Watson, Ian - Novel 11 (2 page)

 
 
          
“INTHEYEAR
1890, as yet, there was no
Trans-Siberian Railway to ride on. Chained convicts still trudged for months
through seas of mud and bitter frosts—into eternal exile!”

 
          
Sergey
Gorodsky looked up from his notebook to see how his words were coming over.

 
          
“We’ll
use a montage of still photos,” he added. Sergey was a stocky man, with a
crusty loaf of a head. A peak of close-cropped stubbly golden hair, rising
above a pocked and sallow face, made it seem as if his crust had split in the
baking.

 
          
The
sudden dark silhouette of some hungry bird beat against the great, drape-clad
windows of the Artists’ Retreat,
then
darted away; and
Sergey stared out down the hill, as though a line of raggy prisoners might
suddenly materialise from amidst the snowy larch trees. However, the steep
valley remained unpeopled. The blue wooden faces of the various dachas were all
shuttered tight, and no vehicle moved along the road, though it had been
snow-ploughed.

 
          
What
the hell had become of Dr Kirilenko? He ought to have been here ages ago.

 
          
“Hang
on,” said Felix Levin. “It won’t do.”

 
          
Presiding
genius of the Stanislavsky Film Unit of Krasnoyarsk, Felix was as personable as
Sergey was ill-favoured. He could have been an ageing gigolo, only slightly run
to seed. His dark wavy hair, worn rather long, was streaked with silver. He
kept a French battery-razor in the pocket of his Italian suit at all times, and
used it thrice a day. Once something of a coxcomb with the girls, for the past
ten years he had been busy sublimating personal style into committed art.
Sergey, in his dingier and more envious moments, pegged him as someone who had
gone to bed with so many young women that they had all melted together
eventually into one collective, sexless Muse which whispered, now, political
endearments. Put one way, he had matured. Put another, he had run out of his
former supply of juice—and a good thing too.

 
          
Felix
slapped the side of the saggy armchair in which he was sprawling elegantly; the
blow raised a puff of dust and fibre. Most of the furniture was equally
ancient.

 
          
“Sorry,
won’t do at all! That suggests the railway was built to get rid of people. Not
to open up
Siberia
as a positive step. You must watch your
nuances.’’ Not so many years ago, as they all knew, there had been many large
labour camps in the vicinity of
Krasnoyarsk
. . .

 
          
“Well,
we can hardly say that the Czar’s government went in for nation building!’’

 
          
“Oh,
agreed. But you’re still equating
Siberia
with
exile. Look, an underlying theme of the film has to be how
Siberia
spelled
space
for development.
Though this didn’t occur in a properly planned way till
later on . . . And as a sub-theme, there could well be a hint that the
Siberia
of tomorrow’s world will literally be
space. Outer space—the asteroid belt, the moons of Jupiter! Where a socialist
attitude’s the only possible one; everyone pitching in, or else it’s lethal. We
mustn’t associate space with punishment.’’

 
          
In
exasperation Sergey threw down his notebook on the disintegrating leather sofa,
which he shared with Mikhail Petrov the actor.

 
          
“I
fail to see how we can dispense with the convicts! Damn it all, they’re the
reason why Chekhov crossed
Siberia
—”

 
          
“It’s
just the balance of words and images.’’

 
          
“—to visit the convict colony on
Sakhalin
!’’

 
          
“You’re
the writer, Sergey. Surely you can see that?’’

 
          
“But
our film isn’t about colonising the bloody asteroids! It’s about the writer
Chekhov—to commemorate the anniversary of his journey, right? It’s about a
watershed in one artist’s life—’’

 
          
“A
watershed brought about by an act of social commitment. Plus: the experience of
launching himself out across untold space, far from the hothouse of
Moscow
literary life. Metaphor, see? But we
mustn’t be ‘arty’, however beautiful our intentions are. This is a scientific
film—first, because of the sort of person Chekhov was, and secondly because
we’ll be using Dr Kirilenko’s hypnosis technique. Science is a sub-text of the
film.”

 
          
Actor
Mikhail tossed back his head, as though to indicate that all this had nothing
to do with him. A faint smile puckered the corner of his mouth; idly he
inspected the shabby elegance of the room.

 
          
It
had once been a reception room, for prior to becoming a rural appendix of the People’s
Palace
of
Culture
in
Krasnoyarsk
, decades earlier, this Retreat had been the
Summer
home of some aristocratic exile who had been
allowed to take his wealth to
Siberia
.
The room had little connexion with a present time which included the likelihood
of colonising space. A threadbare oriental carpet covered most of the floor. An
antique mahogany table was draped in oilskin. Aspidistras sprouted from glazed
terracotta pots. And the light bulbs hummed constantly, as if electricity
were
just newly discovered and the secret consisted in
imprisoning hot little devils in glass bottles. Lampshades, of tasselled
sallow-silk, were stained by age and the heat of the bulbs. The room could
easily have been a stage set for some last-century drama. How very appropriate.

 
          
Mikhail
straightened the right side of his moustache with his index finger. It was a
good
mannerism.

