The Librarian

THE BUNKER

I HAVE MORE than enough dramatic talent and artistic restraint to keep an ending secret, even when I know very definitely what it is. All that I have at the present moment is the closed space around me—a room eight paces long and the same across. A ceiling three metres high with a quietly purring, milky neon lamp on it. The sun’s light doesn’t penetrate in here. On two walls side by side there are dummy window frames, stage decorations flanked by heavy blue curtains. Landscape photo wallpaper has been stuck in the window spaces, representing the false views from the insultingly fake windows: one of Red Square in the morning, the other a view of a large city at night, with the tracer-bullet lines of car lights. And hanging on the wall like a small pictorial window is a reproduction of the painting The Ice Has Gone: a chilly bend in a little grey river, a sky the colour of frozen lead, an earthy bank, the ochre of thawed patches, snow, birch trees, a meadow on the far side of the river as red as a cow’s hide, and a distant fringe of forest.

The door in the room is real, made of riveted gunmetal, with a round peephole and two strong bolts—perhaps that’s why the room reminds me of a war bunker. The bolts aren’t shut, but the door doesn’t open anyway. The mica peephole is always black, its lens covered on the other side by a little curtain inaccessible to me—the peephole was designed for the convenience of those who are on the outside. Earlier I used to sit at the door, waiting for light to quiver in those black optical depths and indicate that, although locked in, I was still under observation. But alas, nothing ever trembled in that bottomless, spellbinding blur. I’m afraid it is simply not permitted to observe me. After all, I am a sacred figure.

One of the walls contains the shaft of a dumb waiter. The only part showing on the outside is the cover, which looks like the damper of a stove. The dumb waiter comes to life four times a day. I say “a day”, but that’s an arbitrary definition. I don’t have a clock or a watch to tell the time by. If the dumb waiter contains a plate of soup as well as other food, I assume that lunchtime has arrived, and that outside the bunker it is day, and I put a tick in an exercise book. There are a hundred and sixty nine of them and I presume that a few days might have been missed—I didn’t start keeping a calendar of my incarceration immediately. I have been under lock and key for more than five months, and outside it is March or April 2001.

I can’t complain about the quality of the food—it’s regular canteen fare. The standard breakfast is vermicelli with a meat patty, salad and tea. Lunch is pearl barley (or pea, or rice) soup, mashed potatoes with a large frankfurter, bread and stewed-fruit water. The afternoon snack is cocoa and a curd-cheese pastry. Supper is a potato cake with sour cream or perhaps, for a change, flapjacks with jam and tea. The side vegetable sometimes changes: instead of mashed potatoes there might be boiled buckwheat or millet; instead of soup there might be clear broth or thick cabbage soup. On my nominal Thursday the frankfurter is replaced by fried hake. I have plenty of food.

I used to send regular notes in the dumb waiter with requests to increase the standard ration, but nobody responded to my requests. There’s a radiator in the bunker. The rusty pipe oozes hot water, which doesn’t affect its heating function at all. I have appropriated a glass and now I put it under the sparse rusty drops. In about one “day” it fills up to the top.

About two months ago I started laying in reserves. Of course, I can’t keep meat products—they go off. The only thing I set aside is bread, and I have almost a kilogram of rusks…

It is not possible to get washed in the bunker. The problem of personal hygiene is solved by a large packet of cotton wool and a five-litre canister of medical spirit. Every three “days” I moisten some cotton wool and wipe down my body. Sometimes I pour some spirit into the compote and treat myself to a cocktail. In the morning and the evening, in addition to everything else, the tray bears a fragrant strip of chewing gum—a substitute for a toothbrush.

For answering the greater and lesser calls of nature, I have a porcelain bedpan. Our dumb waiter is divided into two parts. In the top is the tray with the plates and glass, and in the bottom is the bedpan. I felt ashamed the first time sudden acute anxiety instantly affected my intestinal tract. But all the awkwardness is far behind me now.

There is an excellent writing desk in the bunker—natural oak, a time-honoured office design, with a fabric-upholstered top. One of its corners is broken and crushed—I tried to use the desk as a battering ram and hammered on the door with it. There is a table lamp with a green shade. There are Books laid out on the fabric desktop. So far there are six of them.

After about two months they sent down a Book of Strength that roused wild hopes in me—they couldn’t simply “bury” such a valuable rarity of the Gromov world. I even ventured an attempt to blackmail my jailers, writing notes saying that I would destroy this extremely rare, and quite possibly unique, copy.

The Books of Power, Meaning and Joy arrived, and I shuddered. The neon light went out and the air in the bunker immediately condensed into a prickly fish’s backbone in my throat—I realized why the librarian Alexei Vyazintsev had been locked up. After short intervals I received the Books of Fury and Endurance…

Every time I raise the cover of the dumb waiter, I pray that the Book of Memory will not be there, although I know that one day it will happen. Such is the will of Polina Vasilyevna Gorn.

In a drawer of the desk there were about ten ballpoint pens, three simple pencils and a pencil sharpener. In addition, I have six general school exercise books—four with squared pages and two with lined pages. I wiped my behind the very first time with squared pages, and then my jailers took pity on me and sent down toilet paper.

In the first week they sent down the cotton wool and medical spirit, a comb and a Kharkov electric shaver, with signs of having been used; below the blades there was a lot of coarse, grey stubble that looked like a boar’s bristles—probably the old women used it to shave their hormonal moustaches. I kept my clothes on for a long time, but by the end of a month they were impregnated with the smell of sweat. I gave in and put them in the dumb waiter. In return they sent me hospital pyjamas, a dressing gown and stretched woolly socks.

For sleeping I have a couch—a sturdy, pre-war model. Instead of a pillow I have a cloth bolster under my head. There’s no sheet, but I do have a grey hospital blanket. In addition to the desk and the couch, there is a chair in the bunker. A fine chair with a soft back. True, it is a bit rickety, but that’s my fault. I smashed it against the door and then put it back together again.

The way the dumb waiter is built makes it impossible to climb into the shaft. And squeezing into the actual niche of the lift is quite out of the question. No matter how tightly I might curl myself up, there’s no way a man 190 centimetres tall can fit into a box the size of an oven.

I have studied the walls of the niche carefully. It is set in a solid metal beam that moves up and down the shaft in the manner of a lift. When the niche is in line with the cover, the cover opens and I can take out my food. For the rest of the time the cover is cunningly pressed closed by the edges of the beam. Using the Book of Strength, I have bent the cover slightly and seen the blank metal behind it.

I have tried to break through the wall several times. Behind the bricks there was concrete, and I abandoned any attempts to scrape through it with a splinter of wood. Soon I came into possession of a pair of nail scissors, but I felt reluctant to blunt them. Now I formally perform the ritual of “digging-out” with a disposable plastic spoon, which is already half used up.

My schedule is simple. I write or I read a Book—Endurance or Joy, depending on my mood. Twice a day I perform the ritual of “digging-out” by scraping diligently at the wall with the spoon. After supper I arrange myself on the couch and sleep until the dumb waiter creaks again.

I have got used to the views from the “windows”. I usually read by the “Avenue at Night”. But the writing goes better beside “The Kremlin in the Morning”—that’s where the desk is. In essence, nothing has changed since Polina Vasilyevna Gorn first brought me to the bunker—a former book repository. At that time I could still walk out of here…

I look at the dreary landscape in the wooden frame, and in my mind’s eye I see a different murky river with slippery banks. If you turn your back to the water and walk through the channel of a ravine for about ten minutes, you can climb up to a charred stockade. There is nothing there to remind you of the people who recently moved in here, the heroic defence of the village soviet, the blood and the death, but the deep ravine is a common grave, concealing for ever the bodies of thirteen Shironinites and about seventy of the deprived readers who attacked us.

Leaning my hands against the low window sill, I glowered as I watched the victors, supervised by morose female workers, carrying the bodies out of the yard. By evening all the seriously wounded had died—during the day they groaned, asked for water, tossed about, but at sunset they calmed down and went quiet. Then they were also carried into the ravine.

After dismissing her orderly, Gorn went through the bags in person. In one she discovered a portrait. Gorn broke it with a crunch, impatiently smashing the glass under her heel. She beat out the shards of glass by hammering the frame against the table. The photograph fell out and a small piece of paper with the title “ERRATA” swirled through the air to the ground…

IN THE OLD FOLK’S HOME

THE NEXT EVENING a UAZ van with a red cross on its side rushed us to the Old Folk’s Home. I don’t remember the roads we followed. I slept all night and half a day. The plain-looking exterior of the van concealed a perfectly comfortable interior, fitted with a couch, a chair and a fold-down stool. Gorn magnanimously let me have the couch; she took the chair and Masha, the orderly, installed herself on the stool. Gorn immediately started reading the Book of Strength. The vigilant Masha carried on guarding me. I stopped fighting my exhaustion and passed out.

