The Kukotsky Enigma: A Novel

6

THE ROAD LED DOWNWARD, WINDING AMONG THE HILLS. They walked with a brisk step down the road and experienced that special inner force that pulls hikers along farther and farther, that is so strong that it requires some effort to stop, as if at the imaginary end of the path some breezy trail siren sang some imploring song.

They did not stop. The usual breeze blew, but instead of prickly, hostile sand, it carried scraps of smells, among them nauseating cinnamon and dangerous almond together with the delightful aroma of an old library—old leather, dry paper, and sweet glue . . .

The Judean walked slightly ahead with a mountaineer’s gait, stepping with his bandy legs on the outer side of his foot. Skinhead followed, his shoulders lowered and his relaxed hands in loose fists, like those of an old boxer. Both of them felt that this locale was completely different, and this differentness—for the moment still unqualifiable—continued to mount. They both understood simultaneously that they were headed toward the East, whereas in that earlier place where they had traveled with other people there was no distinguishing direction. Here, though, the East soon made itself known by its pale and light-filled edge of the sky.

The road somehow accelerated on its own, leading down into a hollow, which kept growing deeper. The place gradually acquired the character of an inhabited space, although they encountered no people. The road was lined on both sides with large deciduous trees that resembled lindens, but with very tiny leaves. The trees, which had been planted at regular intervals, lent the place its quality of being inhabited. On the right, the hollow widened, and the road branched off along a cozy path. A board with a blue, sun-faded arrow was nailed to a post. They turned to the right.

The path quickly brought them to a long wooden structure with a high porch. The porch had recently been remodeled with white wood that had not yet managed to darken, while the structure itself was rather dilapidated. Curly low grass grew along both sides of the path, and even in the dim morning light it was apparent that the grass was light green, vernal, and not quite yet fully emerged. “Knotgrass,” thought Skinhead, “just like the kind that grew in the field in Zvenigorod alongside the creek at the edge of our plot . . .” He bent down and ran his open palm along the grass and smiled: his eyes had not deceived him; it felt exactly the same . . .

“I think we’re here,” said the Judean, and they ascended the porch. They wiped their feet on a striped rug. They found themselves in a large entranceway where two earthy peasants sat—watchmen, to judge by their appearance—one wearing an old hat with earflaps, and the other in a cap. An old man dressed in full monastic vestments stood before the watchmen, holding a paper ribbon with a poorly printed text and explaining something quietly to the gatekeepers.

“That’s right. Nothing is allowed. Whatever you have on you is all right, but no unauthorized items are allowed,” the watchman harped.

“That’s not an unauthorized item; it’s a prayer of absolution,” the monk insisted.

“Sh . . . How many times do I have to repeat myself!” The watchman in the earflap hat grew angry. “Look at this, old man!” The watchman opened the rickety cabinet at his side and began extracting item after item: personal hygiene products in a plastic packet, an artificial leg, a wad of money from some unknown country and time, a stack of string-bound letters with a medallion in the shape of a crooked heart, followed, finally, by books, one after the next. They were all New Testaments—from antiquated ones dog-eared from hundreds of years of reading to new trilingual ones, the kind they have in hotels . . .

“You see, these are all unauthorized items . . . People keep bringing them, and bringing them . . . So, you see, give me that ribbon of yours and go on through . . .”

The monk placed his paper ribbon atop a black New Testament and walked dejectedly through the entrance.

The Judean and Skinhead approached the Cerberuses. The one in the cap mumbled something about passes. The Judean flung out his arms.

“Are you guys kidding? Passes were done away with long ago . . .”

“Maybe where you live they were done away with, but not here. Our administration demands we check. All kinds show up around here . . .”

Skinhead looked at them with tenderness: they were obviously locals, provincial peasants, and one of them had a very familiar face. He looked at him closely and recognized him: it was Kuroedov, the son of a bitch. He had worked as a guard at the clinic for many years. A cantankerous former KGB watchdog . . .

“Don’t bother, Ilya. Let’s go. What are you staring at, Kuroedov?” Skinhead walked resolutely past the men through the door.

Kuroedov looked at Skinhead, dumbstruck, then gasped and started waving his arms gleefully. “Holy Fathers! It’s him! It’s him!”

“You fool!” barked Skinhead, and the door on its stiff springs slammed behind them with a resounding boom . . .

There was no structure behind the door. It was a huge amphitheater with a round arena barely visible down below. The two wayfarers stood at the outside edge alongside the aisle that sloped stairless downward to the arena at the bottom. At first it seemed to Skinhead that there were no people there, but then he made out some people in the arena: they sat by themselves, spread far apart, at a great distance from each other.

“We need to go down,” uttered the Judean, not quite confidently. They had descended quite deep, almost half the depth of the amphitheater, when the Judean stopped Skinhead. “I think this is good enough.”

They turned into a side aisle and discovered that instead of the long bleachers they thought they had seen at first there were massive stone benches set rather far apart from each other.

“Sit here,” the Judean offered.

Skinhead sat down.

“Can you see?”

In the center of the arena Skinhead could see a slight mound with a large opaque sphere on a separate podium. “Yes, I see a glass sphere.”

