The Monastery, page 40
They had named each other — and only after this did they learn how to talk a little bit. Or at least Artiom did.
She stood at the door, looking at him with drunk eyes.
“Do you have any water?” she asked.
“No… there, in the carafe.”
“Give me some.”
Artiom did.
“Br-r-r,” she grimaced comically and gave him the carafe back.
“They sometimes do inspections,” said Artiom, nodding at the door.
“So what?” she asked. “Here I make the inspection, checked…” and she laughed quietly, very appealingly.
It turned out that Artiom had not yet heard how she laughed. He quietly smiled, trying to sketch out the line of her lips with his own crude, awkward lips.
“Are you worried for me or for yourself?” she asked, becoming severe again.
“For you,” he answered firmly, choosing the informal you.
“What about for yourself?”
Artiom shrugged without looking away from her and received a piercing pleasure from the fact that he could look directly into her eyes.
“Can you imagine what he is capable of doing to me?” he asked, smiling, though the smile was more one of anticipation.
“He’s going to kill you,” answered Galia. There was something childish in her voice, like a child saying that Papa is coming to punish everybody.
Artiom nodded.
Galia left.
“Good!” someone barked in the corridor.
Artiom almost jumped up from that cry.
For a moment he sat there, then, as soon as her severe heels quieted down, he lay down again.
He lay there with frenzied a heartbeat. His mouth was dry, his eyes were dry — and it was as though a dry draft had blown through his head.
“… What if they really do execute me because of her?” he thought.
“But for what?”
“What do you mean for what? ‘Cohabitation with inmates from the female barracks’ is punished by solitary, but here…”
“What about here? There’s nothing there about female employees of the IID.”
“… Uh-huh. You’re not laughing? Idiot.”
Artiom tried not to think of the head of the camp. Even the name “Eichmanis” sounded like the snap of a pair of scissors as they cut off someone’s head.
Having lain there another minute, he felt that he was covered with sweat — it was slight, almost feverish.
“No-no-no,” he calmed himself down. “Everything will be otherwise. She won’t want me to be here anymore and she’ll arrange a pardon from me. She’s cut down my time by half or even more... and I’ll go home.”
Then he thought about her again. “Has she gone insane? Has she gone totally insane?”
The word “phantasmagoria” surfaced — as though someone had said it recently. But who?
Vasilii Petrovich, that’s who.
Artiom jumped. Vasilii Petrovich had brought berries yesterday, and he hadn’t finished them. Where were they? Or had he finished them? Or maybe he had left them here?
On the table near to Osip’s bed, there was an empty bag — that’s who finished it.
“Oh, so that’s how it is,” said Artiom completely forgetting that he had enjoyed Osip’s reserve lard and sweet and sour cherries.
He pulled out the chest with the produce — there were only cereals and poached pears left. The rest Osip had probably taken to work with him, Artiom decided.
He didn’t really want any pears. He wanted lard again or at the very least some cheese, but in any case, some animal product, something connected to flesh, blood and milk.
“But I had some money!” Artiom remembered, grabbing his mother’s pillow, where he had hidden it. He felt with his fingers: yes, it was still there.
“I’ll go to the store right now… buy myself everything for… how much do I have there? Some sausage, oh… do I have enough for sausage?”
He had to put on footwear to leave. Again those damn boots.
“What if Eichmanis orders me to return the uniform? He probably will. Let’s say that I have a spare set of shirt and pants. But I only have felt boots to put on my feet. I’ll have to buy something. Maybe I shouldn’t waste it on sausage? Or else I’ll be barefoot, prowling around like a leopard. I’m not going to put on the felt boots, after all… But no, I really want some sausage… I’m going to get some sausage, for sure… But what about Passport? Gills? Shaferbekov? They promised to make sausage out of me… Damn it, damn it all. I need some sausage right now… By the way, do I get a ration now or not? Whom should I ask?”
Artiom hurried down, his legs barely bending in the boots, and, no sooner had he left his building to go outside than he met Mitya Schelkachov.
He gasped from pleased surprise and immediately fixed his eyes on him: well, what news have you brought?
“Thank God!” exclaimed Mitya, very pleased. “Your foreman wasn’t allowing me to come to you, but he didn’t want to come get you either. I’ve brought you some things. They brought us the uniforms, and… here it is, your bag. What happened to you? We haven’t figured it out yet.”
“It’s not important, not important,” Artiom said. “How is… Fiodor Ivanovich... Eichmanis… did he… say anything about me?”
“Eichmanis!” Schelkachov repeated contentedly. “There’s been no more Eichmanis at all. After he sent you off, he hasn’t come back. They say he’s gone to Kemi.”
“And what have you been doing?”
“Nothing,” Schelkachov laughed. “We’ve been listening to Gorshkov’s swearing. They swear so curiously here that I decided to put together a dictionary…”
Taking up his parcel and looking at Mitya — as though his face would hold the confirmation of everything that he had just said — Artiom felt as though he were a child who woke up at dawn on new year’s morning, running with bare feet to the tree, and there, a wooden piebald horse — huge, half the size of a real horse and a whole army of wooden soldiers from three armies, not counting the guerillas, three bottles of lemonade, a winding clock, a saber and something else buried in the tinsel — it’s scary to even go there, his heart might burst from it.
