The Monastery, page 39
Next to the building, in the front yard, he saw something like a hen house made of logs with a small window and a small door — it’s possible this was the cell of that same Philip, who knows? But how did he walk through that door? Only by bowing every time to the ground.
A little farther off from the house stood a tall cross and under the cross was a well.
Artiom, as though he owned the place, went over there to drink some water.
Now this would be his new place of residence.
He didn’t think about that out loud, but his entire soul begged that he be allowed to stay here to the end of his term — in the middle of the forest, invisible to all, not needed by anyone, forgotten by all.
“She probably doesn’t want me to talk to anyone and to shut up,” thought Artiom. “I’m ready to seal my mouth shut and take an oath of silence…”
The water was cold and delicious.
“Well, then, grandfather Philip,” said Artiom aloud. “Accept your new lodger! Without a cross and without a tail.”
Osip met Artiom with surprise; he even asked as though joking — he didn’t know how to joke well, so it sounded severe: “Should I watch out for you? Did they send you to bring us all in?”
Artiom scoffed.
Osip himself — finally, he got it! — understood that he was a bit tactless, and so immediately changed the subject.
“We moved here very recently. It’s not bad here. Let’s go, I’ll show you how we live here.”
Osip’s colleagues paid absolutely no attention to Artiom — they were educated people, very busy. Artiom didn’t strive to get to know them either.
“Don’t touch anything here,” Osip warned, nodding at all his myriad devices and solutions, which, of course, only inspired Artiom’s quiet desire to break and confuse everything by tomorrow morning.
In the laboratory, there were six rooms — three under the laboratory, two empty: “We’re going to make bedrooms out of them and eventually move here completely, so we don’t waste time walking back and forth,” said Osip. There was also a kitchen, six guinea pigs lived there.
“Do you eat them?” asked Artiom completely seriously.
“No, no, they breed them,” answered Osip. “It’s not just the iodine plant here, but the biological garden too. They breed animals… by the way, they told us that the guard would see after them. So, maybe I should introduce you to these creatures?”
“Later, later,” Artiom declined. “I’ll have plenty of time.”
Artiom noticed that there was a constant racket coming from the attic.
“What are they doing there?” asked Artiom. “Building a conservatory?”
“No,” answered Osip. “The bunnies live upstairs. Twenty of them. Should we go see?”
“Later,” said Artiom. “I’d like to see my room.”
He suddenly realized that he didn’t get enough sleep and that he would immediately fall asleep in an incredible sleep that he had not had for many days already. After all, someone was always interrupting his sleep, even Osip, who snored next to him, and someone from the guard brigade might come in at any moment, make him get up and do something humiliating; the foremen were always yelling, and the work group leaders beat everyone with bludgeons. But here, there were only bunnies in the attic… And those, what-cha-ma-call-it… piggies.
“There’s nothing here, just that blanket… maybe that sweater can serve as a pillow,” Osip showed him, opening the door, but Artiom, without even waiting for him to finish, fell on the floor, pushed the sweater in to the corner, stuck his head in it, though it smelled horrible — paint and, he thought, rabbit droppings, and man-smell, and who knows what else. Artiom was already sleeping the sleep of the dead.
In his dream, he heard impossibly distant, though audible, human speech, but as though it were not in the next room, but forty rooms away.
“And what’s this? What about this? And here?” repeated the same voice, so thick and unpleasant as though it were coming from a caterpillar with a cold.
Artiom understood that some uniform from the kremlin had arrived with some soldiers, because there was a constant racket of boots stomping here and there and at any moment they would walk into the room of the guard, and the guard was asleep, doing nothing, and this would be a wonderful chance to immediately kick him out by the scruff of the neck, or even send him into solitary; but Artiom still could do nothing with himself and lay there without moving, buried under his entire term with black earth in which he was looking for treasure, buried by Eichmanis’s gestures and words, by Galina’s heat and the moist smell that came from her, the whispered mumbling of Vasilii Petrovich, the hanging lower lip of Passport, little Philip’s stump, the logs, the cross of Vladychka John, the poached pears from Osip’s parcel…
“Here we don’t have anything yet, it’s closed,” Osip lied nearby, almost above Artiom’s ears, and the caterpillar crawled away behind him; once again it became almost quiet, only the rabbits kept looking for something in the attic, found it, ate it and once again searched for it, moving as though not on paws, but on square wheels.
“Or was that Eichmanis?!” someone growled inside Artiom. “What if it was Eichmanis? He’ll come in and ask, ‘Who’s that? Artio-o-o-m! And what are you doing here?’”
Artiom hid his head in the sleeve of the sweater and died there. He had no more strength left to worry.
“Hey! What’s wrong with you?” Osip pestered him. “Are you going to begin your duties or not? It’s time to guard. Let’s go, I’ll warm up some tea. And I’ll teach you how to feed the piggies.”
Artiom got up, as though completely drunk with a head boiled from the unexpected and powerful sleep. Tripping over himself, he went after Osip.
He didn’t even ask if it was Eichmanis who came or someone else. He preferred to decide that he had imagined it.