I awoke in the afternoon. Gorn was reading again. I surreptitiously observed her, then dozed off again, until I was woken by lively chattering—it was Gorn talking to a sleepy Masha. After the Book, Polina Vasilyevna was clearly feeling an exceptional access of strength. The old woman amused herself for a while with little round pieces of foil that she folded in two or in four, depending on their size, and then set them out in a line on the broad armrest of the chair. Then she twirled around in her fingers a little rod that looked like a large nail, but was soft, as if it was made out of plasticine, and easily preserved the impression of every squeeze of her gnarled fingers. A silly kind of march started playing in her handbag and she announced triumphantly:

“I’m bringing something!… It’s a surprise!… No, not that!… A grandson!…”

The old woman moved back the curtain and gazed out into the night for a long time. Out of the corner of my eye I saw smooth whiteness flying by, reminding me of flying above the clouds.

“It piled up overnight…” Gorn commented. “Winter…”

“He’s awake,” Masha suddenly said in a hoarse voice.

Gorn immediately swung round. Her face lit up in a smile.

“Alyoshka! You do like your sleep!”

She leaned down to the armrest, took aim and flicked her nail, as if she were playing at Chapayev. A piece of foil was sent flying and struck me a palpable blow on the cheek; it turned out to be a bent coin.

“Arise, arise, you working folk,” the mischievous old woman said as she bombarded me. “Battery, take aim! Fire!”

“Stop it, Polina Vasilyevna,” I said angrily. “That hurts.”

Gorn burst into joyful laughter.

“Want a bite to eat? Mashka, give him some! Don’t be greedy! He’s a great boy! Our treasure! Our own flesh and blood.”

The orderly handed me a sandwich in a greasy paper bag and poured me a glass of tea from a thermos flask. I wasn’t feeling hungry, but I obediently chewed the sour bread and stringy smoked sausage.

“Need to go to the toilet?” Gorn asked solicitously.

I thought and nodded.

“Number two, number one?” she asked, with a wink at her orderly, who knocked with her fist on the partition dividing us from the driver’s compartment and called: “Lusya, stop!”

The UAZ swerved to the shoulder of the road and stopped.

“Only don’t run off,” Gorn told me. “We’ll catch up with you anyway… And put something on… It’s turned cold… You didn’t answer me… Shall I give you some paper?”

“There’s no need…” I hissed through my teeth.

“Whatever you say… Masha, escort him…”

The snowy steppe washed over me in a chilly wave. Masha let me go ahead and climbed out after me. Swaying slightly on legs that were still unsteady after sleep, I stopped beside some frost-covered clumps of burdock.

Without taking her stony guard’s eyes off me, Masha used one hand to hold up the edge of her padded jacket and the other to pull down her trousers. She squatted down not far away. The yellow fluid gurgled as it ran between the coarse soles of her boots. Masha suddenly asked.

“And are you really Mokhov, then?”

“Yes,” I said without blinking an eye. “Alexei Mokhov.”

“You look like Yelizaveta Makarovna.” The orderly’s voice sounded kinder somehow, and it had lost its spiteful hoarseness. She pulled up her trousers and adjusted her padded jacket. “Let’s go then, love… Or else, God forbid, you might catch cold.”

I was looking forward with awe to seeing a bustling Babylon, an indomitable fortress of aged Amazons, but what I was presented with was a neglected soviet building—a long, three-storey, red-brick barracks-style structure surrounded by a wall made of concrete slabs and prison-style gates with peeling paint.

The door of the UAZ was swung open by a fat woman with a sheepskin jacket thrown across her shoulders like a Caucasian felt cloak on top of a white coat. The fat woman’s face was rather beautiful, but it was disproportionately small, like an elegant carnival mask set on a pig’s face with numerous chins and a bloated neck.

“Good afternoon, Polina Vasilyevna!” she gasped out joyfully. I was accorded a cautious bow. “How was the journey, Polina Vasilyevna?”

“Fine, Klava, fine…” Gorn supported herself on the hand held out to her and climbed out of the vehicle. “Report on how all of you here… have been getting on.”

I rejoiced in my heart that our arrival had not caused any serious commotion. The very last thing I wanted was to find myself in the centre of a jubilant or, on the contrary, morose, glowering crowd of decrepit female fanatics whose cruelty was legendary…

But there wasn’t any crowd as such. About a dozen old women wearing astrakhan coats with the same old-fashioned cut were staggering along the paths of a small park between flower beds with a light covering of snow. Nurse-overseers were keeping an eye on them. All in all I counted about twenty fighting-fit inhabitants, including the welcoming escort of eight taciturn female bodyguards. The garrison was small even by the standards of the most average reading room.

We went straight towards the building, with Gorn and the wheezing Klava leading the way. Masha and I walked behind them. Klava recounted the news.

“We’ve received the annual reports from Novosibirsk, Chita, Irkutsk and Krasnoyarsk. There’s sad news from the Khabarovsk region—the regional prefect Shipova passed away at the age of seventy-nine. We’ve had correspondence from Tver, Vladimir, Lipetsk and Ryazan. And the most important thing. There…”—Klava handed Gorn an impressive stack of paper—“Stenographic reports and summaries. We recorded Piskunova, Belaya, Shvedova…”

“Not now,” Gorn said impatiently. “I’ll look at them later… No, all right… Let me have them…”

The escort drew level with the herd of astrakhan coats. One old woman left the others and hobbled towards us, pushing her way through the bodyguards.

“Polya, Polya,” she squealed pitifully. “Where have you been?”

“Reznikova! My beauty!” said Gorn, stopping and tenderly putting her arm round the old woman’s shoulders. “Are you married?”

“Polya… Polya…” The old woman caught hold of Gorn’s hand and pressed the palm against her own cheek. “So long? Where were you?” Reznikova’s seeing eye watered and glowed with the joy of recognition, while the other, with the dense, milky cataract, shimmered with insanity. “Polya… Where were you?” she repeated tearfully.

“I’ll tell you later.”

Something inside the old woman made a liquid intestinal sound.

“Reznikova… My sunshine…” Gorn said tenderly. “Nadya-Valya-Galya-Tonya!” she shouted to the nurses. “Get everyone back to the wards! Wash them, dress them, feed them… And prepare them for a reading. Beginning at fifteen hundred hours…”

Reznikova was led away. She resisted desperately and howled something incoherent. The other old women also became agitated. One tried to take her clothes off, another seized her chance to grab something that was lying on the ground and stuff it in her mouth, trilling sickeningly, like a cockerel, when the nurse tried to extract the filthy thing from her ward’s mouth. Startled by her cries, the old women scattered in all directions.

“Girls!” Gorn exclaimed irritably to her escort. “Don’t just watch! Catch them! Masha! Do you need a special invitation?”

The bodyguards and the orderly ran to help the nurses. The old women who had relapsed into dotage were not particularly agile. They were quickly herded together into a knot and led towards the entrance in the left wing of the building.

“Listen, Klava,” Gorn suddenly asked. “How’s Rudenko?”

“Fine,” the fat woman replied. “What’s going to happen to her? She smeared the walls with shit again…”—she laughed—“If only that energy could be used for peaceful purposes!”

“She’s a good housekeeper!” Gorn said admiringly. “And tough. It even makes me feel envious. Have they tidied up the wards?”

“Yes, Polina Vasilyevna. Komarskaya and Pogozhina were on duty. They whitewashed the walls too, though they swore themselves blue in the face…”

“Hey, you!” Gorn suddenly shouted to the bodyguards who were holding the aged fugitives by their astrakhan collars. “A bit more politeness there! They’re really getting out of hand, the riff-raff!” Gorn watched the old women leave with a morose air and sighed: “There, Alyoshka… Take note… If you’ve got money, it’s ‘yes sir, no sir’… If you don’t have money, it’s ‘bugger you’… That’s the gloria mundi for you… They only needed to get weak… And there’s no more respect… Not for age, not for title… It’s just that they’ve been without the Book of Strength… For more than two weeks… So their brains have given up…”

Klava moved ahead of us, ran up the steps of the porch and pulled open the glass door.

“Please, come in…”

We walked through a hall that was like an aquarium and into a corridor that ran off to the left and the right. Facing us at the centre was a broad stairway of speckled stone with plaster banisters. The landing between floors was decorated with a semicircular stained-glass window with a sky of heavenly blue, two drooping ears of wheat and a crimson star. Filtered through the different-coloured glass, the sunlight spread itself on the floor in a hazy petrol rainbow.

To the right of the stairway, a woman in a white coat was sitting behind a perspex window with the word “Administration” on it. She was holding a telephone receiver to her ear, evidently informing the upper storeys that the boss had arrived.

“Klava,” said Gorn. “Go on… Get the equipment ready.”

“Yes, Polina Vasilyevna,” the fat woman said with a nod and darted up the stairs. I was left alone with Gorn.

The corridor was genuinely gloomy—poorly lit and as long as a Metro tunnel, and in both directions it ended in twilight and shadows.

A line of matt spheres glowed on the ceiling, like an unknown planetary system of dull, identical moons, but they only lit up themselves, not the twilit expanse of the endless corridor.

“Let’s go,” said Gorn, and led me along the corridor. The scuffed blue linoleum squeaked repulsively as if I weren’t walking, but being pushed on a hospital bed. I heard the voices of nurses and the sandpaper shuffling of numerous slow soles from a distant stairway.

