Buddha's Little Finger

5

The bust of Aristotle was the only thing I retained in my memory when I came round, although I am far from certain that the expression ‘to come round’ is entirely appropriate. Ever since my childhood I have sensed in it a certain shame-laced ambiguity. Round what exactly? To where? And, most intriguing of all, from where? Nothing, in short, but a cheating sleight of hand, like the card-sharps on the Volga steamers. As I grew older, I came to understand that the words ‘to come round’ actually mean ‘to come round to other people’s point of view’, because no sooner is one born than these other people begin explaining just how hard one must try to force oneself to assume a form which they find acceptable.

However, that is not the point. I regard the expression as not entirely appropriate to describe my condition because when I awoke I did not do so completely - instead, I became aware of myself, so to speak, in that non-material world familiar to everyone on the borderline between sleep and wakefulness, where one’s surroundings consist of visions and thoughts which momentarily arise and dissolve in consciousness, while the person around whom they arise is entirely absent. One usually flits through this state instantaneously, but for some reason I remained stuck in it for several long seconds; my thoughts were mostly of Aristotle. They were incoherent and almost entirely meaningless; the ideological great-grandfather of Bolshevism was not the object of any particular sympathy on my part, but neither did I feel any personal hatred for him as a consequence of the previous day’s events - the concept of substance which he had invented was evidently insufficiently substantial to have inflicted upon me any truly serious damage. Curiously enough, in my half-dreaming state I was furnished with the most convincing of proofs for this - when the bust shattered into shards under the force of the blow, it proved to have been hollow all the time.

If I had been struck on the head with a bust of Plato, I thought, then the result would have been far more serious. At this point I remembered that I had a head, the final fragments of sleep scattered and evaporated, and events began to follow the normal sequence of human awakening, as it became apparent that all of these thoughts had their existence inside the head, and that the head in question was aching intolerably.

I opened my eyes cautiously.

The first thing that I saw was Anna, sitting close to my bed. She had not noticed that I had woken, probably because she was absorbed in reading - there was a volume of Knut Hamsun lying open in her hands. I watched her for some time through my eyelashes. I was unable to add anything substantial to my first impression of her, but no additions were necessary: perhaps her beauty appeared even more tormenting in its indifferent perfection. I thought with sadness that when a woman like her does fall in love with a man it is always either a commercial traveller with a moustache or some red-faced artillery major - the mechanism is the same as that by which the most beautiful schoolgirls are bound to choose ugly friends. It is not, of course, a matter of wishing to emphasize their own beauty by means of the contrast (an explanation on the level of Ivan Bunin), but of compassion.

There were some changes in her, however. Her hair seemed to be shorter and a little lighter, but that was probably a trick of the light. Instead of the previous day’s dark dress she was wearing a strange semi-military uniform - a black skirt and a loose sandy-coloured tunic, dappled now with trembling rainbow spots of colour from a ray of sunlight that was split as it passed through the carafe that stood on a table, which stood in turn in a room I had never seen before. But the most astonishing thing was that outside the window it was summer - through the pane I could see what appeared to be the silvery-green crowns of poplars soaring upwards through the noonday heat.

This room in which I was lying reminded me of a suite in an inexpensive provincial hotel; a small table, two firmly upholstered armchairs, a washbasin on the wall and a lamp with a shade. One thing it did not resemble in the slightest, however, was the compartment of the train hurtling through the winter night in which I had fallen asleep the previous evening.

I propped myself up on my elbow. My movement evidently took Anna entirely by surprise - she dropped her book on the floor and stared at me in confusion.

‘Where am I?’ I asked, sitting up in bed.

‘For God’s sake, lie down,’ she said, leaning towards me. I very thing is all right. You are safe.’

The gentle pressure of her hands forced me back down on to the bed.

‘But may I not at least know where I am? And why it is suddenly summer?’

‘Yes.’ she said, going back to her chair, ‘it is summer. Do you not remember anything at all?’

‘I remember everything perfectly well,’ I said. ‘I simply cannot understand how it happens that one moment I was ruling in a train and now suddenly I find myself in this room.’

‘You began talking quite often while you were delirious.’ she said, ‘but you never once came round fully. Most of the time you were in a coma.’

‘What coma? I remember that we were drinking champagne, and Chaliapin was singing… Or was it the weavers. And then that strange gentleman… Comrade… In short, Chapaev. Chapaev uncoupled the carriages.’

Anna must have stared doubtfully into my eyes for an entire minute.

‘How strange,’ she said at last.

‘What is strange?’

‘That you should remember precisely that. And afterwards?’

‘Afterwards?’

‘Yes, afterwards. For instance, do you remember the Battle of Lozovaya Junction?’

‘No.’ I said.

‘Or what came before that?’

‘Before that?’

‘Yes, before that. At Lozovaya you were already commanding a squadron.’

‘What squadron?’

‘Petya, at Lozovaya you distinguished yourself. If you had not moved in from the left flank with your cavalry squadron, they would have wiped us all out.’

‘What is the date today?’

‘The third of June.’ she said. ‘I know that such instances do occur in cases of head wounds, but… I could understand it if you had lost your memory completely, but this strange selectivity is quite astonishing. But then, I am not a doctor. Perhaps this is also part of the normal order of things.’

I raised my hands to my head and shuddered - it was as though my palms had touched a billiard ball that had sprouted short stubble. I had been completely shorn, like a typhus case. And there was also something strange, some kind of hairless projection running through the skin. I ran my fingers along it and realized that it was a long scar lying diagonally right across my skull. It felt as though a section of a leather belt had been glued to my scalp with gum arable.

‘Shrapnel.’ said Anna. ‘The scar is impressive, but it is nothing to worry about. The bullet only grazed you. But the concussion is apparently rather more serious.’

‘When did it happen?’ I asked.

‘On the second of April.’

‘And since then I have not recovered consciousness?’

‘Several times. But for just a few moments, no more.’

I closed my eyes and tried to conjure up a memory of at least some of what Anna had spoken about. But the darkness into which I gazed held nothing except the streaks and spots of light that appeared behind my eyelids.

‘I do not remember a thing,’ I said, and felt my head again. ‘Absolutely nothing. I can only remember a dream I had that in some dark hall in St Petersburg I am being beaten on the head with a bust of Aristotle, and every time it shatters into fragments. But then it happens all over again - pure Gothic… But now I understand what was going on.’

‘Your ravings were really quite intriguing.’ said Anna. ‘You spent half of yesterday remembering some Maria who had been hit by a shell. It was a rather incoherent tale, though, and I never did understand just what relationship you had with the girl. I suppose you must have been thrown together by the whims of war?’

‘I have never known anyone called Maria. Excluding, that is, a recent nightmare.’

‘Please do not be concerned,’ said Anna, ‘I have no intention of being jealous.’

‘That is a shame.’ I replied, then I sat up and lowered my legs to the floor. ‘Please, do not think that I am trying to shock you by talking to you in nothing but my underwear.’

‘You must not get up.’

‘But I feel perfectly well,’ I replied. ‘I would like to take a shower and get dressed.’

‘Quite out of the question.’

‘Anna,’ I said, ‘if I command a squadron, I must have an orderly.’

‘Certainly you have one.’

‘While you and I are talking here, he is most probably swinishly drunk yet again. Do you think you could send him to me? And another thing - where is Chapaev?’

The strange thing was that my orderly (he was a taciturn, yellow-haired, stocky individual with a long body and the short, crooked legs of a cavalryman - a ridiculous combination which made him look like an inverted pair of pincers) really was drunk. He brought me my clothes: a greyish-green military jacket with no shoulder-stripes (but with one sewn on to (he arm for my wound), blue breeches with a double red stripe down the side and a pair of excellent short boots made of soft leather. Also thrown on to the bed were a fuzzy black astrakhan hat, a sabre with the inscription ‘To Pyotr Voyd for valour’, a holster containing a Browning and Vorblei’s travelling bag, the very sight of which suddenly made me feel unwell. All of its contents were still in place, except that there was a little less cocaine in the tin. In addition, I discovered in the bag a small pair of binoculars and a notebook about one-third lull of writing which was undoubtedly my own. I found most of the notes quite incomprehensible - they dealt with horses, hay and people whose names meant nothing to me. But apart from that, my eyes did encounter a few phrases which resembled those which I had been in the habit of noting down:

‘Christianity and other religs. can be regarded as a totality of variously remote objects radiating a certain energy. How blindingly the figure of the crucified God shines! And how stupid it is to call Chr. a primitive system! If one thinks about it, it was not Rasputin who plunged Russia into revolution, but his murder.’