 
          
‘‘Really, fellows, all this business about a watershed!
I
mean, those hills out there are watersheds—for a fact. But old Antosha was such
a secretive chap. I ain’t got the foggiest why he set off across
Siberia
.”

 
          
‘‘Come
off it,” said Sergey. ‘‘We know a whole host of reasons.”

 
          
‘‘Well,
that’s just it, ain’t it? Which was the one that tipped the balance?”

 
          
“There
doesn’t have to be a single reason, shining like a beacon. There wouldn’t be in
one of his plays.’’

 
          
“Sure.
The main business of all the plays is sheer dither. Oh, what’s to be done? Oh,
if only we could . . . But we can’t. There’ll be paradise on Earth in another
hundred years.
Perhaps.
But as for now, oh dear me,
what’s the point?’’

 
          
“It
is
a hundred years later,’’ Felix
reminded Mikhail sharply.

 
          
Mikhail
tipped his head still further back; softly he laughed.

 
          
Despite
himself Felix nodded in approval. The Film Unit had discovered Mikhail through
a nation-wide Chekhov Look-Alike Contest. Mikhail had been in repertory in
Gorki, and he was endearingly second-rate.
Which was ideal .
. .

 
          
“Drivel!”
cried Sergey. “Nina runs off to go on the stage, in
The Seagull
, doesn’t she? Duels get fought. Revolvers pop off.
People do predict an earthly paradise of work and honesty and good will—and
they mean it. People make wild declarations of passion.”

 
          
“Which
all come to
nothing.
And oh, those blessed revolvers!
After our Anton got back from
Sakhalin
,
he always loaded them with blanks.”

 
          
“Blanks?
What do you mean?”

 
          
“Just
look how he revised
The Wood Demon.
Second time round, Vanya just misses—at point-blank range.
So what exactly did wind our darling Antosha up to that final notch so that he
flew thousands of kilometres—oops, pardon me, thousands of versts— clear across
Siberia? Maybe he did it to purge himself of hysteria?
The
same hysteria that screws up his Ivanov, and makes the play
Ivanov
a pretty rotten one.”

 
          
“Ivanov’s
energies weren’t being put to constructive use,” said Felix mildly.

 
          
“As
yours are?” enquired Sergey.

 
          
Felix
was about to squash this sally; but his aggrieved look changed to one of
disbelief—for Mikhail had pulled a pistol out of his jacket pocket. He pointed
it at the window.

 
          
“Bang,”
he said.

 
          
“For
God’s sake, man—!’’

 
          
“How the Devil—!’’

 
          
Mikhail
twirled the pistol round his finger, cowboy style.

 
          
“It’s
just a prop. Found it in the lumber-room, I did, stuffed down one of those
baskets. So I thought to myself, if old Antosha had one in his pocket, so
should I.”

 
          
“Put
it away, you fool!’’ bawled Sergey.

 
          
“Yes,
do put it away, there’s a good fellow—before
she
gets back.’’ Now that the initial shock was over, Felix seemed
quite amused.

 
          
Mikhail
returned the gun to his pocket. “We don’t know anything for sure.’’

 
          
“Ah,
but we will once we make the film,’’ said Felix.

 
          
At
this moment Sonya Suslova came back into the room. Opening her blue eyes wide
in apologetic perplexity, she shook her head.

 
          
“I
phoned the Psychiatric Institute, but Dr Kirilenko hasn’t been
there
...”

 
          
Mikhail
regarded those expressive eyes of hers with amusement. It was a curious
phenomenon, often noted by him, that your average Svetlana or Natasha tended to
exaggerate her mannerisms in the presence of theatrical folk—as though she
imagined that actors were in the business of pulling funny faces and
were
always on the look-out for some suitable facial tic to
be immortalised. ‘Look, ’Tasha, that’s how I scratch my nose! He’s got me off
to a tee.’
Whereas men just as often repressed their
affectations out of
amour propre
, not
wishing to be parodied.

 
          
Mikhail
had seen
this
syndrome oodles of times; here it was
again. And Dr Suslova a psychiatrist, too!

 
          
“Maybe
his taxi broke down—or skidded!’’ Sonya registered alarm.

 
          
She
was a chunky blonde with sensual lips and nostrils which would have been
sensual, too, had nasal copulation been in vogue; perhaps she picked her nose
in private. By contrast, her knitted two-piece was severe: a double corset of
woollen chain-mail.

 
          
She
had left the double doors open.
“Osip!”
Felix called
out. “Can we all have some more tea?”

 
          
An
answering loud grunt from somewhere along the passage indicated that the
caretaker had heard.

 
          
Sergey
recovered his notebook and riffled through it.
“How about
this, then?
On
April 21st 1890
Anton Chekhov left
Moscow
on a journey little short of heroic,
dah-di-dah . . . period photo of the station. Some family and friends
accompanied him as far as
Yaroslavl
.
Photo of Levitan in his cocky hat and dandy togs.
How about a photo of Levitan’s mistress?”