The Librarian (35 page)

Even Masha, who was standing beside me, sensed that the massive women’s fury was slowly rising and told them.

“Easy now, easy. No nonsense…”

“You’re not being very welcoming, girls,” Gorn said with a brief sigh. “We’ll leave you…”

“Take him to the bunker, Polya,” Reznikova agreed. “Out of harm’s way…”

I confess that I felt tremendously relieved when Gorn and Masha finally accompanied me out of the canteen.

“Congratulations, Alyoshka,” said Gorn, in what I took to be a hypocritical tone of voice. “You made a good impression.”

“I don’t think so…” I glanced round at Masha walking a little distance behind us and whispered furtively to Gorn: “They didn’t believe you. About me being the grandson.”

“Of course they didn’t believe me. They’re not… complete idiots…” Gorn pulled me closer by my sleeve. “Alyoshka, you blockhead, they’re not concerned… about family connections… Lizka was a unique factor… of stability… She died… and the Home needs a new… focus for the balance of power… A kind of amulet… At weddings you often see a replacement father sitting beside the bride. You’ll be the same kind of ritual relative… with formal responsibilities. Not difficult, but very important. I’ll explain what it’s all about… in more detail… later… So don’t worry… It’s all been agreed…”

Instead of going downstairs, for some reason they took me to the side staircase that led up to the second floor.

“I want to introduce you to another individual,” said Gorn, turning back towards me on the final steps. “Of course, she doesn’t deserve it… But we’ll be magnanimous… Right, Alyoshka?”

“Polina Vasilyevna,” I balked. “I’m tired of meetings. Perhaps tomorrow?”

“Don’t be stubborn… What’s so hard about meeting an old lady? We’re here.” Gorn stopped in front of a door and fished out a bunch of keys. “Tomorrow, Alexei, will be too late. We read her the Book especially… so that she could… talk to you. In a few hours she’ll go out of her mind again, and we won’t reanimate her any more. Seize the moment… Masha will wait in the corridor… Then she’ll show you to the bunker.”

Dense blue light spread symmetrical rhomboids from the window frame across the floor. The only thing in the ward was a bed with a high barred metal footboard and headboard. An old woman was lying on the sheets with her nightshirt pulled up. Her arms were spread and her hands were secured to the metal bars of the bed with broad straps. Her legs were immobilized at the ankles in exactly the same way.

“Necessary measures of restraint,” Gorn said with a sigh. “Who knows what wild ideas she might get into her head?…”

She walked up to the bed.

“How are you feeling?”

The old woman stirred.

“Better than the lot of you.”

“Sorry about the straps. When the Strength stops working… we’ll untie you…”

“Thanks in advance. I won’t be able to thank you later; I’ll forget all the words.” The old woman swayed the mesh base of the bed, setting the woven metal rustling.

“Can you guess why I’ve come?”

“To show me Vyazintsev,” the old woman said simply.

“I thought… you’d find it interesting… to meet him in person. Come here, Alyoshka,” said Gorn, beckoning to me with her finger. “She doesn’t bite. Not yet…”

I took a few steps towards the bed, trying not to look at the swollen legs covered in blobs of varicose veins and the taboo curly shadow in the depths of the nightshirt. I had already realized that the old woman tied to the bed was Margarita Tikhonovna’s mother.

“How long do you need, Valya? Will ten minutes be enough?”

“Yes.”

“Only don’t frighten him…”

“Go, Polya, go. Celebrate the resurrection of your comrades in arms. Let them enjoy their extreme amusement—deliberately going without the Book of Strength for a while and then reading out to each other what they all got up to.”

“A game’s not a game without some risk…” said Gorn, then she nodded to us and walked out.

“Hello, Alexei.” The old woman’s imperious face was covered with deep wrinkles that looked as if they had been incised with threads. The mottled hair, combed up and back, had fused into a growth that resembled a shelf-fungus on a tree. The flaccid ears ended in large lobes as doughy as wet white breadcrumb.

“Hello, Valentina Grigoryevna.”

When she heard her name the old woman raised her beetling grey eyebrows.

“Was it Polina who told you?”

“She said it was you who hid the Book of Meaning.”

“That’s right, I hid it,” the old woman confirmed in delight. “What else?”

“Your daughter in my reading room was…” I began and immediately regretted it. The old woman might not know that Selivanova had been killed, and the bitter news could be a blow for her.

“They told me Margo was no longer alive. I’m not suffering. I’ll go completely out of my mind soon and lose the ability to grieve. I wouldn’t want you to hold a grudge against her. I was the one who advised Margo to keep you on as the Shironinites’ librarian…” The old woman flinched as if from cold. “It’s drifting over my thoughts,” she complained. “White and suffocating, like cotton wool. Soon it will smother them altogether. The illness is taking its toll… Would you mind not squinting at my body like that! I find it offensive.”

