The Librarian (34 page)

“Right, let's go, Alyoshka, let's go…” said Gorn, hurrying me along. “We'll get you quarters for the night. You're probably hungry. You can get something to eat at the same time…”

In the corridor we ran into fat, breathless Klava.

“Polinochka… Vasilyevna,” she babbled, stifling as she breathed. “The room for our… e-e-er… respected guest…”—the fat woman bowed to me—“…is ready… All first-rate… They put in the couch, and a really fancy desk, a chair and a lamp…”

“Thank you, Klava,” said Gorn. “Get over to the kitchen… to Ankudinova… Arrange for some supper…”

“Aye, aye,” said Klava, raising her palm to her curls in a military-style salute, and dashed off down the corridor at top speed. Near the central stairway she turned a corner and disappeared from view.

“Remember, Alyoshka,” Gorn told me, jabbing her finger at one door after another. “Administration, accounts… dental surgery and physiotherapy room… massage and dressings… after that, the linen room… the housekeeper's room… cloakroom… utility room… The two upper floors are all wards…”

From the main stairway and the alabaster banisters a more modest stairway led downward. We walked down it into an echoing basement.

“Here are the storerooms… The kitchen.” Gorn drew air in through her nose and wrinkled up her face squeamishly. “It stinks like a cheap public canteen…”

The air in the basement was permeated with a warm onion stench. From behind the tiled wall I could hear the battlefield clatter of kitchenware and the cooks' owlish laughter.

“It's just that they had
rassolnik
for lunch,” Masha put in. “The smell hasn't worn off yet.”

“It's just that they boil up slops for lunch,” said Gorn, mimicking her. “What sort of people are they?… They've grown idle in just three weeks… What's the point in trying? The old women are all gaga… They'll eat it anyway… Ankudinova's lost all sense of shame. I'll have her sacked and out the door before she knows what's happening!”

“Polina Vasilyevna, you shouldn't say that,” Masha boomed in her deep voice. “The
rassolnik
was delicious. I tried it. And the potato cakes were tasty too.”

“And now she has an intercessor to plead for her,” Gorn carried on ranting. “The idle gossips are working hand in glove… They're as thick as thieves… And Klava too… Where the hell has she got to?”

I sensed that Gorn's grousing was contrived. She was clearly nervous, but I couldn't tell why. I suddenly felt terribly uneasy, and an invisible, icy hand ruffled up the hair on the nape of my neck, leaving it standing on end.

“Where are we going, Polina Vasilyevna?” I asked with affected indifference.

“To the bunker.”

The basement ended in a broad ramp that ran down to a depth of several storeys.

“It used to be a bomb shelter,” Gorn explained to me as we walked. “Then the Books were kept there… Now it's your personal study…”

We wound our way through concrete catacombs for about another minute until the path ended abruptly at an impressive metal door with a large wheel for opening and closing it, like in a submarine; it looked like the armoured entrance to a bank safe.

“Hard a-starboard,” said Gorn, spinning the wheel. The unlocking mechanism clanged and the old woman pushed against the heavy door. The slab of steel slowly drifted inward. Gorn went in first and switched on the light. “Come in, Alexei, make yourself at home.”

The bunker turned out to be a normal living room, not musty, and quite cosy to look at—an impression that was greatly assisted by the decorative windows framed with dark velvet curtains. Even the desk and couch that Klava had promised were there, and also the chair, in a white slip cover. The pipe of a ventilation shaft or rubbish chute protruded from the wall.

I immediately had the feeling that I'd seen this interior before, only I couldn't remember where—perhaps it was in a dream.

“They've fitted it out well… Good for them,” said Gorn, praising the bunker. “A luxury suite. In an Intourist hotel.” She patted the wall proudly. “Three metres thick, no aerial bomb could ever
penetrate it. The safest place in the Home. You'll live here for now… Until the initiation. No one will bother you. Just look at those bolts.”

I looked round.

“And what are the windows here for?”

“To make it beautiful,” said Klava, who had come up behind me. She was holding a tray with plates on it. Leningrad
rassolnik
, potato cakes with meat stuffing, sliced. Stewed-pear water.
Bon appétit
…”

“Thank you.”

“You don't like it here?” the fat woman asked, genuinely disappointed. “A bit gloomy, right?”

