The Monastery, page 38
“For him?” Vasilii Petrovich chuckled. “No, during our whole lives none of this was appropriate for our status… Do you know, when I was a child, and my father — he was a nobleman, though he had lost his money — when he invited a priest to our estate to perform a service, we didn’t invite him to sit at table with us. Not we, not our neighbors — no one sat with the priest. That was bad form. He was fed separately from us… We carried out snacks, even a shot of vodka once. And he ate there by himself like a servant. And I’m not even speaking about the Petersburg high society. There it was easier to bring a devil on a leash — O, everyone would have been extraordinarily pleased! — than to invite a priest. We all knew how — and wanted — to talk without the priest present… But now, we want to speak in his presence, that’s how it all turned out! So that he can hear us! And feel sorry for us!”
Vasilii Petrovich became thoughtful about something, but then another thought led him away in a different direction, and he, having run after it, immediately spoke it aloud.
“However, I will say one thing. Mezernitskii changes his mind faster than the weather. No one can understand the essence of his position. He often says things that contradict each other.”
“But right about some things,” said Artiom thoughtfully. He felt a little sick, but it was endurable. “About the forge, for example.”
Vasilii Petrovich ruffled his feathers, as though he was a bird and someone had thrown a rock at him, but he didn’t yet know who.
“You can say it in a different way. This is a laboratory,” continued Artiom with strange words that he had heard not so long ago, though he did notice Vasilii Petrovich’s gesture.
“Tioma, my gentlest heart, what are you going on about? I can’t understand it,” Vasilii Petrovich said, and then he stopped.
Artiom shrugged and looked directly at Vasilii Petrovich.
“Artiom, have you ever been to the circus?” asked Vasilii Petrovich. “No…? I mention it because this is not a laboratory. And it’s not hell. It’s a circus in hell.”
He was silent for a moment, then added:
“A phantasmagoria.”
“I socialized with Eichmanis,” said Artiom very calmly. “He says many intelligent things. And he sees everything from a different point of view.”
“Oh yes,” agreed Vasilii Petrovich with an almost mocking readiness to agree. “But what about you, Tioma? Do you see from your own point of view?”
“Don’t get angry, Vasilii Petrovich. You yourself know very well that I do.”
“Do I?” Vasilii Petrovich was sincerely confused. “I thought that I do, yes. But now I am not so sure! What are you doing next to Eichmanis, anyway? Have you never heard the phrase, ‘Near the Tsar, near to death’?”
Artiom quietly looked Vasilii Petrovich in the eyes and didn’t answer.
“Very well, very well, very well,” Vasilii Petrovich agreed with who knows who. “Just tell me what he said, in summary… Eh? Something about reforging? Re-smelting?”
Artiom continued to be quiet.
“I, of course, don’t know exactly,” said Vasilii Petrovich in a whisper, “but I can guess.” Even though it was evening, inmates and soldiers still walked in the courtyard here and there. “I know for sure what he did not tell you.” Here, Vasilii Petrovich took Artiom by the shoulder and said, “Let’s walk this way,” then literally pushed him against the nearest wall.
Above Artiom’s head was a semicircular arch made from white stone, behind his back was a huge boulder of a wall that smelled of water, grass, the massive amount of time that was imprisoned within it.
