Twilight of the Eastern Gods (14 page)

I was struck dumb. I’d never imagined I would witness repentance on such a grand scale. ‘
Meilla ubr
,’ I said, I’ve no idea why.

They wittered on. In the word soup of already dead and gravely sick languages, a few Russian expressions floated to the surface. They cropped up like lost islands in the dark ocean of a collective subconscious. ‘I can see my language before me, like a ghost!’ one kept screaming, as if he had just woken up in fright.
Frulldjek, frulldjek hain. Ikunlukut uha olalla
. Fuck off.
Ah onc kllxg buhu. Meit aham
, without a horse or so much as a farewell. This autumn,
tuuli lakamata
. O star!
Vulldiz, et, hakr bil
, O my language!

You won’t be able to say I did it! Oh, stop dangling your blood-stained suffixes over me!

Stop! I thought. I stuffed my fingers into my ears, struggled to make my way through the group and eventually got to my room. I flung myself straight on to my bed without taking my hands from my ears. What kind of country is this? And why am I in it? I couldn’t think further than that. I wanted to cry but I couldn’t. My chest went into a kind of convulsion once or twice, but it was a dry sob.

CHAPTER FOUR

‘Doctor, Doctor, help me! I’m feeling very bad . . . Ah! Dr Zhivago, Dr Zhivago . . . The bastard!’

What’s happening? I wondered, in my sleep, as I snuggled deeper under my blankets. Who’s calling for a doctor and how did he get into my room? My mind was still befuddled from the previous night and I wasn’t up to understanding anything much. Someone was feeling ill, doubtless because of last night’s drunken binge. Maybe it was Stulpanc, or one of the Karakums, asking for a doctor to help. To hell with them! I thought. I’m not a doctor and they’ve no reason to yell at me through the keyhole like that. I stuffed a loose corner of blanket into my ear and tried to get back to sleep, but it didn’t work. Someone went on calling for help, moaning and uttering indirect threats. You really should go to hell, I thought. You drank like a fish all night, and now you want help? I stuffed my head between the pillows and tried to go to sleep but I could feel the voice calling me, obstinately and evenly. What makes him think I’m a doctor? I wondered in my half-awake state. ‘Doctor, Doctor!’ Enough! After a night like that, I could really do without this! I threw off my bedclothes and listened hard. It was a strange voice, which took a couple of seconds to shake itself free of the aural fog that had shrouded it in my half-conscious mind. It emerged different – unadorned, firm, inhuman: ‘. . . the bourgeoisie’s nefarious aims, this infamous anti-Soviet work. Boris Pasternak’s
Doctor Zhivago
is the expression of . . .’

Only then did I realise I had forgotten to switch off my radio when I’d gone to bed. I tried to raise myself to hear it better but my head was still too leaden. The announcer was going on angrily about some novel about a doctor. Dr Zhivago, Dr Zhivago . . . Where had I seen or heard that name before? Oh, yes! In the empty apartment, of course: still-life with sardine tin and typescript. The announcer was probably fulminating against that very script. At first I felt like laughing: a typescript and an empty vodka bottle! Were they really worth air time on Radio Moscow so early in the morning?

‘. . . a provocative and odious action of the international bourgeoisie. The award of the Nobel Prize to this reactionary novel . . .’

I whistled. This was serious. A novel called
Doctor Zhivago
had bagged the Nobel. It had to be a bad novel. A very bad one! Appalling, even!

I held my neck stiff, as if it had been screwed to the pillow, to listen to the rest of the broadcast. It was a gloomy morning. A greyish light strained to get through the double-glazed windows and barely allowed me to make out what was in the room. It was grey and drab, save for the dimly lit rectangle of the radio, whence emanated words that were just as sombre and sticky: ‘. . . the peoples of the Soviet Union . . . indignant . . . libellous . . . scurrilous . . . This counter-revolutionary novel . . . our magnificent Soviet reality . . . dragged through the mud . . .’

