked surprised when Pasha and I laughed. ‘I’m making a serious point!’

Of course he was; I don’t think Fyodor ever knowingly joked in his life. He forgave us then, although not for much longer.

The ‘compression’, as it turned out, had its advantages. In November the first snows fell and the reality of War Communism under General Winter began to bite. During the winter of 1917–18, we had bartered for firewood and burnt old fences. In 1918–19 wooden bathhouses, sheds, duckboards and shop fronts were burnt as well as whole wooden houses – their inhabitants given twenty-four hours to clear out with their belongings. Moscow’s parks were decimated and the Boulevard Ring lost half its avenues. We congregated in the study for our evening meetings and soon to sleep as well, all the mattresses arranged in a star shape around a
small metal stove, or
burzhui
(bourgeois person; for its fat stomach, I assume). The stovepipe shot vertically upright and out through the old chimney breast, smoke leaking out of every joint. The old ladies, against their will, came to sleep around the stove too.

‘What will my cousin say when he sees how you have treated us?’ complained Anna Vladimirovna bitterly to me. ‘It’s a disgrace! Don’t you know I am a Dolgoruky on my mother’s side?’

In vain I tried to explain to her that this was the best we could do. Poor things, they suffered from the cold more than any of us.

One evening Sonya produced a telegram from Constantinople.

‘All aboard the
Eloise
sailing Marseilles stop Mama’s health not good lack medicines and treatments here stop details on arrival stop 4 x Kobelevs.’

I closed my eyes partly against the fumes of the
nyedyshalka
, and partly against the tears that welled up against my lids. Since peace had been declared in Europe we had heard that hordes of refugees were leaving Russia for Turkey, France or New York. I hated to imagine their journey with an ill Mrs Kobelev. Dima would now be thirteen, Liza fifteen; old enough to help. Old enough to worry.

‘I would like to have the Commune’s agreement,’ broke out Sonya unexpectedly. ‘I want to leave my job. It’s such a waste of time! I didn’t leave my parents and my brother and sister on their own to fritter away my days in that office.’

I agreed with her. She was working in a government department – the Committee for Sovietisation of the Caucasian Nationalities. As the Caucasus was still overrun by civil war the business of Sovietisation was being carried out by the Red Army, who were fighting in the mountains, killing and being killed in great numbers. Meanwhile Sonya’s colleagues consisted of a few officials who saw it as a reasonable way to pass their days, thanks to the office’s ceramic stove which they kept alight with Tsarist reports on Caucasian questions. The promise of a ration, however erratic, and the protection of a government position, however sketchy, was enough to keep them at their desks at least for part of each day.

‘What would you do instead?’ asked Fyodor.

Slavkin spoke up. ‘I need a co-worker on the Capsule. I’m making progress, but it will go faster—’

‘But we need your ration, Sonya,’ objected Fyodor. ‘We can’t feed ourselves as it is.’

‘Yes, I know,’ she said. ‘I thought I could make a trip to Mikhailovka. Some of the peasants are still well disposed towards our family, you know. I think they would help us.’

‘Don’t be a fool!’ Pasha exclaimed. ‘It’s much too dangerous. Please, no, Sonya.’

‘From each according to his ability,’ Fyodor chipped in, raising his voice. ‘Each of us must contribute to the commune. We can’t carry any dead weights.’

‘I will do whatever the commune thinks best,’ Sonya spoke up again. ‘But as I say, I didn’t come back from the south to waste my time. I can hardly bear to see their greasy faces in the department – what clever fellows we are, they seem to say, keeping ourselves warm, our feet under the table, while those fools out there starve—’

‘If I succeed in the task I am now setting myself,’ said Slavkin calmly, ‘the Revolution will, I promise you, make a huge leap forward. This, after all, is our chief aim, is it not? We must keep our eyes on our goal.’

‘But – but is Sonya really the best person to help you?’ I put in. ‘She has little or no scientific education, and—’

‘She will do very well,’ Slavkin said definitively.

‘Wouldn’t I be more suitable?’ I persisted. ‘I could rearrange my English lessons. I at least have an elementary knowledge of physics.’

Slavkin turned his back on me, saying casually, ‘No, no, you must continue with your teaching. I will explain to Sonya what she needs to know.’

 Sonya began work with Slavkin a day or so later, and with her, he spent longer hours than ever closeted in his workshop.

After making a careful inventory of our stores we decided that in order to survive the winter we would have to go bagging. The whole Russian nation would have starved without bagging under War Communism, despite the fact that it was illegal. It meant setting out into the countryside with a bag slung over your shoulder and bartering with any peasants you might come across – a few pounds of grain in return for the family silver. Talk in the food queues was full of terrible fates that had befallen ordinary folk, fathers of families, young boys,
babushki
, who had gone bagging and been caught by the flying brigades – Red Guards who searched the trains and not only confiscated any goods people might have collected, but quite often shot the bagmen too. But as the alternative was starvation, the tide of hopefuls with bags did not abate.