“Well, Alyoshka, are you disappointed?” Gorn suddenly asked. “Were you expecting more?”

“It’s strange that there are so few people…”

“In recent times… many things have changed. Out of the old guard… only fifteen are still alive… You saw them… The ones who were walking in the yard… Former generals, regional prefects, centurion-mums. Before, each one of them had… three or four hundred people… under their command… So much for your Lagudov!…” Gorn lowered her voice to a half whisper. “I’ve been trying for more than a year to persuade them to take well-deserved retirement… But I can’t do it… Be extremely cautious… They’re only dead wood for now… After the Book of Strength they’ll be themselves again. These ladies are very dangerous… and still influential… I’m afraid they won’t go for the hogwash about… a newly discovered grandson… The younger ones will believe it… But you can’t fool the old ones… God only knows what ideas they might get into their heads… Don’t go wandering round the Home… Just to be sure… I’ll give you Masha… Don’t take a step without her… She may be stupid… But she’s as strong as they come… Yes… And don’t even think about mentioning the Book of Meaning to anyone… And in general… until the initiation, try… not to let anyone see you…”

“What initiation?”

“You have to be… consecrated as the grandson… Urgently… Without any precise status… you’re an empty space… No one will stand up for you… And the elders… will be against any ‘grandsons’ in any case…”

“Perhaps you shouldn’t read them the Book of Power yet?”

Gorn frowned jokingly.

“Are you suggesting I should kill them? With Alzheimer’s and Pick’s? My battle comrades?”

“You misunderstand me, Polina Vasilyevna,” I said hastily.

“Don’t make excuses… I understood perfectly well… We’re here.” Gorn stopped in front of a door with a plaque that said “Director” on it and fiddled with her keys. “Basically, you’re thinking… along the right lines. In my time… I suggested an idea to Liza… I had serious doubts… that one of the elders… as my Masha would put it… was playing the rat… That is… hiding Books that had been found. Each of them effectively had… her own network of agents, with spies and scouts… fighters, theoreticians, couriers, suicide operatives… How could we find out? You can’t climb inside someone else’s head… And, after all, they’re experienced and cunning… There’s no way to get them to talk openly…”

The ponderous luxury of Gorn’s office was impressive. The walls were faced with a honey-coloured, semitransparent material that resembled amber. The gleaming parquet floor was decorated with patterned inserts. Most of the furniture matched the ornate decor. An old writing desk crowned with a slab of marble, an armchair as sumptuous as a throne, a carved baroque secretaire, a grandfather clock that looked like an expensive coffin, a branching chandelier with garlands of crystal, velvet curtains, a palm in a tub. Discordant notes among all this lordly magnificence were struck by the office cupboards crammed from top to bottom with papers, the black leather sofa, the glass coffee table, the television, the two-chamber safe, the typewriter and the telephone.

Gorn flung the papers that Klava had given her onto the table.

“Come on in and make yourself at home,” she said, pointing to the sofa. “Being secretive is an intellectual effort… When the personality deteriorates… control is lost. It’s like wine… it loosens the tongue… And drunk or gaga… fundamentally it’s all the same. We needed our colleagues suddenly to become more stupid… How could we do it? Why, elementary. Under some pretext or other… deprive them of the Book of Strength… After a week the lack of constant input… already affects the brain… It all happens confidentially… A stenographer is attached to the suspect, and she documents every word… Naturally, there were some innocent victims. To make an omelette, you’ve got to break some eggs… A few veterans pegged out. A stroke, or kidney failure, or a heart attack… But the important thing, Alexei, was that we caught the ‘rat’. Or rather, she gave herself away. And you know who it was? Valka Rudenko, your Selivanova’s mother. A long time ago—five years now—she hid… a couple of extremely valuable Books. Valka didn’t live with us—she said her health was good enough… That’s the way we do things here… Those who can live independently, without the Book of Strength, live outside in the district. I can see now that Valka wanted to… stay in the shadows… But two months ago she moved into the Home… With a diagnosis of ‘cerebral atherosclerosis’. She wanted to use the Book as treatment… Valka was above suspicion… No one was checking her especially… But since the opportunity arose…” Gorn laughed. “Thank God, all the stenographic reports… came straight to my desk. Absolutely appalling facts surfaced. Valka had a Book of Meaning, and she gave it it to someone… Who exactly, we couldn’t find out… Valka was completely off her trolley… She couldn’t string two words together… I didn’t report everything to Liza… Why upset her?… Liza was absolutely raging anyway… Bearing in mind her previous services… Valka was banned from the readings… Let her die on her own… Then Ritka Selivanova showed up… with a Book of Meaning… And that set the cat among the pigeons… The insert was missing… Ritka was killed… At least we found out… that the Book of Meaning had been sent to you… I won’t try to hide my curiosity, Alyoshka… I was intrigued why Valka sent the Book to you… What is it that makes you so special? And you had the insert too… Our agents got busy… They found your village… Organized people for the attack… And that’s the whole story… It’s a month now since Lizka died… Valka paints the walls… with her own shit… It’s horrible… But on the other hand… she would have resented what happened to Ritka. And taken revenge… But when’s she’s crazy… she can’t even remember… her own name… Later, if you like, you can pay her a visit…” Gorn looked through the sheets of paper as she spoke. “No sedition… As pure as turtle doves…”

“What are those?”

“Stenographic reports…”

“But who have you recorded? Rudenko again?”

“No… the other lovely ladies…”

“The ones you abandoned to their fate?”

“Don’t be sarcastic,” said Gorn, suddenly angry. “I had no choice…” She hastily stacked the sheets into a pile and got up from the desk. “I had to go away… They’ll only turn senile… I’ll die without the Book…” Gorn opened the upper chamber of the safe and hid the papers away. The phone trilled. Gorn answered it and replied curtly: “We’re starting in fifteen minutes… Damn… That interrupted my train of thought… I forgot what I wanted to tell you…”

“Polina Vasilyevna, may I phone home?”

“Where?” Gorn asked in amazement.

“You know, home. To my family. My parents or my sister. They haven’t heard a word from me for a month now… They’ll be worried…”

A wooden mask of cruelty suddenly seemed to cover Gorn’s face.

“Your mother… Yelizaveta Makarovna Mokhova… is dead,” the old woman said with pitiless, slow emphasis. “And the librarian Vyazintsev is dead… There is only Alexei Mokhov… He doesn’t have a sister… And if Mokhov thinks that he is still… a little bit Vyazintsev… Alexei Mokhov will be dead too… Any more questions?”

“Yes…” I said in a depressed voice. Gorn’s crude rebuke had reminded me yet again what a dangerous escapade I had got involved in. “When’s the initiation?”

“I think it will be the seventh of November. We’ll combine two celebrations… In the meantime, you’ll get used to things, settle in…” Gorn looked at the clock. “I’ll be back… in about four hours… Lock yourself in securely… Don’t open the door to anyone. How can I keep you amused? By the way, have you ever seen the one-hander?”

“Who?”

“Well, Gromov.”

“Why the one-hander?”

“What, you mean you didn’t know? For crying out loud! Ritka didn’t tell you? No? That’s strange… Gromov lost his right hand… at the front. He wrote with his left hand… We’ve got… his photograph. Shall I show you it? In By Labour’s Roads there’s only a pencil portrait. Ah, yes… You’ve only… read two Books…”

Gorn walked over to some shelves crammed full with many years of archive material. The lacquered spines of notebooks, folders and thick journals protruded from them.

“I think it’s here…” Gorn pulled apart the plastic covers that had glued themselves together and dragged out a thick envelope. “Who have we got here?… E-e-er… Hello there!…” She turned round. “Have you seen Lagudov? No?” She handed me a dogeared, faded photo that was once coloured, with a long white crack across its glossy surface. The snapshot showed a small group of people huddled together in friendly style, like a set of pan pipes.

“Lagudov and his inner circle?” I asked at random.

“No. This is 1981. A birthday at the publishing house…”

“Where did you get this from?”

“A company secret…” Gorn said with a smile and a wave of her hand. “There isn’t any secret… Just normal intelligence work… We cadged it from Lagudov’s wife… We gleaned… a lot of useful things from her.…”

“And which one here is Lagudov?”

“The third from the right… There’s a woman in a blue dress… with ruffles… and he’s perched beside her… A real opera-singer type…”

Lagudov turned out to be a portly, well-fed gentleman with a dense thatch of greying hair. His dramatic appearance was spoiled by flabby cheeks and a chin the size of a small dumpling.

“And this is Gromov,” said Gorn. “In this snapshot… he’s already almost seventy… We appropriated it from his daughter. At first we wanted to initiate her into the cause… but then we changed our minds… Lizka was afraid of the competition…”

Staring out at me from the black-and-white photo was a distinctive old man with a thin face, who looked more like a physicist than a lyric writer, wearing glasses. His forehead was bony, as if it were faceted, and emphasized by a receding hairline on both sides. The horn-rimmed spectacles had slipped down his nose and the slim legs had lifted up above his ears, so that Gromov seemed to be looking through the lenses and over the top of them at the same time—with two glances. This produced a strange impression.

