Then the investigators grew tired.
They took me away to the cell. I fell asleep.
I awoke from a squeak. The door opened, and three people came in: Revzin, a doctor, and some kind of lieutenant colonel. The doctor examined my swollen thighs, blue from blows to the hips and buttocks, nodded professionally, and said, “Everything’s fine.”
Revzin called two escorts. They grabbed me under the arms and dragged me along the corridor, then up the staircase — way up high, to that very same office. It was light there — rays of sun beat at the window, the crystal inkstand shone, the copper door handle reflected the eyes and buttons of Revzin. And on the wall, in a red frame, an unseen Lenin swirled.
A small, angry Fedotov came in the room with plaits. They again tied me to the bench. They took two whips and began to whip me simultaneously along my swelling thighs.
Two red serpents began to slither over me. They became orange. Then blindingly yellow. The yellow sun sang in my head.
“Tell us the truth! Tell! Tell! Tell us!”
But I’d already told them the truth.
What on earth did they want from me?
The amber-colored serpents wound themselves into a wedding ring. They liked being on my body.
Sweat poured into my eyes.
My heart flared in a violet rainbow: it could feel that my body was being destroyed.
And my heart helped my body: my brain turned itself off, and I fainted.
I awoke on the floor.
Nastya Vlodzimirskaya was hanging over me. They were holding her under her arms and by her hair, so her head wouldn’t slump down onto her chest. They’d done more than beat her. They’d torn her to shreds.
“Do you confirm it?” some fat major asked her, a man who loved cats, mashed potatoes, and gold watches.
From Nastya’s broken mouth a screech sounded. And something dripped on my head.
“There you go!” The major exchanged a joyfully malicious glance with Revzin.
“And you talk about sisters!” Fedotov said, kicking me with a new boot.
“We’re not a bunch of dumbbells sitting here, Korobova.” Revzin looked down on me. “You forgot that we’re professionals. We dig up everything.”
“They only spoke English at home,” the major told Fedotov confidentially. “Eye gow to sleap, mye swheat ledy!”
They jeered. And their waist belts squeaked.
I closed my eyes.
“Just what do you think you’re pretending?” Fedotov kicked me again.
I opened my eyes. The fat major and Nastya were gone.
“Now then, Korobova, here is your evidence.” Revzin brought me some papers covered with childish handwriting. “If you sign, you’ll go to the hospital and then to the camp. If you don’t sign — you’ll go to the other world.”
I closed my eyes and whispered, “The purpose of my life is to go to the other world. To Our World...Our Light...”
“Shut up, you bitch! Don’t pretend to be crazy!” Fedotov snarled. “Read it to her, Yegor Petrovich.”
Revzin mumbled: “I, Korobova Varvara Fedotovna, born in 1929, having established sexual relations with General Lieutenant Vlodzimirsky, L.E., was recruited by him in 1950 as a liaison between the military attaché of the American embassy, Irwin Pierce, and the former minister of the MGB, V.S. Abakumov. My first task was to meet with Pierce on March 8, 1950, at the boat station in Gorky Park, and to hand over plans to him — ”
“That’s not about me,” I interrupted.
“It’s about you! It’s about you, cunt!” Fedotov growled.
“Sign it Korobova, don’t play the fool!”
“I’m not Korobova. My true name is — Khram.”
I closed my eyes.
And the amber serpents again crawled over me.
I came to on a gynecological chair. There was a terrible aroma of smelling salts in the air.
“She’s a virgin,” came a voice from between my legs.
The doctor straightened up, began tearing off his rubber gloves. He was large and wore glasses. He was afraid of his mother, of dogs, and of doorbells at night. He loved to tickle his wife until she got hiccups. He loved crabs, billiards, and Stalin.
“So, what do we do now?” muttered Fedotov just above my ear.
“I don’t know.” The doctor disappeared.
“I didn’t ask you!” Fedotov snapped back angrily.
“Who then? Yourself?” The doctor laughed, clattering his instruments.
A needle pierced my shoulder. I shifted my eyes: the nurse was giving me a shot.
My spread legs were bluish-yellow in color. My abrasions were bleeding.
My eyes filled with moisture. And I felt like sleeping.
“Well, so?” The doctor let out a big yawn.