Pasha and Volodya volunteered to be the bagmen.

‘I’ll be able to deal with the brigades,’ Volodya said. ‘I know how to speak to the lads.’

‘And I’ll hide behind him,’ said Pasha. I laughed.

‘You’re the child of fortune,’ I told him. ‘Nothing could penetrate your halo of good luck, undeserved though it is.’

Vera and I stitched several pouches into their clothes to carry their goods for barter – a gold necklace of Anna Vladimirovna’s, six silver teaspoons, some lengths of cloth, some Kerenkas and other bits and bobs. We also sewed good strong double-lined sacks, in hope.

Later the same week we accompanied them to the railway station, marching in formation and singing Revolutionary songs; Nikita thought this part of the IRT’s duty of enlightenment, now we were becoming so well known. Our commune, in Slavkin’s words, was to shine as a beacon among the darkness of contemporary society; it should mould not only ourselves, but should attract others, through our example, to the communal life.

It may have been my lack of charity, but I was not convinced that our marching and singing inspired passers-by with anything other than amusement. Grunters in the park, PropMash Doctors, and now a rather out-of-tune marching band – it was no wonder that one article about the IRT described us as avant-garde
chudaki
– cranks. Never mind: in this way we saw our boys off on the train. Verochka bathed Volodya’s face with tears and made a surreptitious little sign of the cross over him. Pasha kissed his sister, and made me a funny little bow, and we sent them on their way with renditions of ‘Boldly, comrades, in step’, and ‘Break the fetters, set me free, I’ll teach you to love freedom’.

Each day, on my return from work, the quietness of the house was noticeable, the dampening of all our spirits. Sonya and Slavkin worked long hours, and although their behaviour was entirely proper in our evening meetings, I was tortured by their casual reminders to each other, the tag-ends of their working conversations. One week passed, and two, and three, without word from our bagmen.

‘This commune’, Fyodor shouted suddenly one evening, ‘is deteriorating into some kind of
synod
.’

We all stopped talking; Fyodor did not usually raise his voice like this, or shake with agitation. ‘We are not here to chatter!’

‘Calmly,’ murmured Slavkin.

Fyodor paced up and down. He didn’t meet Slavkin’s eye. ‘Your approach, Nikita, is – is subjective. It’s all wrong. I mean, I don’t want to offend you, but I think you’re going about things completely stupidly.’ He frowned. ‘The psychological approach, the self-criticisms – it just leads to talk and more talk. Your work is your affair, but the narcotics, well, to my mind that’s just some kind of mysticism.’

Slavkin seemed taken aback. ‘Well,’ he said at last. ‘It is easy for anyone to paint the room black. What do you suggest? Let’s see how you’d go about it!’

‘We need discipline and efficiency, above all. Self-control. This is the most important transformation. We are getting waylaid by every sort of nonsense. “Don’t be distracted” – that’s what you say, isn’t it, Nikita? The Taylorisation of our daily lives is what we need.’

F. W. Taylor, the father of the ‘scientific management’ of work, was Fyodor’s great hero.

‘Oh, Lord!’ sighed Slavkin impatiently. ‘All that is the work of
clerks
! We’re searching for revelations! Haven’t I already explained to you many times that in order to penetrate the mysteries of the human soul one must move obliquely, subtly – it’s no good approaching it as if it were a steam engine.’

Sonya nodded, and they smiled at each other.

But Dr Marina interrupted, ‘No, Nikita. You’ve had your own way for too long. It’s becoming an autocracy. Fyodor, you should write out a programme for us. Propose it at our meeting tomorrow, and we’ll vote on it.’

‘Thank you, Doctor. I will,’ replied Fyodor, surprised at this unexpected support.

I glanced at Dr Marina; she was frowning, her face set.

As it was already midnight, we prepared to sleep: washing our faces in a pail of tepid water that had been sitting on the stove and spitting out our toothpowder into a slop basin. In the morning it would have frozen into beautiful spirals. We stepped around the figure of Nikita who sat, sulky and unmoving, in his position to the right of the stove. I suspect the others felt as I did, embarrassed and irritated that he should take this minor challenge to his authority so hard. After some time he turned abruptly to Sonya and murmured something to her. They stood up and, without saying a word to the rest of us, dressed in their outdoor clothes and left the room. We heard the outer door open and close with a thump.