“A good portrait,” I said, giving the photo back to Gorn.

“I like it too… The one on his grave… is the same.”

“Where is he buried?”

“In the town of Gorlovka… in the municipal cemetery… Right, now, Alyoshka… Recognize this?”

The next photograph was of me. Slightly out of focus, because I had been caught in movement—my waving hand looked like ethereal pigeon fluff. Kruchina and Sukharev had also been caught in the frame, but they were completely blurred and cloudy, like ghosts.

“Our photocorps’s work,” Gorn explained. “Taken back in June… For the archive… Who would ever have thought it?…” She shook her head. “The new Shironin librarian… A pawn… A nothing… A tiny little screw…” Gorn held up her hand with the tips of her fingers bunched together, as if she was straining to make out something microscopic. “And the Book of Meaning… Even now… I can hardly believe it… All right then,” she said with a start, “I’ll go… You remember, right? Lock yourself in… Don’t put a foot out in the corridor… Don’t get bored… Take a rest… Watch the television… Only quietly… Don’t attract attention…”

The moment the door closed behind Gorn I turned the key twice, but I still didn’t feel any calmer. On the contrary, I now found myself face to face with a feeling of dangerous uncertainty, as acrid as heartburn. Pounding away in my head was the thought that I had to use this pause I had been given to analyse things. I strode round the office witlessly, repeating to myself, like an incantation: “I have to think everything through carefully.” But there wasn’t anything to think through. That is, I had plenty of thoughts, but they didn’t require analysis. Everything was absolutely clear as it was: I didn’t have the slightest degree of control over the situation and by acting independently I could only make my position worse.

I suddenly realized that I had been wanting to go to the toilet for ages, and now it was too late; Gorn had gone. I didn’t torment myself, but simply took a leak into the palm tree’s pot. Then I sat down at the desk. For a few minutes I was tempted by the phone, but after a moment’s thought I decided not to violate Gorn’s prohibitions. Maybe the line was monitored, and I didn’t want to get on the wrong side of Gorn.

I spotted a print-out that Gorn had forgotten on the desk:

My attention was caught by the clamour of a vast nesting ground of birds of prey coming from the yard. I walked across to the window and my eyes were dazzled by a welter of orange waistcoats and padded work jackets. There were so many of them, perhaps a hundred and fifty or two hundred clamouring women. A truck slowly crept into the yard, pulling a compressor behind it. Another truck disgorged more female workers from its canvas belly. In only half an hour the almost extinct home was engorged with fresh strength.

Of course, I didn’t switch on the television. It seemed to me that someone was walking to and fro outside the door—I pressed my ear to it and heard the linoleum squeaking as regularly as a pendulum. The invisible steps affected my nerves, and I tried to make as little noise as possible.

The marble slab was piled high with post. Some envelopes had already been opened, and until it got dark I passed the time reading this correspondence—mostly boring reports on the housekeeping.

Gorn appeared four hours later, as she had promised. She was not alone. Masha’s jowly face peeped in round the door. Probably the orderly had been watching me in Gorn’s absence.

“How did everything go, Polina Vasilyevna?” I asked cheerfully. “Well?”

“Alles gut…” Gorn said with a nod. “Although one reading is not enough. The girls have more strength… More than enough, in fact… But they don’t have much more wits… They’ll be their old selves again in a couple of day… You’ll meet them then…” Gorn studied the desk and turned towards me. “The curious cat…”—the old woman’s voice trembled with reproach; starting with a gentle tone, it suddenly slid down to a harsh crackle, like someone stepping on spilled sugar—“… ended up dead.”

I took offence.

“I haven’t touched anything, Polina Vasilyevna. Check for yourself…”

“Too much knowledge… can be dangerous, Alyoshka… But then, who are you here? That’s right… The grandson… The future heir… Of the biggest clan of all… We’ll educate you…” She went over to the shelves and tugged on a wide cloth spine with her nail. “There—you can browse through it at your leisure. Lots of useful things…”

“What is it?” I asked, taking the loosely assembled volume out of Gorn’s hands.

“The Chronicle of the Home. And not only that… A little bit about everyone…”

I opened the cardboard cover with red corners. The close-set text had been typed on tracing paper. Blurred by carbon paper, the print was as fluffy as wool thread.

“Right, let’s go, Alyoshka, let’s go…” said Gorn, hurrying me along. “We’ll get you quarters for the night. You’re probably hungry. You can get something to eat at the same time…”

In the corridor we ran into fat, breathless Klava.

“Polinochka… Vasilyevna,” she babbled, stifling as she breathed. “The room for our… e-e-er… respected guest…”—the fat woman bowed to me—“…is ready… All first-rate… They put in the couch, and a really fancy desk, a chair and a lamp…”

“Thank you, Klava,” said Gorn. “Get over to the kitchen… to Ankudinova… Arrange for some supper…”

“Aye, aye,” said Klava, raising her palm to her curls in a military-style salute, and dashed off down the corridor at top speed. Near the central stairway she turned a corner and disappeared from view.

“Remember, Alyoshka,” Gorn told me, jabbing her finger at one door after another. “Administration, accounts… dental surgery and physiotherapy room… massage and dressings… after that, the linen room… the housekeeper’s room… cloakroom… utility room… The two upper floors are all wards…”

From the main stairway and the alabaster banisters a more modest stairway led downward. We walked down it into an echoing basement.

“Here are the storerooms… The kitchen.” Gorn drew air in through her nose and wrinkled up her face squeamishly. “It stinks like a cheap public canteen…”

The air in the basement was permeated with a warm onion stench. From behind the tiled wall I could hear the battlefield clatter of kitchenware and the cooks’ owlish laughter.

“It’s just that they had rassolnik for lunch,” Masha put in. “The smell hasn’t worn off yet.”

“It’s just that they boil up slops for lunch,” said Gorn, mimicking her. “What sort of people are they?… They’ve grown idle in just three weeks… What’s the point in trying? The old women are all gaga… They’ll eat it anyway… Ankudinova’s lost all sense of shame. I’ll have her sacked and out the door before she knows what’s happening!”

“Polina Vasilyevna, you shouldn’t say that,” Masha boomed in her deep voice. “The rassolnik was delicious. I tried it. And the potato cakes were tasty too.”

“And now she has an intercessor to plead for her,” Gorn carried on ranting. “The idle gossips are working hand in glove… They’re as thick as thieves… And Klava too… Where the hell has she got to?”

I sensed that Gorn’s grousing was contrived. She was clearly nervous, but I couldn’t tell why. I suddenly felt terribly uneasy, and an invisible, icy hand ruffled up the hair on the nape of my neck, leaving it standing on end.

“Where are we going, Polina Vasilyevna?” I asked with affected indifference.

“To the bunker.”

The basement ended in a broad ramp that ran down to a depth of several storeys.

“It used to be a bomb shelter,” Gorn explained to me as we walked. “Then the Books were kept there… Now it’s your personal study…”

We wound our way through concrete catacombs for about another minute until the path ended abruptly at an impressive metal door with a large wheel for opening and closing it, like in a submarine; it looked like the armoured entrance to a bank safe.

“Hard a-starboard,” said Gorn, spinning the wheel. The unlocking mechanism clanged and the old woman pushed against the heavy door. The slab of steel slowly drifted inward. Gorn went in first and switched on the light. “Come in, Alexei, make yourself at home.”

The bunker turned out to be a normal living room, not musty, and quite cosy to look at—an impression that was greatly assisted by the decorative windows framed with dark velvet curtains. Even the desk and couch that Klava had promised were there, and also the chair, in a white slip cover. The pipe of a ventilation shaft or rubbish chute protruded from the wall.

I immediately had the feeling that I’d seen this interior before, only I couldn’t remember where—perhaps it was in a dream.

“They’ve fitted it out well… Good for them,” said Gorn, praising the bunker. “A luxury suite. In an Intourist hotel.” She patted the wall proudly. “Three metres thick, no aerial bomb could ever penetrate it. The safest place in the Home. You’ll live here for now… Until the initiation. No one will bother you. Just look at those bolts.”

I looked round.

“And what are the windows here for?”

“To make it beautiful,” said Klava, who had come up behind me. She was holding a tray with plates on it. Leningrad rassolnik, potato cakes with meat stuffing, sliced. Stewed-pear water. Bon appétit…”

“Thank you.”

“You don’t like it here?” the fat woman asked, genuinely disappointed. “A bit gloomy, right?”

“It’s bad that there isn’t a toilet or a washbasin…”

“You can’t put in plumbing in a day,” Klava sighed. “It’s a lot of trouble. The lavatory’s close by. Just a short walk down the corridor…”

“Don’t be awkward, Alyoshka,” Gorn intervened. “I’m sure you can run to the toilet without spattering the whole place.”

“Polina Vasilyevna, you warned me yourself not to go out anywhere.”

“That’s true, I did. So don’t hang about. Once you’ve relieved yourself, it’s straight back… To the bunker.”

“You can have a bedpan for the nights,” Klava suggested. “I’ll just bring one.”

“And what about getting washed?”

