Twilight of the Eastern Gods (18 page)

It was the same in the papers and on TV, in the streets, on the bus and in the corridors of the Institute. Twelve hours earlier the name of Pasternak had come out of people’s mouths with an angry, violent snarl; now it didn’t seem anyone could even get it out properly any more.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked Antaeus. ‘Could this be the fourth degree that Maskiavicius mentioned?’

‘Hard to tell. Apparently, it wasn’t needed.’

‘What do you mean? Why did there have to be exactly that much, neither more nor less? Can you tell me that? Speak, O Greek!’

In the corridor, in the cloakroom, on the staircase, out in the courtyard – not a word. I was tempted to go and question Maskiavicius in person: could this be the fourth degree? But I thought better of it. Everybody was converging on the auditorium where, as if to rub out the memory of the sinister anti-Pasternak event, there’d just been an enthusiastic reception for a friend of the Soviet Union, the Malagasy poetess Andriamampandri Ratsifandrihamanana, to be followed shortly by an equally warm-spirited reception for the eminent leader of the Algerian Communist Party, Larbi Bouhali.

Today was different in every way from the cloudy Pasternakian yesterday. The walls were plastered with posters bearing exclamatory slogans praising Soviet-Algerian friendship. The drapery that covered the long table of the Presidium had acquired a purplish hue. Red canvas banners bore slogans where
USSR
and
Algeria
were accompanied by words like ‘heroic’, ‘blood’, ‘freedom’, ‘bombs’ and ‘flag’. Over the loudspeaker came revolutionary marching songs.

At last he made his entrance to a long ovation, waving at the audience, smiling and cheerful: a positive hero emerging without transition from the fire of epic combat. The clapping didn’t stop all the time he was walking slowly towards the podium. Just as Larbi Bouhali got to the steps that led up to the lectern, Seriogin and a colleague took hold of him by the arms, and that was when the whole audience, through the mist of strong emotion, realised that he had a gammy leg, or perhaps an artificial one. That was all it took for the ovation to rise to a new level (level four), in a paroxysm that had to end in screaming. Eyes were watering, and breathing felt like swallowing your neighbour’s exhalation. Seriogin gestured to the audience in a way that suggested, ‘That’s enough . . . such strong feelings . . . at your age . . .’ In the row behind mine, Shakenov had already launched into one of his heroic ballads and the ‘Belarusian Virgins’ had taken out their handkerchiefs, while Antaeus hissed something hateful into my left ear. He sounded as if he was speaking from far away. ‘It’s all a lie, believe me. I know the story well. He hasn’t set foot in Algeria for years. As for his leg, he broke it when he was skiing somewhere on the outskirts of Moscow. You got that? He broke his leg skiing. That scoundrel has a
dacha
next door to a Greek guy, who told me about it. Sure, he’s an imposter, you understand? A fraud!’

When the meeting was over Antaeus and I left together. I hadn’t seen Stulpanc anywhere.

‘Some militant that was!’ Antaeus muttered, from time to time. We were both in the darkest of moods. In Algeria there was bloody carnage, and that bastard was waiting for the war to end so he could return and seize power. ‘And then he’ll sell his country to the Soviet Union for a
dacha
and a pair of slippers! Oh! I’m going to burst!’

I’d never seen Antaeus so indignant. As he spoke his face twisted as if his war wounds were hurting him again. Maybe they were.

‘Are the plans for the meeting going ahead?’ I asked, to change the subject.

‘What meeting?’

It was some time before he grasped which meeting I was talking about.

‘Oh, I see,’ he said eventually. ‘Yes, sure, the subcommittees are hard at work . . .’

The subcommittees are hard at work . . . I repeated to myself. O Ancient Athenian, tell me, why does that send a shiver down my spine?

We parted at the Novoslobodskaya metro station. I decided to walk all the way back to Butyrsky Khutor. It was a grey day; the buildings went on and on in interminable and depressingly monotonous rows, and the hundreds of windows, perhaps because of their skimpy panes, had a malicious look about them. I crossed Sushchevsky Val, but it was still a long way to the residence. The hundreds of television antennae on the roofs of the houses looked like so many walking-sticks raised in anger by a crowd of old folk. Four days previously, Pasternak’s name had been pouring down on them, like black snow. I went on past Saviolovsky Voksal, cursing myself for not having caught a bus. An old house had been knocked down and bulldozers were shovelling away the rubble.

