Time Will Run Back (3 page)

Stalenin smiled enigmatically. “You are wondering why I sent for you?”

Peter was silent.

“For one thing,” Stalenin continued, “I have decided at last to give you an education. You may not know it, but you are the most ignorant man in Wonworld.”

“But, Your Supremacy, I was told I had the very best tutors—”

“I know all about your tutors. Their function was to protect you from any real knowledge of the modern world.”

He went back to his desk and filled his pipe. “I lived with your mother until you were eight years old. After I became Dictator in 268—you were only five—your mother became a problem. She objected vehemently to the Great Purge of 271, which carried away her brother. That purge was absolutely necessary to the security of Wonworld. But she said she hated me and everything I stood for. She even thought you were being ‘corrupted’ by getting the same communist education as everyone else in Won-world! She defied me. No doubt she expected me to torture her, make her confess treachery, have her beheaded—”

He paused. “I asked her to tell me exactly what it was she wanted. She said she wanted to go off somewhere—on an island—anyway, some place isolated from Wonworld, where she could have her son back and where she could bring him up without ever hearing about me or about the ideology or so-called glories of Wonworld.... I agreed to this madness. I sent her off with you to that little island in the Bermudas—how big is it?”

“About three hectares.”

Stalenin nodded. “I stipulated that no one was to be allowed on the island except servants to bring supplies. These supplies, as you know, were carried regularly from the main island in a small launch. Your mother wanted your place preserved, she said, as a sort of oasis in Wonworld. She asked that you be taught only the subjects selected by her. I agreed to supply the best tutors. So you were taught music, mathematics—I understand you know as much mathematics as a first-class engineer. Let’s see—what else were you taught?”

“Physics, chemistry, astronomy, physiology, biology, horticulture, meteorology—”

“And sports, of course,” put in Stalenin. “I’m told you swim like a professional. And that you’re a first-class chess player. That impresses me most of all. It shows a sense of strategy....

“Nevertheless”—he was looking at a dossier in front of him—“it’s time you were told how ignorant you are of everything a modern man should know. I notice, for instance, that you are completely ignorant of history, politics, sociology and economics. Your acquaintance with our great propaganda literature is negligible. You have never been taught Marxist logic... therefore you cannot begin to understand Dialectical Materialism.... There is a tremendous lot to be done on you.”

He looked at Peter closely. “So unless you can convince me that you can be taught to think right, that you can be made into a useful member of society...”

He left the sentence unfinished.

“You are entirely free for the next two weeks,” he continued. “You will go around, see this great city, give yourself an education. You have been well supplied with ration books?”

Peter rummaged through his pockets. He pulled out ration books of all colors and sizes.

“Learn what they are all for,” said Stalenin. His voice became more kindly. “What do you know about that gray uniform you have on?”

“I was told to put it on this morning before I left the hotel.”

“It is the uniform of the Proletarians,” said Stalenin gravely. “A very honorable status. The Proletarians make up three-quarters of our whole population. It is, of course, they who really dictate. Wonworld is a dictatorship of the Proletariat. I am merely their instrument, their spokesman.”

He smiled grimly. “But you must recognize the other uniforms too, so that you will know how to deal with them—and how you can expect to be dealt with. First and foremost, you must recognize the Protectors. Their uniforms are black—unless they are army officers, in which case they wear a bright red jacket. The Protectors, our top-level comrades, are about i per cent of all the people. Next come the Deputies. Uniform—navy blue. About one in ten of the population. They are the intellectuals, technicians, sub-managers—anybody whom we consider capable of eventually becoming a Protector. Protectors and Deputies together constitute what we sometimes call the Steel Frame. They are like the commissioned and noncommissioned officers of the Army.... At the bottom are the Social Unreliables. Unfortunately, they are still about 20 per cent of the population. They have either committed crimes against the Steel Frame, or have shown themselves incapable of becoming good Proletarians. They are assigned to labor camps... or left to starve. They wear brown uniforms—wherever you can still recognize the color. In any case, you will pretend never to see them. But toward the Deputies, of course, you will maintain proper deference. And to the Protectors you will give reverence and love, as well as absolute obedience.... Any questions?”