“Masha will take you… to the shower unit tomorrow. She’s personally… responsible for you…” Gorn gave her orderly a severe glance. “Answerable with her head, her ovaries and all her other innards…”

Masha and Klava laughed.

“Don’t be sad, Alyosha…” Gorn said encouragingly. “The guard is only a temporary measure. Once you’re a boss… you can wander about wherever you like…”

THE VIEWING

FOR THE NEXT three days not very much happened. I spent them locked away, only leaving the bunker in order to relieve myself. I was regularly provided with food and everything I needed by Masha, who was sometimes replaced by Klava. Gorn was busy with some business or other connected with my initiation. Perhaps she was preparing the ground with the old women who had awoken from their dementia.

I slept for long periods—that was the effect of the fatigue that had accumulated over recent weeks and, in addition, the bunker, with no natural lighting, encouraged lengthy sleep. For the rest of the time I studied the Chronicle. For the most part it was written in the dry style of minutes. Events and names were listed in a monotonous fashion: who found what Book, where and when and then set up a library or a reading room and when they were killed or, on the contrary, eliminated a rival. If the author doubted the authenticity of an event, then various sources with versions of the disputed episode were cited. In places there were tables and even maps on which arrows indicated the routes followed on foot by those long-forgotten distributors of Books, the wandering apostles. At the end of each chapter there were numerous notes, annotations, appendices and commentaries.

The Chronicle of the Home did not fit into this general style, betraying the author’s emotional partiality. The text was thick with graphic metaphors, often breaking into frank adulation of Gorn. At times it gave the impression that it wasn’t the pharmacist Yelizaveta Makarovna Mokhova who was the real leader, but Gorn. And in all likelihood that is the way it was. At the very dawn of the Mokhova clan’s expansion, Gorn sidelined her young boss, giving her the outwardly striking role of a sacred leader. The true power was focused in the hands of Gorn and several dozen old women. I had already realized that under the very best scenario the role prepared for me was the similarly formal role of “grandson”. I didn’t know what Gorn needed this for. At that time I wasn’t concerned with such global questions. I read the description of the ritual of adoption with intense revulsion—I didn’t want Gorn to think up some disgusting, unhygienic procedure of anointment that I would have to go through. Knowing Gorn, she could easily extract Mokhova’s body from the grave for theatrical effect and stage the mystery of my birth for several hundred women. I told myself that I would have a word with Gorn and ask her to keep the ritual of initiation as simple as possible.

Thanks to the Chronicle, by the end of the third day I was fairly well versed in the history of the Gromov world. Recalling the sycophantic recommendations of Dale Carnegie, I learned off the names of all the “mums” who were still alive: Aksak, Nazarova, Sushko, Reznikova, Voloshina, Suprun, Fertishina, Kashmanova, Kharitonova, Guseva, Kolycheva, Temtseva, Tsekhanskaya, Sinelnik.

In the evening Masha came for me. She usually behaved in a relaxed—I would even say flirtatious—manner, as far as that was possible for a tough old woman with huge tattooed, mannish hands that she shyly hid in her sleeves, like in a muff. But this time Masha was extremely serious, with no clowning about.

“The elders want to see you,” Masha informed me quietly and significantly.

“What did Polina Vasilyevna say it was?” I asked keenly. “The initiation?”

“Nah… The viewing. They’re going to get to know you. They’re celebrating the return in the canteen. Polina Vasilyevna said for you to get you dressed up for the occasion. So that you look presentable…”

Masha took me to a storeroom full of things left over from when the male half of the Home was exterminated. There were hundreds of suits hanging on crossbeams, looking like emaciated hanged men. Most of them were old-fashioned and decrepit.

“What size are you?” Masha asked, arming herself with a long stick with a hook on the end.

“Fifty-six…”

“Not an old man’s size…” Masha scurried about between the rows of clothes, hooking everything that caught her eye and then laying it out in front of me. “Don’t you worry. These aren’t cast-offs. They were saving these for when they died, for the coffin. It’s all clean, never even worn.”

I rejected the shirts out of hand because of their proverbial closeness to the body and limited myself to a dark-blue sweater. Masha hunted out two good quality suits for me: the jacket from the black suit fitted me, and so did the trousers from the grey one. Then we set off for the viewing.

I remember how agitated I was as I walked up the broad stairway, leaning with my hand on the cool white convex surface of the banister. While still on the steps I heard a piano accordion playing—the runs were too shrill for a button accordion. A guitar jangled and I heard indistinct choral singing, mingling with trills of laughter in the background.

“They’re cutting loose,” Masha said approvingly. Nonetheless we walked straight past the canteen, which was ringing with voices and music. Masha opened the next door.

“This is the serving room,” she explained. “Polina Vasilyevna’s instructions. She wants to give the others a surprise. I’ll go and tell her in secret that I’ve brought you.”

The din of the celebrations was on my left, beyond a thin, impalpable partition with a broad square window loosely covered by a zinc shutter. Something started jangling in a cupboard built onto the wall.

“Oh, Ankudinova’s sent the dessert,” Masha said. She opened the doors, took out four oven trays and put them on the table. The room was filled with the pleasant smell of something baked with apples.

“You wait a few minutes. I’ll soon be back,” Masha promised, and ran off.

I pressed my eye to the crack between the shutter and the serving window.

The canteen was long and narrow, like a railway carriage. It had been illuminated with strings of little lights—the tiny glow-worms were scattered thickly across the ceiling and the walls, glittering like deep-ocean plankton. Black silhouettes moved about in front of my eyes, clinking bottles and erupting into explosive peals of jackal-like laughter. Somewhere very close to me a knife scraped lingeringly across a plate, and this porcelain screech set my teeth on edge. The merry-making was taking place between tables that were set out in a horseshoe. I saw fat Klava holding an accordion on her knees. She was playing ‘The Blue Scarf’, and half a dozen old women were weaving a cautious reel round some chairs. Polina Vasilyevna Gorn was sitting at the head of the horseshoe table, surrounded by her broad-shouldered retinue. She had her chin propped on her hand and was frowning slightly at the insistent noise as she listened carefully to Reznikova.

Before I could guess what the fun was all about, Klava suddenly broke off the tune, squeezing the bellows of the accordion shut. The old women squealed and made a dash for the chairs. One of them didn’t get a seat and she jostled helplessly for a while and then retreated with a shrug.

“Guseva’s out! Let’s hear about Guseva!” the more agile old women trilled gleefully, stamping their feet. Their resemblance to little girls frolicking about during the break at school was comical, and they even called each other by their surnames.

“What shall I read about this victim?” Klava asked the group in a loud voice.

Guseva threatened her companions.

“If you take it out of week three, I’ll never forgive you…”

The victorious women consulted and announced: “Day eight!”

Klava picked up a tall stack of papers, found the sheet she needed, cleared her throat and read out:

“A letter from Guseva to the elder Maksakova… ‘Zhenechka send me a comb please please I really need a comb because Tsekhanskaya took my comb and lost it and now I haven’t got a comb and they didn’t give me a new comb so I really need a comb now what else can I write to you I’m fine Polya has gone away don’t send any reports but please please send a comb now what else can I write to you come and visit don’t forget and there’s nothing else to write greetings to Vera Yuryevna and do please send me a comb…’”

Guseva dragged the superfluous chair off to one side. Klava started playing ‘On the Hills of Manchuria’ and the reel round the remaining chairs started up again. Klava deliberately played for a long time, teasing them, so that the old women and the spectators were soon exhausted by the tension. Someone even shouted out: “Stop mocking us, Klavka!” Then the accordion suddenly fell silent and the old women dashed for the chairs. Kashmanova was out and she was sentenced to a stenographic report of her fifteenth day of dementia.

Kashmanova gasped resentfully and threw her hands up in the air.

Guseva, who was out just before her, started reading with a gloating note in her voice.

“Uses too much lipstick, mascara, rouge and powder. She has plucked her eyebrows. Always carries a bottle of nail varnish around and constantly paints her nails. Wears beads, brooches and clip-on earrings. Flirts with an imaginary admirer and takes her clothes off. Takes the stenographer and nurses for her rivals and at such moments becomes aggressive. Sexually uninhibited. Constantly talks about sexual relations and masturbates openly. Wants to go to the Caucasus ‘to enjoy the grapes and other pleasures’. Believes she is twenty years old and ought to get married. In the same tone of voice she says: ‘And then I went down on my knees and gave him a French job…’”

The canteen shook with laughter.

“You great fools!” Kashmanova exclaimed, putting on an imperturbable air. “What’s so unusual about that? Normal female behaviour! And you’re all stupid fools! Especially Aksak and Yemtseva!”

Two old women on the chairs giggled contentedly.

Klava struck up ‘The Autumn Waltz’. I saw Masha. She walked round the tables that had been moved together and went straight to Gorn. Masha leaned down to her leader’s ear and told her something.

Klava switched tactics and the accordion growled to a halt after only a brief moment. The one caught was an old woman by the name of Tsekhanskaya.