And then, two pages further on:

‘In life all «successes» have to be measured against the period of time over which they are achieved; if this interval is excessively long, then most achievements are rendered meaningless to a greater or lesser degree; the value of any achievement (at least, any practical achievement) is reduced to zero if the effort extends throughout the length of one’s life, because after death nothing any longer has any meaning. Do not forget the inscription on the ceiling.’

Despite this last exhortation, I seemed to have forgotten the inscription on the ceiling quite irretrievably. There had been times when I would use up an entire notebook every month on jottings of this kind, and every one of them had seemed genuinely significant and filled with a meaning which would be required in the future. But when this future arrived, the notebooks had been misplaced, life outside had completely changed, and I had found myself on the dank and miserable Tverskoi Boulevard with a revolver in my coat pocket. It was a good thing, I thought, that I had happened to meet an old friend.

Once I was dressed (the orderly had not brought any foot-bindings, and I was obliged to tear up the sheet to make some) I hesitated for some time before eventually donning the astrakhan hat - it smelt of something rotten - but my shaven head seemed to me to present an extremely vulnerable target. I left the sabre on the bed, but extracted the pistol from its holster and hid it in my pocket. I cannot bear to upset people’s nerves with the sight of a weapon, and in any case it made it easier to reach the weapon quickly if necessary. When I took a look at myself in the mirror above the wash-basin I was quite satisfied - the astrakhan hat even lent my unshaven face a certain crazed haughtiness.

Anna was standing downstairs at the foot of the broad curved staircase which I descended after leaving my room.

‘What kind of place is this?’ I asked. ‘It looks like an abandoned manor-house.’

‘So it is,’ she said. ‘This is our HQ. And not only our HQ - we live here as well. Since you became a squadron commander, Pyotr, a great deal has changed.’

‘But where is Chapaev?’

‘He is out of town just at the moment,’ Anna replied, ‘but he should be back soon.’

‘And what town is this, by the way?’

‘It is called Altai-Vidnyansk, and it is surrounded on every side by mountains. I cannot understand how towns appear in such places. Society here consists of no more than a few officers, a couple of strange individuals from St Petersburg and the local intelligentsia. The locals have, at best, heard something about the war and the revolution, while the Bolsheviks are stirring things up on the outskirts. In short, a real hole.’

‘Then what are we doing here?’

‘Wait for Chapaev,’ said Anna. ‘He’ll explain everything.’

‘In that case, with your permission, I shall take a stroll around the town.’

‘You must not do that under any circumstances,’ Anna insisted. ‘Think for yourself. You have only just come round -you might suffer some kind of fit. What if you were to faint out on the street?’

‘I am deeply touched by your concern,’ I replied, ‘but if it is sincere, you will have to keep me company.’

‘You leave me no choice,’ she said with a sigh. ‘Exactly where would you like to go?’

‘If perhaps there is some kind of hostelry,’ I said, ‘you know, the usual kind for the provinces - with a wilting palm tree in a tub and warm sherry in carafes - that would do very nicely. And they must serve coffee.’

‘There is one such place here,’ said Anna, ‘but it has no palm tree, and no sherry either, I expect.’

The town of Altai-Vidnyansk consisted for the most part of small wooden houses of one or two storeys set rather widely apart from one another. They were surrounded by tall fences of wooden planks, most of which were painted brown, and were almost totally concealed behind the dense greenery of neglected gardens. Closer to the centre, which Anna and I approached by descending the steep slope of a cobbled street, buildings of brick and stone appeared, also as a rule no more than two storeys high; I noted a couple of picturesque cast-iron fences and a fire-observation tower with something elusively Germanic about its appearance, it was a typical small provincial town, not without a certain unspoilt charm, calm and bright and drowned in blossoming lilac. The mountains towered up around it on all sides; it seemed to lie at the bottom of the chalice which was formed by them - with the central square with its repulsively ugly statue of Alexander II at its very lowest point: the windows of the ‘Heart of Asia’ restaurant to which Anna took me happened to look out on that particular monument. The thought came to me that it was all just begging to be put into some poem or other.

It was cool and quiet in the restaurant; there was no palm-tree in a tub, but there was a stuffed bear standing in the corner clutching a halberd in its paws, and the room was almost empty. At one of the tables two rather seedy-looking officers were sitting and drinking - when Anna and I walked past they looked up at me and then turned their eyes away with indifference. I must confess that I was not really sure whether my present status obliged me to open fire on them with my Browning or not, but to judge from Anna’s calm demeanour, nothing of the kind seemed to be required; in any case, the shoulder-straps had been torn off their uniform jackets, Anna and I sat at the next table and I ordered champagne.

‘You wanted to drink coffee,’ said Anna.

‘True.’ I said. ‘Normally I never drink in the daytime.’

‘Then why the exception?’

‘It is made entirely in your honour.’

Anna laughed. ‘That’s very kind, Pyotr. But I want to ask you a favour - for God’s sake, please don’t start courting me again. I do not find the prospect of an affair with a wounded cavalry officer in a town where there are shortages of water and kerosene very attractive.’

1 had expected nothing else.

‘Well, then.’ I said, when the waiter had set the bottle on the table, ‘if you choose to see me as a wounded cavalry officer, who am I to object? But in that case, how shall I regard you?’

‘As a machine-gunner.’ said Anna. ‘Or if you prefer to be more accurate, as a Lewis gunner. I prefer the disc-loading Lewis.’

‘As a cavalry officer, of course, I detest your profession. Nothing could be more depressing than the prospect of at-lacking a machine-gun emplacement in mounted formation. But since we are talking about you, I raise my glass to the profession of gunner.’

We clinked glasses.

‘Tell me, Anna.’ I asked, ‘whose officers are those at the next table? Who actually holds this town?’

‘Broadly speaking,’ said Anna, ‘the town is held by the Reds, but there are some Whites here as well. Or you might say it is held by the Whites, but there are some Reds here as well. So it is best to dress in a neutral style - much as we are dressed now.’

‘And where is our regiment?’

‘Our division, you mean. Our division has been dissipated in battle. We now have very few men left, a third of a squadron at the most. But since there are no enemy forces of any substance here we can regard ourselves as safe. This is the backwoods, everything is perfectly quiet here. You walk along the streets, you see yesterday’s enemies and you think to yourself is the reason for which we were trying to kill one another only a few days ago real?’

‘I understand you.’ I said. ‘War coarsens the sinews of the heart, but one only has to glance at the lilac blossom and it seems that the whistling of shells, the wild whooping of cavalrymen, the scent of gunpowder mingled with the sweet smell of blood are all unreal, no more than a mirage or a dream.’

‘Exactly.’ said Anna. ‘The question is, how real is the lilac blossom? Perhaps it is just another dream.’

Well, well, I thought to myself, but I refrained from expanding any further on the theme.

Tell me, Anna, what is the present situation at the fronts? In general, I mean.’

‘To be quite honest, I do not know. Or as they say nowadays, I’m not posted on that. There are no newspapers here and the rumours are all different. And then, you know, I have had enough of all that. They take and lose towns one has never heard of with wild-sounding names like Buguruslan, Bugulma and… what is it now… Belebei. And where it all goes on, who takes the town and who loses it, is not really clear and, more importantly, it is not particularly interesting either. The war goes on, of course, but talking about it has become rather mauvais genre. I would say the general atmosphere is one of weariness. Enthusiasm has slumped badly.’

I sat in silence, thinking about what she had said. Somewhere far away a horse neighed in the street, followed by the long-drawn-out yell of the coachman. One of the officers at the next table finally managed to get the needle into his vein: he had been trying unsuccessfully for the past five minutes, leaning far back in his chair to get a good view of his arms concealed under the table all this time his chair had been balanced on its two back legs and there were moments when I thought he was certain to fall. Putting the syringe back into its nickel-plated box, he hid it in his holster. Judging from the oily gleam that immediately appeared in his eyes, the syringe must have contained morphine. For a minute or two he sat swaying on his chair, then he slumped forward on to the table with his elbows, took his comrade by the hand and in a voice filled with a sincerity beyond my power to convey, he said:

‘I just thought, Nikolai… D’you know why the Bolsheviks are winning?’

‘Why?’

‘Because their teaching contains a vital, passionate…’ he closed his eyes and shuffled the fingers of one hand as he searched agonizingly for the right word, ‘a love of humanity, a love full of ecstasy and bliss. Once you accept it fully and completely, Bolshevism is capable of kindling a certain higher hope that lies dormant in the heart of man, don’t you agree?’

The second officer spat on the floor.

‘You know what, Georges,’ he said sullenly, ‘if it was your auntie they’d hanged in Samara, I’d like to hear what you had to say about higher hopes.’