I hastily turned away to look towards the wall and asked:

“Valentina Grigoryevna, it was you who sent me the Book of Meaning, wasn’t it?”

Knots of muscle tensed, swelled up and disappeared under the gelatinous, trembling skin on the crucified arms.

“The Book was found in ninety-four. I had quite a large team of uninitiated agents working for me. The usual mercenaries. We didn’t explain anything to them. It was easier and safer that way. Katerina Cheremis, who worked in the Moscow archives, phoned me: ‘Valentina Grigoryevna, I’ve got a Gromov for you.
A Meditation on Stalin Chinaware
. A lucky find: the entire edition was pulped, but this copy was miraculously preserved in the publishing house’s museum.’ I was sure it was the wrong Gromov. There wasn’t any book with that title in the bibliographies. But even so I went to Moscow. And what a surprise…” The old woman shifted restlessly. A baleful, damp flame blazed in the almost lashless eyes, the thin, bloodless lips filled with veinous sludge and swelled up like overtaut tendons. “You’ve read the Book and you know that it’s a temptation. I couldn’t resist either and I read it. And instead of a revelation I was given just one single word…” The old woman started breathing more rapidly. The wrists restrained by straps swelled up under the subcutaneous impulses of demonic energy. “Can you imagine how many people have died and how much blood has been spilled for the sake of three syllables that sound like a Russian merchant’s surname—‘Vyazintsev’? Not very much, is it? Not at all what I and fifteen hundred ‘mums’ were expecting. No, I decided not to destroy the Book. I eliminated the dangerous witness Cheremis. And then I set about transforming the clan. It had run to seed. We managed to dump almost all the superfluous ‘mums’ at Neverbino. After the battle Margo sent me a list of the new reading rooms, including the one that she had joined. I came across the librarian Vyazintsev…” The captive body strained at its bonds and the parchment cleavage of breasts that had mummified long ago appeared in the dangling neck of the nightshirt. “I didn’t tell Margo about the Book of Meaning; she was only supposed to
keep an eye on developments in the region. For many years I was consumed by frustration. Why some Vyazintsev or other? What if I defied the Book of Meaning and killed its incarnation? What then? How would the Books wriggle out of that?” The dry, desiccated nostrils fluttered as if the old woman had caught the scent of a quarry, the fine membrane of skin on the hollow of her throat trembled sensitively. “Vyazintsev was eliminated. But the Book kept on speaking his name. Margo reported to me that a nephew had shown up… I told her that she had to keep a close eye on you…” The old woman suddenly thrust her rump hard down into the metal mesh and jerked forward abruptly, and only the straps held her back. “It’s nothing to do with you, you little bastard! Even the fact that you received the Book—that’s a pure coincidence! My reason was clouded! I was obviously starting to lose my mind! You’re not special! You’re just one of a set of circumstances!” If she hadn’t been speaking, I would have said that she was simply clacking her jaws, trying to take me by the throat with her gums, as pink as an Alsatian’s. “The Book is free to choose its nominees! To point to anyone drawn into its range of influence! If you’re not here, it will name someone else!” The old woman suddenly ran out of strength, fell back onto the pillow and half-closed her eyes. “But Margo didn’t understand that. She was afraid that Lizka would kill you…” The old woman yawned benignly. “That’s all now. I’m tired. I’m finished. Go away.”

I
N THE MORNING
I got up, but the door of the bunker wouldn’t open any more. I couldn’t believe that this had happened and I kept calling: “Hey, is anyone there? Masha! The bolt’s got jammed!” No one came. I tried shaking the door, but soon gave up—I was the only one that got a shaking.

A wave of intestinal panic swept over me. I grabbed the bedpan out from under the couch and squatted down. Then I turned out the drawers of the desk in a desperate search for paper. Several exercise books came showering out. I plucked a few pages out of the closest one and wiped myself.

After that I felt a bit better and set about trying to free myself with renewed energy. I took a run up and flung my body at the unyielding door. I shouted hysterically, straining my vocal cords to the limit: “Polina Vasilyevna!” At first threateningly: “I demand!” And then pitifully: “I implore you!” And then threateningly again: “I order you to open up. I am Alexei Mokhov!”

All in vain. I lost my voice and bruised both my shoulders. Exhausted, I lay down on the floor and hammered at the door with my feet. I stopped when my battered feet were a cramped block of pain.

It suddenly dawned on me that this had all been set up. They were observing me in secret! But of course! This was the examination for the position of “grandson”, and I had done absolutely everything possible to fail it. Demonic howling, lowered trousers, intestinal cramps, convulsions on the floor. Appalling. Only a
stout-hearted prisoner could count on freedom and power; a coward and nonentity didn’t deserve any leniency—that was what the old women had decided. I almost groaned aloud in the realization that all was lost.