“Stenographic report, day nine,” Kashmanova read out in an expressive voice. “She has forgotten what her toes are called. She calls her big toe a ‘thumb’ and the others ‘the ones that are smaller’. When she sees a syringe she says: ‘Oh, they’ve brought the crystal!’ If anyone tries to tell her that it’s a syringe she asks in amazement: ‘A syringe? Then what’s crystal?’ She claims that foreign agents have put their words in her mouth. She thinks ‘blouse’ but says ‘sun’. She complains that people read her thoughts from her eyes, especially during the daytime. She asks to be locked in a dark room. She does not control her urine and stool…”

Several tables struck up a song to tuneless chords from a guitar.

“Klavka!” the old women cried excitedly. “Let’s show the young kids how it’s done! Give us ‘Evenings on the Ob’!”

“Polya!” said Gorn’s companion, hammering her fist on the table. “You don’t understand! If the reading’s done right, you don’t need any lighting. The light appears out of the reader!”

“Reznikova!” said Gorn, raising her voice. “There’s no proof of that!”

Lines sung in a jaunty chorus rammed like a truck into a couplet about the adventures of the four friends.

…the lead singer chanted in a loud, hoarse voice and the tables picked up the next line:

…but the laughter that followed was drowned in ‘Evenings on the Ob’.

In the middle of this musical bacchanalia, Masha came back to the serving room.

“Let’s go,” she said. “They’re expecting you.”

I was suffering all the torment of a new boy at school who is exhibited for general examination by an unfamiliar and hostile class. When we walked into the canteen a swampy silence fell. The old women with their permed hair, bright make-up and festive clothes, the female bodyguards with their broad shoulders, bestial jaws, gaunt drinkers’ faces and tattooed arms—the entire dangerous gathering studied me cautiously.

“This, colleagues,” Gorn said after a long pause, “is Alexei Mokhov… I’ve told you… about him… He really does… look like Lizaveta Makarovna… doesn’t he?”

“Uhu,” Reznikova laughed dourly. “The way a pig looks like a horse…”

The old women smiled. They found the manoeuvring amusing.

“Polya,” said the frail Tsekhanskaya, stroking the hair trimmed in fashionable curls at her temples, “the resemblance to Liza is very approximate.” The “mum”’s little sparrow head was set on an equally delicate bird’s neck.

“He looks a bit pale to me,” Kashmanova said mockingly. Her robust, greasy nose looked rather like the heel of a yellow lacquered shoe; her cheeks were covered with a sprinkling of fine moles. “He doesn’t suit us…”

“We’ll feed him up,” Gorn snorted.

“It’s not that simple being our grandson,” an old woman with red cheeks, vermilion lipstick, a bright flowery skirt and green knitted jumper told me. “Not everyone could handle it.”

“He’s a talented boy,” said Gorn. “He’ll get the hang of it.”

“We need to test him,” said a thin old woman with luxuriant purple hair hanging loose over her dress. “Set him an examination.”

“Now you’re talking sense, Kharitonova,” said Guseva. “Let’s take him on probation…”

It was obvious that not a single one of the fourteen took the story about a newly found grandson seriously. But on her other hand I didn’t notice any open aggression in the old women’s attitude. It was the bodyguards who worried me. They rubbed their hands together in a distinctive, masculine fashion, exchanging mocking glances, grinning with their stainless-steel crowns and scratching with coarse hands at the crotches of their padded trouser legs that were tucked into tarpaulin boots.

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

“Easy now, easy. No nonsense…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She walked up to the bed.

“How are you feeling?”

The old woman stirred.

“Better than the lot of you.”

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

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

“Can you guess why I’ve come?”

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

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

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

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

“Yes.”

“Only don’t frighten him…”

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

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

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

“Hello, Valentina Grigoryevna.”

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

“Was it Polina who told you?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

UNDER LOCK AND KEY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In a frenzy I got up, switched on the light and opened the hatch. I took out the bedpan and pissed like a human being. And I tipped my entire privy into it as well. I couldn’t give a damn what the old women would think when they saw the three-day heap.

I dragged the tray out of the niche and greedily gulped down the soup. The main course was schnitzel with mashed potatoes— I thought I had never tasted anything more delicious in my life. And that was the end of my hunger strike. I put the plates, licked completely clean, back into the dumb waiter. The mechanism’s gear wheels squeaked and the echo of the shaft cruelly distorted the mechanical noise into croaking laughter.

I made my second, and last, attempt a month later. I decided to commit suicide again—this time by slashing my wrists. The “blood” was made of water, ground brick and a portion of strawberry jam. I mixed the ingredients together in a glass.

In the morning I sent a letter and stood in front of the door— my jailers had to see my Roman hara-kiri. I crushed a light bulb under the sole of my shoe, picked up an extremely thin petal of glass off the floor and ran it across my veins (not even a scratch) and turned away quickly. I had filled my mouth in advance with the brick-and-jam ersatz, and I spat it out, then showed my wrists covered in “blood” to the peephole and sat down at the desk to die—with my back to the door. I kept adding small amounts of blood from the glass, so that it flowed off the desk in a thin, convincing trickle. I thought it was a realistic picture.

It took great self-restraint to show the strength gradually draining out of me, to melt way slowly, like a snowman. I laid my cheek on an exercise book and froze. And then the mental count began: one, two, three, four, five… and on up to sixty—a minute. Sixty minutes—an hour. With every hour that passed I persuaded myself to remain patient and be a little more dead… The night passed. The dumb waiter woke up as if nothing had happened. But the old scumbags hadn’t even thought of coming! Even if they had seen through my amusing hunger strike, they had no right to have any doubts about veins! I really had almost died!

The truth was hard. No one was watching me. Or if they were, they couldn’t give a rotten damn for my ignominious dramatic efforts. In a fit of fury I hammered the chair to pieces against the door, but then I put it back together again. From that day on I knew for certain that if I croaked, the bunker would simply be loaded with a new “grandson”.

I discovered unexpected positive aspects to this unpleasant discovery. Round-the-clock acting was terribly exhausting. I was finally able to relax. I wasn’t crushed by the sense of isolation that suddenly flooded over me. I ate regularly, rubbed myself down with alcohol, combed my hair, shaved and did my exercises. After a month of shoddy acting my shoulders were cramped into a proud bearing. I suffered fits of terror less and less often. An inexperienced diver feels the discomfort of immersion in his chest for the first few seconds. But he only has to get past that urge to breathe in—and there’s still a long way to go to genuine asphyxiation…

I thought up something to do to occupy my mind. After all, it was no accident that they had provided me with exercise books and a bundle of ballpoint pens.

In my long-ago childhood I had imitated the example of the Young Communists of the Sixties, who sent time capsules with greetings to themselves into the Communist future, by writing letters to myself. Sometimes I wrote and sealed the envelope, agreeing with myself that I would open it in ten years’ time. That was how I learned to my surprise that a person’s handwriting ages together with him. Often I cut into the soft, bluish bark of a poplar, imagining that some time, years later, when I grew up, I would touch those scars on the tree and remember the boy in a knitted blue jacket and a woolly “cockerel” cap scraping at the trunk with his key, and that would be a greeting sent across the years.

Working with a view of the Kremlin was absorbing; I didn’t feel at all like crazed Nestor, scribbling his Tale of Bygone Years. I wrote, and in the pauses I turned off the lamp and rested in the dark. The pitch darkness transformed the bunker into a black box and I was the recording mechanism inside, which would one day be found and read. The grey exercise book came to an end and I started on a brown one…

My first despondent leisure hours as a chronicler were enlivened by the Book of Strength (The Proletarian Way). The storyline was this. It is five years since the blast of war fell silent. The country is rebuilding its economy on a peaceful basis. During the war years the plan was fulfilled by superhuman effort and extra-long work shifts. The new life requires not merely enthusiasm but also innovative thinking. Many difficulties arise on this path, including the conservatism of certain enterprise managers. A difficult situation has arisen at the Proletarian Mine. The engineer Solovyev, a former front-line soldier, is at the centre of the plot. He tries to break down the established ways of doing things in order to mechanize work at the coalface. Solovyev is opposed by Basyuk, the head of the mine, who is obsessed with the stereotypes of wartime—to fulfil the plan at any price, even by last-minute storming tactics. Basyuk is not capable of understanding that the grandiose prospects of peacetime construction require different tempos and levels of productivity that cannot be achieved with outmoded equipment. The failure to modernize safety systems results in an accident. Basyuk tries to shift all the blame for what has happened onto Solovyev. It takes all the determination, grit and candour of such seasoned war veterans as the Party organizer Chistyakov and the coalface workers’ foreman Lichko to ensure that the genuine culprit receives his deserved punishment…

After reading the Book of Strength I tried to break down the door; a pointless and painful endeavour, the excess of unnatural power almost left me a cripple. I didn’t notice that I had given myself a hernia lifting the extremely heavy oak desk that I used to ram the unyielding armour plate. The door didn’t budge, but the oak started to crumble. The effect of the Book wore off, and I was racked by fierce pains in my stomach and back. It was no wonder—the Book activated the secret reserves of physical strength of the individual reader. At that moment my maximum strength was limited by the constraints of my body, and even a grenade launcher wouldn’t have blown that door in.