Could those typed pages beside the bottle and empty tin really contain all those abominations? I’d held them in my hand without suspecting a thing. But who had written them? I thought I’d heard the name Boris Pasternak. I put out an ear. Yes, that was it. Now his name was being repeated every three to four seconds. How odd. I’d seen Pasternak less than two months previously on a walk in the woods around Peredelkino. We’d left the village and Maskiavicius had pointed out Pasternak’s
dacha
to me. It was a large two-storey cottage with big bay windows on the ground floor. ‘Look, there he is!’ Maskiavicius had said, a few moments later, pointing to the grounds of the villa. I’d gone up to the fence. At ‘heart-pouring’ times I’d often heard his name mentioned – with admiration from some, but hatred from others – and I was curious to see him, a few feet away from me, digging the garden outside his
dacha
. He was wearing a very plain cap and boots and, with his strong jaw, he looked like the vice-president of a collective farm.

‘Assuming the role of an agent of the international bourgeoisie, Boris Pasternak . . .’

A Nobel Prize didn’t seem compatible in my eyes with the rolled-up sleeves of the shirt he’d obviously bought from the store at the nearest
kolkhoz
. . .

I got up, dressed, and went into the corridor. In the half-light I could see people dotted around, but they were almost unrecognisable with their swollen eyes, and they seemed to find it hard to recognise anyone else. It was half past eight and most of the residents were still asleep. I was tempted to go back to the empty suite to have another look at that accursed typescript, but I thought better of it straight away. Why should I get into an extra tangle with the KGB now that I was sure Auntie Katya had been ordered to demand the papers of anyone visiting me? The communal bathrooms where we washed every morning were deserted. The cleaners had dealt with the vomit, and not a trace of it remained: everything was clean and cold. I took a look at myself in the mirror. I had big bags under my eyes, my right eye was swollen, as if I’d broken a blood vessel, and my complexion was earthen. If Lida had seen me she would have believed I really was dead! Immediately I felt a needle stuck into my heart: Lida in the lift . . . Trajan’s column . . . her telephone number handed over to Stulpanc . . . What a fool! I said to myself. I must be the king of cretins to do that!

As I was crossing Pushkin Square on my way to the Institute, I noticed that people queuing for tickets at the Central Cinema were deeply absorbed in their newspapers. That must mean the press has started its campaign, I thought.

The wind was cold, with something blind and unforgiving about it. I crossed Gorky Street at the junction, went into the pharmacy on the other side and bought some aspirin, then hurried on – I didn’t want to be late for my lecture.

The professor had just come into the lecture hall. I pushed the door open very quietly, and when I entered, I noticed the room was almost empty. It was very dark and I wondered why nobody had put the lights on. Was there a power cut? I could make out two shapes near the windows and a third in a corner; maybe it was Shogentsukov.

The lecturer looked at his watch, brought his wrist closer to his eyes to make out the time, then looked around as if to ask, ‘What’s going on?’ Half out of his briefcase, I saw a morning paper with Pasternak’s name on the front page.

I soon recognised one of the shapes near the window: it was Antaeus. The other one, in the corner, was indeed Shogentsukov. He never missed the first lecture of the day: it was a habit, as he said, that he’d adopted when he was prime minister and held meetings with his cabinet at seven in the morning. Now he was hunkered down in the corner as if he had turned to stone.

The door swung open and the ‘Belarusian Virgins’ made their entrance, with Yuri Goncharov behind them. They were all holding a copy of
Literaturnaya gazeta
, the organ of the Writers’ Union. Then, on the threshold of the lecture hall, the plump, solemn and drab figure of Ladonshchikov appeared.

‘Morning, comrades,’ he said, in a peculiar voice that seemed to combine a sigh and a threat, concern for the common cause and mournful meditation, executive emotion and the gnashing of teeth.

