The Kukotsky Enigma: A Novel

4

ALTHOUGH THOROUGHLY IMMERSED IN HIS PROFESsional, medical affairs, Pavel Alekseevich was perceptive in many respects and took a sober view of life happening around him. Certainly he enjoyed the privileges of a professor and director of a major clinic, but the disastrous situation of his medical staff, insufficient food supplies even in the obstetrics ward, the cold, and the shortages of firewood, of medicines, and of dressings did not escape his notice . . . Although he had observed all this before the war, somehow, from somewhere, the idea had crept into his head that after the war everything would change, improve, be more just . . .

Possibly, his very profession, his constant, almost mundane-seeming contact with fiery lightning—at that critical moment when a human being is born from a hemorrhaging canal, from the uterine darkness of nonexistence—and his professional participation in this natural drama were affecting him both outwardly and inwardly, as well as influencing his opinions: he knew both the fragility of human beings and their supernatural endurance, which far exceeded that of other living organisms. Years of experience had shown him that the abilities of humans to adapt far exceeded those of animals. Had physicians and zoologists ever investigated this phenomenon together?

“I’m thoroughly convinced that no dog could ever withstand what humans do.” He chuckled to himself.

Pavel Alekseevich possessed a most important quality for a scholar: the ability to ask the right questions . . . He kept a close eye on current research in the fields of physiology and embryology and never ceased to be amazed by the unfailing and even somewhat punctilious law that determined the life of a human being while it was still in its mother’s womb and dictated that every observable event occurred with great accuracy—not to the week or day, but to the hour and minute. This timing mechanism worked so precisely that exactly on the seventh day of gestation every embryo—a spherical accumulation of undifferentiated cells—split into two cell masses, inner and outer, with which amazing things began to happen: they bent, unlatched from each other, and turned outward, forming sacs and nodes—part of the surface migrating inward, and all of this recurring with incomprehensible accuracy, millions and millions of times over. Who or what provided the directions for how this invisible performance played itself out?

Through an unnamed higher wisdom, a single cell formed by an immobile and slightly nebulous ovum, surrounded by a radiant wreath of follicle cells, and a long-nosed spermatozoa, with its fusiform head and a spiraled jittery tail, inevitably grew into a bellowing, twenty-inch, seven-pound, thoroughly senseless human creature, which—as dictated by the same law—developed into a genius, or a dolt, or a beauty, or a criminal, or a saint . . .

Precisely because he knew so much—in fact everything there was to know—about the subject at the time, he could picture for himself better than anyone else the cosmic soup from which every little Katenka and Valerik emerged.

His father’s library had contained a multitude of books on the history of medicine, and he had always enjoyed retracing the path of this quaint antiquity: he delighted in, marveled at, and sometimes chuckled over the fantastic opinions of his long-deceased colleagues—the ancient Egyptian high priest, the world’s first professional anatomist, or the medieval jack-of-all-trades who let blood, performed Cesarean sections, and removed corns, all for the same fee.

He would never forget the text of a letter, which he had found as a youngster, written by the Babylonian priest and physician Berossus to a pupil explaining that thirty years ago the star Tishla had entered the constellation of Sippara, and since that time boys were being born larger, more aggressive, and with their little hands positioned as if holding a spear . . .

“Little wonder,” the ancient physician continued, “that the last ten years have seen incessant war: these boy-warriors have grown up and are incapable of becoming plowmen. It must be that the goddess-protectress Lamassu is rewriting the table of fates.”

Pavel Alekseevich had consulted German reference books to determine who this Lamassu was who was rewriting the destinies of generations. She turned out to be the goddess of the placenta. This idolization of separate organs and sense of a cosmic link between earth, sky, and the human body—entirely lost by modern science—amazed him. All these touching superstitions notwithstanding, could it be that an entire generation might share a common personality, a single identity? Was it only social factors that defined generations? Might it not in fact be the influence of stars, diet, or water chemistry? After all, Pavel Alekseevich’s teacher, Professor Kalintsev, had spoken about the hypotonic children of the beginning of the century . . . He had described them as languid, slightly sleepy babies, with puffy bags under their eyes, half-open mouths, angelically relaxed little hands . . . How unlike today’s children, with their tightly clenched little fists, tucked toes, and tensed muscles. Hypertonic. With a boxer’s stance—fists clenched to protect the head. Children of fear. Better equipped to survive. Only what are they protecting themselves from? Whom are they waiting to be struck by? What would the Babylonian scientist Berossus, priest of the goddess Lamassu, have said about these children?

Thoughts of these frightened children led Pavel Alekseevich in another direction: contemplating the fates of those close to him, he realized that almost all of them also had been crippled by fear. The majority concealed some unsavory fact about their family’s origin or background or, if unable to hide it, lived in constant anticipation of being punished for crimes they had not committed. His assistant, Valentina Ivanovna, was descended from one of the wealthiest merchant families; another colleague bore like the plague his half-German blood; the clinic receptionist’s brother had emigrated in 1918; and Elena, who had just entered his life, had admitted that her parents had perished in the camps while she herself had been spared a similar fate thanks to her grandmother, who had adopted her on the eve of her parents’ move to Altai. Even Vasilisa Gavrilovna, an absolutely common person, turned out to have her own tangled little secret. Each had something to keep quiet, and each lived in expectation of being exposed.

With the beginning of the war, this amorphous, almost mystical fear had abated somewhat, replaced by another, more immediate fear for the lives of the men who had gone to the front. They were being killed by real, age-old enemies—the Germans. Yet in fighting and dying at the front, these men defended not only the country, but, to a certain extent, their families from their earlier, prewar terror: the agents of vigilance seemed to have forgotten about rich grandmothers, overeducated grandfathers, and relatives abroad. The death notices that arrived made everyone equal in grief. Orphanhood, hunger, and cold did not discriminate between the children of perished soldiers and the children of perished prisoners. Now everyone’s future was tied to victory; no one’s dreams lay beyond it. The virtually unspoken love that had arisen between Pavel Alekseevich and Elena in whispers and to the crackle of smoldering logs so fully absorbed them that they both put off all inevitable thoughts about the future: they were not terrified, yet.