“Where am I to stay, Your Supremacy?”

“You’ll find an address among your cards. You will have a room to yourself—a privilege granted to few Proletarians.... One more thing. At least for the present you are not to tell anyone that you are my son.”

“But what about my name, Your Supremacy?”

“Oh, give your real name when asked. Outside of the Politburo, probably no one remembers that my own real name is Uldanov; and anyone who did would probably regard your name simply as a coincidence. Anyway, a Proletarian hasn’t much use for a name. Most of the time you will simply be called by your license number. Tomorrow you will apply for one. Any further questions?”

“When do you want to see me again, Your Supremacy?” “I will let you know. By the way, tomorrow is the May Day parade. Of course you will go to see it.”

THE wind was blowing upswirls of dust, cigarette butts and X tattered newspapers. Peter bent forward against it, constantly turning his head to protect his eyes and throat from the grit.

If Moscow looked shabby from thirty stories up, it was squalid from the pavement. The buildings were in every stage of disrepair and decay. The only relief to this drabness—if it was relief—was the omnipresent posters, displaying either enormous faces of Stalenin or exhortations to Work! Production! Loyalty! and warnings against Wreckers and Spies.

The people, too, were drab. The typical face was as devoid of expression as the back of a baby’s head. The women wore precisely the same shabby gray proletarian uniforms as the men. Why had he expected anything else? Then he remembered. His mother had always worn something she called skirts. It was the first time it had ever occurred to him that she might have been in any way affected or eccentric.

What he was seeing now was the real world. His previous life on his Bermuda island suddenly struck him as a strangely insulated, even sterilized, existence. He was beginning to feel like a freak.

He found himself in front of what appeared to be a small public library. His interest quickened. Could he go in? He decided to chance it.

It was restful inside. He browsed among the shelves.

“Is there anything special I can get you?”

A pretty, smiling blonde stood at his elbow. She was a Deputy, in a neat blue uniform. She had a soft, sympathetic face, and the deepest blue eyes he had ever seen.

She would understand me, he thought immediately.

“I’m the librarian,” she offered.

There must be something special he wanted. Ah yes. “Where is your music department? I’d like to see the Mozart scores.” “The Mozart scores? Why, they’re in the Old World Department... they’re on the Special Privilege list!”

“What do you mean—Old World Department?”

She looked at him incredulously. Oh well, he was only a Proletarian.

“The Mozart scores,” she said, as if talking to a child, “are among the small list of books held out from the Great Liberating Bonfires when the old poisoned capitalist civilization was destroyed. No book on that list can be read by anybody who does not hold a Special Privilege card. I’m not allowed to read them myself. They are in a special room behind two locked iron doors. My key opens only the first.”

“Where do I get a Special Privilege card?” Peter asked.

She looked pointedly at his proletarian uniform. “Personally I never heard of anybody’s holding a Special Privilege card who wasn’t a member of the Protectorate, and even a Party member.”

“But why shouldn’t anybody be allowed to read any book there is?”

This time she looked at him more sharply. Suspicion came into her eyes. Nobody, even from a collective farm, could be as ignorant as this. Was she dealing with a member of the secret police?

“It would be a pretty state of affairs,” she said mechanically, “if everybody were allowed to read the books kept over from the old poisoned capitalist civilization. Putting all sorts of subversive notions into people’s heads! Only a small trained class can be allowed to read those books—only people whose minds are so disciplined that they will not be upset by every scrap of the old bourgeois ideology that they come across. Even this small class is only allowed to read these books so that they will be prepared to answer the lies that may be brought forward by malicious wreckers.”

“But Mozart,” Peter insisted. “What possible harm can there be in the liquid gold of Mozart?”

Surely a member of the secret police! This was a tricky question. Her livelihood might depend upon the answer.