The first officer closed his eyes and said nothing for several seconds. Then suddenly he went on: ‘They say Baron Jungern was seen in the town recently. He was riding on a horse, wearing a red robe with a gold cross on the chest, and acting is though he wasn’t afraid of anyone…’

At that moment Anna was lighting a cigarette - when she heard these words she started and the match almost slipped out of her fingers. I thought it would be best to distract her by making conversation.

‘Tell me, Anna, what has actually been going on all this time? I mean, since the day when we left Moscow?’

‘We have been fighting,’ said Anna. ‘You gave a good account of yourself in battle and became very close to Chapaev - you would spend several nights in a row in conversation with him. And then you were wounded.’

‘I wonder what it was we talked about.’

Anna released a fine stream of smoke in the direction of the ceiling.

‘Why not wait for him to get back? I can guess at the approximate content of your discussions, but I would not like to go into any detail. It really concerns nobody but the two of you.’

‘But give me at least a general indication, Anna.’ I said.

‘Chapaev,’ she said, ‘is one of the most profound mystics that I have ever known. I believe that he has found in you a grateful audience and, perhaps, a disciple. I suspect, furthermore, that the misfortune which you have suffered is in some way connected with your conversations with him.’

‘I do not understand a thing.’

‘That is hardly surprising,’ said Anna. ‘He has attempted on several occasions to talk with me, and I have also failed to understand a thing. The one thing of which I am sure is that he is capable of reducing a credulous listener to total insanity within the space of a few hours. My uncle is a very unusual man.’

‘He is your uncle then.’ I said. ‘So that’s it! I was beginning to think that you and he must be bound by ties of a different nature.’

‘How dare you… But then, you can think what you like.’

‘Please, I beg you, forgive me.’ I said, ‘but after what you just said about a wounded cavalry officer I thought that perhaps you might be more interested in healthy cavalry officers.’

‘One more boorish outburst of that kind and I shall entirely lose interest in you, Pyotr.’

‘So you do at least feel some interest. That is comforting.’

‘Do not go clutching at words.’

‘Why may I not clutch at words if I like the sound of them?’

‘Out of simple considerations of safety,’ said Anna. ‘While you were lying unconscious you put on a lot of weight, and you might find the words are not able to support you.’

She was obviously quite capable of standing up for herself. But this was going just a little too far.

‘My dearest Anna,’ I said, ‘I cannot understand why you are trying so hard to insult me. I know for certain that it is a pretence. You are not, in actual fact, indifferent to me, I realized that immediately I came round and saw you sitting there beside my bed. And you have no idea of how deeply I was touched.’

‘I am afraid that you will be disappointed if I tell you why I was sitting there.’

‘What do you mean? What other motive can there be for sitting beside the bed of a wounded man, apart from sincere… I don’t know - concern?’

‘Now I really do feel embarrassed. But you asked for it yourself. Life here is boring, and your ravings were most picturesque. I must confess that I sometimes came to listen - but I came out of nothing but boredom. I find the things you are saying now far less interesting.’

I had not expected this. I counted slowly to ten as I attempted to recover from the blow. Then I counted again. It was no good -I still felt the same bright flame of hatred, a hatred pure and unadulterated.

‘Would you mind giving me one of your cigarettes?’

Anna proffered her open cigarette case.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘You make very interesting conversation.’

‘You think so?’

‘Yes,’ I said, feeling the cigarette trembling in my fingers, and becoming even more irritated. ‘What you say is very thought-provoking.’

‘In what way?’

‘Well, for instance, several minutes ago you cast doubt on the reality of the lilac in which this town is enveloped. It was unexpected - and yet at the same time very Russian.’

‘What do you see in the remark that is specifically Russian?’

‘The Russian people realized very long ago that life is no more than a dream. You know what a succubus is?’

‘Yes,’ said Anna, with a smile. ‘A demon that takes female form to seduce a sleeping man. But what’s the connection?’

I counted to ten again. My feelings had not changed.

‘The most direct one possible. When they say in Russian vernacular that all women suck, the word «suck» as used in I he phrase is actually derived from the word «succubus». An association which came to Russia via Catholicism. No doubt you remember - the seventeenth century, the Polish invasion, m other words, the Time of Troubles. That’s what it goes back to. But I am wandering. All I wished to say was that the very phrase «all women suck»,’ - I reiterated the words with genuine relish - ‘means in essence that life is no more than a dream. And so are all the bitches. That is, I meant to say, the women.’

Anna drew deeply on her cigarette. There was a very slight flush on the line of her cheekbones, and I could not help noticing that it suited her pale face remarkably well.

‘I am wondering,’ she said, ‘whether or not I should throw I his glass of champagne in your face.’

‘I really cannot say.’ I said. ‘In your place I believe I would not do that. We are not as yet sufficiently intimate.’

A moment later a shower of transparent drops struck me in the face - her glass had been almost full, and she flung the champagne out of it with such force that for a second I was blinded.

‘I’m sorry.’ Anna said in confusion, ‘but you yourself..’

‘Think nothing of it,’ I replied.

Champagne possesses one very convenient quality. If one picks up a bottle, closes off the mouth with one’s thumb and shakes it really well several times, the foam will force its way out in a stream which exhausts virtually the entire contents of the bottle. It seems to me that this method must have been known to the poet Lermontov - he has a line which quite clearly reflects direct experience of a similar kind: ‘thus does the ancient moss-covered bottle yet store its stream of frothing wine’. Of course, it is hard to hypothesize about the inner world of a man who, intending to turn his face towards the Prince of Darkness, wrote as a result a poem about a flying colonel of the hussars. I would not therefore claim that Lermontov did actually spray women with champagne, but I do believe that the probability of his having done so was very high, in view of his continuous obsession with matters of sex and the immodest but entirely inescapable associations which this operation always arouses when its object is a beautiful young woman. I must confess that I fell victim to them in full measure.

Most of the champagne caught Anna on her tunic and skirt. I had been aiming for her face, but at the final moment some strange impulse of chastity must have forced me to divert the flow downwards.

She looked at the dark blotch on the chest of her tunic and shrugged.

‘You are an idiot,’ she said calmly. ‘You should be in a home for the mentally disturbed.’

‘You are not alone in thinking that,’ I said, setting the empty bottle on the table.

An oppressive silence fell. It seemed to me entirely pointless to engage in any further attempts to clarify our relations, and sitting opposite each other in silence was even more stupid. I think that Anna was feeling the same; probably in the entire restaurant only the fat black fly methodically beating itself against the window-pane knew what to do next. The situation was saved by one of the officers sitting at the next table - by this time I had completely forgotten that they even existed, but I am sure that in the wider sense they also had no idea of what to do next. The one who

had been injecting himself rose to his feet and approached us.

‘My dear sir,’ I heard him say in a voice filled with feeling, my dear sir, would you mind if I were to ask you a question?’

‘Not at all, please do,’ I said, turning to face him. I le was holding an open wallet in his hands, which he glanced into as he spoke as though it contained the crib for his speech.

‘Allow me to introduce myself,’ he said. ‘Staff Captain Lambovsky. By pure chance I happened to overhear part of your conversation. I was not eavesdropping, naturally. You were simply talking loudly.’

‘And what of it?’

‘Do you genuinely believe that all women are a dream?’ You know,’ I replied, trying to speak as politely as possiblе, ‘that is really a very complex question. In short, if one regards the entire Universe as no more than a dream, then there is no reason at all for placing women in any kind of special Category.’

‘So they are a dream, then.’ he said sadly. ‘I feared as much. But I have a photo here. Take a look.’

He held out a photograph. It showed a girl with an ordinary face sitting beside a potted geranium. I noticed that Anna also stole a glance at the photograph out of the corner of her eye.

‘This is my fiancee, Nyura,’ said the staff captain. ‘That is, she was my fiancee. Where she is now I have not the slightest idea. When I recall those bygone days, it all seems so very real. The skating rink at the Patriarch’s Ponds, or summer out at the estate… But in reality it has all disappeared, disappeared irretrievably - and if it had all never been, what would have been changed in the world? Do you understand how terrible that is? It makes no difference.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I understand, believe me.’

‘So it would seem that she is a dream too?’

‘So it would seem.’ I echoed,

‘Aha!’ he said with satisfaction, and glanced round at his companion who was smiling as he smoked. ‘Then must I understand you to be saying, my dear sir, that my fiancee Nyura sucks?’

‘What?’

‘Well, now,’ said Staff Captain Lambovsky, glancing round once more at his companion, ‘if life is but a dream, then all women are also no more than visions in dreams. My fiancée Nyura is a woman, and therefore she is also a vision in a dream.’