I lay on my mattress very still, very still. A burning sensation inside me caused my chest to pump up and down and my face to contort with pain. A couple of hours passed before Nikita and Sonya returned. They had allowed themselves to get chilled, and spent a long time trying to warm up by rubbing their hands and feet until Marina asked them very sharply to be quiet.

During my long walk to and from work that day I decided that I would vote for Fyodor. It was not an easy decision. But Nikita’s petulant expression of the night before came back to me, and the childish way he had refused to speak and then led Sonya out of the room.

Having already made up my mind, I was surprised and impressed when Fyodor stood up and made his suggestions for the Taylorisation of the commune. He was articulate and passionate, and went into extraordinary detail. I put my hand up immediately we were called upon to vote. Ivan and Nina were performing that whole week, otherwise I suppose it might have gone differently. When I saw Dr Marina’s arm go up, and Volodya’s, followed by Vera’s, I glanced involuntarily at Nikita. The look he gave me, of utter misery and disbelief, was like a slap.

‘Congratulations, comrade,’ he said hoarsely, bowing his head. ‘I look forward to starting on your course of work. I assume, however, that you are happy for me to keep working on my projects in my studio?’

‘Yes indeed, comrade,’ Fyodor replied, flushed with victory. ‘That is something the whole commune will need to agree on, of course.’

‘We agree,’ I spoke up immediately. ‘Or rather, let’s vote. I agree – Marina, Volodya, Vera?’

‘Yes, yes,’ they nodded hurriedly. The atmosphere in the room was strained, only Fyodor was cheerful. Slavkin sat like a figure of stone.

‘Well, good; to implement the efficiency measures, then . . .’ began Fyodor.

As we turned to listen, out of the corner of my eye I saw Sonya’s hand creeping into Nikita’s. He enveloped it with his own.

No hierarchy – for goodness’ sake, the phrase had become a cliché in our discussions on the structure of the commune! No specialisation – the regular reassignment of all roles, by timetable – so that no one becomes comfortable in a position of authority. We had deferred to Nikita precisely because he had presented us with a vision of egalitarianism; surely he understood that? I was enraged with all of us, including myself, but much more so with Nikita. If you can’t adapt, can’t control your pride, your emotions, how can you expect the same of the rest of us? Unsaid, my thoughts chased each other around my brain long into the night.

A new stage began in the IRT. We decided on measures to occupy and oversee every minute of a communard’s day. I reproduce here a copy of the timetable that we painted up on the meeting-room wall, above the fireplace:

Time cards were issued to each of us to record the events of our day, which we were meant to study each evening for possible savings. Every week, one member was given the responsibility of striking the gong to announce each new activity of the day.

There were some good points to the new regime. The mornings were dark and getting out of bed in the damp air of our dormitory was certainly made more bearable by the morning Model T exercises, which Nina had now expanded to include a series of Hungarian dances, very rhythmic and cheerful. Meanwhile Anna Vladimirovna was delighted by the timetable, which seemed to remind her of her childhood. ‘That boy is just like my father,’ she would hiss as Fyodor bustled about with a notebook. ‘Terrible bossyboots!’ Even the constant ringing of the gong, which infuriated all the other inhabitants of the house, pleased the old lady; apparently her father had ordered the church bells to be rung in the village each time he won at backgammon. It was hard, on the other hand, on poor Mamzelle, whose chest infection was worse and who longed only to be allowed to sleep.

We all became more punctual, particularly when poor Vera’s ration was reduced after she took too long scouring the pots. It did seem harsh to leave her bowl empty while we munched away at our bean porridge on either side of her. Her eyes filled with water and she bit her lip. A little colour rose in Fyodor’s cheeks and he chewed slowly and deliberately, looking everywhere but at her face.

Now the evening meetings began with our daily efficiency reports. Dr Marina, for example, might report an increase in the productivity of her ironing – she had ironed ten shirts in only twenty-five minutes, rather than the thirty-five it had taken her last time. Fyodor would sit on the edge of his seat, fidgeting with excitement. ‘Good! Now tell us, how did you achieve this? Did you have a different method? Perhaps you can demonstrate this method to us? Imagine if all over the world ironing speeds are increased by over 20 per cent!’

I imagined instead Pasha’s likely response to this breakthrough and had to stare very hard at my lap not to laugh.

It was impossible to imagine how our minute increases in efficiency would ever make any difference in a world as utterly un-Taylorised as Moscow under War Communism. Most of my time cards reported two or three hours spent queuing for rations, reporting to empty classrooms on the off-chance of a bread delivery or walking to and fro across the city to give private English classes – a waste of time that would have been impossible to imagine before the Revolution.