“It's bad that there isn't a toilet or a washbasin…”

“You can't put in plumbing in a day,” Klava sighed. “It's a lot of trouble. The lavatory's close by. Just a short walk down the corridor…”

“Don't be awkward, Alyoshka,” Gorn intervened. “I'm sure you can run to the toilet without spattering the whole place.”

“Polina Vasilyevna, you warned me yourself not to go out anywhere.”

“That's true, I did. So don't hang about. Once you've relieved yourself, it's straight back… To the bunker.”

“You can have a bedpan for the nights,” Klava suggested. “I'll just bring one.”

“And what about getting washed?”

“Masha will take you… to the shower unit tomorrow. She's personally… responsible for you…” Gorn gave her orderly a severe glance. “Answerable with her head, her ovaries and all her other innards…”

Masha and Klava laughed.

“Don't be sad, Alyosha…” Gorn said encouragingly. “The guard is only a temporary measure. Once you're a boss… you can wander about wherever you like…”

F
OR THE NEXT
three days not very much happened. I spent them locked away, only leaving the bunker in order to relieve myself. I was regularly provided with food and everything I needed by Masha, who was sometimes replaced by Klava. Gorn was busy with some business or other connected with my initiation. Perhaps she was preparing the ground with the old women who had awoken from their dementia.

I slept for long periods—that was the effect of the fatigue that had accumulated over recent weeks and, in addition, the bunker, with no natural lighting, encouraged lengthy sleep. For the rest of the time I studied the Chronicle. For the most part it was written in the dry style of minutes. Events and names were listed in a monotonous fashion: who found what Book, where and when and then set up a library or a reading room and when they were killed or, on the contrary, eliminated a rival. If the author doubted the authenticity of an event, then various sources with versions of the disputed episode were cited. In places there were tables and even maps on which arrows indicated the routes followed on foot by those long-forgotten distributors of Books, the wandering apostles. At the end of each chapter there were numerous notes, annotations, appendices and commentaries.

The Chronicle of the Home did not fit into this general style, betraying the author’s emotional partiality. The text was thick with graphic metaphors, often breaking into frank adulation of Gorn. At times it gave the impression that it wasn’t the pharmacist
Yelizaveta Makarovna Mokhova who was the real leader, but Gorn. And in all likelihood that is the way it was. At the very dawn of the Mokhova clan’s expansion, Gorn sidelined her young boss, giving her the outwardly striking role of a sacred leader. The true power was focused in the hands of Gorn and several dozen old women. I had already realized that under the very best scenario the role prepared for me was the similarly formal role of “grandson”. I didn’t know what Gorn needed this for. At that time I wasn’t concerned with such global questions. I read the description of the ritual of adoption with intense revulsion—I didn’t want Gorn to think up some disgusting, unhygienic procedure of anointment that I would have to go through. Knowing Gorn, she could easily extract Mokhova’s body from the grave for theatrical effect and stage the mystery of my birth for several hundred women. I told myself that I would have a word with Gorn and ask her to keep the ritual of initiation as simple as possible.

Thanks to the Chronicle, by the end of the third day I was fairly well versed in the history of the Gromov world. Recalling the sycophantic recommendations of Dale Carnegie, I learned off the names of all the “mums” who were still alive: Aksak, Nazarova, Sushko, Reznikova, Voloshina, Suprun, Fertishina, Kashmanova, Kharitonova, Guseva, Kolycheva, Temtseva, Tsekhanskaya, Sinelnik.

In the evening Masha came for me. She usually behaved in a relaxed—I would even say flirtatious—manner, as far as that was possible for a tough old woman with huge tattooed, mannish hands that she shyly hid in her sleeves, like in a muff. But this time Masha was extremely serious, with no clowning about.

“The elders want to see you,” Masha informed me quietly and significantly.

“What did Polina Vasilyevna say it was?” I asked keenly. “The initiation?”

“Nah… The viewing. They’re going to get to know you. They’re celebrating the return in the canteen. Polina Vasilyevna said
for you to get you dressed up for the occasion. So that you look presentable…”

Masha took me to a storeroom full of things left over from when the male half of the Home was exterminated. There were hundreds of suits hanging on crossbeams, looking like emaciated hanged men. Most of them were old-fashioned and decrepit.

“What size are you?” Masha asked, arming herself with a long stick with a hook on the end.