What a stressful week! I thought, staring at a half-demolished concrete pillar with wire reinforcements sticking out at the top, like uncombed hair. I walked on a bit and then – who knows why? – turned round to contemplate that lump of concrete: a pillar that had lost its head.

The week ended with the death of the famous story-teller Akulina. Although she was illiterate she had long been granted membership of the Soviet Writers’ Union, and the entire complement of the Gorky Institute attended her funeral at the Novodevichy Cemetery.

A sharp wind swayed the leafless branches of the trees. It seemed to hiss the traditional opening of a Russian folktale: once upon a time, in some kingdom, in some state . . . в нeком цapствe, в нeком госyдapствe . . .

For half an hour we processed behind the pink-silk-draped coffin of the old lady who had told so many stories about the creatures of Slav myths, Scythian divinities and maybe also about that solitary head puffing out its cheeks to blow the wind across the steppe . . .

Once upon a time . . . жил-ъыл . . . No work of any period could have a more universal opening than that formula in the imperfect tense: once upon a time, there used to be . . . Nobody, no human generation, could ever do without it . . .

Once upon a time there used to be a foreigner who met a young Russian woman called Lida Snegina . . .

The long procession of mourners finally came to a standstill. Stulpanc had still not shown his face. Was he so much in love? Around marble tombs, bronze crosses and bare branches, the wind went on whistling the opening lines of fairy-tales. Once upon a time . . . жил-ъыл . . . The phrase seemed to come straight from the ancient lungs of the terrestrial globe . . . Once upon a time there used to be a giant state whose name was Soviet Union . . .

CHAPTER FIVE

A Muscovite artist had just flown back from India, bringing smallpox into the city. He’d caught it at the funeral of a princess in Delhi – imprudently, he had gone too close to the coffin to make a hasty sketch of some of the detail. He died a few days after landing in Moscow; his friends and relatives were expected to end in the same way.

Early one morning, in front of the porter’s lodge at the Institute, a large poster went up, ordering the entire population of the city to be vaccinated, with a list of all the vaccination centres that had been set up. Anyone not following the order within forty-eight hours risked being quarantined.

A knot of people was looking at the poster.

‘Serves us right,’ Kurganov muttered. ‘We’ve got far too cosy with India.’

‘Did the epidemic come from there?’ someone asked.

‘Where else? You don’t think it came from West Germany, do you?’

‘That’s enough, Kolya,’ said his companion, tugging at his sleeve. ‘Time to go and get that vaccination.’

‘Kurganov’s right,’ said Maskiavicius, who had suddenly turned up. ‘We really did get too close to the Indies and Brahmaputras!’ Someone else guffawed. ‘Yes, that’s how it goes. We make up with some people, and pick a fight with others.’

He gave me a sidelong glance, but I didn’t respond. I’d turned to stone as I stood there reading the chilling words on the poster for maybe the tenth time. Inside, I felt something empty taking shape and a contraction somewhere near my diaphragm. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard allusions of that kind in the last few days, but never had I heard one as clear as that.

I was walking down the street in a crowd of people, many of whom were on their way to the vaccination centres, when I caught sight of Maskiavicius again. I put on speed to catch up with him.

‘Maskiavicius,’ I said, taking his elbow. ‘Listen to me. Just now beside the poster you said something, and I thought you meant it for me – or, rather, for my country. If you’ve heard anything, as a good comrade . . . if you’re aware of what’s going on . . . I beg you to let me know.’

He turned to me. ‘I don’t know anything,’ he said, then hastened to add, ‘I was joking.’

‘No, that wasn’t a joke. You’re at liberty to say nothing, but you were not joking.’

‘Yes, I was! It was a joke!’ he said emphatically.

We walked on for a while without saying anything.