“I will feed the guinea pigs with the rabbits,” said Artiom hoarsely. “And the rabbits, with guinea pigs.”
Osip was a man who remembered that decency and orderliness had the same root.17
In the kitchen, where the guinea pigs lived in their cages behind an ingenious wooden barrier, Osip hung a paper where he had written their names: Red, Gypsy, Blackie, Yellow, Daughter and Mommy.
“What, does he think I’m going to talk to them?” Artiom thought with dark sarcasm.
Still, Osip did show him where the teapot was, though he didn’t warm it up, in spite of his promises.
It turned out he had to feed the guinea pigs with oats, rutabagas and turnips. In a separate cage, there were another thirty white mice.
Artiom looked around to see if there was another paper with the names of the mice, or — God forbid! — he would mix them up and they would die from humiliation.
“I hope they don’t send you to solitary for each dead mouse,” thought Artiom in the same tone. “Or I’m going to ask to be transferred to the logs.”
“What are the logs, anyway?” he answered himself a little more seriously. “I could do them now.”
Without admitting it to himself, he was talking with Vasilii Petrovich, arguing with him about yesterday’s words.
Artiom didn’t really remember anything clearly — not the mosquitoes that ate human flesh, not Curly’s swearing, not the bestial labor, not the feeling of the slippery and unwieldy tree on his shoulder.
“… If only I could find something to eat with my tea. Here. There’s a carrot. It’s probably for the rabbits. The rabbits will go without their carrot today.”
The hot sour-cherry tea with carrots in an empty house in the middle of the forest, a few kilometers away from the IID, guards, and watchmen…
“… No, really, how can I manage it for them to forget me?” Artiom imagined again, looking now at the turnip.
In answer to his thoughts, someone knocked on the window.
It seemed that this was enough to scare a grown, strong, young man.
Artiom felt that his legs got cut out from underneath him, even though he sat on a chair.
“Who is that?” the thoughts hopped around like fleas in his head. “For me? I’m the guard — how I am supposed to guard? To die in defense of the guinea pigs? Maybe I shouldn’t answer at all? Who needs to come here in the evening? Or did Osip forget something? Or maybe St. Philip’s come here to preach to me? ‘Who drank from my well?’”
Someone knocked again.
Artiom put down his mug, got a knife from the table and went to the door.
“Who’s there?” he asked loudly.
“Open up,” said a woman’s voice very calmly. It was Galina. “Come on, quickly,” she said dully. “I can’t manage the key.”
Artiom quickly opened the door.
Galia was alone and whisked into the room lightly, without making a sound, as though she were some unlisted animal in this biological garden.
“I was waiting for them to leave,” she said, rubbing her cheeks, which were bitten by mosquitoes. She walked in the direction of the kitchen as though she knew the place. “They’re slow, like all scientists.”
She spoke to Artiom as though they were old friends. He remained silent, and inside him everything trembled again.
“I’m going to turn into jelly soon from all this freaking out.”
After entering the kitchen, Galina put her hand on the teapot and stood there for some time without turning around, as though she were looking at the animals but not quite seeing them.
“Did you know that I’d come?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Artiom, though he knew nothing of the sort and didn’t even dare to think about her.
“Bastard,” she said contentedly, turned around and kissed him on the mouth.
She left around an hour later… or a little later. Artiom wasn’t quite sure.
At first, getting dressed in the darkness, she commanded him with a firm voice, slightly mocking and demanding, as though she were a teenager.
“Now talk to me. I want you to talk.”
Artiom blinked and got confused — he no longer knew a single word.
Ten minutes before, a step before the now almost inevitable loss of consciousness, he had whispered, with a voice heavy from piercing ecstasy: “Galia…” and lightly bit her on the shoulder.
Now he didn’t even dare pronounce that name — who was he anyway? How dare he?
“No, first we have to feed you,” she said, without waiting for a single word from him. “Where did you drop my purse? Did I have a purse?”
“I didn’t see,” Artiom said quietly.
“Didn’t see… Well, go find it now,” she answered.
It lay right at the entrance. In the purse, there were tins of meat and — my God! — oranges! Four of them.
“I’ll eat one,” she said, cleaning the orange, “And you eat the rest. Have you eaten these before?”
“Where did they come from?” asked Artiom, not touching the yellow, strange fruit.
“They rolled in,” answered Galina seriously.
They were in the kitchen — Galia sat on the chair and Artiom stood.
She had let down her hair — it lay a bit lower than her shoulders, and as she talked, she sometimes blew on the falling hairs or fixed them with her hand, quickly looking up at Artiom.
“… They coo like pigeons,” she said, nodding at the guinea pigs, then gave Artiom an orange. “Eat. Do you know how?”
Artiom took the orange.
He stood barefoot — he wasn’t about to put on his swamp boots.
All the more so because they warmed up the iodine plant — evidently, the scientists required warmth to be able to work.
“What, you don’t have any other shoes?” she asked more with concern than ridicule. “Why are you always in those swamp boots…? And you take such a long time to take them off.”
Artiom shrugged. Then he quietly said, “No.”