As they came in each one flicked the light switch and, after looking either at the ceiling fixture or at the lectern, mumbled something about there being no power. Ladonshchikov did likewise, then slumped into his seat and opened his newspaper. ‘
Vot podlets!
What a scoundrel!’ he barked, after a while. His face and the unfolded newspaper then engaged in a curious mirror-dance: his eyebrows moved in lock-step with the headlines, his lips responded and his teeth ground in harmony with the printed words.

The lecturer had begun. It was already half past nine but the hall was still in deep twilight. Daylight from the windows cast illumination only as far down as the print of a Repin picture hanging on the wall opposite me. I’d never even read the caption on the painting, which showed a few wooden faces belonging to high officials or to the editorial board of a journal that would never appear, or perhaps they were a military high command that had never gone to war and never would. Any time you were feeling depressed, that picture made your mood even darker.

‘What happened to you?’ Antaeus asked me, in the break. ‘What’s that graze on your forehead?’

I put my hand to my head and discovered that it was a bit sore. ‘I don’t know!’

I really didn’t. Maybe I’d scratched it on the lift cage – or had somebody done it with their nails?

‘Did the drinking go on late last night?’

‘Don’t bring that up.’

Antaeus lived on his own in an apartment on Neglinnaya Street and had not yet caught up with what had gone on at the hall of residence.

‘You’ve heard about the Pasternak affair?’

I nodded. There was a sarcastic gleam in his intelligent eyes.

The rest of the group slowly trickled in. Pale and dishevelled, some looking grey as steel, others with puffy cheeks and narrowed eyes, a few more simply haggard, they burst into the hallway and took off their heavy winter coats. They were all holding a newspaper in one hand. In the state they were in, it was surprising their eyes were still capable of deciphering a headline, let alone an article. It struck me that any normally constituted individual would have shivered with dread on seeing them all loom up like that. They looked as though they had torn their eyes out during a night of tormented sleep, thrown them at random on top of their discarded clothes, and on waking this morning, had fumbled around to find them, stuck them back in any old how, then dashed, squinting, to the Institute.

The next lecture was on art history.

As we trooped back into the hall, the lecturer came up to me and smiled brightly.

‘Your topic was just wonderful,’ she said.

‘What topic?’ I replied, almost scared. ‘I haven’t prepared anything.’

She went on smiling. ‘A living army commanded by the ghosts of a dead general and a dead priest. A fantastic invention!’

‘No, that’s not it,’ I murmured, though I had no wish to elucidate. ‘It’s more like the other way round. A dead army commanded by a living general and a living priest.’

‘Really?’ she said, tipping her head to one side, while I racked my brains, trying to remember when I had told her about it. I had no recall. ‘But that’s even better,’ she went on. ‘I think it’s even more beautiful. Are you aware of the Pasternak business?’

‘Yes.’

She began her lecture, but nobody was paying attention. Minds were elsewhere.

At the next break most students went outside. The courtyard was packed and there was much more excitement than usual. Everybody, from first-year students to seniors, postgraduates and professors, was holding an open or read and refolded copy of
Literaturnaya gazeta
. Some were reading
Pravda
or
Izvestia
, both of which carried front-page attacks on Pasternak. One of the Shotas had an economics magazine that also denounced Pasternak on its front page.

Nobody talked about anything else. Some spoke harshly, others more timidly. The Nobel Prize? ‘Out, damned spot! Out, I say!’ A Scandinavian plague. ‘Even though Sholokhov takes a trip to Sweden every year to make sure the Academicians haven’t forgotten about him?’ someone behind me blurted out.

‘Keep your voice down!’ a friend warned. ‘You talk too much!’

‘What is the Nobel Prize, then?’ Taburokov asked one of the ‘Belarusian Virgins’. ‘I must have heard something about it . . .’

‘A poisoned gift of the international bourgeoisie,’ she explained.

‘And what does that old running-dog Ilya Ehrenburg say about the business?’ Maskiavicius mumbled behind me. He seemed to be looking for someone to talk to. I kept clear of him as discreetly as I could but, after he’d exchanged a few words with people I barely knew, he decided to launch into Ping, the Chinese student.