‘Let us assume so. What of it?’

‘Was it not you who only a moment ago said that the word «suck» in the idiom «all women suck» is derived from the word «succubus». Let us assume that Nyura excites me as a woman, and is at the same time a vision in a dream - does it not inevitably follow that she also sucks? It does. And are you aware, my dear sir, of the consequences of speaking words of this kind in public?’

I looked closely at him. He was about thirty years old, he had a mousy moustache, a high forehead with a receding hairline and blue eyes; the impression of concentrated provincial demonism produced by the combination of these features was so powerful that I experienced a distinct sense of irritation.

‘Now listen,’ I said, imperceptibly slipping my hand into my pocket and taking hold of the handle of my Browning, ‘you really are taking things too far. I have not had the honour of being acquainted with your fiancee, so I cannot possibly possess any opinions regarding her.’

‘Nobody dares to make assumptions,’ said the staff captain, ‘from which it follows that my Nyura is a bitch. It is very sad, but I can see only one way out of the situation which has arisen.’

Fixing me with a piercing gaze, he placed his hand on his holster and slowly unbuttoned it. I was about to fire, but I remembered that the holster contained his syringe-box. It was all actually becoming rather funny.

‘Did you wish to give me an injection?’ I asked. ‘Thank you, but I cannot tolerate morphine. In my opinion it dulls the brain.’

The staff captain jerked his hand away from the holster and glanced at his companion, a plump young man with a face that was red from the heat, who had been following our conversation closely.

‘Stand back Georges,’ he said, rising ponderously from the table and drawing his sabre from its scabbard. ‘I will give this gentleman his injection myself.

God only knows what would have happened next. In another second I should probably have shot him, with all the less regret since the colour of his face clearly indicated a tendency towards apoplexy, and he could hardly have been fated to live long. But at this point something unexpected occurred.

I heard a loud shout from the direction of the door.

‘Everybody stay right where they are! One movement and I shoot!’

I looked round. Standing in the doorway was a broad-shouldered man in a grey two-piece suit and a crimson Russian shirt. Strength of will was stamped on his powerful face - if it had not been spoiled by his short, receding chin, it would have looked magnificent in an antique bas-relief. His head was completely shaven, and he was holding a revolver in each hand. The two officers froze where they stood; the shaven-headed gentleman approached our table and stopped, setting his revolvers to their heads. The staff captain began blinking rapidly.

‘Stand still,’ said the stranger. ‘Stand still… Easy now…’

Suddenly his face was distorted by a grimace of fury and he pressed the triggers twice. They clicked and misfired.

‘Have you heard of Russian roulette, gentlemen?’ he asked. Hey?’

‘Yes.’ answered the officer with the red complexion.

‘You may regard yourselves at the present moment as playing that game, and that I am your croupier. I can inform you confidentially that the third chamber in each drum holds a live round. Please indicate whether you understand what I have said as quickly as possible.’

‘How?’ asked the staff captain.

‘Raise your hands.’ said the shaven-headed gentleman.

The officers raised their hands; the clatter of the sabre falling to the floor made me wince.

‘Get out of here,’ said the stranger, ‘and please do not look behind you on your way. I cannot tolerate that.’

The officers gave him no reason to repeat himself - they half-drunk glasses of champagne and a papyrosa smoking in the ashtray. When they had left, the stranger placed his revolvers on our table and leaned towards Anna; it seemed to me that there was something very favourable in the way she returned his gaze.

‘Anna.’ he said, raising her hand to his lips, ‘what a great joy it is to see you here.’

‘Hello, Grigory,’ said Anna. ‘Have you been in town long?’

‘I have just this moment arrived,’ he answered.

‘Are those your trotters outside the window?’

‘They are.’ said the shaven-headed gentleman.

‘And do you promise to take me for a ride?’

The gentleman smiled.

‘Grigory.’ said Anna, ‘I love you.’

The gentleman turned to me and held out his hand. ‘Grigory Kotovsky.’

‘Pyotr Voyd,’ I replied, shaking his hand.

‘So you are Chapaev’s commissar? The one who was wounded at Lozovaya? I have heard a great deal about you. I am truly glad to see you in good health.’

‘He is not entirely well yet.’ said Anna, casting a brief glance in my direction.

Kotovsky sat at the table.

‘And what exactly happened between you and those gentlemen?’

‘We had a quarrel concerning the metaphysics of dreams.’ I replied.

Kotovsky chortled. ‘That is what you deserve for discussing such matters in provincial restaurants. Which reminds me, did I not hear that at Lozovaya everything started from a conversation in the station buffet too?’

I shrugged.

‘He remembers nothing about it,’ said Anna. ‘He has partial amnesia. It happens sometimes with serious concussion.’

‘I hope that you will soon be fully recovered from your wound.’ said Kotovsky, picking up one of the revolvers from the table. He slipped the drum out to one side, then raised and lowered the hammer several times, swore under his breath and shook his head in disbelief. I was astonished to see that there were rounds set in all the chambers of the drum.

‘God damn these Tula revolvers,’ he said, looking up at me. You can never trust them. On one occasion they got me into such a pickle

He tossed the revolver back on to the table and shook his head, as though he were driving away dark thoughts. ‘How is Chapaev?’

Anna gestured with her hand.

‘He drinks.’ she said. ‘God knows what is going on, it really is quite frightening. Yesterday he ran out into the street with his Mauser, wearing nothing but his shirt, fired three times at I he sky, then thought for a moment, fired three times into the ground and went to bed.’

‘Stunning, absolutely stunning,’ muttered Kotovsky. ‘Are you not afraid that in this state he might bring the clay machine-gun into action?’

Anna gave me a sideways glance, and I instantly felt that my presence at the table was superfluous. My companions evidently shared this feeling - the pause lasted so long that it became unbearable.

‘Tell me, Pyotr, what did those gentlemen think about the metaphysics of dreams?’ Kotovsky asked eventually.

‘Oh, nothing significant,’ I said. ‘They weren’t very intelligent. Excuse me, but I feel a need for some fresh air. My head has begun to ache.’

‘Yes, Grigory,’ said Anna, ‘let us see Pyotr home, and then we can decide what to do with the evening.’

‘Thank you.’ I said, ‘but I can manage on my own. It is not very far, and I remember the way.’

‘Until later then.’ said Kotovsky.

Anna did not even look at me. I had scarcely left the table before they launched into an animated conversation. On reaching the door I glanced round: Anna was laughing loudly and tapping Kotovsky’s hand with her open palm, as though she was begging him to stop saying something unbearably funny.

Stepping outside I saw a light-sprung carriage with two grey trotters harnessed to it. It was obviously Kotovsky’s equipage. I turned the corner and set off up the slope of the street along which Anna and I had so recently been walking.

It was about three o’clock in the afternoon and the heat w a s unbearable. I thought of how everything had changed since the moment of my awakening - there was not a trace left of my pacific mood; most unpleasant of all was the fact that I simply could not get Kotovsky’s trotters out of my head. It seemed absurd that such a petty detail could have depressed me so much - or rather, I wished to regain my normal state, in which such things appeared absurd to me, but I could not. I was in fact deeply wounded.

The reason, of course, did not lie in Kotovsky and his trotters. The reason lay in Anna, in the elusive and inexpressible quality of her beauty, which from the very first moment had made me invent and ascribe to her a soul of profound and subtle feeling. I could not possibly have dreamed that an ordinary pair of trotters might be capable of rendering their owner attractive in her eyes. And yet it was so. The strangest thing of all, I thought, was that I had assumed that a woman needs something else. But what might that be the riches of the spirit?

I laughed out loud and two chickens walking along the edge of the road fluttered away from me in fright.

