‘Not for many years. I haven’t kept up.’
‘You know one of the main varieties of American science fiction? The alternative history. And you know the most popular form of alternative history?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘They call it Hitler Wins. It’s that mode in which the Nazis are victorious in the war. Dozens of novels about what the world
would
have been like. Imagine!’
‘I imagine things would have been rather unpleasant.’
‘Here’s my point: Soviet science fiction writers never write that sort of story. Alternative history has no pedigree in Soviet science fiction. Do you know why? Because we understand necessity. Russia could not have lost to Hitler. Postulating what things would have been like had he won is meaningless to us.’
‘The moral of this story?’ I prompted, feeling light headed. I had not, you see, eaten during my Militia captivity.
‘The moral is Necessity. You’d do well to accept it. Necessity.’
The car pulled from the slip road to accelerate smoothly along the main ring. Other cars, I could see, were pulling over to permit us to pass. A car so large, so modern, so unrusted, could only be KGB.
‘You and I,’ he said to me. ‘We’re old men.’
‘I can hardly deny it.’
‘The Soviet Union is
our
place. This is where we belong. It is the
country
for old men. Communism is the
system
of old men. All those antique statesmen standing on their balcony watching the May Day Parade. Old, old men. Men like Chernenko. You knew where you were with Chernenko.’
‘In Gaga-grad,’ I said.
‘Oh he wasn’t as senile as people now say. You see, I
knew
him.’ He considered this statement. I realised then that, although Frenkel might put great energies into lying and deception, he was nevertheless oddly punctilious about the truth of all matters pertaining to the dignity of the Communist Party. I say
although
and
nevertheless
. Perhaps I should say
because
and
therefore
. ‘Well,’ Frenkel added, ‘it wouldn’t be quite accurate to say I
knew
him. I worked with him, or worked
under
him. I sat in meetings that he chaired, for instance.’
‘I’m impressed by how elevated your position truly is.’
This clearly annoyed him. Perhaps he thought I was rebuking him for boasting. ‘I’m only saying that Chernenko was not senile. I’m only saying that I should know.’
‘Comrade, I’m not criticising,’ I said. ‘For the whole of the 1970s I had no better employment for my brain than as a filter for several hundred gallons of vodka, like an old sock used for straining moonshine. I believe I have only two memories from that entire decade. I’d never claim the right to criticise others for senility.’
Ivan stared at me. ‘Comrade,’ he said, coolly. ‘I shall be frank with you.’
‘Franker than you usually are?’
This was the wrong thing to say.
‘You fucker,’ he snarled, suddenly furious. ‘One thing I hate in this world and you are fucking
it
. You are an ironist.’
‘An ironist?’
‘Fundamentally, you take nothing seriously. You believe it is all a game. It was the same in your novels; they were never serious. They had no heart. That wasn’t
my
way. For me, as for Asterinov, literature was a high calling. A serious business. One story, not the ludicrous branchings of possibilities and ironic alternatives. But
you
, you don’t really take anything seriously, do you, comrade?’
I thought about this. I can be honest, now, and say that I had not previously considered the matter in this light. ‘There may be something in what you say, comrade,’ I conceded.
‘Understand,’ Frenkel added, his fury draining away a little. ‘I do not exactly denounce you for this. Some human beings are ironists. Others take the business of the world very seriously. The worst that could be said,’ he went on, his voice acquiring a slightly portentous edge, ‘is that
revolution
is not achieved by ironists.’ I thought of all those pictures of Lenin; those myriad images of him smiling at his own private joke, squinnying up his eyes in amusement at the absurdity of things. But I held my peace. Frenkel was still pontificating. ‘Revolution is a
serious
business. Changing the world for the better is a serious undertaking.’
‘No doubt.’
‘Chernenko was old, it is true. His mind was perhaps . . . less
flexible
than comrade Gorbachev’s is proving to be. But - and I do not speak out of disloyalty—’
‘The idea!’