“To the hospital.” Fedotov nodded thoughtfully.
I lay in the prison hospital for a week.
There were six other women in the ward. Two had been tortured, four had pneumonia. They talked constantly among themselves about their relatives, food, and medicine.
I was treated: a perfumed ointment was rubbed into my legs and buttocks.
The doctors and nurses said almost nothing to the prisoners.
I looked out the window and at the women. I knew everything about every one. They weren’t interesting to me.
I remembered OUR PEOPLE.
And their HEARTS.
When I got better, they took me back to interrogation.
The office was the same, but the investigator was new. Sheredenko, Ivan Samsonovich. A slim, well-built thirty-five-year-old with a handsome face. More than anything on earth he feared dreaming of a white tower and dying at work from a heart attack. He loved hunting, fried eggs with lard, and his daughter, Annushka.
“Varvara Fedotovna, your former investigators were scoundrels. They have already been arrested,” he informed me.
“That’s not true,” I answered. “Fedotov is having lunch right now in the Lubianka cafeteria, and Revzin’s walking down the street.”
He looked at me attentively.
“Varvara Fedotovna, let’s talk as Chekhist to Chekhist.”
“I never was a Chekhist. I simply wore your uniform.”
“Don’t be absurd. You worked with Lieutenant Colonel Korobov...”
“I worked not with him but with his heart. Now it knows all 23 words.”
“You went on a business trip on the order of the minister of state security, and you visited Camp No. 312/500, where they extract — ”
“The Ice sent to us from Space, to awake the living.”
“The director of the camp, Major Semichastnykh, was arrested and gave evidence against Colonel Ivanov, you, and your husband. The three of you beat false testimony out of Lieutenant Voloshin in order to hide the true activities of Abakumov and Vlodzimirsky. This was necessary in order to — ”
“So that the camp would continue to extract the Divine Ice, which thousands of our brothers and sisters all over the world await. Thousands of Ice hammers will be manufactured from this Ice, they will strike thousands of breasts, thousands of hearts will awaken and speak. And when there are 23,000 of us, our hearts will pronounce the twenty-three heart words 23 times and we will be transformed into Eternal and Primordial Rays of the Light. And your dead world will disintegrate. NOTHING AT ALL will be left of it.”
He looked at me carefully. Then he pushed a button. An escort entered.
“Take her away,” said Investigator Sheredenko.
I was examined by a psychiatrist — a small, round man, with a meaty nose and feminine hands. He was afraid of many things: children, cats, conversations about politics, icicles, his bosses, even old hats, which “stubbornly hint at something.” The only things he truly loved were playing backgammon, sleeping, and writing denunciations.
In his soft, female voice he asked me to hold my hands out in front of me, to look at his little hammer, count to twenty, answer a bunch of silly questions. Then he tapped his little hammer on my knees and picked up the receiver of a black telephone.
“Comrade Sheredenko, this is Yurevich. She’s absolutely healthy.”
After this, Sheredenko spoke with me differently.
“Korobova, two questions: Why didn’t you and your husband have sexual relations? And what were you and your husband doing so often at General Vlodzimirsky’s dacha?”
“Adr and I didn’t need sexual relations. We had heart relations. At Kha’s dacha we would engage in conversations of the heart.”
“Enough playing the madwoman!” he said, slapping his palm on the table. “When did Vlodzimirsky recruit you and your husband? What were you supposed to do?”
“To awaken brothers and sisters.”
“Awaken?” he asked nastily. “I see, you don’t want to do this the good way. All right then. We’ll awaken you, too.”
He picked up the telephone receiver.
“Savelev, bring the fruits and vegetables.”
Escort guards appeared. I was taken out into the courtyard. Sheredenko walked after me.
Cars stood in the courtyard, and the sun warmed us.
I was taken to a dark green van with a sign reading
FRESH FRUITS AND VEGETABLES
. The escorts and I sat in the back of the van; Sheredenko sat in the front seat with the driver. The van took off. Inside it was dark; light penetrated only through a few cracks.
We drove for a short time, then stopped. The doors opened and the guards took me out. They immediately led me downstairs into a cellar. Sheredenko followed.