“Did you discuss such subjects as imprisoning inmates in solitary in their underwear, in a place that is nothing more than a meter-deep hole in the ground, whose ground and ceiling is covered in thorny branches?” asked Vasilii Petrovich, breathing in Artiom’s face. “Did Eichmanis tell you that such inmates can bear it for three days, then they die? Did he make you laugh with his jokes about dolphins? That’s when inmates, hearing the following command from a soldier: ‘Dolphin!’ must jump, for example, from a bridge, if they are being led to a bridge, into the water. If there is no bridge, the guards sometimes place the inmates on the boulders lining the shore. And those, having heard the command, also dive. And it’s a good thing if it’s August outside, not November! And if they don’t jump, they’re beaten, very seriously and then they’re still thrown into the water…! Did Fiodor Ivanovich remember that one of the punishments for the inmates is carrying water from one hole in the ice to another on our local lakes? Did he tell you how here, in the skete of St. Savatii, political prisoners lived — those same ones who made the Revolution together with the Bolsheviks, then differed in their view and immediately received Solovki as their reward. Yes, they didn’t work here, yes, they only arranged disputes and quarrels. However, when the politicals once refused to leave earlier than usual from an evening stroll — our administration called in a Red Army platoon and they gave a few volleys straight into the living, defenseless people! The heroes, I tell you, of their own Revolution…! You, Artiom, by some miracle have avoided the common labor, and already for how many weeks are doing the devil knows what and you’ve stopped understanding some very simple things. Should I remind you of them? Do you think that if you are no longer sent to the logs that means that no one is carrying them anymore? Do you think that if things are good with you, then everyone else’s lives have become better? People die here! Every day, someone dies! And this is the daily life of the camp of Solovki. Not a tragedy, not a drama, not Sophocles, not Euripides — just daily life. Quotidian!”
Vasilii Petrovich squeezed Artiom’s shoulder more and more firmly, then suddenly relaxed his fingers, removed his hand, and turned away.
They remained silent for another half a minute.
“… They almost killed you here,” he said with an impossibly tired voice. “They almost trampled you to death. How can this be?”
“That’s not all,” suddenly said Artiom. “Eichmanis was speaking of something else. He said that we ourselves… we do it to ourselves. And I see that it’s true.”
“We do it to ourselves — yes!” Vasilii Petrovich continued, immediately understanding the point of the conversation. “But why then is he placed as our authority? So that we can torture ourselves even more painfully?”
Somewhere nearby a gull cried painfully, as though someone had stepped on its tail, and several others shrieked in answer.
Vasilii Petrovich leaned with both hands against the wall near Artiom’s head and loomed over him.
Artiom almost turned his head aside — to look at a drunk, grown, irritated, almost fifty-year-old man in the eyes was not the greatest pleasure in the world.
He didn’t want to answer any more.
Vasilii Petrovich cried out in a whistling whisper, as though something had illumined him, referring to Artiom in the informal you: “Oh, you have fallen under his spell, Artiom! That’s not difficult. I know it for myself! But remember one thing, I beg you. Eichmanis is a whitewashed tomb! Do you know what that is? A painted, beautiful tomb, but inside it’s still full of filth and bones!”
Artiom finally lifted his arm and freed himself, almost pushing aside Vasilii Petrovich.
He stood a step away from him, looking at the ever-present cap of his friend, now cocked to the side.
“I loved you because you were the most independent of all of us,” said Vasilii Petrovich very simply and sincerely. “All of us were broken more or less, if not in spirit, then in character. We were all becoming worse; you alone were becoming better here. There was courage in you, but there was no anger. There was laughter, but no sarcasm. There was a mind, but there was also breeding… What now?”
“Nothing,” Artiom answered in an echo that had unexpectedly found its reason.
What else could he answer?
He searched out his sleeping quarters with his eyes and jerked in that direction. In two steps, he did finally vomit. He didn’t even stop, only stepped over the foul puddle, wiped his lips with his sleeve — it smelled terribly of perfume and bile, and he rushed towards his wing.
The gulls flew down in a cloud to peck at what was left after Artiom.
In the morning, a soldier walked it, and said, “Get your stuff!”
Artiom had slept badly and little, he woke up before dawn and lay facing the wall for a long time without moving. At first, he tried not to think at all — but that didn’t work. Then he tried to think — that didn’t work either.
While Osip gathered his things for work, Artiom pretended to sleep.
“Why does it smell like perfume,” Osip asked several times, smelling the air. “Artiom! Artiom, are you asleep…? Or is it eau de cologne?”
“No, fuck, I’m not sleeping. I’m chopping wood,” Artiom answered mentally, desiring Osip the fate of the proverb: let him grow hoarse and fall to the devil.