‘Well, excuse me, then,’ I said, and walked on faster to put some distance between us.

A few seconds later I smelt his breath over my right shoulder.

‘Wait a moment! You think we’re in every loop, that we’re plotting against you because you’re on your own and a foreigner, not to mention a heap of other reasons.’ After a pause he added, with more feeling, ‘That is what you think, isn’t it?’

It was indeed the case, but as I was offended I didn’t bother to turn my head to reply to him.

‘Listen,’ he went on, in the same tone, ‘you know I’m not like Yuri Goncharov or Ladonshchikov or the fucking Virgins or other such scum of the earth. And you know full well that I’m not particularly fond of Russians. If I knew anything, I’d tell you straight away. I swear I know nothing precise. However . . . we were at the Aragvy restaurant the other day when a fellow who was there, and who isn’t a friend of yours, said, ‘The soup is hot, but things are cooling down between us and the Albanians.’ I tried more than once to get him to talk but he wouldn’t say anything else. So now do you believe me?’

I said nothing. I wasn’t listening to him. I was just saying over and over to myself, Can this be true?

‘And then, to be honest,’ Maskiavicius went on, leaning on my shoulder, ‘it would be a real stroke of luck if things were to go cold between us and you. Yes, I know, I’m Lithuanian, but don’t make me say any more . . .’

Suddenly I felt it was all true. On that cold morning, among the flood of pedestrians hurrying to get themselves vaccinated against the dreadful sickness that the funeral of an Indian princess had brought to Moscow, it seemed that all the mist that had shrouded Antaeus’s words about Vukmanović-Tempo coming to Moscow, about Bucharest or the planning subcommittees for the Moscow conference had lifted in a trice.

I could see my breath turning to haze as it left my mouth and I wouldn’t have been surprised to see it fall to the ground and shatter into a thousand pieces of crystal. I was neither happy nor sad. I had resumed my state of chronic instability, beyond sadness and gaiety, in this glaucous universe, with its slanted, harsh and twisted light. Relations between my limbs had broken off. All the parts of my body were about to disconnect and reassemble themselves of their own free will in the most unbelievable ways: I might suddenly find I had an eye between my ribs, maybe even both eyes, or my legs attached to my arms, perhaps to make me fly.

As with all things beyond understanding, this metamorphosis possessed a mysterious beauty. A world sensation! Newspaper headlines. General stupefaction. The horror and grandeur of breaking off. I was spread out among them, as if I’d been scattered by a gale. A continuous burning tightness afflicted my throat. Then, as in a dream of flying, I thought I could see the black earth laid out beneath me, with a few chrome-ore freight wagons of the kind I used to notice in the goods station at Durrës on Sundays when I went to the beach with friends, alongside the barrels of bitumen that would sometimes be there when there’d been a hold-up in loading the ships, stacked in terrifying funereal mounds.

None of that did much to calm me, though I maintained an outward icy demeanour. The events of 1956 in Hungary. The Party Conference in Tirana that had taken place then, too, at which, for the first time, the Soviets had been spoken of unkindly . . .

‘Now pull yourself together!’ Maskiavicius said.

We would have to put up with economic sanctions, maybe a blockade or something worse. The legendary Slavic head would puff out his cheeks to raise a truly hellish wind that would blow all the way to Albania.

‘I shouldn’t have told you,’ Maskiavicius mumbled, standing beside me.

The dreadful round face that seemed to have been born from the steppe merged in my mind with Khrushchev’s.

‘Name, first name, and date of birth,’ a nurse said.

I was standing in front of a table laden with vials and lancets. All around, a constant hubbub of people coming and going. Maskiavicius had vanished.

‘Take off your coat and jacket, please,’ said the nurse. ‘Roll up your shirt sleeve as far as you can.’

Out of the corner of my eye I watched her white fingers rub my upper arm with a cotton swab dipped in medicinal alcohol. Then they gripped a blood lancet and proceeded to make pricks in my skin with as much care as if they were tracing out an ancient pattern.

It occurred to me that the princess’s coffin must have been decorated with really strange designs to have cast such a spell on the painter.