I had to correct the shameful impression that I had made on my secret observers as quickly as possible. And I had to do it so that they wouldn’t realize I had seen through their game.

I called on my old acting skills to help. I laughed wearily, drew myself erect, spat on the floor and declared: “Why, the bastards…” I thought it sounded rather good. Firm, with a derisively hoarse note. A courageous, cheerful man had amused himself by acting the fool in front of the door for a while and then stopped. So what if he had relieved himself—that was only normal. He wasn’t the kind of fellow you could frighten with a solitary cell. Now he’d just perform a few push-ups on the floor, then sit down at the desk and browse through the exercise books…

There were six of them… a black one, a light-blue one, a grey one and three brown ones. Ancient exercise books from immemorial Soviet times, in oilcloth bindings. I hadn’t seen any like them for a long time—they had disappeared from the shelves many years ago.

The black one had been started. On the cover someone had written: “For Recipes”. Inside, the exercise book had been divided up into chapters. “First Courses”, “Fish Dishes”, “Desserts”, “Salads”, “Drinks”. There weren’t any recipes: the headings were followed immediately by blank pages.

The brown exercise books were untouched, but I looked carefully through them all the way to the stanza of typographical free verse on the end flysheet.

In the grey exercise book the price had been crossed out and a new one written in, in ink—1.65 copecks. Below it was the signature of the person who had crossed out the old price.

Inside the light-blue exercise book there was a page from a tear-off calendar for Thursday, 14 October 1999. There was some kind of astrological nonsense on the front of it.

Out of curiosity I turned the scrap of paper over and my heart fell like a stone, tearing its way through my insides. Printed there in tiny little ant-letters was this:

The blood rushed to my head in surges of heat. I leaned down lower over the desk, afraid that my face had set into a plaster mask of horror. For a long time I couldn’t catch my breath. The air had been snatched away, as if I’d been plunged into a hole in the ice on a river. Thank God, I’d realized that they were watching me and I didn’t give myself away; I checked myself in time. I knew only too well what the word “Veil” signified in Gromovian terminology…

A scrap of paper that flew in from the previous millennium. It is always here in front of me. My Black Spot and everlasting calendar. From that first day the bunker’s time was frozen at 14 October, an eternal Feast of the Veil…

The pulsing of blood in my head faded away and my breathing returned to normal. My pounding heart clambered its way back up, fastening back together with an excruciating zip the innards that it had ripped in its haste. I forced myself to believe that the calendar page was not a subtle message from Gorn but a stupid coincidence, a misunderstanding.

I was distracted by the sudden rumbling of an invisible mechanism in the wall. I dashed headlong to the hatch. Standing in the niche was a tray of food and a clean porcelain bedpan, smelling of bleach.

Purely for form’s sake I shouted up the lift: “Open up, open up!” The only reply was a tinny echo in the shaft.

I took out the tray: a meat patty with mashed potatoes, salad and tea. I wasn’t hungry, but I ate. Calmly, with dignity, posing for the observers.

Then I put the bedpan full of liquefied terror in the lower compartment of the niche and the tray with the empty plates in the upper section. I closed the hatch. Inside the wall gearwheels started squeaking and a cable creaked…

I carried on performing for my audience for a long time—I blustered and swaggered, passing insolent comments; as soon as my vocal cords recovered, I bawled out songs—in short I played the part of a dashing, devil-may-care blade. Except that I slept with the ceiling lamp on. I tried it without any light, but the cosmic blackness of the bunker was immediately transformed into airless terror. That was more than I could take.

I stealthily studied the ceiling, walls, false windows and scenic photographic wallpaper and failed to discover any concealed spying devices. Apart from the peephole, there was nothing looking into the bunker, so I had been giving my performances of manly courage for the door.

The identical days rolled by, differentiated only by the side dish served with the patty. There was no one admiring the valiant prisoner; no one replied with any signals from which he could conclude that his behaviour had been duly appreciated. There was just the indifferent dumb waiter, delivering food and a bedpan to me four times a day.

The light bulbs were a greater blow to me than even the calendar page. They sent one with every lunch. I took out the tray, and there on the napkin was an electric bulb. Matte, sixty watts. At first I was glad. Then I felt terribly afraid, although I didn’t give any sign that I had guessed: they wanted to provide me with plenty of light for future use. As an experiment I sent one back, and the next day they sent me two. The torture ended when I had accumulated forty or more of these bulbs.