… And then, the soldier.
Artiom sat on his bed, trying to gauge by the soldier’s appearance what was about to happen to him.
He couldn’t understand anything. All that was left was to gather his things.
Oh, those damn swamp boots.
The soldier examined Artiom as he put them on.
It would have been no less abhorrent for Artiom to pull on women’s tights.
“Why is he looking like that?” thought Artiom. “Maybe he’s planning to take them off me as soon as they’ve executed me?”
At other times, Artiom had managed to energize himself with similar thoughts, but here nearly the opposite happened — he suddenly felt nauseous, his hands lost their strength, his boots wouldn’t go on, and wouldn’t go on, and wouldn’t go on — it was a joke and some kind of humiliation…
Artiom got up — he didn’t manage to get one of his feet fully into the toe, so he walked like a lame horse for his first few steps.
“Pull on your boot already,” said the soldier indifferently. “Don’t you have any other footwear?”
“No,” answered Artiom, barely hearing his own voice.
… Their path lay towards the IID.
He met Burtsev on the second floor — he was quickly going downstairs, carrying a packet of papers under his armpit. He didn’t give way, so both the soldier and Artiom had to move out of his way — so that piece of shit sloughed off past them without even nodding, as though they had never known each other.
On the third floor, in the same office, Galina waited for him with her lips pursed, with her glance icy… but she smelled of perfume.
She nodded at the stool.
Artiom sat.
Eichmanis’s photograph under the glass was turned face-up again, he noticed with surprise.
“Too bad she didn’t draw horns on him,” thought Artiom from the depths of his hot spiritual underworld.
Galina moved closer to the table, right to the edge, so that her expansive bosom froze in place right above the table.
“If you,” said Galina with her lips alone, “say even a single word, you’ll live exactly as long as it will take for you to be led ‘under the store’. You can forget about solitary — there are enough reports about you to give you exactly three executions. And it would only take one bullet to take you down.”
Artiom raised his eyes to Galina and nodded.
She also nodded: good.
“You didn’t boast to anyone yet?” she asked, slightly louder. “What were you whispering about with Vasilii Petrovich in the yard yesterday?”
Artiom swallowed his saliva, not knowing what to say.
“Something else,” he pushed out.
Galina examined Artiom, but not for long.
“Since you’ve been left without any work,” she said, returning to the paper on her desk, “I’ve had to… assign you a new task… From this day, Artiom Goriainov is assigned to guard duty in the Iodine Plant. Your neighbor Osip Troianskii works there, so… now you’ll work together. When you get there, they’ll show you everything… Usually, it’s the clergy that works these jobs in the sweat of their brow… So you’ll be like a priest’s son.”
They sat in silence for some time.
Galina tapped her pencil on the table.
A flush crept up her cheek, Artiom noticed.
The icy expression of her eyes softened a little to something slightly more alive — as though she had just thought of some feminine mischief.
“Thank you,” said Artiom quietly and distinctly.
“Uh-huh,” said Galina with a careless voice, the same voice that the fine ladies probably use on the Arbat.
Artiom nearly ran down the staircase, just as he had done in school many years ago.
“I’m alive, alive, alive,” he kept repeating. “I’m alive. I’m so alive. And I don’t want to be a god-man. I want to be a living orphan. Without a cross and without a tail… Yes!”
For some time, he rushed about his room like a lover before a rendezvous with his beloved. In general, he had basically nothing to gather. He no longer received an increased ration as a member of the Spartakiade and he only had his winter things left, while the weather was still fine, swelling sunnily in the threshold of August.
“And what does that mean? Now I’m to go hungry?” Artiom complained, completely forgetting that if they had told him half an hour ago that they would no longer feed him at all, but they wouldn’t shoot him, that he would have agreed and been grateful and limitlessly happy.
He really wanted to eat. He had vegetables under his bed, he remembered. And though there were many of them, Artiom really wanted something like a big piece of meat.
