Monumental Propaganda (4 page)

8

On March 5, Aglaya Stepanovna was woken by unbearably bright sunshine. Her head was clear and she felt well and so she decided it was time to get up, live and work. “That's it,” she said out loud, addressing herself strictly in her habitual manner, “enough of this lying around in bed and malingering.” As she pulled on her stockings, she remembered that today was the anniversary of Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin's death—and she called herself an idiot for almost missing the important date. On this day last year and the year before, she had visited the monument with a small bouquet of geraniums specially cultivated on her windowsill.

When she came out into the street bearing the same gift today, she saw that it was spring. The freshly fallen powdery snow was glinting in the sun, melting and settling, slipping down from off the hummocks, laying bare the earth with its sparse covering of grass. The roads had turned dark, and there was melt water flowing along their edges. Icicles were falling from under the edges of roofs and shattering noisily. On the garbage lot in front of the building, black jackdaws or crows (Aglaya could see no difference between them, but she hated them both) were hopping and strutting about, and sitting on the bench by the building were identically black old women (also rather repulsive), their heads huddled in like the birds. The number of old women in front of the house changed, but there were two who sat there constantly, one of them called Old Nadya and the other known by the nickname of Greta the Greek because of her family origins. They had been sitting on the bench in front of the building constantly for many years, perhaps even since time began. It seemed as though they had never been born and would never die, had never been young, but always the way they were now, and they sat there now the way they always had sat and would go on sitting forever. They sat and watched life flowing past in front of their eyes like some eternal soap opera, to use a modern term. Without listening to the radio or reading the newspapers, they knew everything about everybody who lived in the town of Dolgov and even something about the inhabitants of the surrounding area: who'd won money on the government bonds, who'd been jailed for embezzlement, whose husband had been taken off to the sobering-up station, who'd had twins, whose mother-in-law had fallen under a train, where there'd been a fire and who'd been stabbed. They acquired this information by constantly asking all passersby “who?-what?-where?” but they were also able to deduce a great many things by using their own heads. If a stranger entered their field of view, the old women would engage their intellects and in some mysterious manner determine fairly closely to the truth who he was, where he was coming from and going to, what he did for a living and what his intentions were. Sometimes they would simply note that last Monday before lunch a man in a hat had walked by. They were sitting on the bench now too, looking straight ahead at the snow, the sun and the children playing their noisy games. They saw a man and a woman walking by, perfect strangers and quite unremarkable, looked them over carefully, and when they had moved off, Old Nadya asked Greta the Greek: “What d'you think, is he living with her?”

“Who can tell?” said Greta the Greek. “I think he is.”

“He must be,” Old Nadya agreed with a sigh, evidently not approving of this cohabitation.

“Cossacks,” old Granny Bauman mumbled toothlessly, shaking her head shrouded in a fluffy shawl, “those people, my-oh-my! They had no pity for anyone. My sister Mira was pregnant, and they said to her, we'll arrange the birth for you, and they began danshing on her belly and she had a mishcarriage, but she shurvived, only she went totally inshane.”

Old Nadya and Greta the Greek listened, extending the storyteller temporary forgiveness for the crucifixion of Christ and the matzos made with the blood of Christian infants. The story about the Cossacks was interrupted by the appearance of Aglaya, who halted as she emerged from the hallway, blinded by the sun. She was wearing a black coat, black boots and a black beret with a little tail, pulled down to one side of her head, her face black like a gypsy woman's, black like these old women and the jackdaws and crows on the waste lot. She gave the old women a disdainful glance, for she had never liked people who sat around doing nothing, and without even saying “Morning” to them, she strode out of the courtyard quickly and lightly, as though she had not been ill at all. At her appearance the old women had become silent and subdued, but when she moved off, Old Nadya said, “Ooh, what a shnoot!”

“She is, right enough,” Greta the Greek agreed, although if they had been asked, neither one of them would have been able to say what a shnoot was.