‘It is
not
disloyalty to Gorbachev to say this,’ Frenkel snapped, over-insistent, ‘but General Secretary Gorbachev wants to institute
change
. He wants to change the way the Soviet Union is run. Perestroika and so on. But Chernenko - you see,
he
was born before the Revolution. That meant he understood change in a profound way; understood in a way somebody like Comrade Gorbachev never can. Chernenko lived through that time when change was the idiom
of the whole world
. Gorbachev can never understand change in the same way, because he was born after 1917.’
‘So was I,’ I pointed out.
Frenkel rubbed his bald head. ‘You miss my point. You do so on purpose.’
‘In itself, perhaps, a definition of irony.’
‘Communism,’ said Frenkel, as if explaining to a stubborn and unlikable child. ‘Communism is
government by old men
. Capitalism is different. Under capitalism things are run by the young, the thrusting, the violent. You know how it is in New York.’
‘To be honest I don’t really know how it is in Moscow,’ I said. ‘And I live here.’
‘Don’t be obtuse. You know what happens on Wall Street. It’s gangsters in suits. It’s teenagers high on their own piss and testosterone. They’re the ones who make all the money, and who have all the power. Capitalism is the jungle. In the jungle the top gorilla never gets to grow old, because there’s always some young psychopath ready to brain him with the,’ and he stumbled a little. I noticed that two frogspawny spots of spittle had accumulated in the corner of Frenkel’s mouth. He was getting worked up. ‘The jawbone of an ass,’ he concluded, unexpectedly.
‘
Ass
, comrade?’
The tone in which I said this increased Frenkel’s fury. He reached across and put his thumb against my chest, digging it into my sternum. It made me think of army basic training - it gave me, indeed, one of those vertiginous feelings of a deep memory surfacing abruptly and unexpectedly - when we had been taught how to stab a human being with bayonet or knife: to press the thumb in amongst the corrugations of the ribcage, to find the ossified knot at its base and then slide the blade underneath.
Though as old as me, Frenkel was considerably more muscular, and in much better health.
Trofim stirred in the front seat, readying himself to intervene if it proved necessary. He was not, of course, preparing to intervene on
my
behalf.
‘Comrade,’ I said, mildly.
‘You’re
still
not listening to me Konstantin Andreiovich,’ he said. ‘You’re not listening to me because you’re too busy trying to fuck with me. Don’t think I don’t understand what you’re about. You’re trying to commit suicide. The traditional Russian method, the vodka, takes too long. Setting fire to your own cranium was too shocking a method to proceed with. Am I right? Am I right?’ He took his thumb away, and I relaxed the muscles across my back. ‘Fucking idiot. You, Konstantin Andreiovich, I’m talking about
you
. Do you understand?’
‘You have a very eloquent thumb,’ I said. My ribs were sore.
‘That’s what I mean by an ironist. You can’t take the direct route. The direct route would be a rope around the neck and jump off the table, but you won’t do
that
. You exist in a haze of possible paths through life. That’s not the way!’
‘Or a leap from a bridge,’ I said.
‘Because you’re incapable, you want
me
to do your dirty work. The question is:
Why?’
‘Or in front of a train.’
‘The question in other words is: Why
me?’
Frenkel leered. ‘We go back a long way, I suppose. You and I stood in line and met comrade Stalin
in the flesh
. How many people can boast that?’
‘Since boasting requires breath,’ I said, pretending to calculate an answer, ‘and since meeting Stalin usually preceded the confiscation of that very quality . . .’
‘Fuck you, Konsty.
I’m
not your enemy. Don’t make
me
out to be your enemy. You could help me, if you chose to. You could perform a life-saving service for the Soviet Union, if you’d only work with me and stop fighting me.’
I looked at him. I felt enormously weary. ‘I’ve decided,’ I said.
‘Yes?’
‘Jumping off a bridge in front of a river cruiser with a rope around my neck,’ I said. ‘To make assurance doubly sure.’
‘Fucker,’ said Frenkel.
‘Shakespeare,’ I corrected.
Suddenly, and unexpectedly, Frenkel began laughing. ‘Do you know what, Konstantin? Do you know what?’
‘
What
is only one of a great many things I do not know.’
‘I’m not used to this. I’m a senior figure, comrade. I’m KGB, you understand? When I talk to people they’re almost always polite and deferential.’