I managed, at the cost of skinning my fingers, to bend the hatch cover of the dumb waiter slightly, but I only convinced myself that there was no escape through the shaft—a block of steel with practically no gaps closed it off at the top.

I had clearly damaged the hermetic seal of the bent hatch cover, because sounds from the invisible kitchen started reaching the bunker: radio-station jingles, music, the voices of the cooks, the clatter of kitchenware in sinks.

Always at the same time, between breakfast and lunch, a retro music station played Soviet variety music. The programme lasted for about half an hour, and I allowed myself the pleasure of stopping work and listening to Pakhmutov, Krylatov or Frenkel.

I made yet another attempt to communicate by letter, sending two brief blackmailing epistles: I threatened to destroy the Book of Strength. But they sent me the Book of Power (Fly On, Happiness). This short novel in just over two hundred pages was a paean of praise to the heroism of the virgin-soil pioneers. At the summons of the Party, young people have come from every corner of the Union to assimilate previously uncultivated lands. Yevgeny Lubentsov has only recently graduated from an agricultural academy and has been invited to stay on for postgraduate study. The prospects before him are tempting: to finish his Ph.D. and to live in the big city. However, in the spirit of Pavel Korchagin, Lubentsov decides to go to the virgin lands as an agronomist. He deliberately chooses a backward Machine Tractor Station. Lubentsov has to demonstrate great organizational talent in order to get the station working properly. He gradually learns to understand people. At home he was in love with Elina Zaslavskaya, an attractive-looking girl whom he regarded as talented and high-minded. But on the virgin lands he comes to know the value of collectivism and comradeship, and this helps him to see through Elina’s essentially bourgeois nature. For her, heroic, noble labour in the name of the people and the country is nothing but romantic nonsense. Lubentsov realizes that Elina cannot remain his friend and companion for the rest of his life. He finds a new love in the ploughwoman Masha Fadeyeva…

From the artistic point of view the book was a lot weaker than The Proletarian Way. The negative characters were written too grotesquely, like caricatures in the magazine Krokodil. The text was indelibly stained with the newspaper ink of populistic leading articles: “They joyfully appreciated the grandeur and beauty of nature, its wisdom and generosity, and spared no efforts to set the golden ears of wheat waving above the empty land.”

Unfortunately there was no one for me to influence with my Power. No one saw the majestic expressions of my face; no one heeded the imperious modulations of my voice. I hurled my lightning-bolt glances at the walls, the door and the dumb waiter in vain.

The third Book they sent was one I was already familiar with—the Book of Meaning, with its neat insert. The fourth was the Book of Joy (Narva), a military novel about anti-aircraft gunners. Leaving aside the short lyrical passages with descriptions of the lives of the main characters and several pastoral sections at the beginning of the novella, the plot unfolds in the space of a few heroic days. February 1943. An anti-aircraft and machine-gun platoon from a ski battalion has dug in on the western bank of the Narva River. Supported by tanks, Hitler’s forces attack the positions of the Soviet warriors. The defence is headed by Lieutenant Golubnichy. The main forces of the battalion wage stubborn battle against the enemy’s tanks and infantry along a small bridgehead on the other side of the river. It is impossible to get the heavy gun across from the eastern bank to the western one—the ice on the Narva is broken. By the end of the day there are only three members of the machine-gun formation remaining—Golubnichy and two privates, Martynenko and Tishin. In the evening Lance-Corporal Sklyarov manages to get through to them and deliver ammunition. After a powerful mortar attack the German forces advance again. Martynenko is killed. Golubnichy and Sklyarov, both wounded, load the ammunition belts and Tishin runs from one machine gun to another so that the enemy won’t guess that there is only one warrior left unwounded at the position. When the Fascists break in, Golubnichy sends a signal rocket to call down the fire of our artillery on himself. The flames of explosions rage above the position and the Hitlerites flee in panic. Units from a Guards’ rifle division arrive and make a forced crossing of the Narva…

Joy in its pure form had no admixture of merriment and jocularity. There was only exultation and jubilation of the spirit. All the bitterer was the shift of mood when the feeling of rapture was replaced by a withdrawal full of hopeless despair.

I had no doubt that the pragmatic Gorn had the role of a sacrificial “reader” in mind for me right from the beginning. How bitterly I regretted that I had not been killed at the village soviet together with the other Shironinites. Someone who is destined to be hanged should pray to his rope and make confession to his piece of soap, because if he decides to drown instead, it will be torment. I would gladly have exchanged the job of running round in closed circles for a glorious and rapid death from a hook or an axe.

For many days I used the Book of Joy like vodka, to numb my fear, immersing myself twice a day in an iridescent state of ecstasy. I tried to time the reading so the final pages would coincide with the retro music programme. That way the effect of the Book lasted for almost twice as long.

As a result of this binge reading I even had hallucinations a few times. I heard footsteps outside the door, heard the bolt opening with a rusty screech, or I heard the late Margarita Tikhonovna’s voice in the shaft of the dumb waiter, discussing my lunch menu with someone. She was trying to persuade them that “Alyosha has hated chicken since he was little”.

I realized that I was being hoodwinked by auditory hallucinations, but even so I shouted to her and asked her to get me out of the bunker. For lunch I was given macaroni and a pimply chicken leg…

This went on until they sent the Book of Endurance. The anaesthetized indifference to everything that this Book induced suited me far better: unlike Joy, Endurance left almost no fleshly hangover.

I deliberately read the Book of Fury (By Labour’s Roads) without observing the Conditions. I didn’t want to reduce myself to the state of a berserk. I had no one to fight and, in addition, I was afraid of damaging myself in my blind fury.

I can say in brief that the Book told the story of a working-class dynasty, the Shapovalovs, and how a small factory for repairing agricultural equipment grew into a metallurgical combine with automated production lines, and the village of Vysoky grew into a city.

I waited for the seventh and final Book, the Book of Memory. I had no doubt that it would appear. The dumb waiter had turned from a provider of food into an instrument of exquisite torture. My heart was in my mouth every time I opened the cover. After all this exhausting agitation I couldn’t eat a bite; I even suffered from nervous vomiting. Only the artificial endurance saved me.

I didn’t need to wonder exactly how the old women would force me to start reading the Books. The mechanism of compulsion was obvious. When the dumb waiter fell silent, Alexei Vyazintsev would be faced with a fairly simple choice: starve to death or become the talisman of the country. I feverishly stuffed the drawers of the desk with bread.

Of course I was aware that no matter how much I stored up, the rusks would run out. There was no escaping the fate of the reader and curator; I could only drag out the time, hoping that something unimaginable might happen “on the off chance”. What if there really were only one copy of the Book of Strength after all? What if Gorn and the fourteen elders had been weakened and died long ago? That meant that sooner or later the leadership would change up above. The new female ataman would want to recover the invaluable Book from the basement. They would have to reach an agreement with me, and I would haggle…

This state of suspense was worse than having my conviction put into effect. But they left me alone for three months as if on purpose. My storage bins were bursting. Like a miser, I arranged the slices of bread I had saved into loaves like bricks—I had fourteen and a half of them. These reserves would last me until summer, and even longer if eaten like Leningrad siege rations.

I was bored now; my writing task was basically completed. I had begun with a brief overview of the Gromovian universe, on the basis of materials found in Gorn’s archives, and also described my own brief time as a librarian, the glorious death of the Shironin reading room and even my first months in the bunker. Now the narrative had taken itself by the tail. There was nothing left to reveal, except by supplementing what had already been written…

One morning in April or May I opened the cover. The Book of Memory was lying in the top and the bedpan in the bottom. There wasn’t any food or water.

CURATOR OF THE MOTHERLAND

“WE OWE AN IRREDEEMABLE DEBT to our Motherland. Her gifts to us are priceless. The ruby-red stars of the Kremlin shine for all of us, warming us with the rays of freedom, equality and brotherhood. What else is needed for happiness? Our Motherland is kind and generous; she does not count our debts. But there are moments when she reminds us of them. That means the Motherland is in danger. And our debt must be repaid to her in courage, steadfastness, valour and heroism.”

I learned this excerpt off by heart in the third year at school. Our school, which was named after Lenin, was preparing for the May festivities. The bosses of the district party committee were expected. Under the supervision of a department head from the local school board our frightened headmistress personally knocked the stuffing out of the juvenile orators who were privileged to tread the boards of the school-hall stage, which stank of polish. For the final few days the chosen ones were excused from classes and drilled from morning to evening. Even now if I am woken up in the middle of the night I can still rattle off without a hitch: “We owe an irredeemable debt…” This excerpt has remained branded into the skin of my memory.

I had already been a Young Pioneer since 22 April, but for the sake of the holiday they took away my necktie and those of several other third-year pupils, so that our visitors from empyrean realms could participate in the ritual and welcome us into the ranks of the pioneers for a second time.

“If we compare countries with ships, then the Soviet Union is the flagship of the world fleet. It leads the way for the other ships. If we compare countries with people, then the Soviet Union is a mighty knight who conquers his enemies and helps his friends in need. If we compare countries with stars, then our country is the Pole Star. The Soviet Union shows all the peoples of the world the way to Communism.”