Aglaya left the courtyard and set off across the waste lot along the still firm and icy path that was beginning to thaw in the sun. Her steps were rapid and light; she rejoiced in the sunlight and the colors and the smell of spring, without actually understanding the reasons for such keen feelings. But her body understood. Her body knew the illness had been serious and Aglaya's recovery was a miracle, and now every cell in her body was rejoicing at its good fortune in still being alive.

9

At its non-dead-end, Komsomol Cul-de-Sac emerged into Rosenblum Street, which ran out onto Stalin Prospect not far from Stalin Square.

The monument stood facing the building of the district committee of the CPSU, her very own old territory. In her time Aglaya had made her way here (actually, she had been driven; her position did not allow her to walk) as if she was coming home. The policeman at the door had stood to attention and saluted her, the secretary in the waiting room had jumped to her feet and tidied her hairdo and the fat local bigwigs she came across in the corridor had pressed back against the walls, exuding a smell of garlic and raw vodka as they opened mouths crammed full of gold or more base metal. They smiled or even laughed, with their bellies shaking, showing how happy they were to see her, and some even performed something like a curtsey.

In her time Aglaya had occupied the very largest office here, with walls paneled in walnut and numerous telephones. Here, enveloped in dove-gray cigarette smoke, she had sat behind the broad desk under the portraits of Lenin and Stalin, looking like some frenzied Pasionaria. To this office she had summoned those who distinguished themselves by their labor efforts, but there had always been fewer of them than those who had committed an offense of some kind, and at these she had hammered her fist on the desk, bellowed and cursed obscenely. Here men with high positions and large physiques used to tremble before her, sweating and stammering, clutching at their hearts and losing consciousness. There was even one occasion when one of them had quite simply messed his pants, and another—the director of a state farm who was unable to explain how he had managed to drink the farm's entire six-month budget—had collapsed on the spot, felled by a stroke.

Parting with great power is as hard as parting with great wealth. It is unpleasant and even humiliating to walk where you used to be driven in an automobile, with all that speed and commotion and blaring of the horn: Stop, make way, can't you see—it's Revkina's car? It is hard to grow used to the fact that you can't give out orders left and right: serve, bring, take away, show, report. It was strange not to see flattering smiles on approaching faces or an obsequious question in other eyes. But gradually Aglaya had become accustomed to her lowly position, comforting herself with the thought that she had done a lot of good in her life. She had introduced the collective farm system, and participated in the rout of the opposition, and fought as a partisan, and rebuilt the district from ruins, but she believed the very greatest service she had rendered, the crowning achievement of all her efforts, was the erection of the monument, without which the town would quite simply not have been what it was.

As for the district committee—what of it? It had been her home; now it was someone else's. There was nothing for her to do in there. And she wasn't going there now, she was going to see Stalin. But she paused at the Avenue of Glory, which was located in front of the district Party committee building. The first object worthy of note on the alley was the Board of Honor, on which the portraits of labor heroes and industrial shock workers were displayed in two rows: the faces, well known to Aglaya, of progressive collective farm chairmen, agronomists, doctors, teachers, milkmaids, tractor drivers, ammunition-factory workers, cardboard men and thread women (that is, workers from the cardboard and sewing thread plants). Hanging here among the others was Aglaya Stepanovna's own portrait, since last year the children's home where she was the director had been awarded the Red Challenge Banner. And behind the board was the site for which the avenue had been named—the graves of the glorious warriors who had fought for our future and our present day. Beginning with the Red Commissar Matvei Rosenblum, who had arrived on the armored train Decisive and announced to the people the final establishment of the new power in these parts, following which he had immediately been shot by the socialist revolutionary Abram Tsirkes, the incident providing the pretext for the temporary immortalization of Rosenblum's name in the title of one of the central streets. When it later became possible to joke, some people had actually suggested it was Tsirkes who should have been immortalized—after all, he was the one who hit the target. After Rosenblum came the tin obelisks with stars and the gravestones of the heroes of the Civil War, the Finnish campaign and the grueling battles of times of peace, arranged in two neat rows like the Board of Honor. In the very center of the row, under the name of Afanasii Miliagi, lay the bones of the gelding Osoaviakhim, who became almost human (those who have read
Chonkin
know about him). Under a thick covering of moss and mildew, a stone standing nearby bore the deceptive inscription ANDREI EREMEEVICH REVKIN. 1900–1941. HE SACRIFICED HIS OWN LIFE. AS THE GERMAN INVADERS APPROACHED, HE BLEW UP AN IMPORTANT INDUSTRIAL SITE AND PERISHED IN THE EXPLOSION.