“What possible harm? It isn’t for me to say. But still, it’s safer to confine every book of whatever kind carried over from the old poisoned civilization to a Special Privilege list. A very wise decision.”

She was watching his eyes closely, apparently to see how he was taking this answer.

“Don’t worry too much,” she went on, now in a kindly tone, “about not having a Special Privilege card. We have many wonderful books.” She led him along the shelves. “Here, for example, are our books giving the life story of our Great Dictator, Stalenin.”

“Why is there no one in the library but myself?” asked Peter.

Her glance once more became suspicious and fearful. “The library does everything possible,” she said, “to induce people to read these books. We always recommend them first. Some of them doubtless do not praise Stalenin in sufficiently high terms to satisfy readers. And then I think there is a moral laxity in the people. We need to get after that.”

That answer is self-contradictory, thought Peter. What is she saying—that the books are not good enough for the readers, or that the readers are not good enough for the books?

He felt beaten. The books looked hopelessly dull. He sensed, moreover, that he was being too inquisitive. And he wanted her to like him.

“Well, these are very wonderful books,” he said, “but it just occurs to me that I am going out with friends tonight, and I may mislay a book if I take it now. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

“The library’s closed tomorrow. May Day.”

“Oh yes; of course. Will you be watching the parade?”

“Naturally.”

“So will I. I may see you then.”

She smiled at the improbability. Suddenly she understood. Of course he would see her. He had been assigned to see her. She stared at him in open fright. Her eyes fell on his left lapel, where his number badge should have been. There was none. Triumphantly: “I’ll have to see your identity card, please.”

His identity card! It might give him away. But his father had assured him... He produced the card.

“Peter Uldanov,” she read expressionlessly. She wrote down the name in a card file along with the date and the hour he had been there. “Number?”

So the name didn’t mean anything to her.

“I haven’t got a local number yet. This is my first day in Moscow. I’m sorry about my stupid questions. But I’d like to drop in again—often—and look at your books.”

IT was growing dark. He found himself in a workers’ section. From up the street came the sound of marching in cadence. A column of men and women approached, four abreast. Every once in a while it would halt at a command, then start again. It came almost opposite. A hard faced woman was in charge. “Halt!... Numbers T349, T35o, and L184!” The column stopped; two men and a woman stepped forth, saluted, and marched past him into neighboring houses. The column moved again.

Peter stopped a passer-by. “Is this a parade, comrade?”

“Parade?” The man looked puzzled, then suspicious. “That is part of the workers’ army being marched home, just as on any other day!”

Peter mumbled his apologies.

He was getting hungry. Time to look for a good restaurant. He trudged endless blocks, occasionally coming on a dingy little eating place from which nauseating cooking odors oozed out.

Just as he was giving up hope, he found himself in front of a restaurant better lighted and cleaner than the others.

He was challenged immediately inside the entrance. “What are you doing here?” The waiter looked pointedly at Peter’s proletarian uniform.

“Why, I thought—” Peter looked around. The tables were occupied solely by Deputies in navy blue. He went into the next proletarian eating place that he found. It was noisy, crowded and dirty. In spite of his hunger, the stench of cooking made him feel faint. But he took his place on line as he was told. In time he came up opposite the desk of the registry clerk.

“Why aren’t you at your regular restaurant?” asked the clerk.

“I’m new in Moscow.”

At last a large registration book was shoved in front of him and he was told to fill in the blanks under the headings:
Name; Address; Time of Entrance; Purpose of Visit
....

“Purpose of visit?” asked Peter. “Does anybody ever come for any other purpose than to eat?” “They might come to conspire against the government by spreading false rumors,” said the man at the desk.

“Would they put that down in the registry book?”

“Probably not. But then the government could get them on the additional crime of perjury.”

Peter was led to a table for four. It was already occupied by three others. None of them spoke to him.

“What have you got tonight?” he asked the waiter with cheerful anticipation.