This is the extract that I was given at first, and then it was replaced with “We owe an irredeemable…” At the time I was very upset. I liked the solemn words about the flagship, the knight and the star better. Not even the words themselves, but myself proclaiming them, as sonorous as a ship’s bell.

Changes were made to the script, the head of department placed the “Union” right at the very end of the programme, and the excerpt was given to some older girl whose father was the chairman of the district soviet executive committee. And the sensuous paragraph about Lenin—“For ever shall the human river flow to the Mausoleum”—was read by the proud son of the first secretary of the district Party committee

The stupefying smell of polish fogged my reason, which was already wrought up to the absolute limit. I declaimed my section after: “Our country’s shores are washed by twelve seas, and two more seas lie set upon its land” and shouted my text out into the hall without hearing my own voice, deafened by the beating of my heart. We were applauded. The secretary of the Young Communist League district committee knotted my necktie and pinned the Young Pioneer badge onto my white shirt…

And now, from out of oblivion, the country that has disappeared has presented the grubby promissory notes that I rashly signed so many years ago, demanding payment in steadfastness, valour and heroism.

It was all quite fair. Although there was indeed some delay, I have received the incredible happiness promised by my Soviet Motherland. Granted, it was a false happiness, instilled in me by the Book of Memory. But what difference does that make? After all, in my genuine childhood I believed absolutely that the state which was eulogized in all the books, films and plays was the reality in which I lived. The earthly USSR was a coarse and imperfect body, but dwelling apart in the hearts of romantic old men and the children of prosperous urban families was its artistic ideal— the Heavenly Union. When the mental dimension withered, the insensate geographical body also died.

Even when society regarded hatred of one’s own country and its past as a badge of good form, I intuitively steered clear of the debunking novels that screamed with the gluttonous voices of seagulls about various Gulag children of the Arbat walking about in white clothes. I was embarrassed by literary half-truth, and especially by its morosely frowning authors, hammering on the table with the reverberating skulls of victims of the bygone Socialist era. This skeletal rat-a-tat-tat changed nothing in the way that I felt about the Union. When I grew up a bit, I loved the Union, not for what it was, but for what it could have become if things had turned out differently. And is a potentially good man really so very much to blame if the difficulties in his life prevent his splendid qualities from blossoming?

And there was another key moment, the significance and paradoxical character of which only became clear to me years later. The Union knew how to make Ukraine a Motherland. But without the Union, Ukraine has not managed to remain one…

The country in which both of my childhoods—the genuine and the fictitious—were simultaneously located was my genuine, unique Motherland, which I could never deny. And the Book of Memory lying on the tray was my call-up papers from it.

Of course, I didn’t reason in this philosophical manner from the very beginning. At first, the moment I saw the Book, my legs went from under me, as they say, and fear drove the blood into my solar plexus so fiercely that for a few minutes I couldn’t take a proper breath, but only open my mouth. It’s strange: I had spent three months preparing, but the fateful day still caught me by surprise. I reached out for the Book of Endurance, but put it down—I wouldn’t have got through a single page. With my teeth clattering against the glass, I drank the water I had already gathered, filled the glass up to the brim with medical spirit and downed it in one. My throat and oesophagus were charred. A pillar of fire struck me in the head…

It helped. I realized that when the suffocating heat receded, as if the part responsible for fear had burned out for ever. I have nothing left to be afraid of. I have calmed down for ever.

It was the second week at my post. There were heaps of rusks and I was not suffering from hunger. There was a suspicious noise in the radiator and the yields had fallen slightly. During the last twenty-four hours only a glass and a half had accumulated. The heating season was clearly coming to an end, and soon they could turn the water off completely.

In the morning my personal clothing was in the lift and also— an unexpected surprise—the late Grisha Vyrin’s jacket. Someone in Gorn’s female brigade must have taken a fancy to this unusual trophy on that occasion at the village soviet and appropriated the anonymous dead man’s cuirass.

I didn’t feel the slightest shudder. I simply pulled on the jacket that smelled slightly of smoke over my sweater and felt perfectly protected.

They sent me a Solingen straight razor. I took this as a joking reference to my “slashed wrists” and felt offended. I stuck the razor in my pocket and drank my rusty “tea” through pieces of rusk.

Those were probably the most serene days since I had been incarcerated. I could even have killed myself, if only I had wanted to—I was not by nature inherently afraid of death. In fact, almost until the third year in school I was sure that I would grow up to be a soldier and one day I would be killed, and a solemn salute would ring out over my grave. Most often I imagined death with a grenade. I’m fighting off my advancing enemies’ fire. My sub-machine-gun falls silent—the clip in my pistol is empty. I conceal my last grenade under my tunic so that I can easily reach the safety pin. I raise my arms, emerge from cover and say I have an important message for their commanding officer. He comes over to me—the complacent enemy—his soldiers surround me. And then I pull out the safety pin with my teeth and depart into eternity, into the granite forms of a monument and the gold letters on the commemorative plaque: “Senior Lieutenant Alexei Vyazintsev died a hero’s death…” For the minutes that my fantasies lasted, my eyes blazed with tears and my cheeks burned with the heat from the martyr’s flame of that unexploded grenade…

Now that I had grown up, my task had been simplified for me—I had been offered a simplified version of heroism. I don’t even have to die. On the contrary, to live for ever for the good of the Motherland—what is there to be afraid of in that?

I was not particularly worried about what would happen if I suddenly broke off reading after, let’s say, a year. Whether I would emerge from hibernation like a bear or crumble into dust, whether the much-vaunted mechanism of immortality supposedly embedded in the Books would even work…

I suddenly started dreaming of people I had killed. I didn’t have nightmares at all, but calm, epic dreams. In one I was transported into the dismal landscape that adorned my wall. I wandered through birch trees, breathed the damp coolness, chewed on melting snow, glanced across the river. On the opposite bank a little Pavlik, as white as if he were woven out of cobwebs, was scurrying about, shouting something and waving his plaster arms around, but the wind carried away his weightless words.

In another dream the Gorelov librarian Marchenko came to me. He brought a rejigged song for the Institute’s Club of the Jolly and Ingenious team: “Though grieving and alarmed, do not stand in the doorway, I’ll show up when the snow melts.” I objected that this was gruesome humour about corpses. But the Shironinites sitting around me said that I was wrong and the parody was very funny…

I tried to remember my family as little as possible. It was too painful to think of what they had endured in recent times. The first squall of grief had probably already blown itself out. Six months is a long time. They’ll come to terms with their loss. Our fecund Vovka will have a third boy and they’ll name him after me—Alexei.

Lulled by the Book of Memory, in the darkness I fell into a doze with my ear pressed against the radio and slept through the first part of the musical broadcast.

“…from the film Moscow-Cassiopeia…” the female presenter announced in a joyful, breathy voice, merging her words into the surging bell-chime violins of the orchestral introduction.

In the pitch-black abyss of the ceiling a planetarium of the universe suddenly lit up, a cosmically infinite mantle of stars, a magical, tilted swirl of minute heavenly bodies, like a distant reflection of sleeping cities, observed from the fast-moving window of a train that is hurtling past nameless lunar way stations, mysterious nonhuman dwellings that entice with orange shards of electricity, past a purple sky with the blinking scarlet bead of a nocturnal plane, past cast-iron railings above anthracite rivers, past the smell of industrial iron warmed by the sun, the black plumes of poplars with the peacock flashes of semaphores.

With agonizing, sobbing tenderness, I listened to the simple conversational melody, devoid of all pretentious affectation. The words about parting and the long road ahead moved me to the depths of my soul. The voice was a solicitous mentor, deftly stuffing my kitbag with everything essential, everything that might be needed on an expedition from which one is not fated to return…

Something infinitely dear, woven out of poplar fluff and rays of June sunshine, touched my cheek and flooded my meagre saliva with the taste of pear drops and the viscous intoxication of Hematogen candy, then turned its youthful face towards me and waved its hand once in farewell.

The warm, happy tears were cooling in my eyes. I knew that I would no longer need the rusks and the rusty water, wearing down the glass drop by drop…

What year is it outside now? If the Motherland is free and its borders are inviolate, then the librarian Alexei Vyazintsev is keeping his watch steadfastly in his underground bunker, tirelessly spinning the thread of the protective Veil extended above the country. To protect against enemies both visible and invisible.

I would like to think that on a summer evening someone walks along the high road outside town, past cherry orchards and glittering tin-plate roofs. The sunset has spread along the horizon in a thick beetroot trickle. Mulberry trees beside the road rustle and drop berries into the dust. The shoulder of the road is covered in mulberry blots. A slow truck with a loose, rattling frame has daubed a stroke of warm petrol fumes through the air; a goods train has clattered by behind a distant embankment; the wind has pulled the tall grass erect by its topknots…

This has not happened yet, but it will be so.

I shall finish writing the final words. I shall place the notebooks—a black one, a grey one, a light-blue one and three brown ones—in the niche of the lift. I shall close the hatch.

Then I shall sit down at the table. I shall pluck up my courage. I shall open the first Book. I shall start in chronological order, with the Book of Strength.

I shall never die. And the green lamp will never go out.