Without thinking, he pulled out the chest from under Osip’s bed.
Osip was rich — it seems that he had only just received his package. Dried sweet and sour cherries. Poached pears in sugar. Macaroni in a cheesecloth bag. Rise, buckwheat, peas. Mustard, lard. Nuts… Bread.
“Only a few sour cherries and a handful of the sweet…” Artiom decided and immediately filled him south.
“And the lard…” he allowed himself. “One piece.”
Good thing that it was already sliced and not yet finished.
“His mother probably sent it to him like that — already sliced.” Artiom decided. “Otherwise Osip himself would have just gnawed at it until he dislocated his jaw.”
One piece wasn’t enough. Three pieces wouldn’t have been enough if Artiom had not commanded himself: enough, enough, go away. But really — dried cherries and lard is a miraculous thing.
“As soon as I get home, that’s all I’m going to eat,” Artiom decided.
The iodine plant was two kilometers away, through a spruce forest.
Artiom knew the road, and it’s wasn’t difficult. From the kremlin to the north, past the most peaceful lake (like Aleksei Mikhailovich) along the granite shore, through the narrow-gauge railway. Then, a few minutes later, you’d see no more inmates or guards at all, because the rest of the way is straight, straight — forest to the right, forest to the left. Very calm, almost without sound, only if you listened attentively could you hear the river that emptied into the Holy Lake.
“I don’t walk on plush or velvet… but I walk on the edge of a knife…” Artiom sang quietly along the way. It seemed to him a very cheerful song.
“If I knew how to think,” thought Artiom, “I would be like Mezernitskii — I would be sure of everything at once, especially in the most unpleasant things. And that conviction wouldn’t bother me…”
“… How difficult to understand are all people,” thought Artiom. “No one is easy to understand. Inside the external man, there is always the internal man. And inside him there’s someone else still.”
“Shlabukovskii, for example. Who is he? Afanasiev — who is he? Grakov — who’s inside Grakov? Moisei Solomonovich — is he really who he appears to be — the one singing his never-ending songs? Burtsev? Krapin? Curly? Boris Lukianovich? Schelkachov? Zahar? Lazhechnikov…? But no, he’s dead already… Passport? Gills? Was every one of them a child once, climbing up to his mother’s knee? How did they get off those knees?”
He didn’t want to remember yesterday’s words of Vasilii Petrovich, though, on the other hand, he did say that Artiom was getting better in this place — how strange that is, because he didn’t notice anything like that in himself. He didn’t notice himself at all — he was just here and did everything he could not to die.
“But other people want the same thing,” thought Artiom. “Or maybe not…? How do other people do it? How am I different from them? I should ask Vasilii Petrovich. I don’t understand it myself.”
Artiom on purpose did not call Eichmanis and Galina to mind, because those were difficult thoughts and they frightened him. In different ways, but they both frightened him, and he didn’t want to be frightened.
The more so, because if Artiom let his mind wander freely even for a moment, he immediately and vividly felt Galina’s breast in his hand. He had found it in her shirt, having torn off the fourth button from the top, and pulled it out. Her nipple, terrible hard, pushed exactly against the middle of his palm… what could he do with such thoughts…?
… If they came, he had to run away from them just like he did from the mosquitoes, or they would eat him alive. Even now, Artiom ran forward a little and once again felt how light, young and handsome he was. He was convinced that if he struck a tree full force with his shoulder, the spruce, croaking, would fall over.
In one hundred meters, he slowed down, and his breathing almost didn’t change, but at least that hallucination was left behind, and his palms were once again empty — grab the air with them and walk on!
At the road, a fallen birch lay. Its leaves were red, as though filled with blood.
To the left of the road, then up to a wooden gate, and there, on a hillock, stood a while building, tidy as a cake, with three windows on the back end and four on the front, with a porch in the middle with stairs. St. Philip’s Hermitage — this is where the iodine plant was now. It used to be in a different place; apparently, they had just moved.