‘
Almost
always?’
He waved this away. ‘Oh, sometimes I speak to my superiors. They’re usually curt. But this . . . bantering! It makes a change, I can tell you.’
‘I don’t think you’re right,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘About Communism being government by old men. Revolution is a newness coming into the world. Revolution is a continual youth, the resurgence and eternal youth of mankind.’
‘Comrade,’ he said, and again his hand came up, only this time it was to my shoulder. ‘
You’re
an old man.’
‘So are you.’
‘Exactly! Who knows better how to run a country? The young have crazy ideas. They have absurd, destructive energy. But the
old
have - wisdom. Which quality is better for governance? Don’t answer, I’m being rhetorical. Besides, you misunderstand the logic of Revolution. Revolution is the manifestation of historical necessity. It is the coming-into-the-world of inevitable historical consequences. History is old. History is an old man. What’s older than history?’
‘Death,’ I said.
But Frenkel wasn’t in a mood to be metaphysical. ‘History is the oldest man there is. That’s what Communism says. That’s what Marx says, if you boil him down. He says: You can’t escape history. You can’t
avoid
him, or trick him, or
bribe
him. He rules. That’s all. The capitalists think they’ve overthrown history, they think history has come to an end and there
is no
history. They think there’s only money. But they’re fooling themselves. History can’t be escaped. History doesn’t care for youth, or money, or fancy clothes. History is the tyrant that makes rulers like Stalin look weak and benign.’
‘Speaking personally,’ I said, ‘my interpretation of Marx sees him as being more dialectical and less monolithic.’
At this Frenkel laughed loudest of all. ‘Your personal interpretation of Marx!’ he repeated, and I was unsure whether he was amused by the fact that anybody actually read Marx, or by the notion that it was possible to have a personal perspective on a figure so marmoreal.
The car pulled up by the side of the road. Frenkel shifted in his seat the better to look straight at me. ‘Tell me what he said,’ he said.
‘Who?’
‘I will ask you the question once,’ said Frenkel. ‘I shall even ask it twice. But thrice I will not ask.’
“‘Thrice”?’ I repeated, unable to keep the incredulous tone from my voice.
‘Quiet! You hear? Be quiet! I want to hear you
answer
the question, not banter with me.’
‘I understand, comrade. Nevertheless, as one writer to another, I must query thrice.’
‘Trofim - put a gun in his ear.’
The huge fellow swivelled, a little awkwardly, in his seat at the front of the car, and glowered at me. He did not look comfortable. ‘I’m not sure I can manage the ear, sir,’ he said in a slow voice.
‘What?’
‘Unless Comrade Skvorecky turns his head? Otherwise the angle is not correct. Perhaps the eye?’
‘The eye then! I don’t care!
Menace him
, you idiot!’
With an impressively fluid gesture for so large a man Trofim unholstered his pistol and reached round the back of the seat in which he was sitting. His left hand grasped my neck and held it in place; and with his right hand he pressed the end of the muzzle against my left eye. Naturally I tried to flinch backwards, but Trofim held me firm, with an insulting ease. His reach was long enough for this to be no effort for him. He possessed arms a gorilla might have envied for length, muscularity and, I daresay, hairiness. My head was pressed against the upholstery of my seat, and the gun was digging against my eye. This was very far from comfortable. I put my hands up, on reflex, and wrapped my fingers about Trofim’s left wrist, where his hand had fixed my neck, but it availed me nothing. He was much too strong for me.
‘Now that we have your
attention
,’ said Frenkel. ‘You fucking ironist. You went for a walk with Coyne. The American. You are now going to tell me
exactly what he said to you
.’
‘Gladly, comrade,’ I said, in a slightly strangulated voice. ‘I have just given the Militia a complete transcript, and am happy to do the same for the KGB.’
‘Fuck you, Konsty,’ said Ivan. ‘What did you tell the police? I’ll have Trofim scoop your skull out and feed your brains to your wife.’
‘My ex-wife,’ I said. ‘She might be less distressed by the scooping than you imagine.’
‘Quiet! Fucking
be
quiet!’