This was the first problem with Fyodor’s system; the second was that our meetings, under his guidance, had all the excitement of a railway timetable. Ivan and Nina lasted one week and then excused themselves on theatrical business. Not long afterwards, they moved out, into a hostel belonging to the Kamerny Theatre. We were left to practise the Model T without Nina’s deep voice commanding us to ‘Release the pancreas. Release . . . the spleen. Release . . . the duodenum.’ Where
were
Pasha and Volodya? Without them, our evenings became almost funereal. We were all worried, and didn’t want to talk about them. Slavkin would sit a little off to one side, tense, red-eyed, with a nervous twitch of the head that I hadn’t noticed before. When it came to his turn, he said only, ‘I have no increases in efficiency to report.’

‘Come on, Nikita, stop sulking!’ Dr Marina snapped after a week or so of this. ‘Surely you’ve got some ideas. You’ve always been fascinated by time, in theory, at least?’

Slavkin glared at her. ‘Yes, in fact I do have a suggestion,’ he said at last. ‘If I could spend these evening hours in my workshop I believe I could bring forward the completion of my Socialisation Capsule by as much as six months. This is certainly the greatest service I can do for the Revolution.’

‘Fuck you!’ Fyodor suddenly bellowed.

‘Fyodor!’ said Dr Marina, shocked.

‘Yes, I mean it!’ he rushed over to Nikita and shouted in his face. ‘Fuck you! How dare you sabotage my attempts at progress, you bastard? How dare you treat me with this disrespect when we have gone through with all your half-baked idiotic whimsical “experiments”, your narcotic counter-revolutionary fancies! You’ll suffer for this, you cretin, I’ll make sure you do!’

A pause while we all stared aghast at Fyodor, scarlet in the face and shiny with sweat. ‘And fuck all of you too!’ he screamed, his voice breaking, as he stormed out of the room.

The Red Guards upstairs broke into applause. Fyodor stamped downstairs and out of the front door, slamming it behind him.

Sonya was the first to speak up. ‘I do understand what Fyodor means,’ she murmured.

Nikita looked at her, and we all waited.

‘I should probably apologise to him then, should I?’ he asked.

‘Yes, Nikita, well done,’ said Dr Marina bossily. ‘And by the way I think we can all agree that you’d be better off spending the time on the Capsule.’

‘Perhaps these evening meetings have run their course, just for the moment?’ I suggested. ‘Could we have a holiday, so to speak, until Pasha and Volodya return?’

I immediately regretted having mentioned their names. Vera burst into tears and Sonya jumped up to comfort her.

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ Sonya rounded on me. ‘Gerty, you are as bad as Fyodor. There’s no need to say everything that pops into your head!’

As usual, Pelyagin had a few tasks to finish off when I arrived at his office. I sat down to wait for him and looked around. The room was warm and stuffy, and there was the usual faint smell of food from the canteen. His assistant was not there; I watched Pelyagin working methodically through his papers, scanning, signing, placing them on one pile or another. A delicious sensation of peace crept through me; I removed my coat and leant back in the chair, feeling the muscles in my back and legs relax, the tension in my forehead seep away. My eyes drifted shut . . .

‘My apologies, Comrade Freely.’ Pelyagin was standing over me and there was an expression on his face . . . I gazed at him, trying to read it. ‘I’ve kept you waiting,’ he said. ‘Why don’t I fetch some coffee from the canteen, and something to eat?’

He left the room. Flustered, I struggled upright and tried to make myself tidy. I took the
Illustrated London News
out of my bag and bent over it as he entered, carrying a cup and a bag of rusks.

‘Goodness, coffee!’ I exclaimed. ‘I haven’t tasted it for months.’

‘They call this coffee. I think it is made out of wood chippings.’

We both laughed, and for a moment I caught a glimpse of a younger Pelyagin, a boy with a loose, aimless grin.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said diffidently, sitting opposite me. ‘I couldn’t help with the housing compression. It is not my department, you know. I talked to my colleagues but they were not sympathetic. Are you managing to continue your communal work?’

‘Oh, yes, we are managing – although things are not easy at the moment, we have some personality clashes – it is inevitable, it may even be a necessary part of the evolution of the commune.’ Suddenly my loneliness came out in a wail. ‘But it is hard . . .’

‘I’m . . . I’m sure you will persevere.’

I leant forward and put my hand on his arm.

‘I really am so grateful to you for doing what you could.’

He almost snatched his arm away. ‘We must start work.’

‘Yes, you’re right. Please, read this passage for me.’ As he stumbled his way through an article on recent innovations in the Manchester textile industry, I drank the rest of my coffee and tried to calm down. I was becoming morbidly sensitive. It was poor nutrition and lack of sunshine, no doubt.