We arrived at a metal door with a peephole; the guard knocked on it. The door opened. It smelled of cold. We were met by a mustached overseer wearing a floor-length sheepskin coat. He turned and walked off. We followed him. He opened yet another door. I was pushed into a small, square, empty room. The door slammed shut, the lock clanked. Sheredenko said through the door: “If you get smarter, give us a knock.”
The cell was lit by a dim lightbulb. One of the walls of the cell was metallic. A coating of hoarfrost covered it in white.
I sat down in a corner.
In the metallic wall something hummed faintly. Barely audible, it gurgled.
I suddenly realized: a refrigerator.
I closed my eyes.
The cold grew slowly. I didn’t resist it.
If the red serpents of my beating had crawled over the surface of my body, the cold made its way inside. It took away my body in parts: the legs, shoulder, back. The last to yield were my hands and fingertips.
All that remained was my heart. It beat more slowly.
I felt that it was the last bastion.
I really wanted to fall into a deep, long, white dream. But something was in the way. Something was bothering me. I couldn’t go to sleep. And so I entered a waking reverie. My heart-sight became even sharper. I saw the corridors of the cellar with its guards. Another eight people were sitting in other refrigerators. They were in bad shape because they resisted the cold. Two of them wailed incessantly. Three others danced around on their last legs. The rest simply lay on the floor in an embryonic position.
Time ceased to exist.
There was only the cold. Around my heart.
Sometimes the door opened. And the mustached guard asked me something. I opened my eyes, looked at him. And closed them again.
One time he put a cup of boiling water next to me. He placed a piece of bread nearby. Steam rose from the cup. Then he stopped coming.
The prisoners in the cells changed: meat machines couldn’t withstand the cold. They admitted to everything the investigator demanded from them. They were carried out of the cells like frozen chickens.
New ones were herded into the refrigerators. They jumped up and down and wailed.
My heart beat evenly. It existed. On its own. But in order to keep from stopping, it needed work.
And I helped it work.
I constantly surveyed the environs with my heart: I saw the frost, the iron wall, the hallway, the cells, the walls, the rats on the garbage heap, the trolleys, the meat machines going to and from work, the pickpocket stealing an old lady’s wallet, a drunk falling on the sidewalk, troublemakers with guitars in doorways, a fire at a factory that manufactured irons, a meeting of the Party committee of the automobile-highway institute, sexual acts in a woman’s dormitory, a dog run over by a tram, newlyweds leaving the marriage office, a line for noodles, a soccer game, young people strolling in the park, a surgeon sewing up warm skin, the robbery of a food kiosk, a flock of doves, a conductor chewing a sandwich of smoked sausage, invalids at the train station, the streets, the iron wall, the frost.
The city surrounded me on all sides.
The city of meat machines.
And in this dead mixture, like red embers, burn the hearts of OUR PEOPLE.
Kha.
Adr.
Shro.
Zu.
Mir.
Pa.
Umi.
All of those who remained in Moscow.
I saw them. And spoke with them. Of the Kingdom of Light.
Sheredenko came in.
He talked and shouted. He stamped his heels on the frozen floor. He shook some papers. Blew his nose. I looked at his dead heart. It worked like a pump. It pumped dead blood. Which moved the dead body of Investigator Sheredenko.
I closed my eyes. He disappeared.
Then I saw OUR PEOPLE again. Their hearts shone. And they swam around me. There were more and more of them. I reached out to more and more new ones, to ones that were far, far away. And finally, I saw the hearts of ALL OUR PEOPLE on this gloomy planet. My square refrigerator glided in space. Around it, their hearts swam like constellations. There were 459 in all. So few! Nevertheless, they shone for me and spoke to me in OUR language.
And I was happy.
My cheeks were painfully cauterized.
I woke up. I was in a hospital ward. The ceiling had six lights. A nurse was putting something on my face. A towel dipped in warm water. The smell of alcohol. The trace of a shot in the crook of my elbow.
Some colonel came in quietly. The nurse and the towel disappeared.
A chair squeaked. And boots.
“How do you feel?”
I closed my eyes. Seeing the world with my heart was so much more pleasant to me.
“Can you talk?”
“About what?” I said with great difficulty. “About the fact that you are afraid of drowning? You almost drowned twice, isn’t that so?”
“How do you know?” he smiled awkwardly.