Now that was interesting, I reasoned, for if I were truthful with myself, that was precisely what I had thought - that there existed in me something capable of attracting this woman and raising me in her eyes immeasurably higher than any owner of a pair of trotters. But the very comparison already involved a quite intolerable vulgarity - in accepting it I was myself reducing to the level of a pair of trotters what should in my view seem of immeasurably greater value to her. If for me these were objects of one and the same order, then why on earth should she make any distinction between them? And just what was this object which was supposed to be of immeasurably greater value to her? My inner world? The things that I think and feel? I groaned out loud in disgust at myself. It was time I stopped deceiving myself, I thought. For years now my main problem had been how to rid myself of all these thoughts and feelings and leave my so-called inner world behind me on some rubbish tip. But even if I assumed for a moment that it did have some kind of value, at least of an aesthetic kind, that did not change a thing - everything beautiful that can exist in a human being is inaccessible tо others, because it is in reality inaccessible even to the person in whom it exists. How could it really be possible to fix it with the eye of introspection and say: ‘There it was, it is and it will be?’ Was it really possible in any sense to possess it, to say, in fact, that it belonged to anyone? How could I compare with Kotovsky’s trotters something that bore no relation to myself, something which I have merely glimpsed in the finest seconds of my life? And how could I blame Anna if she refused to see in me what I have long ago ceased to see in myself? No, this was genuinely absurd - even in those rare moments of life when I have perhaps discovered this most important of things, I have felt quite clearly that it was absolutely impossible to express it. It might be that someone utters a succinct phrase as he gazes out of the window at the sunset, and no more. But what I myself say when I gaze out at sunsets and sunrises has long irritated me beyond all tolerance. My soul is not endowed with any special beauty, I thought, quite the opposite - I was seeking in Anna what had never existed in myself. All that remained of me when I saw her was an aching void which could only be filled by her presence, her voice, her face. So what could I offer her instead of a ride with Kotovsky on his trotters - myself? In other words, my hope that in intimacy with her I might discover the answer to some vague and confused question tormenting my soul? Absurd. Had I been in her position myself, I would have chosen to ride the trotters with Kotovsky.

1 stopped and sat down on a worn milestone at the edge of the road. It was quite impossibly hot. I felt shattered and depressed; I could not recall when I had ever felt so disgusted with myself. The sour stench of champagne that had permeated my astrakhan hat seemed at that moment truly to symbolize the state of my spirit. I was surrounded on all sides by the indifferent torpidity of summer, somewhere there were dogs barking lazily, while the overheated machine-gun barrel in the sun was strafing the earth in a continuous, never-ending burst of fire. No sooner had this comparison come to mind than I remembered that Anna had called herself a machine-gunner. I felt tears well up in my eyes and I buried my face in my hands.

A few minutes later I got to my feet and set off up the hill again. I was feeling better; more than that, the thoughts that had just passed rapidly through my mind and seemingly crushed me had suddenly become a source of subtle pleasure. The sadness that had enveloped me was inexpressibly sweet, and I knew that in an hour’s time or so I would attempt to summon it again, but it would not come.

I soon reached the manor-house. I noticed that there were several horses tethered in the courtyard that had not been there before, and that smoke was rising from the chimney of one of the outhouses. I halted at the gates. The road continued on up the hill and disappeared around a bend into dense greenery; not a single building was visible above me, and it was quite incomprehensible where it might lead to. I did not wish to encounter anyone, so I entered the courtyard and made my way furtively round the house.

‘You’ve lost again, you idiot!’ shouted a bass male voice on the first floor.

They must have been playing cards. I reached the edge of the building, turned round the corner and found myself in a back yard, which proved to be unexpectedly picturesque - several steps away from the wall the ground fell away steeply, forming a natural depression concealed beneath the shade of the trees that overhung it. A babbling brook ran through the dip and I could see the roofs of two or three outbuildings, while further off, in a small open area, there was a tall stack of hay, exactly like those depicted in the idyllic rural scenes to be found in the journal Niva. I felt a sudden, crazy desire to tumble in the hay, and I set off towards the stack. Then suddenly, when I was only ten paces away from it, a man with a rifle leapt out from beneath the trees and barred my way.

Standing before me was the very same Bashkir who had served us dinner in the staff car and then uncoupled the weavers’ carriages from our train, but now his face was covered by a sparse black beard.

‘Listen,’ I said, ‘we know each other, don’t we? All I want to do is take a roll in the hay. I promise you not to smoke.’

The Bashkir did not react to my words in any way; his eyes gazed at me without the slightest trace of expression. I attempted to walk round him, and then he stepped backwards, raised his rifle and set the bayonet against my throat.

I turned and walked away. I must confess that there was something in the Bashkir’s manner which I found genuinely Irightening. When he pointed his bayonet at me he had gripped his rifle as though it were a spear, as if he had no notion that one could shoot from it, and the movement had hinted at such wild strength born of the steppe that the Browning in my pocket had seemed no more than a simple child’s firecracker. But it was all surely no more than nerves. When I reached the brook I looked back, but the Bashkir was no longer anywhere to be seen. I squatted down by the water and carefully washed my astrakhan hat in it.

Suddenly I noticed that the murmuring of the brook was overlaid, like the strains of some obscure instrument, by the tones of a low, rather pleasant-sounding voice. In the building nearest to me which, judging from the chimney in its roof, had once been a bathhouse, someone was intoning:

‘Calmly I walk the open field in my white shirt… And the storks are like the crosses on the bell towers.’

Something in these words moved me, and I decided to see who was singing. Wringing the water from my hat, I thrust it into my belt, walked across to the door and swung it open without knocking.

Inside there was a wide table made of freshly planed boards and two benches. On the table stood an immense bottle containing a turbid liquid, a glass and several onions. Sitting on the nearer of the benches with his back to me was a man wearing a white Russian shirt hanging loose outside his trousers.

‘I beg your pardon,’ I asked, ‘but is that not perhaps vodka in your bottle?’

‘No,’ said the man, turning round as he spoke, ‘this is moonshine.’

It was Chapaev.

I started in surprise. ‘Vasily Ivanovich!’

‘Hi there, Petka,’ he answered with a broad smile. ‘Back on your feet already, I see.’

I had absolutely no memory of when we had moved on to such familiar terms. Chapaev glanced at me with gentle cunning; a damp lock of hair had fallen across his forehead and his shirt was unbuttoned down to the middle of his belly. His appearance was so absolutely ordinary and so far removed from the image that I carried in my memory that I hesitated for several seconds, thinking it was a mistake.

‘Siddown, Petka, siddown.’ he said, nodding towards the other bench.

‘I thought you were out of town, Vasily Ivanovich,’ I said as I took a seat.

‘I got back an hour ago.’ he said, ‘and came straight to the bathhouse. Just the job in this heat. But why are you asking about me, tell me about yourself. How’re you feeling?’

‘Fine,’ I said.

‘Gets up just like that, puts on his hat and goes off into town. You should stop playing the bleeding hero. What’s this talk I hear about your losing your memory somewhere?’

‘1 have,’ I said, trying not to pay any attention to his buffoonery and perverse use of uncultured language. ‘But who could have told you already?’

‘Why Semyon, who else? Your orderly. You really can’t remember anything then, eh?’

‘All I remember is getting into the train in Moscow,’ I said. ‘Everything after that is a blank. I cannot even recall under what circumstances you began calling me Petka.’

Chapaev stared me in the face for a minute or so with his eyes screwed up, as though he were looking straight through me.

‘Yes,’ he said finally, ‘I see. A bad business. I reckon that you, Petka, are simply muddying the water.’

‘What water?’

‘Carry on muddying it if you like,’ Chapaev said mysteriously, ‘you’re still young yet. And I began calling you Petka at Lozovaya Junction, not long before the battle.’

‘I know nothing of this battle,’ I said, frowning. ‘I keep hearing about it all the time, but I cannot remember a single thing. It just makes my head start aching.’

‘Well, if it makes your head ache, don’t think about it. You wanted a drink, didn’t you? So have one!’

Tipping the bottle Chapaev filled the glass to the brim and pushed it across to me.

‘Many thanks,’ I said ironically and drank. Despite its frightening murky sheen, the moonshine proved to be quite excellent - it must have been distilled with some kind of herbs.

‘Like some onion?’

‘Not at the moment. But I do not rule out the possibility that in a while I might indeed reach a state in which I am able and even eager to chew onions with my moonshine.’

‘Why so down in the dumps?’ asked Chapaev.

‘Oh, just thoughts.’

‘And what thoughts might they be?’

‘Surely, Vasily Ivanovich, you cannot really be interested m what I am thinking?’

‘Why not?’ said Chapaev. ‘Of course I am.’

‘I am thinking, Vasily Ivanovich, that the love of a beautiful woman is always in reality a kind of condescension. Because it is simply impossible to be worthy of such a love.’

‘You what?’ said Chapaev, wrinkling up his forehead.

‘Enough of this swaggering foolery,’ I said, ‘I am being serious.’

‘Serious are you?’ asked Chapaev. ‘All right then, try this for size - condescension is always movement down from something to something else. Like down into this little gully here. So where does this condescension of yours go to - and from where?’

I started thinking about it. I could see what he was getting at: if I had said that I was talking about the condescension of the beautiful to the ugly and the suffering, he would immediately have asked me whether beauty is aware of itself, and whether it can remain beauty having once become conscious of itself in that capacity. To that question, which had driven me almost insane through long sleepless nights in St Petersburg, I had no answer. And if the beauty I was speaking of was a beauty unconscious of itself, then there could surely be no talk of condescension? Chapaev was very definitely far from simple.