One day I realized that my jailers weren’t interested in my character and I stopped playing the stout-hearted hero. The only thing I still couldn’t come to terms with for a long
time was that I had been totally abandoned. The dumb waiter, although one-sided, was still a means of communication, and I insistently tried to establish a dialogue, writing extensive complaints addressed to Gorn, always starting with: “Dear Polina Vasilyevna…”

I requested her politely and urgently to explain the reasons for my incarceration and reproached her for breaking her word, although I knew that, formally speaking, Gorn had kept her word—I had been granted my life and immunity from harm.

In between the reproaches and demands, I tried to cadge petty concessions: give me another blanket, or vitamins and a television, or paracetamol and fresh newspapers. I didn’t receive anything.

However, I can’t claim that they didn’t respond to me at all. Gorn had her own ideas about a prisoner’s requirements. She sent me cotton wool and neat alcohol without any reminders. And they gave me an electric shaver and nail scissors, which I hadn’t dared to ask for.

Every single day I scribbled letters and put them in the dumb waiter beside the dirty plates. Naturally, I never got an answer. No, I’m lying. They sent me an answer once. But not in the form of a letter.

It happened like this: I flew right off the handle and sent Gorn an abusive letter. It began with the words: “Gorn, you’re a fucking bitch and a shitty whore!” Before breakfast I poured out onto paper my entire arsenal of obscenity. I was really hoping that this unprecedented boorishness would spur Gorn into a response.

And so it did. They sent me my lunch as usual, and floating in the glass of stewed fruit was a thick, ripe-green gob of spit. That was the entire correspondence, if I may call it that. However, I concede that it might not have been Gorn who spat in my drink, but the cook. She could have taken offence for her boss.

I apologized at length over several pages, saying that my nerves had given out. I didn’t receive any indication that I had been
forgiven, but no one spat in my drink any more. And I was thankful for that much.

I somehow became firmly convinced that they hadn’t stuck me in the bunker in order to do me to death. They fed me and took care of me, which mean they must need me alive. And if Vyazintsev’s life had some value, that meant that Vyazintsev’s death must be undesirable. There was only one way to check this assumption—act out a suicide and lure my jailers into the bunker.

I didn’t know what I would gain from the guards appearing in the bunker—I couldn’t really expect to escape, and when I was exposed I would become a laughing stock. I had to think the whole thing through properly. After running through numerous possibilities, I chose a hunger strike. In the first place, death would be conveniently stretched out over time and Gorn might relent before things became critical. In the second place, it would be harder to unmask my pretence—how could they tell just how emaciated and dehydrated I really was?

I stealthily laid away reserves of bread, hiding it in my blanket… After I had accumulated about a loaf and a half I wrote a farewell letter.

The breakfasts, lunches and supper were sent back untouched. I fed in the darkness on dry bread, and then crept to the radiator to drink, hoping with all my heart that Gorn had not discovered this extra source of water. After slaking my thirst I turned on the light and withered away dramatically in open view. For the first three days I continued to use the bedpan—my body was still processing its remaining reserves. After that the bedpan went back up empty too—what could it have been filled with? The proud prisoner wasn’t eating or drinking.

I arranged a special little privy out of paper and relieved myself there. And I urinated under the radiator, into the natural drain between the floor and the skirting board. And all this in total darkness. The radiator gave me two glasses of water a day at the most, so to some extent I did suffer from lack of fluid. In addition,
my concentrated urine had a foul sewer smell. Thank God, the meagre bread diet had a positive effect on the consistency of my stool, which was dry and hardly even smelled at all.

It was the fifth day of my hunger strike. No one seemed in any hurry to visit me. To enhance the effect I coughed like a consumptive, clutching at my stomach with my “withered” hand as if I was stopping a wound—hunger pains. I drew my cheeks farther and farther in, imitating extreme emaciation, and supported myself against the wall when I walked—a performance worthy of an alumnus of the Institute of Culture. Then I lay down on the couch, covered myself with the blanket and lapsed into feigned sleep. I was hoping crazily that soon the bolt would clatter and Gorn would walk into the bunker. Then I would have raised myself up on weak arms, forced apart my dried-out lips—in my grief I had eaten my entire store of stale rusks under the blanket and now I was terribly thirsty—and said: “Get out… I want to die…” and collapsed, with my sunken chest slumping back onto the couch.

Perhaps I was misled by the lack of a clock and I started expiring too soon. The enclosed space gave rise to a different sense of time. Later I tormented myself with the idea that I was in too much of a hurry, but on the other hand everyone’s body has its own limits, and the old women had to take that into account.

The bolt didn’t clatter. Gorn didn’t come. I urgently needed to pee. I gave in and crept down onto the floor. The dumb waiter clattered—it had brought lunch. I suddenly felt disgusted: I was lying on my side under the radiator, easing my bladder in brief rivulets so that it would have time to seep away. The bunker smelled like a public toilet, and up there no one cared what was happening to me.