“Mitya,” said Artiom with a suppressed voice. “Wait a moment for me. I’m going to take off these… boots. I’ll change and let’s go to the retail store. I unbearably want to buy you something.
“Enough,” said Schelkachov. “Not worth it.”
“Shut up,” commanded Artiom and ran back.
How wonderful it was in his own shoes, in his own shirt. He felt as though protected with his own body’s warmth, which had heated his clothing before and in a miraculous way had not escaped.
There was no sausage. They ran out the previous evening. So they bought some cheese and Artiom said “… for everything!” and on the way back, paying no one any heed, they began to eat it.
Two leopards immediately ran up. Artiom broke them off a piece — he didn’t mind, but he commanded them: “Don’t come up anymore, or I’ll kick you.”
“And I’ll spit in your face!” answered the leopard, and his mouth was already full of cheese.
Artiom laughed, nudged Mitya — ha-ha, that guy’s funny — but he only moderately smiled, evidently, not all that amused.
In the courtyard bustle, Bear and Black easily made Artiom out. They also got a piece and some caresses. Only the gulls bothered them, frantically and incessantly demanding their own.
The cheese was magnificent, soft, sour, and milky — you could cry from it.
“How are our Saracens doing?” asked Artiom. Schelkachov thought for a minute, then laughed with pleasuring, understanding that he meant Kabir-shah and Kurez-shah.
Behind Artiom, someone slapped him on the shoulder.
“The gangsters…” his heart jerked.
But it was Boris Lukianovich.
“Artiom!” They hugged with sincere pleasure. “Where are you now? How are you? Has the head of the camp released you? It’s a bit difficult for me without you. There’s hardly anyone I can rely on here.”
“Oh, I’m well, yes,” Artiom smiled from ear to ear. “Want some cheese…? They’ve moved me to a new job, but I’ll ask if I can be returned to you,” he answered, though he knew he was lying — with all his heart, but still lying — after all, what damn Spartakiade when he had such a… what? Job? Life? Song?
When he was living in such a phantasmagoria.
“Yes, yes, do ask,” said Boris Lukianovich. “Considering that they’ve continued to issue a ration for you all these days and I haven’t even received a document confirming your transfer. So you can take that which belongs to you. Not… cheese. Though that’s good too, of course, thank you. You’ll take your dry ration tomorrow, yes?”
Artiom closed his eyes, opened them, grabbed his ear and walked like that for a few steps.
“No. I’m not sleeping.”
“What did you call me?”
“A con woman.”
“I like that. It sounds like a candy in the mouth, rolling around in the teeth… Call me something else.”
“Ladette.”
“What’s that?
“Like a lad. Except female.”
“Ladette… ladette. That’s good too… so why didn’t you do it with the prostitute? You gave her a ruble. And didn’t do anything. Idiot.”
Artiom was silent for a time, drawing an invisible design on the wall. They were lying in darkness in his guard room.
I gave her one, but spent three, he remembered.
“Just didn’t,” he said.
“What a proud man,” she quietly laughed. “And now your wait is over?”
For a moment, Artiom stopped drawing on the wall — what if she suddenly gets angry? His other hand lay on top of hers, not grasping it, not trying to intertwine fingers, just — above. These hands were the only things that were touching right now.
Artiom tried to sense through his hand — is she angry or just joking? Is she just provoking him? Or is she making herself angry on purpose?
Just in case, he didn’t answer.
“In that case, go get me some tea,” she commanded.
Artiom threw his nonexistent drawings off the walls and went into the kitchen.
It was a strange thing — when he left her for a moment, he immediately lost any faith in the reality of what was happening, even more so in her human and — how insane to say it! — feminine emotions.
“Osip made a thermos. Himself,” he reported, quickly returning. “Now we’ll always have hot water.”
Even though he had only left her for two minutes, he had already managed to become afraid — what’s her mood now? Did it come apart at the seams? Did it transform into something impossible and horrid? Artiom always felt that the chance of that happening was great. Blink, and the world around him would become unrecognizable.
With his voice, uttering the words into the darkness of the room, it was as though Artiom tested whether or not there was life there, and if there was — what sort of life was it? Warm, mammalian? Or cold, contentious, consuming people whole?
In the same way, people search with a trembling lantern or hissing torch underground, every minute fearing to see something that would make their hair turn white for all time.
“Troianskii?” She asked from the darkness.
Artiom at first didn’t understand what she was on about.
“Oh, yes. Osip. Troianskii.”
A few hours before, Artiom, having argued with that same Osip, pulled a couch from the scientists’ smoking lounge to his own room.
“Where are my friends going to smoke when it gets cold?” Troianskii asked angrily and a little bit into his nose.
“Standing! You have to smoke standing!” Artiom answered quietly, moving the couch. No one helped him; the scientists in general tolerated his presence less and less.
Neither had Osip offered Artiom to use the thermos, but he hadn’t asked.