‘Let us say, Vasily Ivanovich, not the condescension of something to something else, but the act of condescension in itself. I would even call it ontological condescension.’

‘And where exactly does this an-ta-logical condescension happen, then?’ asked Chapaev, obviously relishing his mimicry. He took another glass from under the table.

‘I am not prepared to converse in that tone.’

‘Let’s have another drink, then.’ said Chapaev.

We drank. I stared dubiously at an onion for several seconds.

‘But really.’ said Chapaev, wiping his moustache, ‘you tell me where it all happens.’

‘If you are in a fit state to talk seriously, Vasily Ivanovich, then I will tell you.’

‘Go on then, tell me.’

‘It would be more correct to say that there is no condescension involved. It is simply that such love is felt as condescension.’

‘And which parts is it felt in?’

‘In the m i n d, Vasily Ivanovich, in the perception of the conscious mind.’ I said sarcastically.

‘Ah, in simple terms you mean here in the head, right?’

‘Roughly speaking, yes.’

‘And where does the love happen?’

‘In the same place, Vasily Ivanovich. Roughly speaking.’

‘Right.’ said Chapaev in a satisfied voice. ‘So you were asking about, what was it now… Whether love is always condescension, right?’

‘Correct.’

‘And it seems that love takes place inside your head, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘And is that condescension too?’

‘So it appears, Vasily Ivanovich. What of it?’

‘Tell me, Petka, how on earth you have managed to get yourself into a state where you ask me, your commanding officer, whether what happens in your head is always what happens in your head, or not always?’

‘Sophistry,’ I said and drank. ‘Unadulterated sophistry. And anyway, I cannot understand why I continue to torment myself. I have endured all this before in St Petersburg, and the beautiful young woman in the maroon velvet dress set her empty goblet on the tablecloth in exactly the same fashion and I took my handkerchief out of my pocket in exactly the same way-’

Chapaev cleared his throat loudly, drowning out what I was saying. I finished in a quiet voice, not quite sure to whom I was actually speaking:

‘What do I want from this girl? Am I not aware that one can never return to the past? One might skilfully reproduce all of his external circumstances, but one can never recover one’s former self, never…’

‘Oi-oi, you spin a very fine line in garbage, Petka.’ Chapaev said with a laugh. ‘Goblet, tablecloth.’

‘What is wrong with you, Vasily Ivanovich,’ I asked, restraining myself with some difficulty. ‘Have you been rereading Tolstoy? Have you decided to become more simple?’

‘We’ve no need to reread any of your Tolstoys.’ said Chapaev, chuckling again. ‘But if you’re pining because of our Лпка, then I can tell you that every woman has to be approached in the right way. Pining away for our Anka, are you? Have I guessed right?’

His eyes had become two narrow slits of cunning. Then he suddenly struck the table with his fist.

‘You answer when your divisional commander asks you a question!’

There was definitely no way I was going to be able to break through his strange mood today.

‘It is of no importance.’ I said. ‘Vasily Ivanovich, let us have another drink.’

Chapaev laughed quietly and filled both glasses.

My memories of the hours which followed are rather vague. I got very drunk. I think we talked about soldiering -Chapaev was reminiscing about the Great War. He made it sound quite convincing: he spoke about the German cavalry, about some positions above some river, about gas attacks and mills with machine-gunners sitting in them. At one point he even became very excited and began shouting, glaring at me with gleaming eyes:

‘Ah, Petka! D’you know the way I fight? You can’t know any thing about that! Chapaev uses only three blows, you understand me?’

I nodded mechanically, but I was listening carefully.

The first blow is where!’

He struck the table so hard with his fist that the bottle almost toppled over.

‘The second is when!’

Again he smote the boards of the table.

‘And the third is who!’

In a different situation I would have appreciated this performance, but despite all his shouting and striking the table, I soon fell asleep right there on the bench; when I awoke it was already dark outside and somewhere in the distance I could hear sheep bleating.

I lifted my head from the table and surveyed the room - I felt as though I were in a cab drivers’ tavern somewhere in St Petersburg. A paraffin lamp had appeared on the table. Chapaev was still sitting opposite me holding his glass, humming something to himself and staring at the wall. His eyes were almost as clouded as the moonshine in the bottle, which was already half-empty. Perhaps I should talk with him in his own manner, I thought, and thumped the table with my fist in a gesture of exaggerated familiarity.

‘Tell me now, Vasily Ivanovich, straight from the heart. Are you a Red or a White?’

‘Me?’ asked Chapaev, shifting his gaze to me. ‘You want to know?’

He picked up two onions from the table and began cleaning them. One of them he cleaned until its flesh was white, but from the other he removed only the dry outer skin, exposing the reddish-purple layer underneath.

‘Look here, Petka,’ he said, placing them on the table in front of him. «There are two onions in front of you, one white, the other red.’

‘Well,’ I said.

‘Look at the white one.’

‘I am looking at it’

‘And now at the red one,’

‘Yes, what of it?’

‘Now look at both of them.’

‘I am looking,’ I said.

‘So which are you, red or white?’

‘Me? How do you mean?’

‘When you look at the red onion, do you turn red?’

‘No.’

‘And when you look at the white onion, do you turn white?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘I do not.’

‘Let’s proceed then,’ said Chapaev. ‘There are such things as topographical maps. And this table is a simplified map of consciousness. There are the Reds. And there are the Whites. But just because we’re aware of Reds and Whites, do we take on any colours? And what is there in you that can take them on?’

‘You are deliberately confusing things, Vasily Ivanovich. If we are not Reds and not Whites, then just who are we?’

‘Petka, before you try talking about complicated questions, you should settle the simple ones. «We» is more complicated lhan «I», isn’t it?’

‘It is,’ I said.

‘What do you call «I»?’

‘Clearly, myself

‘Can you tell me who you are?’

‘Pyotr Voyd.’

‘That’s your name. But who is it bears that name?’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘one could say that I am a psychological individual. A totality of habits, experience… And knowledge and preferences.’

‘And just whose are these habits, Petka?’ Chapaev asked forcefully.

‘Mine,’ I shrugged.

‘But you just said yourself, Petka, that you are a totality of habits. If they are your habits, does that mean that these habits belong to a totality of habits?’

‘It sounds funny,’ I said, ‘but in essence, that is the case.’

‘And what kind of habits do habits have?’

I began to feel irritated.

‘This entire conversation is rather primitive. We began, after all, from the question of who I am, of what my nature is. If you have no objection, then I regard myself as… Well, let us say, a monad. In Leibniz’s sense of the word.’

‘Then just who is it who goes around regarding himself as this gonad?’

‘The monad itself.’ replied, determined to maintain a grip on myself.

Good, said Chapaev, screwing up his eyes in a cunning fashion, well talk about who later. But first, my dear friend, let us deal with where. Tell me, where’s it live, this gonad of yours.’

‘In my consciousness.’

‘And where is your consciousness’

‘Right here, I said, tapping myself on the head.’

‘And where is your head?’

‘On my shoulders.’

‘And where are your shoulders?’

‘In a room.’

‘And where is the room?’

‘In a building.’

‘And where is the building?’

‘In Russia.’

‘And where is Russia?’

‘In the deepest trouble, Vasily Ivanovich.’

‘Stop that,’ he shouted seriously. You can joke when your commander orders you to. Answer.’

‘Well, of course, on the Earth.’

‘And where is the Earth?’

‘In the Universe.’

‘And where is the Universe?’

I thought for a second.

‘In itself.’

‘And where is this in itself?’

In my consciousness.’

‘Well then, Petka, that means your consciousness is in your consciousness, doesn’t it?’

‘It seems so.’

‘Right,’ said Chapaev, straightening his moustache. ‘Now listen to me carefully. Tell me, what place is it in?’

‘I do not understand, Vasily Ivanovich. The concept of place is one o the categories o consciousness, and so…

‘Where is this place? In what place is this concept of place located?’

‘Well now, let us say that it is not really a place. We could-’ I stopped dead. Yes, I thought, that is where he is leading me. If I use the word reality, he will reduce everything to my own thoughts once again. And then he will ask where they are located. I will tell him they are in my head, and then… A good gambit. Of course, I could resort to quotations, but then, I thought in astonishment, any of the systems which I can cite either sidesteps this breach in the logic of thought or plugs it with a couple of dubious Latinisms. Yes, Chapaev was very far indeed from being simple. Of course, there is always the foolproof method of concluding any argument by pigeon-holing your opponent - nothing could be easier than to declare that everything he is trying to demonstrate is already well known under such-and-such a name, and human thought has advanced a long way since then. But I felt ashamed to behave like some self-satisfied evening-class student who has leafed ahead through a few pages of the philosophy textbook during breaks. And had not I myself only recently told some St Petersburg philosopher, who had launched into a drunken discussion of the Greek roots of Russian communism, that philosophy would be better called sophisilly?