“Fifty-six…”

“Not an old man’s size…” Masha scurried about between the rows of clothes, hooking everything that caught her eye and then laying it out in front of me. “Don’t you worry. These aren’t cast-offs. They were saving these for when they died, for the coffin. It’s all clean, never even worn.”

I rejected the shirts out of hand because of their proverbial closeness to the body and limited myself to a dark-blue sweater. Masha hunted out two good quality suits for me: the jacket from the black suit fitted me, and so did the trousers from the grey one. Then we set off for the viewing.

I remember how agitated I was as I walked up the broad stairway, leaning with my hand on the cool white convex surface of the banister. While still on the steps I heard a piano accordion playing—the runs were too shrill for a button accordion. A guitar jangled and I heard indistinct choral singing, mingling with trills of laughter in the background.

“They’re cutting loose,” Masha said approvingly. Nonetheless we walked straight past the canteen, which was ringing with voices and music. Masha opened the next door.

“This is the serving room,” she explained. “Polina Vasilyevna’s instructions. She wants to give the others a surprise. I’ll go and tell her in secret that I’ve brought you.”

The din of the celebrations was on my left, beyond a thin, impalpable partition with a broad square window loosely covered
by a zinc shutter. Something started jangling in a cupboard built onto the wall.

“Oh, Ankudinova’s sent the dessert,” Masha said. She opened the doors, took out four oven trays and put them on the table. The room was filled with the pleasant smell of something baked with apples.

“You wait a few minutes. I’ll soon be back,” Masha promised, and ran off.

I pressed my eye to the crack between the shutter and the serving window.

The canteen was long and narrow, like a railway carriage. It had been illuminated with strings of little lights—the tiny glow-worms were scattered thickly across the ceiling and the walls, glittering like deep-ocean plankton. Black silhouettes moved about in front of my eyes, clinking bottles and erupting into explosive peals of jackal-like laughter. Somewhere very close to me a knife scraped lingeringly across a plate, and this porcelain screech set my teeth on edge. The merry-making was taking place between tables that were set out in a horseshoe. I saw fat Klava holding an accordion on her knees. She was playing ‘The Blue Scarf’, and half a dozen old women were weaving a cautious reel round some chairs. Polina Vasilyevna Gorn was sitting at the head of the horseshoe table, surrounded by her broad-shouldered retinue. She had her chin propped on her hand and was frowning slightly at the insistent noise as she listened carefully to Reznikova.

Before I could guess what the fun was all about, Klava suddenly broke off the tune, squeezing the bellows of the accordion shut. The old women squealed and made a dash for the chairs. One of them didn’t get a seat and she jostled helplessly for a while and then retreated with a shrug.

“Guseva’s out! Let’s hear about Guseva!” the more agile old women trilled gleefully, stamping their feet. Their resemblance to little girls frolicking about during the break at school was comical, and they even called each other by their surnames.

“What shall I read about this victim?” Klava asked the group in a loud voice.

Guseva threatened her companions.

“If you take it out of week three, I’ll never forgive you…”

The victorious women consulted and announced: “Day eight!”

Klava picked up a tall stack of papers, found the sheet she needed, cleared her throat and read out:

“A letter from Guseva to the elder Maksakova… ‘Zhenechka send me a comb please please I really need a comb because Tsekhanskaya took my comb and lost it and now I haven’t got a comb and they didn’t give me a new comb so I really need a comb now what else can I write to you I’m fine Polya has gone away don’t send any reports but please please send a comb now what else can I write to you come and visit don’t forget and there’s nothing else to write greetings to Vera Yuryevna and do please send me a comb…’”

Guseva dragged the superfluous chair off to one side. Klava started playing ‘On the Hills of Manchuria’ and the reel round the remaining chairs started up again. Klava deliberately played for a long time, teasing them, so that the old women and the spectators were soon exhausted by the tension. Someone even shouted out: “Stop mocking us, Klavka!” Then the accordion suddenly fell silent and the old women dashed for the chairs. Kashmanova was out and she was sentenced to a stenographic report of her fifteenth day of dementia.

Kashmanova gasped resentfully and threw her hands up in the air.

Guseva, who was out just before her, started reading with a gloating note in her voice.