She looked at him again, a bit longer than usual this time, and said, “Well then. I’m going to go. Guard.”
Artiom was about to go with her to the exit, but Galia stopped him.
“Sit here until I leave. Don’t… see me off. You can close up later.”
She slammed the door.
He didn’t turn off the light and sat in the kitchen for a long time.
The guinea pigs fell asleep.
Artiom ate one orange — it was delicious. But in his mouth, no less powerful than the orange, was the taste of that woman — her skin and sweat.
He had neither joy nor wonder — it was remarkably easy not to think. And if he entered into himself, trying to find at least some kind of feeling, some kind of thought, then it was like he was walking in an empty house, looking into every room and finding nothing other than a quiet draft.
It wasn’t a bad draft and it wasn’t a frightening emptiness, as though he had just moved someone for a time, or forever. But where?
He fell asleep a bit before morning. His sleep was like this — as though he had been performing some extraordinary and rare work all night through a terrible racket and flickering fires. The work required not only strength, but endurance, and also angry joy… maybe a sailor in the tropics? Something like that. In his dream, that tropical noise and flashes of fire and trilling of birds went on constantly, circling about and rising up into the heavens.
He woke up from the voices of the scientists. He hadn’t locked the door behind her… What a guard!
“Oranges!” someone was amazed. “The guard feeds himself with oranges!”
Artiom quickly came out of his little room. Osip was, it seems, coming to him — they almost knocked heads.
“My friends were asking if they could use the orange peel — we’re going to add them to our tea. I think it’ll turn out to be… unique.”
“Of course,” said Artiom quietly, trying to remember if anything else had accidentally been left.
By the morning, the warmth in the iodine plant diminished. Artiom felt chilly and his head ached slightly.
“Where did you get them?’ asked Osip.
“They rolled in,” Artiom answered in an echo.
In five minutes, he went back to his room to finish his sleep.
On the way to the monastery, he felt a little better — a breeze blew the brouhaha of his short sleep away, inspiring a seemingly impossible, and yet completely palpable carelessness.
The trees stood thoughtful — the summer had turned to autumn, after all.
“Autumn — that’s good,” thought Artiom.
The thought of Galia was sweet, bitter, sour — like nettles. It quietly clenched his jaw.
“Galia… that’s good too,” Artiom thought carefully, attentively watching to see how his consciousness would react at these words uttered silently within.
His consciousness pulsed.
“You were supposed to be digging for treasure. And when Eichmanis returns, they’ll bury you instead,” Artiom thought, almost cheerfully. “And no one will search for you… Except for Mama?”
These thoughts didn’t sadden him at all — if only for the reason that in this forest, in this solitude, it was very difficult to believe in them.
Suddenly, he realized that he was still carrying an orange in his hand. He had taken it from the kitchen.
He began to peel it with his teeth and even tried to chew the peel, but no, it’s not good, bitter. But the orange — yes, it’s magical, thank you, Galia.
From this second utterance of her name in his thoughts this morning, his head started spinning, and a desire to scream appeared…
“… My God, there’s solitary ahead, and there, they’ll truly — Vasilii Petrovich is right — they kill people there… But here, there’s this silence and I alone am free. How is it? Maybe I should go somewhere?”
Something rustled in the forest.
Then two soldiers came out to the road. They started to smoke, standing next to a huge black boulder, looking at Artiom from time to time.
When he was passing by, the soldiers had already forgotten about him and were speaking about something, cursing angrily, heavily and bitterly, like cheap tobacco.
Not far away, Artiom heard the striking of axes and someone swearing terribly. They were probably beating someone.
Artiom hurried on.
At the entrance to the monastery gates, he met Curly, who bulged his eyes at him — not very much, though — it seemed that he didn’t recognize him.
Artiom even touched his face, caressed himself on his shaved head — maybe something changed in him, making him completely different.
People were walking in the monastery courtyard, but he didn’t want to meet anyone and kept looking at his cobbled path, hurrying forward.
No one was in the abbot’s wing. Everyone was working except for Artiom…
He fell onto his bed, face down, as before stunned by everything that had happened, smiling into his mother’s pillow, invisible to anyone in the world.
In two minutes, or maybe only one, the door opened and he quickly looked up.
“What, it doesn’t lock?” she asked. “That’s right, you can’t. Let’s move your boots over here…”
She quickly moved the swamp boots to the doors with her little feet, and, taking off her skirt with difficulty as she walked, returned to Artiom’s bed.
She stood next to it, leaning against its edge with one knee. Galina was still wearing brown boots with heels. They had silver buckles.
It was all terribly seductive, so much so that he spasmed in his chest.
“Only quickly,” she said strictly. “Do you know how to do it quickly?”
“I don’t know,” answered Artiom, looking her up and down.
Breathing heavily, with widened eyes, painfully clasping the back of his head, she suddenly called him “Tiomka”, with her lips alone, somewhere into his temple. But he heard how his name pushed with her breathing against his skin…
It was as though when he had said “Galia” last night, unexpectedly for himself, he had said the first half of a password, and now she was uttering the second half.