Chapaev laughed.

‘And ust where can human thought advance to?’ he asked.

‘Eh?’ I asked in confusion.

‘Advance from what? Where to?’

I decided that in my absent-mindedness I must have spoken out loud.

‘Vasily Ivanovich, let us talk about all that when we are sober. I am no philosopher. Let us have a drink instead.’

‘If you were a philosopher, said Chapaev, ‘I wouldn’t trust you with anything more important than mucking out the stables. But you command one of my squadrons. At Lozovaya you understood everything just fine. What s happening to you? Too afraid, are you? Or maybe too happy?’

‘I do not remember anything,’ I said, once again experiencing that strange tension in all my nerves. ‘I do not remember.’

‘Ah, Petka.’ Chapaev sighed, filling the glasses with moonshine. ‘I just don’t know what to make of you. Understand yourself first of all.’

We drank. Mechanically I reached for an onion and bit out a large chunk.

‘Perhaps we should go for a breath of air before bed?’ asked Chapaev, lighting up a papyrosa.

‘We could,’ I replied, replacing the onion on the table.

There had obviously been a brief shower of rain while I was sleeping and the slope of the gully that rose towards the manor-house was damp and slippery. I discovered that I was absolutely drunk - having almost reached the top, I slipped and tumbled back down into the wet grass. My head was flung back on my neck and I saw above me the sky full of stars. It was so beautiful that for several seconds I simply lay there in silence, staring upwards. Chapaev gave me his hand and helped me to my feet. Once we had scrambled out on to level ground, I looked up again and was suddenly struck by the thought that it must have been ages since I had last seen the starry sky, although it had been there all the time right above my head, and all I had to do was look up. I laughed.

‘What’s up?’ asked Chapaev.

‘Nothing special,’ I said and pointed up at the sky. ‘The sky is beautiful.’

Chapaev looked upwards, swaying on his feet.

‘Beautiful?’ he queried thoughtfully. ‘What is beauty?’

‘Come now,’ I said. ‘What do you mean? Beauty is the most perfect objectivization of the will at the highest possible level of its cognizability.’

Chapaev looked at the sky for another few seconds and then transferred his gaze to a large puddle which lay at our feet and spat the stub of his papyrosa into it. The Universe reflected in the smooth surface of the water suffered a momentary cataclysm as all its constellations shuddered and were transformed into a twinkling blur.

‘What I’ve always found astounding.’ he said, ‘is the starry sky beneath our feet and the Immanuel Kant within us.’

‘I find it quite incomprehensible, Vasily Ivanovich, how a man who confuses Kant with Schopenhauer could have been given the command of a division.’

Chapaev looked at me with dull eyes and opened his mouth to say something, but at this point we heard a clatter of wheels and the whinnying of horses. Someone was driving up to the house.

‘It is probably Kotovsky and Anna.’ I said. ‘It would seem, Vasily Ivanovich, that your machine-gunner has a penchant for strong personalities in Russian shirts.’

‘So Kotovsky’s in town, is he? Why didn’t you say so?’

He turned and walked quickly away, completely forgetting about me. I plodded slowly after him as far as the corner of the house and then stopped. The carriage stood by the porch, while Kotovsky himself was in the act of assisting Anna out of it. When he saw Chapaev approaching, Kotovsky saluted and went to meet him and they embraced. This was followed by a series of exclamations and slaps of the kind that occur at every meeting between two men who both wish to demonstrate how well they are able to keep their spirits up as they wander through the shifting sands of life. They wandered in the direction of the house, while Anna remained beside the carriage. Acting on a sudden impulse I set off towards her -on the way I almost fell again when I stumbled over an empty shell crate, and I had a brief presentiment that I would regret my impetuousness.

‘Anna, please! Do not go!’

She stopped and turned her head towards me. My God, how beautiful she was at that moment!

‘Anna,’ I blurted out, for some reason pressing my hands to my breast as I spoke, ‘please believe me when I say… I low badly I feel just thinking about my behaviour in the restaurant. But you must admit that you did give me cause. I understand that this unremittingly self-assertive suffragism is not the real you at all, it is nothing more than conformity to a certain aesthetic formula, and that is merely the result-’

She suddenly pushed me away.

‘Get away from me, Pyotr, for God’s sake,’ she said with a frown. ‘You smell of onions. I’m willing to forgive you everything, but not that.’

I turned and rushed into the house. My face was burning so hotly that one could probably have lit a cigarette on it, and all the way to my room - I have no idea how I managed to find it in the darkness - 1 roundly cursed Chapaev with his moonshine and his onions. I flung myself on to the bed and fell into a state close to coma, no doubt similar to the state from which I had emerged that morning.

After a while somebody knocked.

‘Petka!’ called Chapaev’s voice. ‘Where are you?’

‘Nowhere!’ I mumbled in reply.

‘Now then!’ Chapaev roared unexpectedly. ‘That’s my lad! Tomorrow I’ll thank you formally in front of the ranks. You understand everything so well! So what were you up to, acting the fool all evening?’

‘How am I to understand you?’

‘You work it out for yourself. What can you see in front of you right now?’

‘A pillow.’ I answered, ‘but not very clearly. And please do not explain to me yet again that it is located in my consciousness.’

‘Everything that we see is located in our consciousness, Petka. Which means we can’t say that our consciousness is located anywhere. We’re nowhere for the simple reason that there is no place in which we can be said to be located. That’s why we’re nowhere. D’you remember now?’

‘Chapaev.’ I said, ‘I would like to be alone for a while.’

‘Whatever you say. Report to me in the morning, fresh as a cucumber. We advance at noon.’

He retreated along the corridor over the squeaking floorboards. For a while I pondered over what he had said - at first over this ‘nowhere’, and then over the inexplicable advance that he had set for noon the next day. Of course, I could have left my room and explained to him that it was impossible for me to advance because I was ‘nowhere’, but I did not want to do that -1 was overwhelmed by a terrible desire to sleep, and everything had begun to seem boring and unimportant. I fell asleep and dreamed of Anna’s fingers caressing the ribbed barrel of a machine-gun. I was awakened by another knock at the door.

‘Chapaev! I asked you to leave me alone! Let me get some rest before battle!’

‘It’s not Chapaev,’ said a voice outside the door. ‘It’s Kotovsky.’

I half sat up in my bed. ‘What do you want?’

‘I must talk to you.’

1 took my pistol out of my pocket and laid it on the bed, covering it with the blanket. God alone knew what he could want. I had a presentiment that it was somehow connected with Anna.

‘Come in then.’

The door opened and Kotovsky entered. He looked quite different from when I had seen him during the day - now he was wearing a dressing-gown with tassels, from beneath which protruded the striped legs of a pair of pyjama trousers. In one hand he held a candlestick with three lighted candles, and in the other he had a bottle of champagne and two glasses - when I spotted the champagne my guess that Anna had complained to him about me became a near certainty.

‘Have a seat.’ I pointed to the armchair.

Setting the champagne and the candlestick on the table, he sat down.

‘May I smoke here?’

‘By all means.’

When he had lit his cigarette, Kotovsky made a strange gesture - he ran his open hand across his bald head, as though he were pushing back an invisible lock of hair that had fallen across his forehead. I realized that I had seen the movement somewhere before, and immediately remembered where - on our first meeting, in the armoured train, Anna had smoothed down her non-existent locks in almost exactly the same way. The idea flitted through my mind that they must be members of some strange sect headed by Chapaev, and these shaven heads were connected with their rituals, but a moment later I realized that we were all members of this sect - all of us, that is, who had been obliged to suffer the consequences of Russia’s latest attack of freedom and the lice that inevitably accompanied it. I laughed.

‘What are you laughing at?’ Kotovsky asked, raising an eyebrow.

‘I was thinking about how we live nowadays. We shave our heads in order not to catch lice. Who could have imagined it five years ago? It really is incredible.’

‘Remarkable.’ said Kotovsky, ‘I was thinking about just the same thing - about what is happening to Russia. That’s why I came to see you. On a kind of impulse. I wanted to talk.’

‘About Russia?’

‘Precisely,’ he said.

‘What is there to say?’ I said. ‘Everything is abundantly clear.’