“Try sitting over there,” the Judean requested, and Skinhead moved down a row and made himself comfortable on the stone bench. He could see the same thing, only it was like looking through someone else’s glasses: everything was hazy and had lost its sharpness.

“It’s worse from here.” Skinhead blinked.

The Judean nodded in satisfaction and proposed that he climb several rows higher. But from there all he could see was a whitish fog.

“You see, Doctor, I wasn’t wrong: this is where you’re supposed to sit.” He seated Skinhead in his original place. “Just what the doctor ordered.”

“Your jokes are idiotic,” Skinhead sniffed. “Can you explain to me just what kind of a show this is . . .”

The Judean did not sit down, but stood alongside him, his hands on Skinhead’s shoulders.

“This is where you belong. For now.”

“And those sitting further down can see better?” Skinhead inquired.

“They don’t see better, they see more. It’s a particular kind of accommodation. What you see depends on your place, while the place depends on you. But don’t let that get to you. They’ve spent more time studying.” The remark sounded consolatory.

“Studying what?” Skinhead shot back.

“It. Being yourself.” He looked at the sky. Even from here, from the depths of the amphitheater, it was apparent that the eastern side of the sky was filling with light.

“Sometimes you say intolerably banal things,” Skinhead said, frowning. “Better you should tell me how not to be oneself.”

“Everyone has to be born again. To give birth to himself again . . . Enough. You’ll figure it out.” He sighed bitterly. “So, now you and I will say good-bye.”

“Forever?”

“I don’t know. I think not . . .”

“Listen,” said Skinhead, quashing the amicably romantic tone. “So what am I supposed to do with all those . . . with Manikin, and Limper, and Fat Lady . . . I have a hard time imagining what I can do for them . . .”

“You know, you’ve got the right approach. I think you’ll manage. Put your faith in the Supreme Intelligence. It won’t let you down.” The Judean smirked, and his smirk suddenly wounded Skinhead.

“Are you laughing, Ilya?”

“That part of Ilya that still remains, Doctor, weeps. After all, it seems, you once believed in a Supreme Intelligence just as I did. So follow it.”

Skinhead wanted to object, but there came a sound, at first not very loud, but alarming. It was the sound of a road. It reached his inner depths, and Skinhead felt a hole in his solar plexus, as if the sound had penetrated him and gone out his back, piercing his entire being. The sound contained a voice that announced very distinctly: “Are you ready? Are you ready?”

At the same time it was clear that someone else, not he, needed to ready himself. The sound was the sound of a trumpet . . .

The Judean leaned over and kissed Skinhead awkwardly and ran down to the arena, and it became clear that the voice of the trumpet had been calling precisely him . . . Suddenly he stopped, returned, and rummaged hastily in his pockets. He pulled out something that looked either like a small box or a large bug and stuck it in Skinhead’s hand.

“I almost forgot. It’s a lighter. That sticks to the palm of your hand. Take it easy! Everything will be okay! Very okay!”

He ran back down, skipping slightly, rather quickly, and the light locks of his poor hair flew behind him. An instant later he was alongside the platform, and two radiant indeterminate beings that could barely be made out piled into his outstretched arms a stack of books, papers, packages, and bags—the usual travel gear for a scholarly business trip . . .

The sphere split into two hemispheres. The Judean with his baggage stepped inside, and the sphere shut with a metallic click.

The sound of the trumpet—piercing, and resembling reveille at a Pioneer camp amplified multiple times over—mounted until the moment the metallic click was heard. Then the trumpet abated, and a weak electric-tinted buzz could be heard as the base of the sphere lit up slightly. The illumination increased, and the entire sphere filled with a cold bluish-white light that, despite its brilliance, did not light the arena; rather, it seemed, all its powerful incandescence was concentrated deep inside the sphere.

“He’ll burn up . . . It’s the end.” Skinhead was horrified.

The buzzing ceased, the light inside the sphere was extinguished, and the sphere became cloudy and translucent. As if it were cooling down . . . It opened.

Out of the sphere emerged the Judean. His arms were stretched out in front of him, as they had been, as if they still held the pile of books. But there were no books. It seemed as if there was nothing at all.

“It burned up. It all burned up.” Skinhead deduced what exactly it had been that his best, idiotic friend had been holding in his arms: all his thoughts, his work, his plans, his books, his reports, and all his silly accomplishments, his prison work, as well as all his noble deeds, which had always caused those around him so much suffering . . .

The Judean raised the palm of his right hand so that Skinhead could see perfectly clearly the thin light metallic plate on it. The plate bore a word that Skinhead was able to make out despite the distance between them.

INTENTIONS read the word on the plate.

“Lord, God,” Skinhead implored, “but what about hell being paved with them? . . . Can our intentions really acquit us?”

The arena swayed, and the cooling sphere, and the edge of the brightening sky—all of it shifted to the side, like the shadow of a cloud . . . Once again they were walking single file through the gray sandy desert, and their legs sank into the sand, and the weak breeze carried bits of sand that it cast in their faces . . . Up ahead marched Skinhead, while Limper brought up the rear, no longer limping . . .