People who came here by chance bowed their heads over the stone, or perhaps they didn't, but simply stood here in meditation, believing that this was truly the resting place of a hero who had performed a feat of outstanding courage. In actual fact, there was no one resting here. Because it had not been possible to find Revkin's body after the explosion, especially as no one had searched for it, and especially as there had been nothing to search for, since the explosion had blown the entire power station into little pieces, and what was not blasted apart had burned away, and if it had not burned away, then in the conditions of German occupation, who could possibly have searched for bodies on the site of the power station and buried them with full honors? It was nothing but plain nonsense. Aglaya, of course, knew there was no one lying there, or she should have known it, but the brains of ideologically oriented individuals are arranged in such a way that while knowing one thing, they believe in something else. And Aglaya knew that Revkin was not lying there, but she believed that he was.

The snow had melted a little and slipped downward, revealing the humps of the graves covered in withered grass. Aglaya stood by the grave, mentally promising the man who was not lying there that she would come back in early summer, dig up the old grass and sow new.

The remainder of her route was straight and short.

On reaching the monument, she first laid her flowers against the pedestal and then stepped back, raising her head, and only then noticed that something was wrong. Stalin was standing in his former place, in his former pose with his habitually raised right hand, but his glance was sad, his stance had shifted, as though somehow (but it was impossible!) he had begun to stoop. And on his cap—this was really incredible—two fat, disgusting gray pigeons were billing and cooing. It might seem there was nothing unusual in that; what else could be expected from these brainless creatures—after all, they never missed a single monument. But this monument was different from all the others, and they themselves had differentiated it. In all this time not a single bird had dared to lay either foot or wing on the statue. There had been only one solitary occasion when a crow with a crust of bread had tried to land on the cap, but it had barely even touched the surface before it dropped its food, flew up with a wild cry and came crashing down like a stone onto the asphalt of the square. Since that time it was quite certain that not a single winged creature had even attempted to use the statue as a landing ground. And now here were these stupid birds! How had they realized that now it was possible to land here and defile the monument? They had already covered the top of the cap with white excrement, streaks of which were visible on the peak and on the left shoulder and the flap of the greatcoat.

“Shoo!” Aglaya called out in a weak voice. “Shoo, you cursed brutes!”

But the cursed brutes responded to her call with absolute disdain. The fatter of the two, evidently the male, cocked his head to one side and squinted at Aglaya with one eye, then turned to the female and cooed something to her, and she gurgled something to him in reply. Aglaya had the feeling that they were simply laughing at her. She looked around to see if there was a stone near her feet, found a gray pebble the size of an egg and flung it. The stone hit the top of the left boot and fell in front of the pedestal, and as she followed its fall, Aglaya only now noticed a poor, miserable, solitary spray of yellow mimosa lying in the snow beside her geraniums. Her heart beat faster in joy. So she was not the only one in this town who remembered and honored the dear and beloved, the unique and irreplaceable.

“Yes,” she heard a thin, ingratiating little voice say behind her, “not everybody's forgotten everything. People love iron, birdth love iron, but when the iron fallth, the birdth will fly away, but people can't fly. They're heavy, they haven't got wingth and they're heavy, they can't fly, and iron will fall on iron.”

Aglaya turned around. Shurochka the Idiot, dressed in a plush jacket wrapped around with sackcloth, was watching Aglaya with a crazy, mysterious glimmer in her eye.

“Now what are you driveling about?” Aglaya cried indignantly. “What iron? Where is it going to fall?”

“People can't fly,” Shurochka repeated with conviction. “And iron fallth down from above.”

“Buzz off!” said Aglaya, and stalked away with a rapid, unwavering stride.