Instead of a table for the tea, Artiom, once again leaving the room, brought back a bedside table on which the scientists jotted down the weights of the guinea pigs and other observations concerning their rich lives.
When he returned the second time, Galia was sitting completely dressed, only with her hair down, and she was touching the self-same couch with her hand.
“You don’t have any lice, do you?”
“Are they necessary?” Artiom asked with a smile.
She didn’t laugh.
“I brought some pie with a jam filling. Let’s eat. I haven’t eaten anything all day. Turn on the light! Only the window… cover it with something.”
Artiom did everything she commanded.
He sat near the table on his knees. He poured himself and her a cup.
By that time, she had reached for her purse.
The purse wasn’t quite feminine — it was leather, military, with a strap, only it wasn’t very large and it was almost new. However, inside it had everything a woman needed — powder, lipstick, perfume — Artiom noticed when she opened it and began, in her womanly way, to rummage for something quickly and with slight irritation — where is it?
It seems she was looking for her brush, but she didn’t find it. However, she did find something else.
“Look at what notes I have here,” she said.
“To whom?” asked Artiom, blowing on his tea, even though it wasn’t all that hot.
“To no one, really. The inmates write them. We confiscated them. Listen. ‘I’m going to go to the nurse’s station, and you come there. Without you, I’m melting like a candy. I’ll remain your faithful lover until the grave.’ Eh? There’s love for you. Listen to this one too.” She chose some from her purse, there were many in there, and Artiom didn’t understand why she carried them around with her. ‘That Gala that you know wants to get to know you.’ Understand? Gala! Fa-mous!” It’s as though she were waiting for him to laugh.
“Yes,” Artiom answered very seriously.
She looked at him for a second and not finding something in his face, breathed out, “Fine…” And put away the notes. “… What shall we have with our tea? It smells of herbs.”
“I added pine leaves into it,” said Artiom, looking at her nervously. Something was going on and it had to be stopped.
“Really?” she asked and looked into the cup. “Interesting… I don’t want that. I’m going to go.”
She got up suddenly, grabbed her purse and the purse opened up, dropping a single note. Galia didn’t notice it, walking around the seated Artiom and rushed towards the exit.
He got up too, walked after her, sorrowfully understanding that this is it. The end was coming and what would happen after, no one could explain to him. Nothing good, probably would follow.
She would leave right now and goodbye, incredible good fortune.
And if he would try, for example, to kiss her on the cheek in parting, then something completely awful would happen.
But if he didn’t come out to accompany her, it would be even worse.
Basically, there was not much of a choice, and it was bad either way.
“The Gala that you know,” he explained quietly. “I understood it like this: she who’s made of spring.”18
She stopped, holding the door frame, and once more looked back at him.
It was dark in the threshold, and Artiom couldn’t see her eyes.
Then he added, guessing, “You.”
It was all painful and impossible, holding on by some kind of ancient, invisible threads that, if you breathed in, would rip apart… But by some miracle, it continued.
He walked towards her, and she had nowhere to go — behind her was the door, and he was before her.
Then they drifted somewhere into the kitchen, frightening the guinea pigs. The animals all got scared, the people dropped the teapot, the thermos and everything was covered in boiling water… until they found themselves a space in some new corner, on an old armchair, biting each other all over and thus made peace.
Artiom didn’t come back to himself immediately. His mind was cloudy and kept disappearing — now Artiom, almost already without a mind, thoughtless, felt himself floating for some reason, jerking, jerking, jerking — down underneath he had a fish, but it had caught him, or he had caught it, it wasn’t clear anymore, and at any moment, he would pull that fish out into the wide world and it’s all wet, golden, fantastic, hungry — or, on the contrary, it would pull him down to the bottom, floating once again and he would finally choke. This feeling of indeterminacy kept going and going and that, devil take it, fish kept biting, the circles in the water kept getting more and more rough, and the water simultaneously turned thicker, like molten metal, and you can’t survive in that water, in that water you die forever, yes, that’s for sure, yes, yes…
Then suddenly someone turned the entire river upside down, together with the sun reflected in it, or the stars, or the fish, and everything flew from above, as from a trough — the sun, the fish, the stars.
She had tanned hands, with downy hair. Her breasts and… another part of her body were blindingly white like ice cream…
“I want your tea. With trees,” she said hoarsely. She had screamed herself out. And she couldn’t get up yet; he had to do that first.
He got up, left, and for the first time felt much more confident that he would return and now everything would be well. Now it couldn’t end badly. At least, not immediately.
The thermos, thank goodness, didn’t break.
“What about the pie?” she cried from the room, where, judging by her voice, she was dressing. “You forgot the pie. Get the pie!”
They drank the tea, and Galia said, “Ask me, ‘why me?’ I have to explain myself.”
“I have no right to address you without permission,” Artiom answered.
She laughed quietly and warmly.
She had her fill of laughter and said, “You struck Sorokin. I knew that they would put you in solitary and kill you soon after. You were walking towards IID — all young and sweaty — and I even sensed your smell; though how that’s possible, from the third floor… And that was it. Everything collapsed.”