‘No, what I meant was - who is to blame?’

‘1 do not know,’ I said, ‘what do you think?’

‘The intelligentsia. Who else?’

He held out a full glass towards me.

‘Every member of the intelligentsia,’ he continued, his face showing a dark grimace, ‘especially in Russia, where he can only survive if someone else supports him, possesses one revoltingly infantile character trait. He is never afraid to attack that which subconsciously he feels to be right and lawful. Like a child who is not afraid to do his parents harm, because he knows that they may put him in the corner, but they won’t throw him out. He is more afraid of strangers. And it’s the same with this vile class.’

‘I do not quite follow you.’

‘No matter how much the intelligentsia may like to deride the basic principles of the empire from which it has sprung, it knows perfectly well that within that empire the moral law retained its vital strength.’

‘How? How does it know?’

‘From the fact that if the moral law were dead, the intelligentsia would never have dared to trample the cornerstones of the empire under foot, just recently I was rereading Dostoevsky - do you know what I thought?’

I felt one side of my face twitch.

‘What?’ I asked.

‘Good is by its very nature all-forgiving. Just think, all of these butchers who are so busy killing people nowadays used to be exiled to villages in Siberia, where they spent days at a time hunting hares and hazel-hens. No, the intelligentsia is not afraid of sacrilege. There’s only one thing it is afraid of -dealing with the question of evil and its roots, because it understands, and quite rightly, that here it could get shafted with a telegraph pole.’

‘A powerful image.’

‘Toying with evil is enjoyable,’ Kotovsky continued passionately. ‘There’s no risk whatsoever and the advantages are obvious. That’s why there’s such a vast army of villainous volunteers who deliberately confuse top with bottom and right with left, don’t you see? All of these calculating pimps of the spirit, these emaciated Bolsheviks, these needle-punctured liberals, these cocaine-soaked social-revolutionaries, all these-’

‘I understand.’

Kotovsky took a sip of champagne.

‘By the way, Pyotr,’ he said casually, ‘while we’re on the subject, I heard you have some cocaine.’

‘Yes.’ I said, ‘I do. Now that the subject has come up anyway.’

I reached into my travelling bag, took out the tin and put it on the table.

‘Please help yourself.’

Kotovsky needed no further persuasion. The white tracks lie sprinkled on the surface of the table looked like two major highways under construction. He went through all the requisite manipulations and leaned back in his armchair. After waiting a minute or so, I asked out of politeness:

‘And do you often think about Russia in that manner?’

‘When I lived in Odessa, I thought about her at least three times a day,’ he said in a dull voice. ‘It was giving me nosebleeds. Then I gave it up. I didn’t want to become dependent on anything.’

‘And what happened now? Was it Dostoevsky who tempted you?’

‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘A certain inner drama.’

1 suddenly had an unexpected idea.

‘Tell me, Grigory, are you very fond of your trotters?’

‘Why?’ he asked.

‘We could swap. Half of this tin for your carriage.’

Kotovsky gave a me a sharp glance, then he picked up the tin from the table, looked into it and said:

‘You really know how to tempt a man. Why would you want my trotters?’

‘To go driving. Why else?’

‘Very well,’ said Kotovsky, ‘I agree. As it happens, I have a set of chemical scales in my luggage…’

‘Measure it by eye,’ I said, ‘I came by it very easily.’

Extracting a silver cigarette case from the pocket of his dressing-gown, he emptied out the papyrosas from it and then took out a penknife and used its blade to transfer part of the powder to the case.

‘Won’t it spill?’ I asked.

‘Don’t worry, I got this cigarette case in Odessa. It’s special. The trotters are yours.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Shall we drink to our deal?’

‘Gladly,’ I said, raising my glass.

Kotovsky drained his champagne, put the cigarette case in his pocket and picked up the candlestick.

‘Well, thank you for the conversation. Please forgive me, I beg you, for intruding during the night.’

‘Good night to you. Would you permit me to ask you one question? Since you have already mentioned it yourself -what is the inner drama which is eased so well by cocaine?’

‘In the face of the drama of Russia it dwindles to nothing,’ said Kotovsky. He nodded curtly in military fashion and left the room.

I tried for some time to get to sleep, but was unsuccessful. At first I thought about Kotovsky - I must admit that he had made a rather pleasant impression on me, there was a sense of style to him. Then my thoughts turned back to Chapaev. I began thinking about his ‘nowhere’ and our conversation. At first glance it seemed far from complicated: he had asked me to answer the question, whether I exist because of the world, or the world exists because of me. Of course, it all amounted to nothing more than banal dialectics, but there was a rather frightening aspect to it, which he had pointed out in a masterly fashion with his questions, at first sight so idiotic, about the place where it all happens. If the entire world exists within me, then where do I exist? And if I exist within this world, then where, in what place in the world, is my consciousness located? One might say, I thought, that on the one hand the world exists in me and on the other I exist in the world, and these are simply the poles of a single semantic magnet, but the tricky thing was that there was no peg on which to hang this magnet, this dialectical dyad.

There was nowhere for it to exist!

Because its existence required an individual in whose consciousness it could come into being. And that individual had nowhere to exist, because any ‘where’ could only arise in a сonsciousness for which there was simply no place other than one created by itself… But then where was it before it created this place for itself? If within itself, then where?

I suddenly felt afraid of being alone. Throwing my military jacket over my shoulders, I went out into the corridor, saw the blue radiance of the moon shining through the window on to the staircase and descended to the hallway.

The horseless carriage was standing near the door. I walked round it a couple of times, admiring its clean lines -the moonlight seemed to lend it additional charm. A horse snorted somewhere close to me. I turned round and saw Chapaev standing with a curry-comb in his hand, brushing the animal’s mane. I walked over and stood beside him; he looked at me. I wonder, I thought, what he will say if I ask him where this ‘nowhere’ of his is located. He will have to define the word in terms of itself, and will find his position in the conversation no better than my own.

‘Can’t sleep?’ asked Chapaev.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Something is bothering me.’

‘What is it, never seen the void before?’

I realized that by the word ‘void’ he meant precisely the ‘nowhere’ which I had become aware of only a few minutes earlier.

‘No,’ I answered. ‘Never.’

Then just what have you been seeing, Petka?’ Chapaev asked gently.

‘Let’s change the subject,’ I said. ‘Where are my trotters?’

‘In the stable,’ said Chapaev. ‘And just how long have they been yours and not Kotovsky’s?’

‘About a quarter of an hour now.’

Chapaev laughed.

‘You be careful with Grigory,’ he said. ‘He’s not as straightforward as he seems,’

‘I have already realized that,’ I replied. ‘You know, Vasily Ivanovich, I just cannot get your words out of my head. You certainly know how to drive a person into a corner.’

‘That’s right,’ said Chapaev, forcing the curry-comb through the tangles of horsehair, ‘I do. And then I give them a good burst from the machine-gun…’

‘But I think,’ I said, ‘that I can do it too.’

‘Try it.’

‘Very well,’ I said. ‘I shall also ask a sequence of questions about place.’

‘Ask away, ask away,’ muttered Chapaev.

‘Let us start at the beginning. There you stand combing a horse. But where is this horse?’

Chapaev looked at me in amazement. ‘Petka, have you gone completely off your chump?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘It’s right here in front of your face.’

I said nothing for several seconds. I had not been prepared for such a turn of events. Chapaev shook his head doubtfully.

‘You know, Petka,’ he said, ‘I reckon you’d better get off to bed.’

I smiled stupidly and wandered back towards the house. Somehow managing to reach my bed, I collapsed on to it and began tumbling down into the next nightmare; I had sensed its inevitable onset as I was still climbing the stairs.

I did not have to wait for long. I began dreaming of a blue-eyed, blond-haired man tethered with loops to a strange-looking seat like a dentist’s chair. In the dream I knew for certain that his name was Serdyuk, and that what was happening to him now was soon going to happen to me. Coloured wires connected Serdyuk’s arms to a menacing-looking dynamolike machine standing on the floor; I was sufficiently conscious to guess that this mechanism had been added to the picture by my own mind. The handle of the machine was being turned by two men in white coats who were leaning over it. At first they turned the handle slowly, and the man in I he armchair merely trembled and bit his lip, but gradually their movements grew faster, and one after another huge shuddering movements began sweeping in waves through I he bound man’s body. At last he could no longer restrain himself from crying out.

‘Stop it!’ he said.

But his tormentors only worked even faster.

‘Stop the dynamo,’ he roared as loudly as he could, ‘turn off the dynamo! The dynamo! The dynamo! The DY-NA-MO!!!’