“Uses too much lipstick, mascara, rouge and powder. She has plucked her eyebrows. Always carries a bottle of nail varnish around and constantly paints her nails. Wears beads, brooches and clip-on earrings. Flirts with an imaginary admirer and takes her clothes off. Takes the stenographer and nurses for her rivals and at such moments becomes aggressive. Sexually uninhibited. Constantly talks about sexual relations and masturbates openly. Wants to go
to the Caucasus ‘to enjoy the grapes and other pleasures’. Believes she is twenty years old and ought to get married. In the same tone of voice she says: ‘And then I went down on my knees and gave him a French job…’”

The canteen shook with laughter.

“You great fools!” Kashmanova exclaimed, putting on an imperturbable air. “What’s so unusual about that? Normal female behaviour! And you’re all stupid fools! Especially Aksak and Yemtseva!”

Two old women on the chairs giggled contentedly.

Klava struck up ‘The Autumn Waltz’. I saw Masha. She walked round the tables that had been moved together and went straight to Gorn. Masha leaned down to her leader’s ear and told her something.

Klava switched tactics and the accordion growled to a halt after only a brief moment. The one caught was an old woman by the name of Tsekhanskaya.

“Stenographic report, day nine,” Kashmanova read out in an expressive voice. “She has forgotten what her toes are called. She calls her big toe a ‘thumb’ and the others ‘the ones that are smaller’. When she sees a syringe she says: ‘Oh, they’ve brought the crystal!’ If anyone tries to tell her that it’s a syringe she asks in amazement: ‘A syringe? Then what’s crystal?’ She claims that foreign agents have put their words in her mouth. She thinks ‘blouse’ but says ‘sun’. She complains that people read her thoughts from her eyes, especially during the daytime. She asks to be locked in a dark room. She does not control her urine and stool…”

Several tables struck up a song to tuneless chords from a guitar.

“Klavka!” the old women cried excitedly. “Let’s show the young kids how it’s done! Give us ‘Evenings on the Ob’!”

“Polya!” said Gorn’s companion, hammering her fist on the table. “You don’t understand! If the reading’s done right, you don’t need any lighting. The light appears out of the reader!”

“Reznikova!” said Gorn, raising her voice. “There’s no proof of that!”

Lines sung in a jaunty chorus rammed like a truck into a couplet about the adventures of the four friends.

…the lead singer chanted in a loud, hoarse voice and the tables picked up the next line:

…but the laughter that followed was drowned in ‘Evenings on the Ob’.

In the middle of this musical bacchanalia, Masha came back to the serving room.

“Let’s go,” she said. “They’re expecting you.”

I was suffering all the torment of a new boy at school who is exhibited for general examination by an unfamiliar and hostile class. When we walked into the canteen a swampy silence fell. The old women
with their permed hair, bright make-up and festive clothes, the female bodyguards with their broad shoulders, bestial jaws, gaunt drinkers’ faces and tattooed arms—the entire dangerous gathering studied me cautiously.

“This, colleagues,” Gorn said after a long pause, “is Alexei Mokhov… I’ve told you… about him… He really does… look like Lizaveta Makarovna… doesn’t he?”

“Uhu,” Reznikova laughed dourly. “The way a pig looks like a horse…”

The old women smiled. They found the manoeuvring amusing.

“Polya,” said the frail Tsekhanskaya, stroking the hair trimmed in fashionable curls at her temples, “the resemblance to Liza is very approximate.” The “mum”’s little sparrow head was set on an equally delicate bird’s neck.

“He looks a bit pale to me,” Kashmanova said mockingly. Her robust, greasy nose looked rather like the heel of a yellow lacquered shoe; her cheeks were covered with a sprinkling of fine moles. “He doesn’t suit us…”

“We’ll feed him up,” Gorn snorted.

“It’s not that simple being our grandson,” an old woman with red cheeks, vermilion lipstick, a bright flowery skirt and green knitted jumper told me. “Not everyone could handle it.”

“He’s a talented boy,” said Gorn. “He’ll get the hang of it.”

“We need to test him,” said a thin old woman with luxuriant purple hair hanging loose over her dress. “Set him an examination.”

“Now you’re talking sense, Kharitonova,” said Guseva. “Let’s take him on probation…”

It was obvious that not a single one of the fourteen took the story about a newly found grandson seriously. But on her other hand I didn’t notice any open aggression in the old women’s attitude. It was the bodyguards who worried me. They rubbed their hands together in a distinctive, masculine fashion, exchanging mocking glances, grinning with their stainless-steel crowns and scratching
with coarse hands at the crotches of their padded trouser legs that were tucked into tarpaulin boots.